bug#26338: 26.0.50; Collect all matches for REGEXP in current buffer

[Tino Calancha <tino.calancha@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 4 Apr 2017, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

>> Any interest in something like this?:
>>
>> (defmacro with-collect-matches (regexp &optional group &rest body)
>>   "Collect matches for REGEXP and eval BODY for each match.
>> BODY is evaluated with `it' bound to the match.
>> Optional GROUP if non-nil, then is the regexp group to save.  Otherwise,
>> save the whole match."
>
> Sorry if this was said already, but why a macro and not a map-like
> function?
No special reason.  It's the second idea which came to my mind after
my initial proposal was declined.  Maybe because is shorter to do:
(with-collect-matches regexp)
than
(foo-collect-matches regexp nil #'identity)

if you are just interested in the list of matches.  Implementing it as
a map function might be also nice.  Don't see a big enthusiasm on
the proposal, though :-(

So far people think that it's easy to write a while loop.  I wonder 
if they think the same about the existence of `dolist': the should
never use it and always write a `while' loop instead.  Don't think they
do that anyway.

I will repeat it once more.  I find nice, having an operator returning a 
list with matches for REGEXP.  If such operator, in addition, accepts a 
body of code or a function, then i find this operator very nice
and elegant.

Regards,
Tino