Interactive query-replace

Interactive query-replace

[Ole Laursen]

Hi!

I realized the other day that search and replace in Emacs isn't very
interactive when a coworker showed me another editor he was
experimenting with. What he somehow did there seemed like something
Emacs would do when query-replacing, only it doesn't.

Search and replace has three phases:

- Enter search term
- Enter replacement term
- Confirmation

Only confirmation is interactive in Emacs.

The search phase could move the cursor and highlight all matches as
you type, just like isearch. Then we can see what we're about to
overwrite.

Replacement text phase could overwrite each match visible in the
buffer with the replacement text as you type it. The replacements
would still be highlighted so it's obvious what's happening. Then we
can actually evaluate how the replacement works in practice in the
buffer before committing to it.

Confirmation then actually commits the changes to the buffer, just like today.

Doesn't this sound like something Emacs should be doing?

I'll admit I have no idea how to actually implement it.


Ole

Re: Interactive query-replace

[Kaushal Modi]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 791 bytes --]

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 4:27 PM Ole Laursen <olau@iola.dk> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I realized the other day that search and replace in Emacs isn't very
> interactive when a coworker showed me another editor he was
> experimenting with. What he somehow did there seemed like something
> Emacs would do when query-replacing, only it doesn't.
>
> Search and replace has three phases:
>
> - Enter search term
> - Enter replacement term
> - Confirmation
>
> Only confirmation is interactive in Emacs.
>
> The search phase could move the cursor and highlight all matches as
> you type, just like isearch. Then we can see what we're about to
> overwrite.
>

Looks like the multiple-cursors package (
https://github.com/magnars/multiple-cursors.el ) will do it. It's available
via Melpa.
-- 

Kaushal Modi

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1591 bytes --]

Re: Interactive query-replace

[Kaushal Modi]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 316 bytes --]

Here's a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNa3axo40qM

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 4:37 PM Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Looks like the multiple-cursors package (
> https://github.com/magnars/multiple-cursors.el ) will do it. It's
> available via Melpa.
> --
>
> Kaushal Modi
>
-- 

Kaushal Modi

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1188 bytes --]

Re: Interactive query-replace

[Clément Pit-Claudel]

On 2017-02-09 16:27, Ole Laursen wrote:
> Doesn't this sound like something Emacs should be doing?

I think you'll like https://github.com/benma/visual-regexp.el :)

Re: Interactive query-replace

[Ole Laursen]

2017-02-09 22:42 GMT+01:00 Clément Pit-Claudel <cpitclaudel@gmail.com>:
> On 2017-02-09 16:27, Ole Laursen wrote:
>> Doesn't this sound like something Emacs should be doing?
>
> I think you'll like https://github.com/benma/visual-regexp.el :)

Thanks for the suggestions! I have installed both.

Multiple cursors is a bit too general/fiddly for this problem I think,
although the concept seems useful for solving problems that otherwise
call for a keyboard macro and apply-macro-to-region-lines.

As for visual-regexp, after setting vr/default-replace-preview to t,
vr/query-replace seems to do what I'm suggesting. Neat. Would it make
sense to integrate behavior like this into stock Emacs?


Ole

Re: Interactive query-replace

[Chunyang Xu]

Ole Laursen writes:

> Hi!
>
> I realized the other day that search and replace in Emacs isn't very
> interactive when a coworker showed me another editor he was
> experimenting with. What he somehow did there seemed like something
> Emacs would do when query-replacing, only it doesn't.
>
> Search and replace has three phases:
>
> - Enter search term
> - Enter replacement term
> - Confirmation
>
> Only confirmation is interactive in Emacs.
>
> The search phase could move the cursor and highlight all matches as
> you type, just like isearch. Then we can see what we're about to
> overwrite.
>
> Replacement text phase could overwrite each match visible in the
> buffer with the replacement text as you type it. The replacements
> would still be highlighted so it's obvious what's happening. Then we
> can actually evaluate how the replacement works in practice in the
> buffer before committing to it.
>
> Confirmation then actually commits the changes to the buffer, just like today.
>
> Doesn't this sound like something Emacs should be doing?
>
> I'll admit I have no idea how to actually implement it.
>
>
> Ole

Re: Interactive query-replace

[Chunyang Xu]

(I replied a empty message a minute ago by accident, sorry about that)

Ole Laursen writes:

> Search and replace has three phases:
>
> - Enter search term
> - Enter replacement term
> - Confirmation
>
> Only confirmation is interactive in Emacs.
>
> The search phase could move the cursor and highlight all matches as
> you type, just like isearch. Then we can see what we're about to
> overwrite.

The search term is also interactive if you start your query-replace from
isearch via the same keys (that is M-% ('isearch-query-replace')). I use
this whenever I am not sure if my search pattern is correct.

Re: Interactive query-replace

[Stefan Monnier]

> Search and replace has three phases:
>
> - Enter search term
> - Enter replacement term
> - Confirmation
>
> Only confirmation is interactive in Emacs.

That's the old search and replace.  I think we should deprecate it.
The new one goes like this:

   C-s blabla M-% blibli RET

the "Enter replacement term" is indeed not interactive (yet), but the
"enter search term" is.


        Stefan