Make search commands respect the register prefix?

[xJonathanLEI]

Not sure if this should be submitted as a bug or enhancement, so enhancement it is.

Currently serach-related commands do not respect the register prefix and are hard-coded to use /:

• search
• rsearch
• search_next
• search_prev
• extend_search_next
• extend_search_prev
• search_selection
• make_search_word_bounded
• global_search

While search, rsearch, and global_search use a prompt, the register / is still used for completion.

I wonder if this is intentional, given how consistent it is that all search commands discard the register input. Otherwise I'd love to send a PR.

[the-mikedavis]

search, rsearch and global_search accept selected registers: you can use other registers by selecting them via select_register ("). For example you can yank something with y and then search for it with ""/<ret> ("" selects the " register and then / uses that register for history).

Ideally, search_next, search_prev, extend_search_next, and extend_search_prev would use the same register as the original search if there were one. #4635 might help with that since it adds some state that tracks matches. Allowing them to accept registers isn't ideal since usually you execute these commands multiple times and you would need to select the register each time.

search_selection and make_search_word_bounded are currently hard-coded to / and should probably accept a selected register.

[xJonathanLEI]

Ah you're right. search, rsearch and global_search do accept register selection. Not sure how I missed that. Sorry. I guess the problem is mostly with search_next etc. not respecting the register originally used to kick start the search then. (Right now if you start a search with a custom register, there's no way to jump to the next occurrence)

Regarding this:

Allowing them to accept registers isn't ideal since usually you execute these commands multiple times and you would need to select the register each time.

What I had in mind was macro scripting, which makes having to press the prefix every time kinda irrelevant. But making these commands use the register used for starting the search is definitely a better approach.

Agree on search_selection and make_search_word_bounded.

To sum it up, I guess the desired changes are:

• make search_next, search_prev, extend_search_next and extend_search_prev respect the register used to kick start the search in the first place (instead of always using /);
• make search_selection and make_search_word_bounded accept register selection like search and its friends do.

[xJonathanLEI]

While working on this, discovered another bug: register selection is unexpectedly discarded when the command keybinding is more than 1 key. For example: "s<SPACE>g does a global search using the default / register instead of the specified s.

Will simply do a key remap for global_search for the sake of this PR to dodge this bug. Will submit a separate issue/PR for the bug.

(so this is actually why I missed the fact that global_search uses the register - I tested the function directly without looking into the source)