How can I escape the slash character in vi?

Question

When I try to search a string starting with the slash / character in vi, the cursor jumps to the next search result from the previous search. However, I'd like to find the literal slash character. How can this be done?

Answer 1

Type this:

/\/

Answer 2

Use a backslash.

:/\/

This will search forward to the next forward slash.

Answer 3

--- oops, sorry, I entered info for replace. Escaping with \ is better for search only

Use a different separator

:%s./.z.

will replace all '/' with the letter z