Interactively changing the configuration

You might want to change the separator or the matching style configuration on the fly while matching. There many possible user interfaces for this: you could toggle between two chosen configurations, cycle among several, have a keymap where each key sets a different configurations, have a set of named configurations and be prompted (with completion) for one of them, popup a hydra to choose a configuration, etc. Since there are so many possible UIs and which to use is mostly a matter of taste, ‘orderless’ does not provide any such commands. But it’s easy to write your own!

For example, say you want to use the keybinding ‘C-l’ to make all components match literally. You could use the following code:

(defun my/match-components-literally ()
  "Components match literally for the rest of the session."
  (interactive)
  (setq-local orderless-matching-styles '(orderless-literal)
              orderless-style-dispatchers nil))

(define-key minibuffer-local-completion-map (kbd "C-l")
  #'my/match-components-literally)

Using ‘setq-local’ to assign to the configuration variables ensures the values are only used for that minibuffer completion session.