Subject: Re: bug#23484: 25.1.50; undo doesn't work properly in xref-query-replace-in-results

From: Dmitry Gutov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2016 01:03:14 +0300

On 05/11/2016 12:34 AM, Juri Linkov wrote:

>> - Being able to replace _any_ regexp inside the matches is a feature
>> (though maybe it's not going to be very popular).
>
> Honestly speaking, the ‘.*’ thing is quite confusing.

You're probably right. We could provide a separate command with that 
advanced feature (or only use ask for FROM with prefix argument). We 
would still have `.*' under the covers in the default case, though.

> More natural syntax is ‘\&’ like is used in e.g.
> ‘occur-read-primary-args’ to collect the entire match.

I'm not sure how \& would be used. And the ability to use \1, \2, etc, 
seems to depend on the original regexp. Which is a) currently unknowable 
(and the original search may have been performed not using a regexp, but 
e.g. by asking a specialized external program), b) not something the 
user can choose when the command is e.g. xref-find-references.