Smart case

[oantolin]

Smart case

[oantolin]

case-fold-search makes search case insensitive, right? orderless already obeys the standard completion-ignore-case variable.

[noctuid]

orderless already obeys the standard completion-ignore-case variable.

Thanks for pointing me to this. Would be nice if smart case ("i" matches "i" and "I", "I" matches only "I") was a possibility, but maybe that is outside the scope of this package.

[noctuid]

I guess one way I could do this is to advise orderless-default-pattern-compiler to set completion-ignore-case based on whether the pattern contains any capital letters. And then I could maybe advise completing-read to let bind completion-ignore-case to prevent this from affecting the global value. Do you have any ideas for a better method?

[oantolin]

I think it worth adding directly to orderless. Let's just think about what the best behavior and interface is.

You described smart case as meaning "i" matches "[iI]" and "I" matches "I". I don't think any commands in Emacs behave in that way. The other behavior you mentioned in your last comment I think is what isearch does by default:

• if there are only lowercase letters in the search string, then matching is case insensitive
• if there is any uppercase letter at all, then matching is case sensitive.

The difference is that with your first description "It" would match "I[tT]", but what isearch does is match "It".

I think the isearch thing is probably the behavior we should go for: it will be familiar to users and as a bonus, is easier to implement (with your strategy of locally binding completion-ignore-case).

Now, for the interface to activate this, how about using the same search-upper-case variable that isearch uses? Or, if that's too sneaky, we can add a new orderless-search-upper-case variable (I don't like the name that much, but since isearch uses it I feel it is "standard").

[oantolin]

Mmh, maybe the least confusing way is a new orderless-smart-case variable. When t it overrides completion-ignore-case (and read-file-name-completion-ignore-case, read-buffer-name-completion-case, too), when nil those variables are respected.

[oantolin]

I implemented this (with an orderless-smart-case variable) in the smart-case branch (bc9e482). Please test and read the docstring for the new variable to make sure it is clear.

[noctuid]

I think the isearch thing is probably the behavior we should go for

Yes, this is the behavior I want. I just described it badly at first.

I implemented this (with an orderless-smart-case variable) in the smart-case branch (bc9e482). Please test and read the docstring for the new variable to make sure it is clear.

Thanks! It works as expected for me, and the documentation is clear.

[oantolin]

Excellent, I will merge this into master and tag a release for MELPA stable.