how to get the word between two character in vim script?

Question

My cursor is on the word <header>.

If I run the function expand("<cword>") it will return for me the word <header> I want get only what is between <> which is header.

I want to write a function that takes three arguments

foo(string, startChar, endChar)

and returns the characters between startChar and endChar.

Could you help please ?

Answer 1

After researching an answer I found one. The answer is that by default the expand('<cword>') return the word between special character such as '<' or '' ... but if I want to get the groups of characters between two indexes we can write a function that do the job

function Get_string_between(string, start, end)
  let str=""
  "get length of string
  let len =strlen(a:string)

  "set the default values o start and end indexes to 0
  let startIndex=0
  let endIndex=0


"Get the index of start and end characters
  let i =0
  while i < len
    if a:string[i]  == a:start && startIndex == 0
      let startIndex =i
    elseif a:string[i] == a:end && endIndex == 0
      let endIndex =i
    endif
    let i += 1
  endwhile
  echo "StartIndex: ". startIndex
  echo "endIndex: ". endIndex

  let i =startIndex+1

  while i < endIndex
    let str .= a:string[i]
    let i +=1
  endwhile
  return str
endfunction