Why is asterisk not highlighting repeated occurences of a character?

Question

I am using the latest version of Gvim on Windows 10.

When I type / and some expression, for example /a, I see all matches in the document highlighted.

The documentation says that the asterisk symbol * will match repeated occurrences of the same character, for example, *n will match nnnn.

However, when I type /*n or /\*n, nothing is highlighted, and when I press enter, I receive the message "Pattern not found", even though the word "Connect" is in the document.

When I enter /n*, the entire document is highlighted.

Does this indicate the asterisk has had its meaning remapped due to some Windows configuration or is there some other reason I am not able to match repeated instances of characters? What can I do about this?

Answer 1

1. The question is basically about (standard) regex, not Vim.
2. Quantifier, such as an asterisk, applies to what it follows, not what it precedes, i.e. n*, not *n.
3. The asterisk means "zero or more". Hence n* matches just anything. It should probably be nn* or n\+ instead.