Re: isearch-whole-buffer?

[xyblor <fake@invalid.email>]

B. T. Raven wrote:

> I'm having trouble imagining why C-s  xxxxxxxxxx... and then C-s again to
> force wrapping to the beginning of the buffer doesn't work for you. Even
> if the search string (xxxxxx...) is very long, you don't have to backspace
> to the beginning to return to the mark. You can just C-x C-x. No?

Being forced to wrap the search is inconvenient when you don't know how 
to spell what you are looking for, and you have to press C-s every time 
you want to try a different spelling. It's also inconvenient to start a 
search when the point is at the end of the buffer, because no matter 
what you're looking for, you'll have to press C-s again, and you don't 
know you've typed enough characters.

There's also a more general design issue at play here: it seems to me 
that most of the time, when a person initiates a search, s/he wants to 
answer the question "where in this buffer will I find this string?" not 
"where will I find this string in the portion of the buffer that is 
below/above the point?". I find Firefox's "find" (control-f) to be more 
sensible in this regard, and I am surprised that in the long history of 
Emacs' development, nobody seems to have shared this view; to such an 
extent that not only is there no built in function or variable to 
enable searching the whole buffer by default, there isn't even a 
convenient workaround. I realize it's a minor point, but given Emacs' 
extensible nature, I'm supposed to bend it to my will, right? Or am I 
just out to lunch on this?