Re: Text property searching

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> I thought you were designing a command (since search-forward is a
> command).  But t looks like this is just another API, in which case I
> must ask how is it different from the existing primitives.

The existing primitives are really awkward to work with.  Whenever I
have to implement something that picks out data based on text
properties, it's an awful experience.  There's so much you have to do by
hand based on whether you're already in a region, or after it, and
getting all the details right with `next-single-property-change' is so
enervating that I usually resort to just looping over all the characters
in the region and examine them one by one.

The new function allows a method of working that's natural if you've
ever worked on Emacs before (i.e., `search-forward').

-- 
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   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no