/ in vi Search and replace?

in vi, search and replace, how do you escape a '/' (forward slash) so that it is correct. Say in a path.

like: /Users/tom/documents/pdfs/

:%s//Users/tom/documents/pdfs//<new text>/g  --FAILS (obviously)

:%s/\/Users/tom/documents/pdfs\//<new text>/g -- FAILS with a trailing error

:%s/'/Users/tom/documents/pdfs/'/<new text>/g -- FAILS with a trailing error

What am I missing?

Alternatively you can do :%s,foo/bar/baz,foo/bar/boz,g - I almost never use slashes because of the escaping confusion.

You need to escape the forward slashes internally, too.

:%s/\/Users\/tom\/documents\/pdfs\//<new text>/g

As Sarah suggested, you need to escape ALL forward slashes.

You could instead use another character besides forward-slash as the delimiter. This is handy if your search string has a lot of slashes in it.

:%s#/Users/tom/documents/pdfs/#<new test>#g

This works perfectly in vim. I'm not 100% sure about vanilla vi.

I know this question is several years old, but for others who may land upon this one searching for an easier solution, in 2014, you can substitute the "/" delimiter for something else like "!", as long as you do it in front, middle, and back, like this:

:%s!foo/bar/baz!foo/bar/boz!g

Very simiar to Meder's answer ... But, I find that the exclamation is a lot easier to view as a separator. And I just wanted to confirm that this method still works in the current version of VIM, which I am using in Mac OSX Mavericks.

You can use ? to search

In case of searching pattern in a register, and the pattern contains a '/' character, you can simply use ? command instead of / command from normal mode to start pattern matching. In such case, no more escape required for '/' char. (however you need to escape '?' char now)

? will search in the opposite direction of /, so if you don't mind the search direction, and your search pattern doesn't contains '?' char.

In addition, check the escape() script if you want more.

Windows uses backslash for directories and Linux uses forward slash for directories. Vim is a text editor that works for operating-systems. Since both os have different directory path interpretation regarding how slashes are used, Vim must then need a way to interpret Windows twisted method.

LINUXFORWARD vs. WINDOWSBACK (DIRECTORY SLASHES)

• The slashes are literally reversed in Windows and easily stated for Linux
  • Windows:
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft OneDrive\
  • Linux:
    • /usr/bin

SOLUTION

> I'm only able to state the struggle for Vim's Find & Replace on Windows as i'm not on a Linux pc.

• Fix is to double backslash
  • GOOD:
    • :%s/c:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft OneDrive\\/annoyancereplaced/g
  • BAD:
    • :%s/c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft OneDrive\/unabletoreplaceannoyance/g

NOTE

• If working with network paths where Windows uses two slashes \\ then that means for every backslash there needs to be another backslash as it's always kept even
  • e.g. network path: \\Foo\Bar\
  • %s/C:\\Program Files (x86)\\foo\\bar/\\\\Foo\\Bar\\
    • notice the \\\\