How do I list only search-pattern history entries in Vim?

Explanation

Power users tend to run long, composable searches during refactors, but the default / and ? history navigation can be noisy when command history and search history get mixed in your workflow. :history / gives you a clean, searchable list of only forward-search patterns so you can recover complex regexes quickly.

This is especially useful when a one-off pattern worked earlier and you want to reuse or adapt it without retyping from memory. Instead of pressing / repeatedly and stepping through history blindly, inspect the list, copy exactly what you need, and rerun it intentionally.

How it works

:history /

• :history shows command-line history tables
• / selects the forward-search history table specifically
• Vim prints indexed entries you can inspect and reuse

Example

After running several searches:

/foo\s\+bar
\v\<User(Id|Name)\>
TODO\%>120l

Use:

:history /

You get a focused list of search patterns, making it easy to copy one back into / or into a substitute command.

Tips

• Use :history ? for backward-search patterns
• Open command-line window with q/ to edit a recalled search before executing it
• Pair this with :set hlsearch and :nohlsearch for faster iterative search tuning