I want to able to search for multiple words on the same line.
For example, consider the file with the following contents:

....
11. 15 18 40 53 => 16 19 41 54
12. 03 15 27 64 => 04 15 28 65
13. 25 46 47 91 => 26 47 48 92
14. 10 15 32 53 => 11 16 33 54
15. 01 12 16 73 => 02 13 17 74
....

Say I want to search for occurrences of "15" or "53" or "92" on the same line. Then the correct lines that the search should identify are line 11 and 14. I don't want line 15 to be identified because the 15 is used as a numeral for the line, not as data. Also, I don't want the search to identify data to the right of the "=>" word, so the 15 on line 12 doesn't count either.

So what I want is a query for: find all occurrences of "15" or "53" or "92" that are found between "." and "=>". As a note, the numbers are increasing order, with no repetitions, on each line between the "." and "=>", so the search condition can be refined as: find the lines that have at least one of {15, 53, 92} between "." and "=>".

What I have so far is:

/[.].*\(15\).*\(53\).*\(92\).*\(=>\)

However, with this condition all three of "15", "53", "92" have to be on the same line.

Thanks.

> the 15 on line 12 doesn't count either.
There are two 15's on line 12.

You should probably post this in the Perl section.
I'd try (in Perl):
/\..*\s(15|53|92)\s.*=>/

My mistake: the first 15 was supposed to be 14.

Thanks for your help.

This would still wouldn't give you the right answer? Its expecting all the search charcters to be in the same line. Look at nucleon post.

-ssharish

Actually, in vi all I need is:
/[.].*\(15\|53\|92).*[>]

I got confused because a website mentioned that to search for lines with 12 or 34, use "/\(12|34\)/".
However, it's missing a backslash in the group condition and it should have said to use "/\(12\|34\)/".