emacs: interactively search open buffers

Question

Is there a way to search all the open buffers for a particular pattern?

C-s interactively searches current buffer. Similarly, is there something that searches all th

Answer 1

In Icicles, C-c ' is command icicle-occur, which can search multiple buffers.

C-u C-c ' searches a set of buffers that you choose. You can choose by dynamically filtering the buffer names with your minibuffer input, then hit C-! to search all of those buffers whose names match. Similarly, C-99 C-c ' searches only the buffers that are visiting files.

Like occur and grep, icicle-occur searches line by line. More generally, instead of using lines as the search contexts you can use any buffer portions at all. C-c ` (backquote instead of quote) is command icicle-search. With a non-negative prefix arg it searches a set of buffers that you choose.

The first thing you do is give it a regexp that defines the search contexts. E.g., if you give it .* then it acts like icicle-occur: each search context is a line. If you give it a regexp that matches only function definitions then those are the search contexts, and so on.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Search_Commands%2c_Overview