GNU awk also supports \y which is same as \b as well as \B for opposite (same as GNU grep/sed)

Intererstingly, there's a difference between the three types of word anchors:

    $ # \b matches both start and end of word boundaries
    $ # 1st and 3rd line have space as second character
    $ echo 'I have 12, he has 2!' | grep -o '\b..\b'
    I 
    12
    , 
    he
     2

    $ # \< and \> strictly match only start and end word boundaries respectively
    $ echo 'I have 12, he has 2!' | grep -o '\<..\>'
    12
    he

    $ # -w ensures there are no word characters around the matching text
    $ # same as: grep -oP '(?<!\w)..(?!\w)'
    $ echo 'I have 12, he has 2!' | grep -ow '..'
    12
    he
    2!

There's no point in awk if perl etc are ubiquitous and more consistent.

  $ printf "fishstick\nfish\ngoldfish\n" | awk '/\<fish\>/' 
  fish