Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 80

Meet the Search Command

In this tip, we’ll cover the basics of using the search command, including how to specify the direction of a search, repeat (or reverse) the last search, and work with the search history.

Execute a Search

From Normal mode, the / key brings up Vim’s search prompt. Here we can enter the pattern, or literal text, that we want to search for. Vim does nothing until we press the <CR> key to execute the search. If we press the <Esc> key instead, the search prompt will be dismissed and we’ll return to Normal mode.

When we execute a search, Vim scans forward from the current cursor position, stopping on the first match that it finds. If nothing is found before the end of the document, Vim informs us “search hit BOTTOM, ...