Re: query-replace-interactive not documented

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

On Sat, Jun 12, 2004 at 08:01:20PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     What do you think about documenting `query-replace-regexp-eval'
>     in the Emacs manual even without a keybinding?
> 
> The reason I did not document it before is that I'm not sure it is
> really very useful.  I never use it.  How many people here actually
> use it?

I use it -- not everyday, but for some problems, it can be invaluable.

When I found out about this function I was elated; it replaces various
less-flexible ad-hoc elisp code I had, and for the cases where you need it,
it's actually very succinct.

E.g., when I have some C defines:

   #define X 0x001	/* bla blah */
   #define Y 0x002
   ...

and I rearrange the cases or do something that screws up the values, it's
much easier to use a region-limited `query-replace-regexp-eval' replacing
"0x[0-9a-f]*" with (format "0x%04x" (lsh 1 replace-count)) than to do it by
hand.

-Miles
-- 
I'm beginning to think that life is just one long Yoko Ono album; no rhyme
or reason, just a lot of incoherent shrieks and then it's over.  --Ian Wolff