Inconsistent behavior of `current-word'

Inconsistent behavior of `current-word'

[Emilio Lopes]

Start Emacs and type the following in the "*scratch*"
buffer:

        Diesel-Motor*

[The asterisk represents point position]

`current-word)' returns "Diesel-Motor" although all other
word-related commands (`backward-word', `capitalize-word'
etc.) I've tested return "Motor" only.

A look at the current syntax table shows that `-' is not a
word component:

        - .. /          _ 	which means: symbol


Emilio

Re: Inconsistent behavior of `current-word'

[Kevin Rodgers]

Emilio Lopes wrote:

> Start Emacs and type the following in the "*scratch*"
> buffer:
> 
>         Diesel-Motor*
> 
> [The asterisk represents point position]
> 
> `current-word)' returns "Diesel-Motor" although all other
> word-related commands (`backward-word', `capitalize-word'
> etc.) I've tested return "Motor" only.
> 
> A look at the current syntax table shows that `-' is not a
> word component:
> 
>         - .. /          _ 	which means: symbol

And a look at lisp/simple.el shows that current-word includes both word
and symbol constituent characters.

I agree that this is a bug, and think that a separate current-symbol
function should be defined (or an optional SYMBOL arg to current-word)
for callers that want the current behavior of current-word.

-- 
<a href="mailto:&lt;kevin.rodgers&#64;ihs.com&gt;">Kevin Rodgers</a>

Re: Inconsistent behavior of `current-word'

[Richard Stallman]

current-word actually finds a symbol rather than a word.
Since a number of programs use it already,
I decided to document this rather than change it.

Thanks for pointing this out.