Re: [Emacs-diffs] emacs-25 f8208b6: Document the user-level features of the Xref package

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 22:46:03 +0300
> 
> On 01/21/2016 10:00 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > But a reference includes a file name, doesn't it?  If so, why not
> > search through those files?
> 
> My core objection is that "find regexp" is not a semantic query. Whereas 
> all current xref queries are semantic (i.e. require language analysis 
> for best results).
> 
> So really want some clear justification, rather than "etags has command 
> that does this", and "a user could want this". Without the 
> justification, it would be hard to document the new command anyway.

Same justification as for Dired's command you just coded.  Except that
in this case, I want to search and/or replace in files that belong to
some coherent group that is not a directory hierarchy.

> >> How about xref-query-replace-in-matches?
> >
> > Fine with me.
> 
> You'd agree that tags-query-replace doesn't require a direct replacement 
> then?

I thought that was what xref-query-replace-in-matches will do.

> > It would be OK for xref-find-regexp to do the same.  Users who want
> > the project.el way of doing that can invoke the commands there.  (They
> > should probably be documented in the manual.)
> 
> We should worry that a user might invoke xref-find-regexp while 
> expecting it to behave like project-find-regexp.

I don't.

> Because in most other editors regexp search works more like the latter: 
> it's either in the current file, or across the current project.

I'm not lobbying for supplanting the project.el command.  It has its
uses.