Vim: How do you efficiently search for text?

Question

Whenever you want to search for text in vim you would type / and then the string you are looking for.

However, when the string is a long one, and you want to do this multiple times, is there a way to do it so that you don't have to type /andthisreallylongstring more than once?

Answer 1

Press "n" after you completed a search, then it will repeat the previous action(search).

Answer 2

If the string you search is under the cursor, then you can type * to search for it forward, or # to search for it backwards.

Answer 3

How I usually search is something like;

1. Press '/'
2. Enter Search Term
3. Press Enter
4. Use 'n' and 'N' to navigate forward and backwards within the search.

Vim keeps a history of your searches, so if you need previous searches you can press '/' and use the UP and DOWN keys or <Ctrl-P> <Ctrl-N> to browse the search history.

You can also use '?' instead of '/' to search backwards.

I also like to use:

set ignorecase smartcase

Now it will only be a case sensitive search if you have uppercase characters in the search string.

Answer 4

Two additional tips that can make your searching more efficient are set hlsearch and set incsearch.

• set hlsearch, well, highlights your search results. Type :noh to turn them off when you don't need it anymore.

• set incsearch turns on incremental searching.

  Extracted from :help incsearch

  While typing a search command, show where the pattern, as it was typed so far, matches. The matched string is highlighted. If the pattern is invalid or not found, nothing is shown. The screen will be updated often, this is only useful on fast terminals.

  Without incsearch, your results will only be displayed after pressing <CR> on your search keyword.

  Example:

  You want to search for wildignore

  

  You type /wild and the first match gets highlighted automatically.

  

  Then type i and it goes on to the next correct match.

  

Answer 5

Another tip not yet covered: Pressing the characters q and then /, will give you a list of your previous search terms. You may edit them like any other line in a document, and then press enter to re-use them for a new search.

Answer 6

After pressing / to start the search, you can up-arrow to scroll through your search history.

You can enter a regular expression to avoid having to type out the whole search term: and.*longstring

Answer 7

Does just hitting / with no arguments following not work for you? On all our systems, that causes a repeat of whatever search was done last.

Answer 8

There is a nice pattern you can follow to search for yanked text. Then you don't even have to type the word in itself, if you've navigated to it by means other than a search. In summary, if you're on the first character of the word you want to search for:

v
e
y
/
Ctrl-r
0
Enter

(then continue to next match with n or N)

However * (or #) accomplishes pretty much the same thing as all these commands. The only difference is you can be flexible by how much of the word you specify (rather than e, to the end of the word, you can select as much as you want to, e.g. 9l)

Answer 9

Additionally, you can paste the contents of any register into the search prompt by pressing Ctrl+R and then the name of the register, e.g., / Ctrl+R 0 Enter.

Answer 10

• /string — Search forward for string
• ?string — Search back for string
• n — Search for next instance of string
• N — Search for previous instance of string

Answer 11

A lot of time when programming I'll want to search for aVeryLongVariableNameInTheProgram.

In vim you can very easily yank text into a buffer/register and then search for it:

• Put cursor on first character of word
• "Byw to yank text aVeryLongVariableNameInTheProgram into buffer B (choose your favorite, I used B)
• /^RB (slash, Ctrl-R, B) to paste buffer B on the search line

Of course you can also yank to end of line, etc. instead of yanking a single word - I just happen to use the above sequence all the time.

Answer 12

Is the long string that you're entering a variable name? Or a long string that's in your text? Then hit * to search for the word/string under your cursor.