Default search should be literal; regex should be opt‑in?

[oekeur]

Hi!

We’re seeing editors report this as a bug:
When they try to replace a specific character sequence, other text gets replaced too. Example from our newsroom: searching for .’ and replacing with ." also replaces letters before the quote, because . is treated as “any character.” From their perspective, they typed a literal string and the plugin “over‑replaced.”

Right now, the input is interpreted as a regex by default, which is surprising for non‑technical users. They expect plain text matching.

Proposed fix:

• Make literal matching the default (escape regex characters).
• Add a clear “Use Regular Expression” toggle for users.
• Persist that toggle per user via core/preferences.
• If the regex is invalid, show a friendly error.

This keeps advanced regex support, but avoids the current “unexpected replacements” that feel like a bug for editors.

I have a PR lined up if you are OK with this :)

[badasswp]

@oekeur Thanks for flagging this. If you can raise a PR for this, I can get eyes on it shortly. cc. @chibuzorihueze