What is the \& pattern in Vim's Regex

Question

I recently came across the branch specifier in Vim regex builtins. Vim\'s help section on \\& contains this:

A branch is one or more concats         


        

Answer 1

\& can be used to match a line containing two (or more) words in any order. For example,

/.*one\&.*two\&.*three

will find lines containing one, two and three in any order. The .* is necessary because each branch must start matching in the same place.

Note, the last branch is the one that participates in any substitution. For example, applying the following substitution:

s/.*one\&.*two\&.*three/<&>/

on the line

The numbers three, two, and one

results in

, two, and one