Re: backward-delete-word?

[Barry Margolin <barmar@genuity.net>]

In article <wkk7ida6q3.fsf@TheWorld.com>,
Joe Fineman  <jcf@TheWorld.com> wrote:
>"Bingham, Jay" <Jay.Bingham@hp.com> writes:
>
>> In similar circumstances I have stored text in a register and
>> inserted it into the buffer from the register.
>
>I too have often found registers a welcome relief from the
>complexities of the kill ring.  However, there is one oddity about
>their implementation that takes some getting used to.  When you insert
>the contents of a register (C-x g), point is at the beginning of the
>insertion; you have to do C-x C-x to get it to the end, where it would
>be after yanking from the kill ring.  Either outcome could be argued
>for, but it seems perverse to do these two very similar jobs in
>different ways.

I too have always found this curious.  My guess is that it's because
registers are most often used in keyboard macros (if you think of a macro
as a program, registers are the "variables"), while yanking is mainly
interactive, and the designer of the register code didn't think the same
expectations applied.  In any case, when creating a macro, it's easy to fix
up the location after inserting a register, and then you don't have to
worry about it.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.