How do I search in all files of my project using VIM?

Question

There are a couple of things I do not yet understand the VIM way.

One of these is searching in a project like so (using VIM in Atom):

I use CtrlP curren

Answer 1

Use :grep or :vimgrep to search file contents. The results are put onto the "location list" which you can open by typing :cw Enter.

Syntax for :grep is, by default, the same as the grep(1) command:

:grep 'my pattern.*' /path/to/dir

By default it will search the current directory (:pwd). I added set autochdir to my .vimrc so my PWD always follows the file I'm editing.

The major difference between :grep and :vimgrep is that :vimgrep (:vim for short) uses Vim-compatible regular expressions, whereas :grep uses whatever regular expressions your &grepprg uses.

You can use a custom program by setting &grepprg to something different. I personally like ack which uses Perl-compatible regex.