Re: [patch] Re: regexp repacement, how to present replacement to user?

[Richard Stallman]

    These functions basically perform part of what `replace-match' does.
    The latter substitutes replacement group references (`\N' and `\&')
    and replaces match in the buffer with the result text.  Proposed
    functions only generate and return that text, without modyfing the
    buffer.

Yes, I understand that.  I agree that these functions make logical sense.

The question is, is this operation sufficiently useful that we should
add functions to Emacs to do it, and document them?