In vim when searching or replacing an exact word you need to type:
\<word\>
to match it exactly, this is cumbersome to type, and I find myself wanting to search/replace exact words a lot more often by default than part of a word. Is there a way to let vim use exact words by default, and then turn this option off/on when necessary?
:h 'ignorecase'
and:h 'smartcase'
which change the behavior of the searches and the handling of case in patterns. – statox May 17 '16 at 19:10