Changing case in Vim

Question

Is there a command in Vim that changes the case of the selected text?

A helpful link I guess: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Switching_case_of_characters — yuan, Nov 02 '13 at 14:18

score 779 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 19 '20 at 01:03

779

Visual select the text, then U for uppercase or u for lowercase. To swap all casing in a visual selection, press ~ (tilde).

Without using a visual selection, gU<motion> will make the characters in motion uppercase, or use gu<motion> for lowercase.

For more of these, see Section 3 in Vim's change.txt help file.

edited Feb 19 '20 at 01:03

Community

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answered May 31 '10 at 21:34

Mark Rushakoff

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In experimenting, it looks like `g~` works, too. May want to add that, I tend to use `~` exclusively. – trysis Jul 21 '19 at 14:41
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Which means that we can use `gUiw` to turn a word into uppercase. Thanks! – lucidbrot Aug 24 '19 at 11:51
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Or gUw does it. – Ilias Karim May 10 '22 at 16:57
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@Ilias Karim, not exactly the same! Without the `i` (for inner) you only change from the cursor position to the end of the word, if you use `gUw`. – jens.klose May 07 '23 at 10:19

score 519 · Answer 2 · edited May 06 '21 at 14:05

519

See the following methods:

 ~    : Changes the case of current character

 guu  : Change current line from upper to lower.

 gUU  : Change current LINE from lower to upper.

 guw  : Change to end of current WORD from upper to lower.

 guaw : Change all of current WORD to lower.

 gUw  : Change to end of current WORD from lower to upper.

 gUaw : Change all of current WORD to upper.

 g~~  : Invert case to entire line

 g~w  : Invert case to current WORD

 guG  : Change to lowercase until the end of document.

 gU)  : Change until end of sentence to upper case

 gu}  : Change to end of paragraph to lower case

 gU5j : Change 5 lines below to upper case

 gu3k : Change 3 lines above to lower case

edited May 06 '21 at 14:05

Kes

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answered Jun 03 '10 at 12:48

ungalnanban

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In this case, the aw and iw commands would do the same thing since whitespace doesn't have a case. I believe we can save a keystroke and go with the w versions of the command. Is there any reason to use aw here? – batbrat Apr 05 '19 at 16:48
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`guw` changes the case from the current position until the end of the word. `guaw` or `guiw` changes the case of the whole word. – Victor Schröder May 10 '19 at 16:17

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 16 '22 at 10:09

Additionally, although all is said and its not for visual selection:

There are operators:
Usage: operator motion See :h operator and :h motion

Operators can be

c   change
d   delete
gu  make lowercase
gU  make uppercase
...

The motions are mostly well known:

0  first character of the line
$  end of line
aw a word
iw inner word
...

So you have to remember just a few operators and the motions (there are much but you will have some favorites).

In this way you get the list of @ungalnanban above.

Found on Vim cheatsheet - devhints.io

Changing case in Vim

3 Answers3

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