Re: killing the result of isearch

["Loris Bennett" <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de>]

Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> writes:

>> On Nov 7, 2017, at 19:49, Loris Bennett <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> So doesn't searching-and-replace with an empty replacement work?
>
> It works to accomplish the same result but it takes many more step as I wrote
> earlier:
>
> isearch string isearch-query-replace (replace with nothing)
>
>> As to Emacs behaving differently to other editors, I think it is the other way
>> round ;-)
>
> No, actually it really is the other way round. Emacs is not a text editor, it is
> a Lisp virtual machine with text editing functions.

According to https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ GNU Emacs is:

  An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more.

> Applications that are created to be specialized in text editing are
> closer to what the users need in terms of interaction. Which is the
> point of the current discussion.

My point was that you are comparing the editing idiom of Emacs, which
arose in the 1980s, with that of more modern editors.  In addition, you
are talking about what you need, rather than what "users" need.

> The problem with emacs and searches, is that you only search, you don't *find*,
> as in the action of searching does not result in an object that you can act
> upon. Which defeats the purpose of searching.
>
> A simple "search" does nothing but put the point at the end of the match. it is
> nice to navigate the document but it does nothing about the match. isearch is
> even more treacherous since it makes it look like you are finding something,
> when actually you have also just moved the point in the buffer and nothing more.
>
> A simple "search" should at least be able to create a region on the match, it
> doesn't even do that.

If Emacs doesn't do something, to me, that suggests it is not a very
common thing to do.  However, fortunately Emacs is extensible and
customizable and so you can make it do less common things too.

Cheers,

Loris

-- 
Dr. Loris Bennett (Mr.)
ZEDAT, Freie Universität Berlin         Email loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de