How can I do a case-sensitive search in Emacs?

Question

Is there a shortcut? Ctrl + S gives I-search:, and that is case-insensitive.

Montpellier

Answer 1

You press M-c after you run search.

This will set the case-sensitive flag.

More generally, you can do: C-s C-h b to see all keybindings active during search, in isearch-mode-map.

Mcmorris

Answer 2

In addition to M-c mentioned by alinsoar, entering a capital letter as part of your search string will cause the search to be case-sensitive.

Gerson

should capital letter entered as the first character? – Stemma

Not much use if you're searching for a lower-case string... :) – Subside

Answer 3

To make case-sensitive search the default, add this to your startup file (e.g. ~/.emacs), or evaluate it during your Emacs session:

(setq case-fold-search nil)

To set it back to the normal case-insensitive behavior (which can also be case-sensitive when a capital letter is used in the search string as @Tyler noted earlier), use:

(setq case-fold-search t)

More info: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/efaq/Controlling-case-sensitivity.html

Reptilian