--text follows this line-- - Starting from 'emacs -Q' - Invoke CPerl mode via 'M-X cperl-mode'. - Edit (or create) a buffer that has more lines than the display window. - Open another window (same size), via 'C-x 5 2'. - Position the view in that second window to the end of the buffer, via 'ESC->'. - In the first window, near the top of the buffer, enter this string, the start of a pair of escaped [] brackets within a perl regexp range: my $x = qr/[\[\ - Enter the second escaped ']': my $x = qr/[\[\] When it is entered, a diagnostic like Couldn't find end of charclass in a REx, pos=33584 is displayed in the echo area at the bottom of the edit window and then the other window displaying that buffer is scrolled (repositioned) back to the same view as the window being edited, outside the user's control, abandoning its previous position. The views, the windows, that are repositioned are those of any latter part of the buffer. Peculiarly, identical edits in latter portions of the buffer do not cause a similar repositioning of top-of-buffer views although they do generate the diagnostic. This is just one example of how the repositioning happens. In general, any edit that results in a message being displayed in the echo area causes the view to be repositioned. In the cperl source (git cperl-master), it looks like these diagnostics are generated via elisp's (message) function. Is this repositioning a side effect of that function? The repositioning causes problems when it's important to maintain multiple views of different parts of a large file. It's like shaking all the bookmarks out of a reference book, then trying to find the bookmarked places again. In GNU Emacs 26.3 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.14) of 2020-03-26, modified by Debian built on lcy01-amd64-020 Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12009000 System Description: Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. 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