Problem with word search

Problem with word search

[Burkhard Schultheis]

I searched in Google groups in this group for my problem and found an 
old discussion from 2007 for my problem, but it does not answer my 
question because the discussion was inconsistent:
Someone stated that "word-search-forward machine" does _not_ find 
"running_machine_state". But another one stated it would (and should) 
find the longer "word". And this is the case with my emacs 21.3.1 (it's 
a development server where I cannot install the newest version).

How can I change this behavior? Or is it OK in Version 21? Or how should 
I search for a word? I've tried the regular expression \bmachine\b and 
it does find "running_machine_state" too! I think, this is the problem, 
but why? And how can I change it?

Thanks in advance!

Regards
Burkhard

Re: Problem with word search

[Burkhard Schultheis]

Additional info: The syntax table in the buffer shows that the 
underscore should be treated as whitespace. In this case I had expected 
that \bmachine\b would not find "running_machine_state" as it does. Why?

Regards
Burkhard

Re: Problem with word search

[Burkhard Schultheis]

Am 29.03.2012 09:51, schrieb Burkhard Schultheis:
> Additional info: The syntax table in the buffer shows that the
> underscore should be treated as whitespace. In this case I had expected
> that \bmachine\b would not find "running_machine_state" as it does. Why?
>
> Regards
> Burkhard

Now I understand it. I changed the meaning of "_" to "w", and it works now.