Question

The title question is straightforward; I’m looking for an option similar to magic so that the Vim regexes are sufficiently Perly. I’m tired of having to type \v any time I need to do some capturing.

Answer 1

No, and enabling such option, if it will be added, will cause almost all plugins to break. Of course, you could use mappings and commands, for example here is my :S command:

command -nargs=1 -range   S execute "<line1>,<line2>s".<q-args>[0].'\v'.
                                                      \<q-args>[1:]

. Usage is similar to :s, but it enables \v. You could also add a mapping

noremap / /\v

and define a set of custom functions, like the following:

function Substitute(expr, pat, sub, flags)
    return substitute(a:expr, '\v'.a:pat, a:sub, a:flags)
endfunction