How do I make Vim's search stop at the end of the file instead of wrapping back to the top?

Explanation

By default Vim's wrapscan option is enabled, which causes / and ? searches to wrap silently from the end of the file back to the beginning (and vice versa). Setting :set nowrapscan disables this: when no more matches are found forward or backward, Vim reports an error and stops instead of looping.

How it works

• :set wrapscan (default) — search wraps around the file end transparently
• :set nowrapscan — search stops at the file boundary; Vim displays:
  • E385: search hit BOTTOM without match for: pattern (forward search)
  • E384: search hit TOP without match for: pattern (backward search)
• Toggle: :set wrapscan! (or short: :set ws!)
• Check current value: :set wrapscan?

Example

With two occurrences of error on lines 5 and 20, cursor on line 25:

" wrapscan on (default):
/error      → jumps to line 5 (wrapped around silently)

" nowrapscan on:
/error      → E385: search hit BOTTOM without match

Tips

• Essential for macros and scripts that repeatedly search forward — with wrapscan, a macro can loop infinitely; with nowrapscan, it stops cleanly when no match remains
• Add set nowrapscan to ~/.vimrc if you prefer predictable boundary behaviour
• n and N also respect wrapscan, so the fix applies to repeat-search navigation too
• Combine with set shortmess-=s to keep the "search wrapped" hint messages visible when you do want wrapping