Emacs Init: isearch Whitespace Regex

Put this in your Emacs Init File:

;; for isearch, make equivalent space newline tab hyphen underscore
(setq search-whitespace-regexp "[-_ \t\n]+")
;; in emacs 30, default is "[ \t]+"


;; enable isearch unicode equivalence e.g. e é
(setq search-default-mode 'char-fold-to-regexp)
;; in emacs 30, default to nil
;; (setq search-default-mode nil)


;; for isearch. specify if single space is equivalent to multiple.
(setq isearch-lax-whitespace t)
;; in emacs 30, default to t
;; but can be toggled by isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace

;; for isearch regex mode. specify if single space is equivalent to multiple.
(setq isearch-regexp-lax-whitespace nil)
;; in emacs 30, default to nil
;; but can be toggled by isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace

• Emacs: Search Text

Reference

• Lax Search (GNU Emacs Manual)