Searching for strings

In a large document, searching for a particular text string can be very time consuming. The / command prompts for a string to search for in the file. When you press <Enter>, vi searches the file for the next occurrence of the string you entered.

To try searching for a string, first move to the top of vitest. Then type:

/Blu

and press <Enter>.

As soon as you enter /, it is displayed on the bottom of the screen. As you type the string Blu, it is echoed . You can use <Backspace> to fix mistakes as you type the search string. After you press <Enter>, the cursor moves to the first occurrence of the string.

The n command searches for the next occurrence of the last string you searched for. Try it now by entering:

The cursor should move to the next occurrence of the string, which is the th in the word with. You can also use N like n to search the other direction through the file.

If you just type a slash without anything after it, vi looks for the most recent word or phrase you searched for.