SEARCH > Incremental Search prompts for a search string and searches the current file, starting from the cursor position, for the accumulated search string after each keystroke. Press Esc when done. This is a convenient way to search without having to enter more of the search string than is necessary.
Following each keystroke, if matching text is found, it is highlighted. Otherwise, the previously marked text remains highlighted.
You can then press Backspace and change the search string.
The following function/control keys can be used:
Find the next/previous occurrence of the string by selecting Search > Next or Search > Previous
The search mode (simple, pattern matching, regular expressions) and case sensitivity are set from the current CONFIG > Search options settings.
This function is implemented by the srchincr.vdm macro.
Since incremental searching that fails in huge files can be time consuming, this macro can be set up to initially perform a “local” search. See the comments within srchincr.vdm for details.