How to escape vim keywords in mappings?

Question

In another thread this terrific mapping was suggested as a way to upper-case SQL keywords:

noremap <leader>s <Esc>:s/\v<select>\|<from>\|<insert>\|<into>\|<table>\|<where>\|<delete>\|<limit>\|<order>\|<by>\|<asc>\|<desc>\|<set>\|<update>/\U\0/g<Return>

However, it appears that <insert> and <delete> are VIM keywords. How does one escape them? The obvious attempt to precede them with \ does not work!

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes, escaping the angle brackets is probably the right way to go.

My original proposal used \v to reduce the number of backslashes in the search pattern but it didn't take into account the requirements of mapping.

The solution is thus to remove the \v and go into backslash frenzy to end up with something like:

nnoremap <F9> :s/\<insert\>\\|\<delete\>/\U\0<cr>

Answer 2

In this case, since that occurs in a regular expression you can get around that problem by breaking up those sequences by using grouping to share the <> characters:

noremap <leader>s <Esc>:s/\v<(select\|from\|insert\|into\|table\|where\|delete\|limit\|order\|by\|asc\|desc\|set\|update)>/\U\0/g<Return>

More generally, you could replace the < characters (either all of them or just the ones before the problem words) with <Char-0x3c>, 0x3c being the ASCII value for the < character.