This page covers:

• Searching for text in buffers and files;
• Searching for files whose name matches certain patterns.

Search in a buffer

• C-s is a forward incremental search. M-% to replace found occurrence.
• C-r is a backward incremental search
• M-x list-matching-lines: list lines matching a regexp in the current buffer.

In search mode, the following bindings are available:

• M-e: Edit search string
• M-s c: Toggle case-sensitive search
• M-s o: List occurrences of search string

Search in multiple buffers

• M-x multi-occur-in-matching-buffers RET .* RET <text> RET: Search in all open buffers.

Ibuffer

In Ibuffer, you can select buffers to do an incremental search on them. To mark buffers in the list, press m.

Then:

• M-s a C-s: Incremental search on marked buffers. When the end of a buffer is reached (with C-s, it goes to the next marked one. Once all the buffers have been searched, it rotates back to the first buffer.
• M-s a C-M-s: Isearch for regexp in the marked buffers.

Search and replace

• M-%: query-replace
• C-M-%: query-replace-regexp

Search and Replace in several files

• M-x find-name-dired t Q: Prompts for interactive query-replace in files selected in dired. Use y to accept replace. C-x s ! to save all.

Search and Replace with across multiline regions

Newlines must be entered using C-q C-j. For example, to remove trailing commas in a JSON file, the regexp should be:

,\([
 ]+},\)

the newline being inserted with C-q C-j.

Examples

• Remove ^M characters:

M-% C-q C-M RET RET

Replace with a Lisp expression

 M-x replace-regexp <RET> ^.\{0,72\}$ <RET>
         \,(format "%-72sABC%05d" \& \#) <RET>

• \& : Represents the whole match being replaced
• \# : Count of replacement so far, starting with 0
• \1, \2, …: Grouped match.
• \#1, \#2, …: Grouped match as a number.

Match Parenthesis

• C-M-f : forward-sexp, Search matching parenthesis forward
• C-M-b : backward-sexp, Search match parenthesis backward.

Search content in files

• M-x rgrep : Does a recursive grep.
• To navigate in grep-mode:
• }, TAB: Next match
• <: Beginning of buffer
• >: End of the buffer.

Exhuberant Ctags

A tag file must be created with exuberant ctags, for example:

 /usr/local/bin/ctags -e -R -f TAGS --tag-relative

This creates a tag file that will to need to be visited when first searching for a tag.

• M-.: search for a tag
• C-u M-. : Find next match
• M-* : pop-tag-mark, Go back to previous location

Highlighting

• C-x w h <regexp> RET <face> RET : Highlight regexp. To then deactivate highlighting, C-x w r.
• C-x w l <regexp> RET <face> RET: Highlight lines containing regexp.

Misc Commands

• M-x cd: Change default directory. Often needed when using search commands that operate from current directory.

Find a file

• find-name-dired: Searches file pattern in a given base directory
• locate: Searches file using a search string.

Next: Select