Re: Recentish C-s M-y change

[Gregory Heytings via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>]

>> I don't understand your difficulty here.  RET (or C-m) has been bound 
>> to isearch-exit since Emacs 21 at least;
>
> Yes, and in all that time it has not worked its way into what I recall 
> when I need to exit a search.  It never became natural.  I have to dig 
> around to remember this.
>

I just searched in the trunk history, and apparently C-m/RET, C-y and C-w 
already had their current meaning in 1992.

>> why do you need to use another more complex command like C-f C-b to do 
>> this?
>
> I told you why -- because exiting with RET does not occur to me in a 
> search.
>
> I almost always exit a search with a command that will execute after 
> exiting.
>

May I respectfully suggest you to add the following to your .emacs?

(define-key isearch-mode-map (kbd "C-f") '(lambda () (interactive) (message "Use C-m or RET to exit isearch")))
(define-key isearch-mode-map (kbd "C-b") '(lambda () (interactive) (message "Use C-m or RET to exit isearch")))

I did this when I wanted to unlearn to use the arrow keys to move around, 
that is, to force myself to learn to use C-f/b/n/p.  It's annoying during 
a day or two, but it's the best way I found to enter something into my 
"muscle memory".

>
> It is no surprise to me that I don't remember WHEN various keys were 
> changed from the default meaning, of "exit the search and execute". 
> There have been so many that I don't remember what they all are.
>

In isearch-mode-map at least, the number of changes on control keys during 
the last twenty years or so is very small: C-u (to allow arguments to 
subcommands), C-h (to enable help on the isearch-mode-map keys) and C-x 
(to allow C-x 8 RET).