With this tip, you can select some text, then press a key to search for the next occurrence of the text. Two alternative methods are presented.

Features

• Press * to search forwards for selected text, or # to search backwards.
• As normal, press n for next search, or N for previous.
• Handles multiline selection and search.
• Whitespace in the selection matches any whitespace when searching (searching for "hello world" will also find "hello" at the end of a line, with "world" at the start of the next line).
• Each search is placed in the search history allowing you to easily repeat previous searches.
• No registers are changed.

Place the following mappings in your vimrc: