How to search any word in linux 'screen'

Question

I am going screen logs of devstack with following command. screen -x stack I find searching in screens very difficult. Currently I start copy mode with Ctrl A Esc and read all the logs, sometimes it is very irritating to go through all logs while searching for a single word.

Is there a good way for searching a word in screens?

from man screen I found

    Searching:
     / Vi-like search forward.
     ? Vi-like search backward.
     C-a s Emacs style incremental search forward.
     C-r Emacs style reverse i-search.

but screens do not support vi-like forward search.

Solution

Once you are in scrollback mode with Ctrl + A, ESC, you should be able to search backwards through the buffer as described in the manual.

So to search for the word "string", press Ctrl + A, ESC, enter ?string and press Enter. It will take you backwards through the buffer to the word string. Pressing N will go to the next match (backwards) in the buffer.

To search forwards, the cursor should be anywhere but the end of the buffer, then use /string to search down.

Comments

[Mario Olivio Flores]

This might be my most visited Q/As on SO.

[mwfearnley]

Scrollback mode seems to work a lot like less - /string and ?string search downwards and upwards. n/N find the next/previous match. g/G jump to the top/bottom of the output.

[Martin Klosi]

N aborts the copy mode for me. It does not reverse the search.

[ebarrere]

N aborts the copy mode for me. It does not reverse the search. Same here — any ideas how to reverse search?

[Peaceful James]

@martin-klosi @ebarrere If N aborts the copy mode for me. It does not reverse the search. then you can try using Control + R instead of N. That should do the same thing.

[Waqas]

this does not work if you are in the screens for example byobu. Answer from @ian-petts works perfectly. Thanks :)