Re: Fwd: Re: Easy way to rename files sequentially?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Has anyone looked at this?
>
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: Easy way to rename files sequentially?
> Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help
> To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:40:47 +0200
>
>> From: David Hansen <david.hansen@gmx.net>
>> Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:26:02 +0000
>> 
>> \# isn't working in `dired-do-rename-regexp'
>
> That sounds like a bug (or missing feature) to me:
> dired-do-rename-regexp is supposed to be 100% compatible with
> query-replace-regexp, as far as regexp replacement goes.

The regexp magic from query-replace-regexp is implemented in a two-step
process: first the interactive form translates such elements into a
replacement list of a specific form rather than a replacement string,
and then perform-replace works using this list.

The generated list (and the code processing it) heavily relies on
working in a buffer whereas dired-do-rename-regexp basically works on a
string.  Making the additional magic available generally instead of just
to query-replace-regexp itself would require some amount of work, not
least of all because one would need to design a reasonable interface for
this functionality which is, at the current point of time, more or less
a hack inside of replace.el.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum