.. default-role:: code
.. image:: doc/locate.png :align: center
/ and ? are search motions: simple and powerful. But when searching for a
common pattern, especially in a large file, it can be hard to get to the one
match you're looking for (tired of hitting n?). They also don't provide an
overview of where the matches are: the only way to figure it out is to move the
cursor.
Vim comes with alternate commands for this use-case (see :help vimgrep or
:help ilist), but they all require manual work (refreshing the list of
results, no highlighting, etc.). :Locate, or :L for short, handles all this
and more.
very magic modes.:L foobar searches for "foobar" inside the current window (short for
:Locate foobar). Matches in the current window will be highlighted.gl searches for the word under the cursor (normal mode) or the current
selection (visual mode).:Lpurge closes the results list and cancels highlighting (can also be done
via :lclose).After each new search the cursor will jump to the location list and remember
its position inside the searched window (this can be configured with the
g:locate_focus and g:locate_jump_to options respectively). The list of
results will stay updated on save. There are more commands and configuration
options which you can read about by running :help Locate.
With pathogen.vim_:
.. code:: bash
$ cd ~/.vim/bundle $ git clone https://github.com/mtth/locate.vim
Otherwise simply copy the folders into your .vim directory.
.. smartcase: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/options.html#'smartcase'
.. very magic: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#/magic
.. _pathogen.vim: https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen