Subject: Re: bug#11381: 23.3; isearch-search-and-update issue?

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2012 03:08:33 +0300

>> Below is a complete patch that moves them to Elisp:
>
> Feel free to install it on the trunk, thanks,

Installed.

Regarding the addition of symbol search functions, I hesitate to define
7 more functions for every search type.  If now add
symbol-search-forward, symbol-search-backward,
symbol-search-forward-lax, symbol-search-backward-lax,
and two functions to activate the symbol search
isearch-forward-symbol, isearch-backward-symbol,
then later someone might ask to add a subword search type
with subword-search-forward, subword-search-backward,
subword-search-forward-lax, subword-search-backward-lax,
isearch-forward-subword, isearch-backward-subword,
and so on.  This will grow isearch.el unnecessarily.

When trying to achieve simplicity, all what is needed to define
for every regexp-based search type is just:

1. Define a string-to-regexp conversion function
   (like `word-search-regexp').

2. Define a key sequence to activate this search type.

This is a minimal set of requirements to define a new regexp-based
search type.

I believe a set of search filters for bug#11378
could be defined in the same simple way:

1. Define a filter predicate function
   (like `isearch-filter-visible').

2. Define a key sequence to activate this search filter.