Stay in Search Mode
You are probably already aware that you can search in Vim by typing /
and entering a pattern. Typically you might search like so:
/some_pattern<CR>
Hitting <CR>
, aka carriage return or “Enter”, immediately exits search mode. That means that refining the search patterns and running it again requires that you return to search mode using /
followed by the up arrow to reenter the previous pattern. Then you can modify the pattern and try again. But there is a better way!
ctrl-g
– Jumps to the next occurrence of the pattern, but keeps focus in the command linectrl-t
– Jumps to the previous occurrence, but again keeps focus in your search
To use these commands, make sure you have incremental search enabled. Either run the :set incsearch
command or put set incsearch
in your .vimrc
, which we’d highly recommend.
This allows for a search workflow that where you can see and page through the matches while modifying and refining your search pattern. Here’s a short screencast of these in action:
