Question

Say I have multiple blocks of the following code in a file (spaces is irrelavent):

sdgfsdg dfg
dfgdfgf ddfg
dfgdfgdfg  dfgfdg

How do you find/highlight all the occurrences?

What I ideally want to do is to visually select the code block and then press search to find all occurrences.

Answer 1

The text being searched for is stored in the / register. You can’t yank or delete directly into this register, but you can assign to it using `let’.

Try this:

• Use visual mode to highlight the code you want to search for
• Type "ay to yank that highlighted selection into register a
• Type :let @/ = @a to copy register a into the search register /

At this point, all code matching your selection will be highlighted, and you can navigate through occurrences using n/N just as you would a regular search.

Of course, you can use any temporary register instead of a. And it shouldn’t be too difficult to get this command sequence mapped for easy use.