Like other editors, Emacs has commands to search for occurrences of a string. Emacs also has commands to replace occurrences of a string with a different string. There are also commands that do the same thing, but search for patterns instead of fixed strings.
You can also search multiple files under the control of xref
(see Identifier Search) or through the Dired A command
(see Operating on Files), or ask the grep program to do it
(see Grep Searching).
| • Incremental Search | Search happens as you type the string. | |
| • Nonincremental Search | Specify entire string and then search. | |
| • Word Search | Search for sequence of words. | |
| • Symbol Search | Search for a source code symbol. | |
| • Regexp Search | Search for match for a regexp. | |
| • Regexps | Syntax of regular expressions. | |
| • Regexp Backslash | Regular expression constructs starting with ‘\’. | |
| • Regexp Example | A complex regular expression explained. | |
| • Lax Search | Search ignores some distinctions among similar characters, like letter-case. | |
| • Replace | Search, and replace some or all matches. | |
| • Other Repeating Search | Operating on all matches for some regexp. | |
| • Search Customizations | Various search customizations. |