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I have lines like the following ones (actually function prototypes)
void ()
word ( word, another word, one_more word, ..., hello, ... )
one argument ( only )
I want to match each single argument and enclose it between < and >.
Before wasting time with the replacement string, I'm trying to devise the proper search pattern. The following command
:%s/\(( \|, \)\(.\{-}\)\( )\|,\)/\1<\2>\3/g
only matches and replace odd-position arguments.
It's because your matching groups have overlap! Exept for zero-width pattern items, every charachter in your string will be consumed in the matching. so here you can use \zs and \ze to confine your match:
:%s/\%(( \|, \)\zs\(.\{-}\)\ze\%( )\|,\)/<\1>/g
Here i also changed the first and third captuting groups to non-capturing as we don't need to capture them.
for a complete list of zero-width pattern items, see: :h pattern-overview
%s/ \(\w[^,)]\+\)/<\1>/g. This is good too, but it fails when something (not necessarly a comment) follows the closing parenthesis. What do you think about it?
%s/(\zs\(.*\)\ze)/\=substitute(submatch(1), '\(\w[^,)]\+\)', '<\1>', 'g')