search under cursor in vim

1-minute read
technical
vim

here’s a vim tip i’ve learned recently

let’s say you want to search other occurences of a keyword in that case, just press *

and then n to move forward and N (that’s capital N) to move backwards

keep in mind vim’s definition of keyword, ie spider-man is considered 2 words

in that (and other more advanced) cases, you may want to use visual selection

unfortunately it’s not as straightforward as we would want, but here’s how it is done:

  • press v to enter visual mode,
  • select the desired text
  • y to copy to register "
  • / to enter search
  • Ctrl + r + " to paste from register "

keep in mind the query search is considered a string

so let’s say you have a file with

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spider-.*
spider-pig
spider-ham
spider-man

searching for spider-.* will naturally highlight all lines

Spider-Ham giving thumbs up

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