Vim: searching for text containing a slash or a question mark

Vim: the search command

To activate a text search in Vim, press one of the following trigger keys in your keyboard:

• the slash "/" key (do not confuse with the back-slash "\" key)
• the question mark key.

By pressing the slash "/" key will activate a forward search.

By pressing the question mark "/" key will activate a backward search.

To move the cursor to the results in your document, press the "n" key (mnemonic for “next”). To invert the direction of the cursor, press the "N" key, (“upper n”).

What about if you need to search for a slash or a question mark, i.e. the same trigger characters, in your document?

You can prepend the Escape character to the trigger key.

The Escape character

The Escape character is the back-slash key: "\".

Just an example: if you need to forward search (then with / trigger key) the string /test you need to write \/testin the search field.

Similarly, if you need to backward search (then with ? trigger key) the string ?test you need to write \?test in the search field.

Below, a little summary table (the firts character in the “search string” column is the trigger key):

searched string	trigger+search string
/test	/\/test
?test	?\?test

The “inverse search” trick

You can use a little “trick” in Vim to avoid the Escape character by inverting the trigger key.

In this case the search string would be as follows:

searched string	trigger+search string
/test	?/test
?test	/?test

Wouldn’t the research go in the opposite direction of what was intended?

Yes, but you can use the "N", (upper n) to invert the inverse search.