Does vim allow for searching raw strings?
If what I want to search is in the variable string, does the following code work?
call search('\V' . escape(string, '\'))
Or are there other more direct ways?
5
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3No, that is the only possibility. There is no other way to search literally. – Christian Brabandt Sep 24 '18 at 10:24
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1@ChristianBrabandt care to write an answer? – D. Ben Knoble Sep 24 '18 at 12:45
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Vim does not have an (easy) native way to search for text literally. However, I find that the default of using regular expressions makes the search quite a bit more powerful, if you have grokked at least the basics.
For the few times I have needed to search for text literally, I use basically what you have shown here:
call search('\V' . escape(string, '\'))
which you can wrap into a custom command to make searching text literally more easy:
" Search literally!
com! -nargs=1 Search :let @/='\V'.escape(<q-args>, '\\')| normal! n
So you can search literally by using
:Search my literal text with \\ and . and ^ and more regexpes
to search for the text "my literal text with \ and . and ^ and more regexpes.
This command I have taken from my .vimrc but I can't remember if I ever actually used that command, besides showing how to make searching for a literal text more easily available.
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If you want to search multi-line literal text with \V:
call search('\V' . substitute(escape(text, '/\'), "\n", '\\n', 'g'))
