Make 'n' always search forwards, regardless of whether / or ? was used for searching

Question

I almost always search in Vim with /, and then continue searching forwards with n and backwards with N. Sometimes, however, I use ?<

Answer 1

This was taken from ZyX's post on the vim mailing list.

noremap  n 'Nn'[v:searchforward]
noremap  N 'nN'[v:searchforward]

It maps n to the original N or n based off of the variable v:searchforward by indexing 'Nn' as a list of two elements. This only works because the mapping is non-recursive. If it was recursive this would call it self and you would be in an infinite loop.

When v:searchforward == 1 (search forward) the mappings are equivalent to

noremap  n n
noremap  N N

and when v:searchfoward == 0 (search backwards) the mappings are equivalent to

noremap  n N
noremap  N n

This mapping works in Normal, Visual, and Operator pending modes.

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I probably would have written it like this. (Although I'm not sure this is any clearer)

noremap  n (v:searchforward ? 'n' : 'N')
noremap  N (v:searchforward ? 'N' : 'n')