From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: egarrulo Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Why does Emacs lack `backward-delete-word`? Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2016 13:08:41 +0100 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1457352631 9787 80.91.229.3 (7 Mar 2016 12:10:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2016 12:10:31 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Mar 07 13:10:31 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1actzQ-0005DD-BL for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 07 Mar 2016 13:10:20 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55293 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1actzP-0003Wo-PL for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 07 Mar 2016 07:10:19 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 25 Original-X-Trace: individual.net KvRmgPDMDHdDEPPqC5QVNQSM59Tub95vZMW8aCav6/D++4e//+ Cancel-Lock: sha1:pD2d2Oky/X3vzeb+KfpZHvp+aRs= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0 In-Reply-To: Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:217200 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:109493 Archived-At: On 07/03/16 04:21, Robert Thorpe wrote: > As Stefan says, it's not usually necessary. M-y can skip past > irrelevant kills. Also, if you know you're going to add something > useless to the kill ring, then you can just use backspace. Getting rid > of a word with backspace, in the few occasions when it's necessary, > isn't that slow. > > But, in keyboard macros it can be troublesome. If M-y has to be used in > a macro that generally spells trouble. Also, kills are slower than > deletes. For those reasons I define delete-word in the obvious way, > like kill-word but using delete-region instead of kill-region. I don't > bind it to a key though, I just use M-x when I need it, which is only > when using keyboard macros. Your indirect explanation for the lack of a key for `delete-region` sounds plausible. Maybe my question is a symptom of a more general problem: inexperienced Emacs users, don't know how to edit effectively with vanilla Emacs, especially when they come from mainstream editors. The manual explains Emacs commands, but not how they "work" together. For example, I remember a Emacs user commenting that it is often quicker to kill and yank some text, than to copy it. Not very intuitive, I would say. Therefore, some users might feel frustrated because they are trying to accomplish something by unknowingly "going against the grain" of Emacs.