Re: yank-pop error unnecessary and annoying

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> writes:

> We have a proposal to do more useful things for yank-pop
> without a previous yank:
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel/122139/focus=122670

That is a proposal to do something different (prompt for an entry on the
kill ring).

But usually, what people have in mind when they do a spurious yank-pop
is "delete the stretch of text that I most recently yanked, and replace
it with the next item in the kill ring".  At least, that's what
frequently happens to me, usually when I inadvertently do some cursor
motion after yanking.

(In fact, the error is frequent enough that the above proposed behavior
might be annoying, since I don't just want to yank; I want to *replace*
the text; so I would end up doing an extra C-g to quit out of the
prompt.)

It Would Be Nice (tm) if the "yank-pop without previous yank by deleting
last yank" behavior could be implemented, but I don't know how easy or
difficult it is.  I assume the main complication is how to handle the
case where the buffer is modified since the last yank.