Advanced isearch tips, settings, options and uses

Caveat

A technical video for advanced users of Emacs

Settings

; (setq isearch-lazy-highlight nil) ; remove lazy-highlight from incremental search
  (setq isearch-repeat-on-direction-change t) ; Remove "pause" when changing directions
  (setq isearch-wrap-pause nil) ; Never wrap isearch, either go up or down
  (setq search-ring-max 4) ; max length of search ring; default is 16; cycle using M-p and M-n
  (setq isearch-forward-thing-at-point '(region url email symbol sexp))
  (setq isearch-allow-prefix t) ; do not allow scrolling commands to exit search, does not work in org-mode

Cancel search

ESC ESC ESC

or,

C-g C-g

Reuse earlier searches (see `search-ring-max` above)

M-p or M-n

Editing current search

C-g removes characters from search string not found in buffer. (Note: A second C-g at that point cancels the search entirely.)

C-M-d removes once character at a time from the search string (NEW)

DEL (Backspace) deletes the last typed character from the search string

M-e allows edits in minibuffer (more wide scale editing)

Search at point (all commands presuppose you are in isearch)

C-s C-w search word or sometimes character at point (Note: Emacs decides for you if it will search a word or character (heuristic search))

One can also use numeric arguments or re-invoke C-w to add more words/characters

C-s C-M-y search one character at time C-M-d removes one character at time

The heavy stuff

C-s C-M-w as above but searches for a symbol instead of word

C-s M-s C-e appends line

C-s C-M-z search from point to character x

C-s C-y search current copy/killed item

Some relief: New in Emacs 28: Search for "things"

M-s M-. (isearch-forward-thing-at-point)

Searches for things at point include the following: symbol, list, sexp, defun, number, filename, url, email, uuid, word, sentence, whitespace, line, and page.

Also useful for searching a region

An example config:

(setq isearch-forward-thing-at-point '(region url email symbol sexp))

Special Input for Incremental Search

M-s SPC toggle lax space searching

hello world
hello world

M-s c or M-c toggle case searching

M-s r or M-r toggle regexp and non-regexp search

M-s _ toggle symbol mode

C-j searches for a newline character; a nice way to see new lines quickly

M-s h r highlight search

M-s h l unhighlight search

C-h C-h help (works only if isearch is active)

M-s M-> goes to last occurrence

M-s M-< goes to first occurrence

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