Use regex PCRE search for pane in tmux                               2026-04-22
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Since tmux 3.1, basic regex is available when searching a pane in
copy-mode (<leader>-b), then / or ?.

When you want extended functionality (e.g. with regex PCRE), set a keybind
to pipe the content of the pane to grep:

  bind-key F command-prompt -p "PCRE regex" \
    "display-popup \
      -E -w 90% -h 90% \ 
      \"tmux capture-pane -p -S - | tr -d '\r' | grep -nP '%%' | less\""


What this does:
 - command-prompt
     opens a prompt which asks for regex pattern
 - display-popup -E -w 90% -h 90%
     Opens a popup over the current tmux client and runs a shell command
     inside it, `-E` closes the popup automatically when the shell exits.
     `-w` and `-h` set the width and height of the popup.
 - tmux capture-pane -p -S -
     Captures the text from a pane. `-p` prints to stdout. `-S -` starts
     at the beginning of a pane history (instead of only visible part).
 - tr -d '\r'
     Remove CR characters (progress displays, term updates, ...)
 - grep -nP '%%'
     Do the search itself with regex PCRE. `-n` uses prefixes for each
     matching line.
 - less
     Open stdin with pager less.