Re: Isearch: retrieve last successful search string from when you quit (`C-g')

[Nix <nix@esperi.org.uk>]

On 1 Oct 2012, Dani Moncayo stated:

>> Since there is a difference in opinion, a user
>> configurable flag is what I would advocate for.
>
> Another approach: keep `C-g' as it is now (just cancel the current
> command) and choose another key for exiting i-search saving the
> current search string...

Quite. Perhaps I'm just an idiot, but I always thought the current
isearch behaviour of not immediately quitting when C-g was stuck on a
failed search was a *bug*. Only now, after Drew commented on it, do I
notice that it's removing the unfound component of the failed search:
i.e., it's a feature, but unless you spend your time looking at the echo
area while isearching (and who does that?) they'll never notice it.

I don't know the right way to fix this. The operation is clearly useful;
C-g is clearly a meaningful keybinding for it, and lots of keys work
differently form the norm in isearch, so why not keyboard-escape-quit
too; it is clearly documented... but I never realised it was there and
thought C-g instantly quit anything unless Emacs was busy at the C
layer. So perhaps there is no problem here and I should just chalk this
up to being a doofus and needing to spend some time learning what
features have been added to isearch in the last fifteen years. Maybe
everyone else expects C-g to work the way it does in isearch.

But perhaps something other than C-g is the right binding, and C-g
really *should* quit, dammit.

-- 
NULL && (void)