

Vim Magic Option - vijaydev
http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#/magic

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mcantor
In addition to useful special characters in search pattern matching, vim can
also do some excellent stuff in the second phrase of its substitution
statements, as documented in sub-replace-special:
[http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html#sub-
replac...](http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/change.html#sub-replace-
special)

I find \U, \L and \E to be most useful, for example:

    
    
        :%s/ALL_CAPS_\(.*\)_HUZZAH/SOME_LOWERCASE_\L\1\E_HUZZAH/g
    

Will translate "ALL_CAPS_IS_GREAT_HUZZAH" to "SOME_LOWERCASE_is_great_HUZZAH".
Super handy in certain situations.

It's also worth noting that these "magic" settings affect :s, :g, / and ?.

------
grogers
But is there any way to set the "very magic" option in your .vimrc so you
don't have to type \v every time you want to avoid a barrage of backslashes?

~~~
mcantor
I believe there is no "very magic" nor "very nomagic" option, because the
"magic" option itself is assumed to be binary by legacy vi scripts, which Mr.
Moolenaar does not want to break. Also, either of those would wreck
functionality on a lot of existing scripts, which make assumptions about the
environment's level of magic.

I had a period of time where I reflexively typed \V or \v before everything,
but really, I think it's worth it to just get used to remembering which
characters need to be escaped in magic mode.

~~~
graywh
I second leaving 'magic' at its default.

