Re: Why does Emacs lack `backward-delete-word`?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>>> I should have been clearer, sorry.  `backward-kill-word` kills.  I wonder
>>> why there is no corresponding command to delete instead.
>>
>> Emacs's UI generally assumes that the difference between "delete" and
>> "kill" is sufficiently minor that the trouble of providing both versions
>> is higher than the gain.
>>
>> IOW, use M-y (or a prefix arg to C-y) to get to the kill you care about.
>
> As Stefan says, it's not usually necessary.  M-y can skip past
> irrelevant kills.  Also, if you know you're going to add something
> useless to the kill ring, then you can just use backspace.  Getting rid
> of a word with backspace, in the few occasions when it's necessary,
> isn't that slow.
>
> But, in keyboard macros it can be troublesome.  If M-y has to be used in
> a macro that generally spells trouble.  Also, kills are slower than
> deletes.  For those reasons I define delete-word in the obvious way,
> like kill-word but using delete-region instead of kill-region.  I don't
> bind it to a key though, I just use M-x when I need it, which is only
> when using keyboard macros.

This is what registers are good for!