Sorry, the slash is OK. The application runs fine so far.
I skipped the framework info: It's in a Portlet container and all the .do forwarding renaming blabla is done by the framework.
The Forward "/search" works fine in the MenuAction...
But I solved the problem in a more elegant way anyhow.
I switched to a cleaner, more layered design and removed the search implementation from the Action in a 'Command' using the Command
Pattern.
Action just takes
JSP input, calls commands and get's results
Now executing the new search is just a single line of code issuing the SearchCommand again.
Sometimes it pays of to build a clean architecture..