searchemacs

Automatically wrapping I-search?


In Vim I can :set wrapscan so that when I do an incremental search, the cursor jumps to the first match whether the first match is above or below the cursor.

In Emacs, if I start a search via C-s, the search fails saying Failing I-search if the first match is above the cursor. If I hit C-s again it then wraps the search, saying Wrapped I-search. How do I wrap and jump the cursor by default as in Vim, without having to C-s a second time?


Solution

  • The easiest way to do this is to use the following defadvice:

    (defadvice isearch-repeat (after isearch-no-fail activate)
      (unless isearch-success
        (ad-disable-advice 'isearch-repeat 'after 'isearch-no-fail)
        (ad-activate 'isearch-repeat)
        (isearch-repeat (if isearch-forward 'forward))
        (ad-enable-advice 'isearch-repeat 'after 'isearch-no-fail)
        (ad-activate 'isearch-repeat)))
    

    When Isearch fails, it immediately tries again with wrapping. Note that it is important to temporarily disable this defadvice to prevent an infinite loop when there are no matches.