Spacemacs doesn't have a lot of smarts about how it calls the underlying searchers like ack, pt, ag, etc (see the SPC s menu for the list). This means that sometimes you mean to search for things but you're accidentally passing options to the searcher. (Try prefixing your search with --, which is an old unix CLI trick. Dunno if that will help; just a guess.) This is frustrating at times but also can be powerful to be able to easily change the options on the fly.

Can you share the search pattern used? And which search tool you have installed I use ripgrep and haven't had too many problems, although the odd special character can confuse the search too. These are the options I know about, which should work for ripgrep and ag https://practical.li/spacemacs/spacemacs-basics/working-with-projects/searching-projects.html#searching-specific-files

it happens for all patterns. I'll install ripgrep, im using my labtop so thats likely the issue. thanks john

thanks jeff ill try that

install ripgrep fixed it. thanks again 🙂

I've updated https://practical.li/spacemacs/spacemacs-basics/working-with-projects/searching-projects.html with example of using the -A option which will show the specified number of additional lines after each matching line. There is also a screenshot of the error that occurs if using an option without a valid value (i.e. missing a glob pattern from -g). This is because Spacemacs sends the pattern to the search binary as soon as you type characters. I didn't get anywhere with --, although did discover that the pattern can be used before or after the options, which seems very handy