How can I search a word in whole project/folder recursively?

Solution 1:

:vimgrep /JFactory/ **/*.java

You can replace the pattern /JFactory/ with /\<JFactory\>/ if you want full word match. :vim is shorthand for :vimgrep.

If JFactory or \<JFactory\> is your current search pattern (for example you have hit * on one occurrence) you can use an empty search pattern: :vimgrep // **/*.java, it will use last search pattern instead. Handy!

Warning: :vimgrep will trigger autocmds if enabled. This can slow down the search. If you don't want that you can do:

:noautocmd vimgrep /\<JFactory\>/ **/*.java

which will be quicker. But: it won't trigger syntax highlighting or open gz files ungzipped, etc.

Note that if you want an external program to grep your pattern you can do something like the following:

:set grepprg=ack
:grep --java JFactory

Ack is a Perl-written alternative to grep. Note that then, you will have to switch to Perl regexes.

Once the command of your choice returned, you can browse the search results with those commands described in the Vim documentation at :help quickfix. Lookup :cfirst, :cnext, :cprevious, :cnfile, etc.

2014 update: there are now new ways to do that with the_silver_searcher or the_platinum_searcher and either ag.vim or unite.vim plugins.

Solution 2:

From the project root folder, run following:

grep -H -r 'what_you_search' * | less

You will get a list of folders and matching lines with that string.

Solution 3:

The Silver Searcher(https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher) highly recommended, really fast!

install

sudo pacman -S the_silver_searcher  // arch linux 
sudo apt install silversearcher-ag  // ubuntu

usage

$ ag keywords

integrate with vim

rking/ag.vim (https://github.com/rking/ag.vim)

after installing

:Ag keywords

Solution 4:

Take a look at ctags and cscope which let you jump to class and function definitions, and find where those functions/classes are used.