Yeah, I agree, vim's default regex syntax is infuriatingly inconsistent. I pretty much always start my REs with "/\v"[0], to the point it's in my muscle memory:

Yeah, I agree, vim's default regex syntax is infuriatingly inconsistent. I pretty much always start my REs with "/\v"[0], to the point it's in my muscle memory: I'll find myself looking at that in the cmdline before I've even drafted the pattern in my head. (Then sometimes I'll realise I just want to find an exact string full of symbols, and have to back up and capitalize the "v".) ... I should probably come up with some mappings so the \v is inserted automatically. [0] http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#/\v http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#/\v