Re: new apropos feature in Emacs-22

[Luc Teirlinck]

   Yes, .emacs is a hard one -- but it is a very special case IMO.

This is just an example, of course.  Plenty of standard files (most,
actually) have `.'s in their names, plenty of standard buffers (most
of them) have `*'s in their names, several functions have *'s in
their names, say let* or list*, several variables have *'s in their
names (cl actually has tons of these variables and functions), some
have `+' in their name.  I can go on and on.  Most of the characters
that are "special" in regexps are common outside of regexps too.

   Did you try to do C-h C-d .mailrc ?

Is that a personal binding of yours?  For me, C-h C-d runs
`describe-distribution'.

   Did you try to do C-h C-d .mailrc ?  I don't see any false matches there.

   And for C-h C-d *scratch* RET, it finds all the relevant matches AFAICS.

   I still don't see the "serious" problem here.

The problem is that a if you put .mailrc, *scratch*, let* or whatever
in a list of keywords, then that list of keywords turns into a regexp.

Sincerely,

Luc.