bug#375: forward-word cmd finds beginning of next word

bug#375: forward-word cmd finds beginning of next word

[Gunnar P. Vestergaard]

I have a feature request for GNU Emacs: In Emacs, when using the command 
forward-word, with the keyboard shortcut M-F, I understand that Emacs 
places point just after the end of the current word, pointing at the 
beginning of a non-letter sequence. And the command backward-word, with 
the keyboard shortcut M-B, places point at the beginning of the current 
word, or if it is already at the beginning of a word, it places point at 
the beginning of the previous word.

I would like if those two commands, forward-word and backward-word, had 
identical results, i.e. so that the command forward-word would instead 
place point at the beginning of the next word, just as the command 
backward-word places the point at the beginning of a word.

Has this issue ever been discussed?

In Microsoft Windows, when you edit a text and you move forward one word 
with Ctrl-ArrowRight, the cursor is placed at the beginning of a word. 
It makes more sense, I think. Not that MS Windows is a great operating 
system. It sucks, actually.

I am not subscribed to the bug-gnu-emacs mailing list, so would someone 
send a reply to my e-mail address?

Gunnar Vestergaard
Torshavn, Faroe Islands

bug#375: forward-word cmd finds beginning of next word

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:40:12 +0100
> From: "Gunnar P. Vestergaard" <post@gunnar-pv.fo>
> Cc: 
> 
> I have a feature request for GNU Emacs: In Emacs, when using the command 
> forward-word, with the keyboard shortcut M-F, I understand that Emacs 
> places point just after the end of the current word, pointing at the 
> beginning of a non-letter sequence. And the command backward-word, with 
> the keyboard shortcut M-B, places point at the beginning of the current 
> word, or if it is already at the beginning of a word, it places point at 
> the beginning of the previous word.
> 
> I would like if those two commands, forward-word and backward-word, had 
> identical results, i.e. so that the command forward-word would instead 
> place point at the beginning of the next word, just as the command 
> backward-word places the point at the beginning of a word.

You _might_ succeed asking for this as an optional feature.  Asking
for changing the default behavior is a non-starter, since many users
and most developers (including myself) consider the current behavior a
feature, and will never trade it for anything like what you describe.

Btw, you should be able to write your own replacements for these
commands that behave like you want by using search-forward-regexp with
a suitable regexp.

bug#375: forward-word cmd finds beginning of next word

[Stefan Monnier]

tag 375 +wontfix

> I have a feature request for GNU Emacs: In Emacs, when using the command
> forward-word, with the keyboard shortcut M-F, I understand that Emacs places
> point just after the end of the current word, pointing at the beginning of
> a non-letter sequence. And the command backward-word, with the keyboard
> shortcut M-B, places point at the beginning of the current word, or if it is
> already at the beginning of a word, it places point at the beginning of the
> previous word.

All possible variants have advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of Emacs's behavior is that you can get to either end of
a word.  E.g. you can get the behavior you want if you do M-f M-f M-b
(tho this only works if you're not at the end of the buffer, obviously).

There's not much point changing the behavior to something else which is
not clearly better.  The argument that  it is "what people expect"
doesn't have much weight here, because the difference doesn't lead
to confusion.


        Stefan

bug#375: forward-word cmd finds beginning of next word

[Glenn Morris]

Thanks for the report, but as was explained this won't be changed.