org: Search options
4.7 Search options in file links
================================
File links can contain additional information to make Emacs jump to a
particular location in the file when following a link. This can be a
line number or a search option after a double(1) colon. For example,
when the command ‘C-c l’ creates a link (
Handling links) to a
file, it encodes the words in the current line as a search string that
can be used to find this line back later when following the link with
‘C-c C-o’.
Here is the syntax of the different ways to attach a search to a file
link, together with an explanation:
[[file:~/code/main.c::255]]
[[file:~/xx.org::My Target]]
[[file:~/xx.org::*My Target]]
[[file:~/xx.org::#my-custom-id]]
[[file:~/xx.org::/regexp/]]
‘255’
Jump to line 255.
‘My Target’
Search for a link target ‘<<My Target>>’, or do a text search for
‘my target’, similar to the search in internal links, see
Internal links. In HTML export (HTML export), such a
file link will become an HTML reference to the corresponding named
anchor in the linked file.
‘*My Target’
In an Org file, restrict search to headlines.
‘#my-custom-id’
Link to a heading with a ‘CUSTOM_ID’ property
‘/regexp/’
Do a regular expression search for ‘regexp’. This uses the Emacs
command ‘occur’ to list all matches in a separate window. If the
target file is in Org mode, ‘org-occur’ is used to create a sparse
tree with the matches.
As a degenerate case, a file link with an empty file name can be used
to search the current file. For example, ‘[[file:::find me]]’ does a
search for ‘find me’ in the current file, just as ‘[[find me]]’ would.
---------- Footnotes ----------
(1) For backward compatibility, line numbers can also follow a single
colon.
Info Catalog
org: Link abbreviations
org: Hyperlinks
org: Custom searches