Subject: Re: bug#19924: 24.4; incremental search for octal character

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2022 17:15:09 +0100

[email-masked] writes:

> TWO (2) problems; for both I follow the GNU Emacs manual from
> "https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/emacs.html"
>
> PROBLEM 1: The following is quoted from page 91:
>
> "To search for non-ASCII characters, use one of the following methods:
> • Type C-q, followed by a non-graphic character or a sequence of octal
> digits."
>
> In my case I typed C-q, followed by 213 and then return (the enter key).
> Rather than searching, the octal character \213 is inserted into the
> file.
>
> PROBLEM 2: Vose conjectured that the manual was simply mistaken, and
> should have said something closer to: To search for an octal character,
> type C-s C-q, followed by a sequence of octal digits.

(I'm going through old bug reports that unfortunately weren't resolved
at the time.)

Yes, that's what the manual means.  The section starts with "In addition
to characters described in the previous subsections, some of the other
characters you type during incremental search have special effects." and
all the keys described are during incremental search.

But I've clarified this in the Emacs 29 manual

> In my case I typed C-s C-q, followed by 213 and then return (the enter
> key).  Rather than searching, the message "Failing I-search: \213" was
> displayed (see attached screen shot).

Yes -- you probably didn't have that byte in the buffer?  For
instance, having this character in the buffer:

®

And then C-s C-q 2 5 6 RET works fine for me (at least in Emacs 29).

So it seems like things are working as designed here, and I'm therefore
closing this bug report.  If I misunderstood what the problem was about,
please respond to the debbugs address and we'll reopen.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no