bug#10387: CODE wishlist: search-prop.el

[Michael Olson <mwolson@gnu.org>]

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On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>wrote:

> > I like this.  Gnus uses text properties extensively, and searching for
> > them using the standard functions (`next-property-change' and friends)
> > is a hassle.
> > `search-property' looks like what I have needed in the past.
>
> text-property-any (and t-p-not-all) seems to do the same, except it only
> searches forward.  Is there some other difference I'm missing (other
> than the `cycle' which doesn't seem tremendously useful)?
>

Differences compared to text-property-any:

 - Includes helper functions 'search-property-forward' and
'search-property-backward' which move point and closely match the interface
and behavior of 'search-forward' and 'search-backward'.  (Except for
'count'.)  The interactive use is nice: when you need it, you really need
it.

 - I don't remember what the original use case was for 'cycle'.  Possibly
to emulate the effect of hitting TAB in Emacs Muse to go to the next URL
(behavior that I would remove if I was starting again from scratch).

 - In the initial release of the file to gnu.emacs.sources, I wrote this
blurb.  Maybe there was a related shortcoming in text-property-any at the
time.

Blurb: "It should work perfectly well both in the case where consecutive
characters have the property, and in that where a single character has
the property."

-- 
Michael Olson  |  http://mwolson.org/

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