Re: Text property searching

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> What if someone doesn't want to gather strings but instead
> wants the match-zone limits?

Then use the match-zone limits that are returned by the function?  I
don't quite understand what you're asking here.

> The current design sounds a bit analogous to tossing out
> `match-data' in favor of just `match-string'.  Except that
> you even _return_ the strings, in a defstruct no less.

No, no strings are returned in the structs, only the start/end points
and the text property found.

> Similarly, I'd think we would want all of the same optional
> args and behavior as are provided by `search-forward':
> limiting the search scope, raising or suppressing an error,
> and repeating for a given count.  That's a proven and widely
> used Emacs interface.

Yes, and it's rather superfluous since you already have primitives like
`narrow-to-region'.  If the search functions didn't have those weird
parameters, the source of Emacs would be reduced by at least 67% by just
eliding all those " nil t"'s from every `{re-,}search-forward' call.

My math may be off by a couple of percent.

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