In vim, is there a way to set “very magic” permanently and globally?

Question

I use \"very magic\" for regexp searches (i.e. /\\v or %s/\\v) but I wish I could set some option so I don\'t have to include \\v anymore, anywhere. Is there a way to do thi

Answer 1

EDIT2: I just discovered this plugin, which may be better than the remapping solutions (which seem to have some unavoidable drawbacks; see below). I haven't tested it yet, though, so I don't know if it behaves exactly as desired.

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=4849

EDIT3: I've been using the plugin for about a year and a half, and I love it. It still interferes with search history, however (see below), and it also breaks incsearch, so I have the following in my Vim config:

" Since I use incsearch:
let g:VeryMagic = 0
nnoremap / /\v
nnoremap ? ?\v
vnoremap / /\v
vnoremap ? ?\v
" If I type // or ??, I don't EVER want \v, since I'm repeating the previous
" search.
noremap // //
noremap ?? ??
" no-magic searching
noremap /v/ /\V
noremap ?V? ?\V

" Turn on all other features.
let g:VeryMagicSubstituteNormalise = 1
let g:VeryMagicSubstitute = 1
let g:VeryMagicGlobal = 1
let g:VeryMagicVimGrep = 1
let g:VeryMagicSearchArg = 1
let g:VeryMagicFunction = 1
let g:VeryMagicHelpgrep = 1
let g:VeryMagicRange = 1
let g:VeryMagicEscapeBackslashesInSearchArg = 1
let g:SortEditArgs = 1

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I used DrAI's suggestion for a while, but found it frustrating in practice because of the following behavior:

If you type the following: /{pattern} :%s//{replacement}

...then, without this mapping, you can see what you're about to replace before you do a replacement. But with the remapping, you suddenly have s/\v/ instead of s//; this matches eveything in the file, which is obviously wrong.

Fortunately, the s command itself has an alternative form that uses very magic for its search. So here are the mappings I'm currently using in my .vimrc:

nnoremap / /\v
vnoremap / /\v
cnoremap %s/ %smagic/
cnoremap >s/ >smagic/ 
nnoremap :g/ :g/\v
nnoremap :g// :g//

Note that just mapping s/ leads to problems when attempting to use a pattern that ends in s; similarly, mapping g/ would create problems when using patterns ending in g. Note that the :g/ and :g// mappings prevent Vim from showing the command immediately.

EDIT: Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a "magic" version of :global, which is why the seemingly-superfluous mapping of :g// is used to ensure that the global command can use the previous search pattern.

Another drawback is that these remappings interfere with search history. As an example, consider using * to search for the next occurrence of the word under the cursor. This causes Vim to search for the pattern \<[word]\>, which does not start with \v. Without the remappings described above, typing / and pressing the up arrow will recall that search pattern. With the remappings, however, after typing /, you must delete the automatically-inserted \v before pressing the up arrow in order to recall that pattern.