Re: Understanding Word Boundaries

[Gary <help-gnu-emacs@garydjones.name>]

Paul Drummond writes:
> ** Example 2
>
> When editing C++ files I often need to delete the "ClassName::" part when
> declaring functions in the header:
>
> void ClassName::function();
>        ^
>
> With point at the start of ClassName I want to press M-d twice to delete
> ClassName and :: but "::" isn't recognised as a word.  In Vim I just

Twice? Three times, shirley? Class and Name are both words...

(As you might guess, my pet peeve about the word boundary recognition is
when programming using camelcase.)

> So to wrap up, the point of this post is to kick-start a discussion about why
> the word boundaries in Vanilla Emacs (specifically GNU Emacs 23.1.50.1 in my
> case) seem to be so awkward and unintuitive.

Because it needs to be defined somewhat differently for natural
languages and different programming languages, at a guess. What a word
is depends entirely on the context you (and I) decide, and they may well
be different (see two versus three key presses above).