emacs: Symbol Search
15.4 Symbol Search
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A “symbol search” is much like an ordinary search, except that the
boundaries of the search must match the boundaries of a symbol. The
meaning of “symbol” in this context depends on the major mode, and
usually refers to a source code token, such as a Lisp symbol in Emacs
Lisp mode. For instance, if you perform an incremental symbol search
for the Lisp symbol ‘forward-word’, it would not match
‘isearch-forward-word’. This feature is thus mainly useful for
searching source code.
‘M-s _’
If incremental search is active, toggle symbol search mode
(‘isearch-toggle-symbol’); otherwise, begin an incremental forward
symbol search (‘isearch-forward-symbol’).
‘M-s .’
Start a symbol incremental search forward with the symbol found
near point added to the search string initially.
‘M-s _ <RET> SYMBOL <RET>’
Search forward for SYMBOL, nonincrementally.
‘M-s _ C-r <RET> SYMBOL <RET>’
Search backward for SYMBOL, nonincrementally.
To begin a forward incremental symbol search, type ‘M-s _’ (or ‘M-s
.’ if the symbol to search is near point). If incremental search is not
already active, this runs the command ‘isearch-forward-symbol’. If
incremental search is already active, ‘M-s _’ switches to a symbol
search, preserving the direction of the search and the current search
string; you can disable symbol search by typing ‘M-s _’ again. In
incremental symbol search, only the beginning of the search string is
required to match the beginning of a symbol.
To begin a nonincremental symbol search, type ‘M-s _ <RET>’ for a
forward search, or ‘M-s _ C-r <RET>’ or a backward search. In
nonincremental symbol searches, the beginning and end of the search
string are required to match the beginning and end of a symbol,
respectively.
The symbol search commands don’t perform character folding, and
toggling lax whitespace matching (
lax space matching Lax Search.)
has no effect on them.
Info Catalog
emacs: Word Search
emacs: Search
emacs: Regexp Search