Re: Elisp: Search a File Without Visiting?

[taashlo@sandia.gov]

"Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:
> > My question: is it possible (using elisp) to search the contents of
> > the thesaurus file *without* loading it into a buffer?
> 
> Nope.  How would it work ?
> I guess what you're thinking about is not "without loading it" but
> "without loading it all at once".  In which case, yes, you can use
> the BEG and END args of insert-file-contents to load only a part
> of the file, so you can search the file 1MB at a time (for instance).
> 
> But maybe you'll be better off using something like grep on
> your thesaurus and then fetching the relevant part.
> 
>         Stefan

Yeah, Kai Großjohann posted a similar response.  I was too focused on
my original solution to see the right way of getting this problem
solved.

Anyway, I've got the code working as I like:

1) It can pickup the word or phrase to search for from the cursor or
   the mark.

2) It can prompt you to input the word or phrase to search for.

3) It keeps a history of what you searched for.

4) It will preferentially find the word/phrase in the root position.

5) If not found as a root, it will seach for the word/phrase in the list
   of synonyms and related words.

6) With the results of a previous thesaurus search, you can perform a
   subsequent thesaurus search, a dictionary lookup (see
   dictionary-1.8.4.tar.gz), copy, cut & paste, etc.

There's just one minor little nit that is bugging me.  After
formatting the "*Thesaurus Search Results*" buffer, I call
forward-line to position the cursor on a blank line.  This works fine
if the "Results" window is buried or non-existant, but if it is still
visible from a previous search, the cursor is always ends up located
at the beginning of the buffer after the call to display-buffer.

If you would like, I will post the code (to gnu.emacs.sources), or I
can try to make a small example that demonstrates the problem.
(I'm using Gnu Emacs 21.3.1 on Windows NT 4.0 SP 6.)  But before I do
that, I want to check that this isn't a known problem.

Thanks,
Tad Ashlock