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

The built-in multi-occur-in-matching-buffers hasn't been mentioned. I use a modified version of this (because I invariably want to search all buffers, and specifying a buffer name pattern each time is annoying).

(defun my-multi-occur-in-matching-buffers (regexp &optional allbufs)
  "Show lines matching REGEXP in all file-visiting buffers.

Given a prefix argument, search in ALL buffers."
  (interactive (occur-read-primary-args))
  (multi-occur-in-matching-buffers "." regexp allbufs))

(global-set-key (kbd "M-s /") 'my-multi-occur-in-matching-buffers)

To invert the behaviour of the prefix argument so that the default behaviour is to search all buffers, change the call to:

(multi-occur-in-matching-buffers "." regexp (not allbufs))

(and, of course, update the docstring accordingly.)