bug#52733: 29.0.50; Wishlist: thingatpt should use fields

bug#52733: 29.0.50; Wishlist: thingatpt should use fields

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

A previous attempt at making this happen was done in
7db376e560448e61485ba054def8c82b21f33d6a, but was reverted due to
serious performance regressions (see bug#52593).

I still think it's a good idea to make this work, but it has to be more
efficient.  Perhaps a way to implement this would be to make the
beginning-of-thing/end-of-thing functions (or something in that
vicinity) check whether there's a field in the area it's covering, and
then limit itself to that area first.

That should fix the performance regressions -- the problem with
just calling field-beginning/end without any limits is that it will
search through the entire buffer, and that can be slow.


In GNU Emacs 29.0.50 (build 13, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.30, cairo version 1.16.0)
 of 2021-12-19 built on xo
Repository revision: ec692470bdbd9f673e925bae1c96ad066fb0295a
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12013000
System Description: Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid


-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no