Search in filled text does not work correctly

Search in filled text does not work correctly

[linuxfever]

Hello everyone,

I am not sure if this is a bug or a missing functionality, so I thought to
try here first before reporting as a bug. I have noticed that when searching
for an expression in a filled text, then the search function (C-s) does not
find the expression when it is broken between lines. Try the example below
in your scratch buffer by copying and pasting it and searching for such an
expression.

Example for checking that when the text is filled the search
function does not work correctly. After filling this
paragraph (M-x fill-paragraph), try to search for two words that
are broken between lines. In my scratch buffer, this was 'the
search' and should be found at the end of the first line, but was
not found by the command.

Does the same happen in your Emacs as well? Thanks in advance!
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Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 25.2.2012 um 13:59 schrieb linuxfever:

> Does the same happen in your Emacs as well?

Yes, of course! The text is broken, there is no SPACE character between the two words but a LINE FEED. So try to search for two words separated by a LINE FEED:

	C-s f i r s t C-q C-j s e c o n d

Or try isearch-forward-regexp!

--
Greetings

  Pete

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.
				– Hunter S. Thompson

Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[linuxfever]

Thanks, I just tried that out and it works. However, is there a way to change
the default behaviour of search (C-s) so that it automatically searches for
the expression including line feeds as well?
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Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[linuxfever]

Ok, never mind, I found that incremental word search does what I need (M-s
w)! Thanks for the help!
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Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[bitterspetey]

But suppose you wanted to replace the phrase?  Then it looks like incremental
word search will not help, and you need the fancy regexp with the literal
line feed character.

Given that in the short time I've been watching this list the issue has come
up twice, does it make sense to call this a bug of sorts? It's a little
disappointing that it's difficult to do something as straightforward as
searching / replacing a phrase. It seems in search contexts emacs should
read a space as whitespace or feed, unless it's escaped or something.


linuxfever wrote:
> 
> Ok, never mind, I found that incremental word search does what I need (M-s
> w)! Thanks for the help!
> 

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RE: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[Drew Adams]

> But suppose you wanted to replace the phrase?  Then it looks 
> like incremental word search will not help, and you need the
> fancy regexp with the literal line feed character.
> 
> Given that in the short time I've been watching this list
> the issue has come up twice, does it make sense to call
> this a bug of sorts? It's a little disappointing that it's
> difficult to do something as straightforward as
> searching / replacing a phrase. It seems in search contexts 
> emacs should read a space as whitespace or feed, unless
> it's escaped or something.

The way to register an enhancement request is to use `M-x report-emacs-bug'.
(That's for enhancement requests, not just for bugs.)

Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[linuxfever]

bitterspetey wrote:
> 
> It seems in search contexts emacs should read a space as whitespace or
> feed, unless it's escaped or something.
> 

I completely agree. I will check to see first if a similar request has been
made, and if not, I will submit one.
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Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[linuxfever]

Ok, I just filed a report here:

http://old.nabble.com/Replace-expressions%3A-enhance-functionality-when-searching-in-filled-paragraphs-td33392837.html

Regards
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RE: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[Drew Adams]

> Ok, I just filed a report here:
> http://old.nabble.com/Replace-expressions%3A-enhance-functiona
> lity-when-searching-in-filled-paragraphs-td33392837.html

I could be wrong, but I don't think that that files a bug report (enhancement
request).  That post, at least, does not (yet) seem to have an associated bug
number.  (Someone will correct me if I'm wrong about this.)

My guess is that you need to report the bug using email to
`bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org', preferably via `M-x report-emacs-bug'.

That's what it's for.  If you invoke that Emacs command it will tell you how to
file a bug report.  See also the Emacs manual: `C-h r g checklist'.

RE: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[Drew Adams]

> I could be wrong, but I don't think that that files a bug 
> report (enhancement request).  That post, at least, does not
> (yet) seem to have an associated bug number.

I stand corrected.  It showed up as bug #10885.
Sorry for the noise.

Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[Gregory (Greg) Benjamin]

I happened to want to convert a list like this:

"apple" "banana" "cherry"

to this format:

apple
banana
cherry

the other day. I started our with 'replace-regexp' and learned about
C-q C-j in a matter of minutes after first trying \n, \\n, C-j,
etc. before googling. 

Perhaps it would be better to educate rather than change emacs'
behavior. The built-in tutorial could have a few words added about
using C-q C-j with respect to searching and replacing, or the single
tutorial now provided could be broken into several, with one dedicated
to searching, replacing, highlighting, displaying only the lines
containing a pattern, etc.

Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[bitterspetey]

Certainly you can learn to do it - but I found it a bit remarkable that such
a sophisticated regexp was required to allow for the possibility of breaking
over lines (and catch the other usual whitespace).  I'm not a power user by
a longshot (like I very rarely do any lisp) - but I've been a user for over
a decade, and I picked up some amount of regular expression stuff, and it
still took me some time to figure out that '\s-' does not match line feeds,
contrary to explicit statement in 
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RegularExpression the manual :

Note also that \s- matches space, tab, newline and carriage return. This can
be handy in a [^ … ] construct.
If I had this trouble, I'm guessing a totally new user, curious about the
power of emacs, is going to be totally at sea.
So I think if the emacs community cares about new users, this is a default
that should be changed.  You should have the option to search for an
explicit space, of course, but the default in searches should be a
whitespace of any of the generic sorts.


gregben wrote:
> 
> I happened to want to convert a list like this:
> 
> "apple" "banana" "cherry"
> 
> to this format:
> 
> apple
> banana
> cherry
> 
> the other day. I started our with 'replace-regexp' and learned about
> C-q C-j in a matter of minutes after first trying \n, \\n, C-j,
> etc. before googling. 
> 
> Perhaps it would be better to educate rather than change emacs'
> behavior. The built-in tutorial could have a few words added about
> using C-q C-j with respect to searching and replacing, or the single
> tutorial now provided could be broken into several, with one dedicated
> to searching, replacing, highlighting, displaying only the lines
> containing a pattern, etc.
> 

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Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[bitterspetey]

Oops.  Now this is working for me to find 'foo bar' across lines and such:

foo\s-*bar
I swear it wasn't before. I have no idea what could make the difference -
the major mode? Anyway I still think the space in a simple 'foo bar' should
be interpreted widely in search contexts, unless explicitly escaped or
something.
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RE: Search in filled text does not work correctly

[Ludwig, Mark]

I've been using Emacs for >30 years, and I've always wished that searching for a specific sequence of characters and words including whitespace in a text file would automatically span lines.

Of course, early on, I learned how to form the regular expression that does this (this predates the "\s-" construct in today's GNU Emacs).  This request feels to me like a different sort of search.  Were I doing this 30 years ago, I would have called it Isearch-English or something like that.  (Mostly I work with computer languages, which is why I never got around to writing anything like this....)  In today's multi-lingual world, I'm not sure what to call it, and I also don't know which natural languages (outside of the obvious European-based languages) would work with this concept.

Cheers,

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+ludwig.mark=siemens.com@gnu.org [mailto:help-gnu-emacs-bounces+ludwig.mark=siemens.com@gnu.org] On Behalf Of bitterspetey
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 1:58 PM
To: Help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Search in filled text does not work correctly


Oops.  Now this is working for me to find 'foo bar' across lines and such:

foo\s-*bar
I swear it wasn't before. I have no idea what could make the difference -
the major mode? Anyway I still think the space in a simple 'foo bar' should
be interpreted widely in search contexts, unless explicitly escaped or
something.
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