Subject: Re: bug#14457: 24.3; buggy forward-sexp in octave mode?

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 02:59:08 -0400

> Since 'case', 'otherwise' are closers to 'switch' as in
> smie-closer-alist, I was expecting (forward-sexp -1) to jump back to
> 'switch', much like from 'elseif' to 'if'. Does this make sense?

Both behaviors make sense.  Note that elseif/else behaves just like
case/otherwise: if will stop at the previous matching elseif.

For indentation purpose it's better if it doesn't jump
too far, which is why octave-mode currently behaves this way.
The reason why it's better is:
- faster indentation since we parse less of the buffer.
- more local decision means that the behavior is easier to understand
  for the user.
- also means that it better takes into account choices of the user: if
  the user decides to place his "case" at some other indentation, only
  the first "case" after "switch" will disagree with the user, all the
  other ones will simply align under the first.

Ideally, this behavior would also allow to use C-M-t to transpose two
cases, just like you can do with the usual infix operators/separators,
but currently this doesn't work (and it can't be done with "otherwise").

        Stefan