> With the best will in the world, I honestly don't think there's a bug
> here.  Could I ask you to have another look at that manual page ("Errors
> in Incremental Search" in the Emacs manual) and carefully compare what
> you read there with what you see on the screen.
Ok, we disagree. Probably  you define "bug" as something that cannot be
made to fit the description.

The net effect is that at some point typing ^W will keep appending the
same word over and over. I would say, either update the text window too
or disallow using ^W after a failure. I prefer the former, preferably in
combination with a rest of the failure, just like ^S does.

> By the way, Emacs 23.2 is now pretty old.  You might want to consider
> upgrading to a newer version.  The current released version is 24.5.
Unfortunately it comes with the version of my OS X, and upgrading leads
to all kinds of trouble when I try to use regular (Apple) updates.

Thanks for your energy. I still hold this is unexpected and unwanted
behavior if not a bug, but I respect your different opinion and will
learn to live with it.

I guess, if I want it my way, I should do what you do and donate my time
for improving emacs. :-) Thanks again, btw. :-D

Regards,

--
Jan-Mark