Subject: bug#9598: 24.0.50; completion goes too far

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:47:46 -0700

> This is totally surprising and unhelpful.
> ...and did not mention *mail* at all.  That is confusing
> and unhelpful too...
> 
> I surmise it is treating the input as a wildcard pattern.
> I think that is a misguided feature.  The *'s should be
> treated literally.  And the current buffer should not be
> excluded from a completion list, when a completion list is displayed.

1+

Yes, the default matching uses wildcard patterns.  In fact, the default matching
uses several different matching schemes, in sequence, until one of them results
in matches.

See my reply to your post today about bug #9591.

And we have been over this before[*].  People, including you, have pointed out
the user-oriented problems with this UI design, but Stefan really wants it this
way.  So you and other users will continue to be surprised.

[*] I cannot find appropriate emacs-devel threads to cite here, because it is
impossible to search at http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/ etc. for
`+from:[email-masked]', because of too many hits.  That limitation sounds
reasonable at first, until you realize that you cannot even combine such a
filter by ANDing it with a small set of hits from another pattern - e.g.
`:subject:complet' (regardless of AND order).  Similarly, I couldn't find a way
to search at http://debbugs.gnu.org/ for bug-list postings (not submittals) from
[email-masked] with subject-line matches.  Poor GNU.