vim: how to convert all text to lowercase

Question

Hi,

How do you convert all text in vim to lowercase? Is it even possible?

Thanks, Kenneth

Answer 1

1. If you really mean small caps, then no, that is not possible – just as it is’t possible to convert text to bold or italic in any text editor (as opposed to word processor). If you want to convert text to lowercase, create a visual block and press u (or U to convert to uppercase). Tidle (~) in command mode reverses case.

2. If you want to see all text in Vim in small caps, you might want to look at the guifont option, or type :set guifont=* if your Vim flavour supports GUI font chooser.

Answer 2

I assume you want lowercase the text. Solution is pretty simple:

ggVGu

Explanation:

1. gg - goes to first line of text
2. V - turns on Visual selection, in line mode
3. G - goes to end of file (at the moment you have whole text selected)
4. u - lowercase selected area

Answer 3

If you are running under a flavor of Unix

:0,$!tr "[A-Z]" "[a-z]"