Good day.

I started to use zsh recently, and so far I have been enjoying it
greatly. One thing I would like to have is the ability to change the
prompt when doing a history search in vi editing mode.

o I find it confusing that pressing '/' displays a '?' as a prompt
  when doing a search (and viceversa). I understand the logic behind
  this, but I would still prefer to be able to opt out of it. I have
  tried implementing a custom zle widget to work around it, but
  reading from the terminal has been causing me issues. It also seems
  like a search called through zle doesn't update LASTSEARCH, so
  I cannot get the search string either.

o I would like to be able to erase the prompt to exit search mode in
  vi. I know that it may be frustrating for some people to
  accidentally erase the prompt when trying to do a search, but
  that's the way it is in other vi-inspired programs including vi
  itself. I'm used to cancelling my searchs this way.

I implemented a patch that makes these two changes under an option I
arbitrarily decided to name "BASH_VI_SEARCH" because I couldn't think
of any better name at the time. If you think the way I did it is not
appropriate, then I am open to suggestions. If you are not interested
in implementing these changes (it's admittedly a very small nitpick),
then that's fine too.

Thank you very much.
======================================================================
diff --git a/Doc/Zsh/options.yo b/Doc/Zsh/options.yo
index cbd3d0f8e..aaec9d7a0 100644
--- a/Doc/Zsh/options.yo
+++ b/Doc/Zsh/options.yo
@@ -2538,6 +2538,17 @@ cindex(enabling the beep)
 item(tt(BEEP) (tt(PLUS()B)) <D>)(
 Beep on error in ZLE.
 )
+pindex(BASH_VI_SEARCH)
+pindex(NO_BASH_VI_SEARCH)
+pindex(BASHVISEARCH)
+pindex(NOBASHVISEARCH)
+item(tt(BASH_VI_SEARCH))(
+Use the same prompting style as Bash when searching through history in
+vi mode. That is, when searching backward with this option set, a
+slash will be shown as the prompt for the search. When searching
+forward, a question mark will be shown instead. The default is the
+reverse. This also allows to erase the prompt to cancel the search.
+)
 pindex(COMBINING_CHARS)
 pindex(NO_COMBINING_CHARS)
 pindex(COMBININGCHARS)
diff --git a/Src/Zle/zle_hist.c b/Src/Zle/zle_hist.c
index cfaa70dae..89b82d3d0 100644
--- a/Src/Zle/zle_hist.c
+++ b/Src/Zle/zle_hist.c
@@ -1811,7 +1811,11 @@ getvisrchstr(void)
     }
     clearlist = 1;
     statusline = sbuf;
-    sbuf[0] = (visrchsense == -1) ? '?' : '/';
+    if (isset(BASHVISEARCH)) {
+     sbuf[0] = (visrchsense == -1) ? '/' : '?';
+    } else {
+     sbuf[0] = (visrchsense == -1) ? '?' : '/';
+    }
     selectkeymap("main", 1);
     while (sptr) {
      sbuf[sptr] = '_';
@@ -1841,6 +1845,10 @@ getvisrchstr(void)
          sptr = 0;
      } else if(cmd == Th(z_backwarddeletechar) ||
              cmd == Th(z_vibackwarddeletechar)) {
+         if(isset(BASHVISEARCH) && sptr == 1) {
+           ret = 0;
+           break;
+         }
          sptr = backwardmetafiedchar(sbuf+1, sbuf+sptr, NULL) - sbuf;
      } else if(cmd == Th(z_backwardkillword) ||
              cmd == Th(z_vibackwardkillword)) {
diff --git a/Src/options.c b/Src/options.c
index a994b563e..d203669d4 100644
--- a/Src/options.c
+++ b/Src/options.c
@@ -99,6 +99,7 @@ static struct optname optns[] = {
 {{NULL, "bareglobqual",       OPT_EMULATE|OPT_ZSH},      BAREGLOBQUAL},
 {{NULL, "bashautolist",            0},                        BASHAUTOLIST},
 {{NULL, "bashrematch",       0},                BASHREMATCH},
+{{NULL, "bashvisearch",            0},                BASHVISEARCH},
 {{NULL, "beep",              OPT_ALL},                BEEP},
 {{NULL, "bgnice",            OPT_EMULATE|OPT_NONBOURNE},BGNICE},
 {{NULL, "braceccl",          OPT_EMULATE},            BRACECCL},
diff --git a/Src/zsh.h b/Src/zsh.h
index a0243e98e..8145b300c 100644
--- a/Src/zsh.h
+++ b/Src/zsh.h
@@ -2381,6 +2381,7 @@ enum {
     BAREGLOBQUAL,
     BASHAUTOLIST,
     BASHREMATCH,
+    BASHVISEARCH,
     BEEP,
     BGNICE,
     BRACECCL,
diff --git a/Test/E01options.ztst b/Test/E01options.ztst
index 533e08773..804302c77 100644
--- a/Test/E01options.ztst
+++ b/Test/E01options.ztst
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@
 #    AUTO_RESUME
 #    BANG_HIST
 #    BASH_AUTO_LIST
+#    BASH_VI_SEARCH
 #    BEEP (!)
 #    BG_NICE
 #    CHECK_JOBS