Re: Make \< and \> match symbol boundaries

[Stefan Monnier]

> > From: "Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/address@hidden>
> > Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 15:53:05 -0500
> > 
> > > Many characters have symbol syntax in text mode, including -.
> > > For this reason, the change you have requested would surely
> > > cause user confusion in that mode.
> > 
> > I don't think it would cause much confusion and we can simply
> > tell them to use \b in place of \< or \>.
> 
> But that would break the current symmetry between \b, \<, and \>.
> Currently \b is equivalent to \(\<\|\>\).  If we change the meaning of

We obviously have very different points of view: for me the fact
that `\b is equivalent to \(\<\|\>\)' means that \b is useless.

> \< and \>, shouldn't we change the meaning of \b (and \B) to be
> consistent?

I don't see why consistency is good in this particular case.

> > So it would have to be specified with something like \-s^w_-w_-
> 
> I see.  That is a bit prolix, yes.
> 
> > I know that changing \< and \> to match symbol boundaries rather than
> > word boundaries is a very simple change and it would be useful
> > in many situations.
> 
> OK.  How about this proposal instead, then?  It's upward compatible
> with the current Emacs.  It's less powerful than the more general
> proposals we were talking about, but it's easier to read:
> 
>   \_< is like \<
>   \_> is like \>
>   \_b is like \b
>   \_B is like \B
>   \_w is like \w
>   \_W is like \W
> 
>   except that in each case, the variant with `_' uses symbols not words.
> 
> Hence you can get the behavior that you want with \_<symbol\_>.

I could live with this,


        Stefan