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talljosh
talljosh

Reputation: 742

Vim: persistent search buffer between vim instances (in Ubuntu)

I have two separate instances of Vim running. I would like to set up my system so that when I search for something in one Vim (using /, ?, * or #), then press n or N in the other Vim, it searches for the same something in the second Vim. I am running Ubuntu.

I already make use of the primary system clipboard for things yanked in vim by using set clipboard=unnamed in my .vimrc file.

Research so far
The command-line tool "xsel" lets me access three different clipboards in Ubuntu: the primary clipboard (used when you select text and middle-click to paste), the clipboard clipboard (used for Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V etc.), and the secondary clipboard (which seems to be unused). My thought at the moment for Vim to use xsel to set the secondary clipboard when /, ?, * or # are used, and use xsel to access the same clipboard when n or N are pressed.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 557

Answers (3)

dahu
dahu

Reputation: 329

I was going to just post the code I cobbled together for this here, but then decided to bundle it up into a tiny plugin: https://github.com/dahu/VimSharedSearch

Upvotes: 3

sml
sml

Reputation: 2320

With clipboard=unnamed set, you can copy between the last-pattern register (the last thing you searched for), and the shared clipboard using let @/=@* and let @*=@/ (* is the clipboard, and / is last-pattern).

So you can then create a function that copies the last-pattern into the clipboard and map to /, ?, * or #, and another which copies the clipboard to the last-pattern for n or N.

Upvotes: 1

Karl Bielefeldt
Karl Bielefeldt

Reputation: 49078

Not exactly what you were asking, but I use split windows (:sp or :vsp) for that purpose.

Upvotes: 0

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