Question

How to use “usual” regexps in vim’s search /? I mean something like [0-9]+\d+\S*, and not the vim syntax? I find vim’s syntax annoying and constantly have to check how to express something in it.

Answer 1

The problem you encounter most possibly is because of magic. See :help /magic inside of ViM. What you can do is add \v as the first member of your pattern. Example:

/\v[0-9]+\d+\S*

Explanation from the manual:

Use of "\v" means that in the pattern after it all ASCII characters except
'0'-'9', 'a'-'z', 'A'-'Z' and '_' have a special meaning.  "very magic"

You can also set the magic option (see :help magic).