Subject: RE: bug#7700: 24.0.50; C-y binding withing Isearch mode

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:28:55 -0800

> > Personally, I find this behavior inconsistent/annoying: I 
> > would expect that C-y within Isearch add text X to the
> > search text, where X is the text that
> > would be yanked in normal editing.
> 
> FWIW, I'd agree.  I've always found the C-y binding in
> isearch "useless" and counter-intuitive.  I'd much rather
> make C-y and M-y behave like they do in the minibuffer.

1+

Why not bring it up in emacs-devel, to see what counter arguments there might
be?  I'm thinking that Richard, for example, might express some good reasons
behind the longstanding behavior.

---

Although I haven't used `C-y' in isearch in a long time, I'm not sure its
behavior is "useless".  It would probably be good to have some isearch key
binding for what C-y does now.

Juri might mention that there are few keys available. ;-)

One possibility might be `C-u C-y' (since the C-u behavior for C-y doesn't apply
during isearch), but that would mean sacrificing C-u's ability to exit isearch.
Worse, C-u is currently passed to any exiting key (e.g. `C-u C-n'), which can be
handy.

Personally, I wouldn't mind sacrificing `C-u' for this - I think there are
plenty of keys to exit a search.  But I know that others do object to losing any
exit keys, and `C-u' is also a special case wrt exiting.