RE: pushing and popping the mark

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > `M-y' for `yank-pop'.
> 
> I know this is called `yank-pop`, but it is more of a "peek" 
> because it keeps the kill ring intact.
> 
> More generally though, this is a neat solution. I hadn't thought to
> do it this way. The only problem with it is that it necessitates
> doing everything in exact order and not making any mistakes along
> the way. Therefore, I'll prefer `C-x C-x` when there are more than a
> few things needing moved around, but prefer this in simple cases.

There are plenty of ways to more directly access given entries on
the kill-ring.  `browse-kill-ring[+].el' provides one.  Icicles
provides another, and I'm sure that other general completion
packages do too now.

Quite often, when vanilla Emacs provides only a way to cycle, to
get to some candidate, some package such as Icicles gives you a
way to get to it more directly.

Whether it is navigating among function-definition tag matches
or among index matches in Info, the vanilla Emacs approach is
often to have you repeatedly hit a key (e.g. `M-,') to get to
successive candidates, but completion packages let you
pattern-match against all candidates (and cycle among the
matches, if you like).

Even vanilla Emacs sometimes gives you more direct ways, in
addition to mechanically cycling.  To get to a previous
minibuffer (history) entry, for example, you need not cycle to
it using `M-p' over and over.  You can sometimes reach it more
directly by matching, using `M-r'.  Or even better, using `C-r'
(in the minibuffer - see (emacs) `Isearch Minibuffer').  I'm
not saying that these vanilla matching means are wonderful,
but they sometimes exist and are underused.

Sometimes cycling is handier than matching; sometimes the
reverse - depending on how long the candidate list is and
whether partial matching shortens the list to be cycled.
Icicles and other packages that combine matching with cycling
usually let you get where you are going pretty directly.

Compared to using `yank-pop', for example, being able to get
to any marked locations anywhere, by matching, or by a
combination of matching and cycling, sure beats just cycling.