Practical Vim, 2nd Edition

Tip 73

Tune the Case Sensitivity of Search Patterns

We can tune the case sensitivity of Vim’s search globally or on a per-search basis.

Setting Case Sensitivity Globally

We can make Vim’s search patterns case insensitive by enabling the ‘ignorecase’ setting:

:set ignorecase

Be aware that this setting has a side effect that influences the behavior of Vim’s keyword autocompletion, as discussed in ​Autocompletion and Case Sensitivity​.

Setting Case Sensitivity per Search

We can override Vim’s default case sensitivity using the \c and \C items. Lowercase \c causes the search pattern to ignore case, while the uppercase \C item forces case sensitivity. If either of these items is used in a search pattern, the value of ‘ignorecase’ is overridden ...