12.2 Non-Incremental Search

Emacs also has conventional non-incremental search commands, which require you type the entire search string before searching begins.

C-s RET string RET

Search for string.

C-r RET string RET

Search backward for string.

To do a non-incremental search, first type C-s RET (or C-s C-m). This enters the minibuffer to read the search string. Terminate the string with RET to start the search. If the string is not found, the search command gets an error.

By default, C-s invokes incremental search, but if you give it an empty argument, which would otherwise be useless, it invokes non-incremental search. Therefore, C-s RET invokes non-incremental search. C-r RET also works this way.

Forward and backward non-incremental searches are implemented by the commands search-forward and search-backward. You can bind these commands to keys. The reason that incremental search is programmed to invoke them as well is that C-s RET is the traditional sequence of characters used in Emacs to invoke non-incremental search.

Non-incremental searches performed using C-s RET do not call search-forward right away. They first check if the next character is C-w, which requests a word search.