Subject: bug#5138: 23.1; M-x man -k error message

From: Kevin Ryde <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:12:42 +1100

If you do an M-x man keyword search with nothing matching, like

    M-x man
    -k jkjkjkjk Ret

The result shown is

    error in process sentinel: Can't find the -k jkjkjkjk manpage

where reads as if it thought the "-k" was the page name -- which is not
the case, M-x man understands -k is an "apropos" keyword search.

This could be due to "man-db" (as used in debian and elsewhere) printing
nothing for no matches, as opposed to a "nothing appropriate" message
which Man-bgproc-sentinel knows to look for.

Perhaps something along the lines below,

2009-12-07  Kevin Ryde  <[email-masked]>

	* man.el (Man-bgproc-sentinel): When "-k foo" produces no output
	show error "no matches" rather than "Can't find manpage", as the
	latter reads like -k was interpreted as a page name (which is not
	so).

--- man.el.~1.193.~	2009-11-29 08:37:28.000000000 +1100
+++ man.el	2009-12-07 11:04:19.000000000 +1100
@@ -1174,6 +1174,15 @@
 						  (progn
 						    (end-of-line) (point)))
 		       delete-buff t))
+
+		;; "-k foo", successful exit, but no output (from man-db)
+		((and (string-match "\\(\\`\\|\\s-\\)-k\\s-" Man-arguments)
+		      (eq (process-status process) 'exit)
+		      (= (process-exit-status process) 0)
+		      (= (point-min) (point-max)))
+		 (setq err-mess (format "%s: no matches" Man-arguments)
+		       delete-buff t))
+
 		((or (stringp process)
 		     (not (and (eq (process-status process) 'exit)
 			       (= (process-exit-status process) 0))))

In GNU Emacs 23.1.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.16.5)
 of 2009-09-14 on raven, modified by Debian
configured using `configure  '--build=i486-linux-gnu' '--host=i486-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' '--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs23:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/23.1/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.1/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.1/leim' '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=gtk' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-g' 'CPPFLAGS=''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_AU
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1-unix
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t