[cocok]

I wouldn't say either is better "usually", it really depends on the situation.

If the next five words begin with the same prefix (happens to me), searching will be wasteful. Just spamming "w" is easier.

But when there's something really distinctive (often, punctuation) near the position I'm aiming for, I'll definitely use search.

That's one of the reasons I prefer BRE over ERE/PCRE when editing text interactively - I can search for punctuation in code without having to backslash-escape it.

[kragen]

you have some good points

'bre vs. ere' is terminology i wasn't familiar with, though i've often tripped over the differences: https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/html_node/BRE-vs-ERE...

iirc mit teco used control characters for its regexp metacharacters to diminish this particular problem