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How in vim/vi can I search for all lines that contain string1 and string2, where either string can appear anywhere on the line separated by whitespace and possibly other words?

I would also like to know how to do this using the less pager search (/).

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/string1\|string2 within vi/vim –  val0x00ff Aug 7 at 15:58
 
also set this :set hlsearch incsearch –  Rahul Patil Aug 7 at 16:08
 
@val0x00ff That does not seem to work. –  Gregg Leventhal Aug 7 at 16:16

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Find two words in either order in a line:

/.*red\&.*blue

or

/\(red.*blue\)\|\(blue.*red\)

Other tools use a slightly different regular expression dialect; in less, you'd use:

/(red.*blue|blue.*red)
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Looks good, where is less' regex syntax documented? –  Gregg Leventhal Aug 7 at 16:13
 
I think it just uses man 7 regex. –  Ingo Karkat Aug 7 at 16:23
 
Thanks a lot! Accepted. –  Gregg Leventhal Aug 7 at 19:48

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