Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 86

Count the Matches for the Current Pattern

This tip shows a couple of ways that you can count the number of matches for a pattern.

Suppose we want to find out how many times the word “buttons” appears in this excerpt:

search/buttons.js

var buttons = viewport.buttons;
viewport.buttons.previous.show();
viewport.buttons.next.show();
viewport.buttons.index.hide();

We’ll start by searching for that word:

/\<buttons\>

Now we can move from one match to another by pressing the n and N keys, but Vim’s search command doesn’t give us any indication of how many matches are in the current document. We can get a match count by using either the :substitute or :vimgrep command.

Count Matches with the ‘:substitute’ Command

We can get a ...