Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 51

Search to Navigate

The search command allows us to rapidly cover distances both large and small with very few keystrokes.

The character search commands (f{char}, t{char}, and so on) are fast and lightweight, but they have limitations. They can only search for a single character at a time, and they can only operate within the current line. If we need to search for more than one character or move beyond the current line, then we can use the search command instead.

Suppose that we want to position our cursor on the word “takes” in this sample:

motions/search-haiku.txt

search for your target
it only takes a moment
to get where you want

We could do so by searching for the word: /takes<CR>. It only occurs once in this short sample, ...