Thanks. the problem is that I really want to match *test* when it is on a word boundary. So, I want to match /*test*/ for example, or --*test--
That's why I thought \b\*test\*\b would do the trick. I thought that \b should stop matching if it finds the end of a word boundary or a character that is explicitly specified. So, since * is part of a word boundary, but is also the next exact match in the regex, I thought \b would stop matching. Guess \b sucks anything that matches, even if it is explicitly specified as something to be matched.