Re: Isearch interaction model

[dancol@dancol.org]

>> We have a search history because it's often the case that we want to
>> repeat something we've recently done --- look up the same word, find
>> the same function, and so on. It doesn't make sense to me that the
>> exact mechanism we use to search for a particular thing should
>> affect its recency or the way in which we recall it.
> But "repeating" a search for \_<foo\_> as a non-regexp search is useless.

It is. That's why we'll store the search flags along with the history
entry. A long time ago (years and years), I posted a proof-of-concept of
this model to emacs-devel.

>
>> It's very easy already to casually switch between literal and regex
>> isearch with M-r. Why should this distinction affect the way in which
>> we recall that search?
> I think the answer is to have one history which records the mode used
> for each search, so that it is reused correctly.  (When it makes sense,
> the user can change the search mode after selecting the history element.)
>

Yep.