With this small tweak for command line you can get arguably a bit more precise way to navigate using vim's search:
# enhance search with <space> as "whatever"
# to enter literal <space> use <C-v><space>
cnoremap <expr> <space> getcmdtype() =~ '[/?]' ? '.\{-}' : "<space>"
Enhance search for navigation
With this small tweak for command line you can get arguably a bit more precise way to navigate using vim's search:
Basically, it treats every space as a non-gready wildcard: https://asciinema.org/a/4bNrmPZd2KjkchxnykpWwUFj0
It mimics what Emacs has with a dedicated setting and I found it quite useful in vim as well.
CTRL-Wdeletes.\{-}if needed.