How can I search for 3 strings at a time in the vi editor?

How can I search for 3 strings at a time in the vi editor?

I was wondering how could we do it. I.e. search for 3 strings at a time in vi like I do: :/xyz in command mode.

How could I add 2 more strings so that the cursor will stop at a string which ever is found first among the three and if we press n it will stop at the string that is found second among the three?

I suppose this would be very helpful in real time.

From stackoverflow

• Use the bar (|), escaped (i.e., with a backslash in front, so that it is not interpreted as a literal bar):

  /string1\|string2\|string3
  

  Note that the colon (:) is not necessary. In command mode, you can just type a slash (/); no need to type a colon first.

  Pascal : Strange that you have to escape the pipe symbol, which is the opposite from standard RegExp. $-)

  Stephan202 : @SanHolo: yes. This holds for e.g. parentheses and square brackets as well. I suppose the philosophy behind this is that most users will use the search functionality for "regular" (non-regexp) searches.

  Tim : See `:help magic` for more details on when you should escape special characters, and how you can change this.