GNU bug report logs -
#63398
28.2; Doc or behavior of replacement commands (e.g. `replace-string')
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Reported by: Drew Adams <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
Date: Tue, 9 May 2023 20:14:01 UTC
Severity: normal
Found in version 28.2
Done: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Bug is archived. No further changes may be made.
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Your message dated Wed, 10 May 2023 16:37:09 +0300
with message-id <83fs848fzu.fsf <at> gnu.org>
and subject line Re: bug#63398: 28.2; Doc or behavior of replacement commands (e.g. `replace-string')
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #63398,
regarding 28.2; Doc or behavior of replacement commands (e.g. `replace-string')
to be marked as done.
(If you believe you have received this mail in error, please contact
help-debbugs <at> gnu.org.)
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[Message part 2 (message/rfc822, inline)]
emacs -Q
;; So `search-upper-case' is `not-yanks', and `case-fold-search' and
;; `case-replace' are both `t'.
In *scratch* enter this text:
Test 0
test 0
At bob, use `M-x replace-string RET test 0 RET test 1 RET'
(emacs) `Replacement and Lax Matches' seems to say that the result
should be this:
Test 1
test 1
But the result is this:
test 1
test 1
That doc says this:
If the first argument of a replace command is all lower case, the
command ignores case while searching for occurrences to replace-provided
'case-fold-search' is non-'nil' and 'search-upper-case' is also
non-'nil'.
OK, that's respected; both lines are found during the search. Good.
___
BTW, it's unfortunate that we use an em dash char here, with no
preceding or following space chars. Why? Because it reads as if it
were a hyphen, producing adjective "replace-provided" modifying noun
`case-fold-search'. Since we use fixed-width fonts by default, this is
all the more apparent. Please reword or surround the em dash with space
chars.
___
The doc also says this, however, regarding replacement:
In addition, when the NEWSTRING argument is all or partly lower case,
replacement commands try to preserve the case pattern of each
occurrence. Thus, the command
M-x replace-string <RET> foo <RET> bar <RET>
replaces a lower case 'foo' with a lower case 'bar', an all-caps 'FOO'
with 'BAR', and a capitalized 'Foo' with 'Bar'. (These three
alternatives-lower case, all caps, and capitalized, are the only ones
that 'replace-string' can distinguish.)
My reading of this is that, since "test 1" is lower-case, the
replacement should "try" (meaning what, exactly? under what
circumstances does such a trial "fail"?) to preserve the case pattern of
the first occurrence, chaning "Test 0" to "Test 1". That doesn't
happen.
Is the doc wrong? Is my reading of it wrong? If my reading and the doc
are right, is the behavior wrong (bugged)?
___
[It's also not very good to refer to argument NEWSTRING in a topic/node
that doesn't define it. Users have to look backward through the doc to
see if they can find out which argument this is talking about.]\
___
In GNU Emacs 28.2 (build 2, x86_64-w64-mingw32)
of 2022-09-13 built on AVALON
Windowing system distributor 'Microsoft Corp.', version 10.0.19045
System Description: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (v10.0.2009.19045.2846)
Configured using:
'configure --with-modules --without-dbus --with-native-compilation
--without-compress-install CFLAGS=-O2'
Configured features:
ACL GIF GMP GNUTLS HARFBUZZ JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBXML2 MODULES NATIVE_COMP
NOTIFY W32NOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS
XPM ZLIB
(NATIVE_COMP present but libgccjit not available)
[Message part 3 (message/rfc822, inline)]
> From: Drew Adams <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
> Date: Tue, 9 May 2023 20:13:04 +0000
>
> The doc also says this, however, regarding replacement:
>
> In addition, when the NEWSTRING argument is all or partly lower case,
> replacement commands try to preserve the case pattern of each
> occurrence. Thus, the command
>
> M-x replace-string <RET> foo <RET> bar <RET>
>
> replaces a lower case 'foo' with a lower case 'bar', an all-caps 'FOO'
> with 'BAR', and a capitalized 'Foo' with 'Bar'. (These three
> alternatives-lower case, all caps, and capitalized, are the only ones
> that 'replace-string' can distinguish.)
>
> My reading of this is that, since "test 1" is lower-case, the
> replacement should "try" (meaning what, exactly? under what
> circumstances does such a trial "fail"?) to preserve the case pattern of
> the first occurrence, chaning "Test 0" to "Test 1". That doesn't
> happen.
>
> Is the doc wrong? Is my reading of it wrong? If my reading and the doc
> are right, is the behavior wrong (bugged)?
The manual says "try", and for a good reason. There's a heuristics
involved that tries to DTRT. The "when the NEWSTRING argument is all
or partly lower case" part is relevant. What you expect will happen
if the original text doesn't include digits, as in
Testing
testing
M-x replace-string RET testing RET foobar RET
> [It's also not very good to refer to argument NEWSTRING in a topic/node
> that doesn't define it. Users have to look backward through the doc to
> see if they can find out which argument this is talking about.]\
Fixed.
> BTW, it's unfortunate that we use an em dash char here, with no
> preceding or following space chars. Why? Because it reads as if it
> were a hyphen, producing adjective "replace-provided" modifying noun
> `case-fold-search'. Since we use fixed-width fonts by default, this is
> all the more apparent. Please reword or surround the em dash with space
> chars.
In your post the em dash was the ASCII character '-', but on my system
it is an actual em dash -- a much longer character, thus the confusion
is unlikely. As for why there are no spaces -- that's our style.
This bug report was last modified 2 years and 12 days ago.
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