search for a yanked text and automatically escape special characters - vim

Question

for example, I'd like to yank hello/world and paste that into a search for other instances of hello/world
I've tried yanking, then typing /\v ctr-r 0 and in the search bar it places the entire hello/world but practically, it only searched for hello.
Is there a way to automatically escape special character during paste in the search?

Answer 1

You might be interested in this:
" return a representation of the selected text
" suitable for use as a search pattern
function GetVisualSelection()
let old_reg = #a
normal! gv"ay
let raw_search = #a
let #a = old_reg
return substitute(escape(raw_search, '\/.*$^~[]'), "\n", '\\n', "g")
endfunction
xnoremap <leader>r :<C-u>%s/<C-r>=GetVisualSelection()<CR>/
It uses more or less the same strategy as above but in a slightly cleaner and reusable way.
Select hello/world.
Hit <leader>r.
The command-line is populated with :%s/hello\/world/, ready for you to…
type the replacement text and…
hit <CR>.

Answer 2

Adding this to the vimrc file allows you to visually select something, press *, and it will search with escaped characters
vnoremap <silent> * :<C-U>
\let old_reg=getreg('"')<Bar>let old_regtype=getregtype('"')<CR>
\gvy/<C-R><C-R>=substitute(
\escape(#", '/\.*$^~['), '\_s\+', '\\_s\\+', 'g')<CR><CR>
\gV:call setreg('"', old_reg, old_regtype)<CR>
vnoremap <silent> # :<C-U>
\let old_reg=getreg('"')<Bar>let old_regtype=getregtype('"')<CR>
\gvy?<C-R><C-R>=substitute(
\escape(#", '?\.*$^~['), '\_s\+', '\\_s\\+', 'g')<CR><CR>
\gV:call setreg('"', old_reg, old_regtype)<CR>
source