44
votes
How do I find text across many open buffers?
Sticking to built-in Emacs commands, you can use multi-occur or multi-occur-in-matching-buffers (M-x multi-occur- TAB RET). multi-occur gives you fine control by prompting for each buffer to use, but ...
37
votes
Accepted
What is the easiest way to search all useful files inside a single project?
Project based searching within Emacs can be done using projectile.
It allows for per-project configuration of ignore files (in a <projectroot>\.projectile file), or specify subdirectories to ...
- 4,187
31
votes
Accepted
Match two spaces with incremental search
Use M-s SPC during Isearch to toggle matching whitespace literally. When matching literally, each SPC char you type is matched individually. (This used to be the default Emacs behavior, BTW.)
To ...
- 69.7k
29
votes
Accepted
Counsel M-x always shows "^"
ivy-initial-inputs-alist is a variable that controls the default minibuffer contents when using ivy (which is used by counsel).
The default "^" string means that if you type something immediately ...
- 1,240
24
votes
Accepted
Only show lines containing phrase/regex
...see all the lines from the current buffer...
With built-in commands and no external packages or dependencies in
a new buffer, use:
M-x occur
the same buffer, use:
M-x keep-lines
- 5,375
22
votes
Accepted
Search for text and navigate between the occurrences
The manual is your friend!
The basic search capability is incremental search. Press C-s and enter the string to search (C-r to search backwards). Press C-s/C-r again to go to the next/previous ...
17
votes
Accepted
Helm: search within buffer feature?
You can use helm-occur as a tool that comes with the basic helm module for this.
But to me, one of the best helm based tools for buffer searching is Shingo Fukuyama's helm-swoop. You can get it from ...
- 1,754
15
votes
Accepted
Getting number of occurrences, during incremental search (C-s / isearch-forward)
The anzu package does that.
anzu.el provides a minor mode which displays current match and total matches information in the mode-line in various search modes.
- 24.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Search through the values of all variables in Emacs
Does apropos-value do what you're looking for?
(apropos-value PATTERN &optional DO-ALL)
Show all symbols whose value’s printed representation matches PATTERN.
PATTERN can be a word, a list of ...
- 461
14
votes
What is the easiest way to search all useful files inside a single project?
The project-wide search of only relevant files can be done using ag aka the_silver_searcher.
Why ag?
It ignores file patterns from your .gitignore, .hgignore, svn:ignore. You can choose for your ...
- 24.3k
14
votes
How do I find text across many open buffers?
swiper-all from the swiper package provides a tool for doing this. It's even incremental, so it updates as you type.
- 6,660
14
votes
How to search the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual?
You can use elisp-index-search. I use it daily.
I use it mostly when I already know a function name and want to see it in emacs lisp manual.
- 1,706
14
votes
Getting number of occurrences, during incremental search (C-s / isearch-forward)
Here are some possibilities that aren't very slick, that have the advantage of working with a stock Emacs.
If you press M-s o (isearch-occur) during an incremental search, an Occur buffer pops up ...
13
votes
Accepted
How to search the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual?
EDIT: I just found the wonderful M-x info-apropos which searches full text over all info documents and returns the relevant nodes. Seems this gem is relatively unknown.
If you use helm package from ...
- 3,826
13
votes
Search for string ignoring new lines
Take a look at the variables isearch-lax-whitespace, isearch-regexp-lax-whitespace, and search-whitespace-regexp.
If the first two variables are set to something non-nil (e.g. t) any space character ...
- 5,216
12
votes
How do I find text across many open buffers?
In addition to what others have mentioned - here are two other resources for this.
M-x multi-isearch-buffers or M-x multi-isearch-buffers-regexp (vanilla Emacs) - Incremental search across multiple ...
- 69.7k
12
votes
How do I find text across many open buffers?
This can be done with helm via the command helm-multi-occur. You can install helm from melpa and then call the command as follows:
M-x helm-multi-occur RET M-a RET
This will open helm-multi-occur ...
- 7,813
11
votes
helm-ag (or similar) find in javascript files only
If you use helm-ag command, you can specify option like -G\.js$ search_pattern, or if you use helm-do-ag, you can use C-u prefix for specifying extension.
This is screencast.
Thanks for using helm-...
- 456
10
votes
Accepted
Recursively find all files from a folder containing a regexp in the filename, using helm
On systems that provide GNU find utility, you can use helm-find (by default bound to C-x c /) to get the desired behavior. Starting helm-find with a prefix argument C-u C-x c / prompts for the ...
- 3,826
10
votes
Search for text and navigate between the occurrences
Instead of just providing a link to the manual section section about searching, the real "the manual is your friend" answer is to tell you how to look this up in the manual yourself: C-h r i searching ...
- 69.7k
10
votes
How to convert a series of lines into a working HTML list?
Alternatively to query replace you can go with multiple-cursors:
Also consider using something like this:
(defun wrap-html-tag (tagName)
"Add a tag to beginning and ending of current word or text ...
- 506
10
votes
How to search *just* the current line
Select the current line ( C-a C-SPC C-e )
Narrow region ( C-x n n )
Perform search using any method
Go back to the original buffer by widening ( C-x n w )
- 24.3k
10
votes
Accepted
Is there a more efficient alternative to search-forward when searching for a single character?
I have run the following benchmarks on
GNU Emacs 27.0.50
(build 14, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)
of 2018-02-21
without customisations, i.e. by starting Emacs with the -Q flag.
...
- 11.4k
9
votes
Accepted
how to search and replace an entire word?
You don't need to define a separate function (command) for this. And even if you did define one, it need not use query-replace-regexp.
The standard command query-replace does just what you request, ...
- 69.7k
9
votes
Accepted
How to select text found by `re-search-forward`?
One way to do it:
(defun my-search-forward (str)
(interactive "smy-search-forward: ")
(when (re-search-forward str nil t)
(setf
(point) (match-beginning 0)
(mark) (match-end 0))))
- 10k
9
votes
Accepted
Gracefully Exiting a While Loop
re-search-forward has an option for not causing an error:
(re-search-forward REGEXP &optional BOUND NOERROR COUNT)
You should call (re-search-forward "..." nil t) and your while will receive a ...
- 5,005
9
votes
Accepted
Does "Occur-at-point" already exist?
There are a number of Emacs commands for which M-n at the input prompt (next-history-element) will insert a reasonable default if there is no next history element available. For occur that happens to ...
- 19.2k
8
votes
How to convert a series of lines into a working HTML list?
You can use query-replace-regexp (C-M-%). Replace ^\(.*\)$ with <li>\1</li>.
- 4,968
8
votes
Accepted
How to search *just* the current line
Isearch is quite flexible and if you become tired of constantly
narrowing the buffer (as was suggested), you may want to have a
dedicated command for this, e.g.
(defun isearch-line-forward (&...
- 3,276
8
votes
Accepted
How to check if a string exists in the current buffer?
I think the easiest approach would be
(save-excursion
(goto-char (point-min))
(search-forward string nil t))
This will return non-nil if the given string is in the current buffer.
- 3,351
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible