In Emacs, how to search from beginning of file?

Question

In Emacs, how I can I instruct isearch-forward to search not from the location of the point, but from the beginning of the file?

Answer 1

The simplest option is to just move the point to the beginning of file with M-< before invoking isearch. Or, you can write a command that does it for you:

(defun isearch-from-buffer-start ()
  (interactive)
  (goto-char (point-min))
  (isearch-forward))
(global-set-key [(control s)] 'isearch-from-buffer-start)