How to call incremental forward/reverse search inside function in Neovim?

Question

I'm trying to implement a search function that finds a pattern and jumps to it without overriding the current searched for & highlighted pattern.

Specifically, I want to be able to type out the pattern and jump to it just like how / and ? are implemented in neovim; where when I start typing it immediately starts highlighting & jumping in real time. The only difference is that after jumping, I want to keep the previous highlighted/searched for pattern.

I took a look at several pages including this, but the problem is that these solutions only seem to work with pre-specified patterns, whereas in my case I want to type out the pattern via / or ?.

One solution may be to write a function that stores current pattern, calls //? and after jumping replaces the pattern.

function! ForwardJumpToPattern()                                                                                                                                                              
    let search_original_content=@/                                                                                                                                                          
    normal! /  
    let @/=search_original_content                                                                                                                                                                    
endfunction 

But the problem is that I can't figure out how to call / or ? from inside a function.

Answer 1

You can use the search() function.

Call:

• search(pattern) to simulate /pattern
• search(pattern, 'b') to simulate ?pattern