Searching

Search commands look though the buffer, in either the forward or the reverse direction, looking for text that matches a search pattern. Search commands prompt for the search pattern in the echo line. The search pattern used by the last search command is remembered, and displayed in the prompt. If you want to use this pattern again, just hit carriage return at the prompt.

In search strings, all characters stand for themselves, and all searches are case insensitive. There are no regular expression searches, and there probably should be. The newline characters at the ends of the lines are considered to have hexadecimal value 0A, and can be matched by a linefeed in a search string. [1]##1 [C-S, M-S] Search forward, from the current location, toward the end of the buffer. If found, dot is positioned after the matched text. If the text is not found, dot does not move.

The C-S form of the command is not usable if the terminal being used required XON/XOFF support. In fact, if you use this format of the command on such a terminal, it will hang until you type C-Q. [C-R, M-R] Search reverse, from the current location, toward the front of the buffer. If found, dot is positionedat the first character of the matched text. If the text is not found, dot does not move.