Re: Search first character in a file

On Thu, 22 Jan 2026 at 02:21, Cristian <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> Thank you for the explanation — that makes sense for the behavior of the n key.
>
> That said, I was wondering whether, for the initial search (the one
> NOT triggered by n), it might also be reasonable for vi to start
> searching from the character currently under the cursor.

As others have pointed out, the behaviour is fundamental[1].

> This could make the behavior a bit more intuitive when the cursor
> is already on a match.

I think your intuition is incorrect.  You wouldn't expect 'w', for
example, not to move to the next word because the cursor was already
at the start of a word.

You can think of '/' as executing something like :let @/ = 'pattern' | normal! n

The best solution, if you don't want to adjust to how it works, is
probably to remap '/' to a user function that calls search('pattern',
'c') and sets the '@/' register.  Anything else, like :-;/pattern,
won't work well for multiple matches per line.

Regards,
Doug

1. https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/vi.html#tag_20_146_13_36

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