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Bruno Heridet edited this page Jun 16, 2020 · 6 revisions

In kakoune, many prompts or commands require a regex:

  • search /, ?
  • select s
  • split S
  • keep <a-k>
  • not keep <a-K>

The regex engine used by kakoune is a custom one, based on an ECMAScript standard. More info in the documentation

This page lists common patterns you may need to better express your intent.

You can set user mappings to pre-fill prompts with the ones you need often. Here's an example with search and the \Q\E mentioned below:

map global user / ':exec /<ret>\Q\E<left><left>'

(<left><left> move the cursor back where you need it to be)

Case insensitive search

It is possible to make case insensitive regex by prefixing the expression with (?i).

Disable regex during search

Use the Quote flags, by surrounding your query with \Q and \E. Everything in between will be treated literally.

Remove non-ASCII characters from a buffer

%s[^\x00-\x7F]<ret>d

See also

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