> > Commands like `isearch-yank-until-char', > > which yank consecutive buffer text at the > > search point, are better if they can also > > work with backward search. > > Backward yanking is a separate feature unrelated > to isearch-yank-until-char. It's not unrelated. That's a new command. And it's essentially broken for yanking when searching backward. > Moreover, in my opinion backward yanking is too > awkward, That opinion is too vague. Unless you care to be specific about what it is that you find awkward. E.g., a recipe, and possibly an alternative, less awkward, behavior that you propose for yanking when searching backward, with an explanation for why you find it less awkward. Yanking text that's at the search point should be possible regardless of the direction of search. Why shouldn't it be? > and should not be enabled by default. That can be discussed. But your opinion that it's somehow vaguely awkward isn't a good reason, without elaboration. In addition, currently if you try to yank buffer text (e.g. `C-w' and kin) while searching backward the behavior is bizarre, not to mention awkward. The text yanked isn't even at the search point. It can be far away. Yet your eye is focused on the search point and the buffer text in "front" of it (in the backward direction). And there's little, perhaps no, use case for doing that, which likely prompted you to ask if I do it often (no). It's not something very useful or that would likely occur to someone. Put simply, it's wrong behavior. If you were to be faithful to your argument that yanking while searching backward makes little sense and is awkward, then you would remove that possibility right now - make `C-w' and kin do nothing when searching backward. If you really want to remove such behavior for the default case because you find it awkward, then that's the place to start. Nothing is lost, and a lot is gained (including consistency), by correcting the current yank-some-text-at-search-point behavior for backward search, making it parallel to the behavior for forward search. You call that enabling something new, but it's really fixing bad behavior that already exists. The fact that users have long ago learned to avoid that bad behavior, and thus never yank buffer text when searching backward, is an argument for fixing it, giving them the same useful behavior they have for forward search. `isearch-yank-until-char' is new. It need not ever have such bad (at best useless) behavior. You said: What I also like about isearch-yank-until-char is that an easy way to yank until the end of the line with just `C-M-c C-j' is a replacement of isearch-yank-line. The same is true for yanking until the beginning of the line when searching backward. Exact same key sequence (but the key should not be `C-M-c' - see my argument about that). Not that that's a big win. `isearch-yank-line' also works both in directions with my patch. And that's just as easy as using `C-j' with `isearch-yank-until-char'. I've attached an updated patch, which fixes two bugs in the previous patch I sent, one each in `isearch-yank-internal' and `isearch-yank-until-char'. I do hope you try it. I've also attached the result of patching, for anyone who wants to try it and doesn't want to bother downloading the Emacs 27 source file to patch (from 2019-08-19, when I grabbed it).