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Re: Last call for lua-mode contributors
From: |
Ken Raeburn |
Subject: |
Re: Last call for lua-mode contributors |
Date: |
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:15:07 -0500 |
On Jan 17, 2012, at 23:32, Miles Bader wrote:
> immerrr again <address@hidden> writes:
>> As some of you might know, lua-mode, Emacs major mode for editing Lua, is
>> undergoing integration to Emacs mainline.
>
> Hopefully lua-mode's bogus handling of symbols vs. words will finally
> be fixed as a result.....
>
> [lua-mode redefines "_" as a word-component; it shouldn't, as it
> really messes with users' instincts, and makes Emacs commands less
> useful. Historically this was often done by language-modes as an
> simple (though misguided) expedient to allow them to safely use "\<"
> and \>" in regexps matching keywords, but nowadays they shouldn't do
> that, they should leave "_" alone and use "\_<" and "\_>" instead.]
My "instincts" have long been to interpret "word" as "identifier or keyword" in
programming modes, to the point of customizing the syntax tables at startup to
make "_" a word component. Not for regular expressions, but for word-motion
commands; I like the fact that I can skip over one identifier with M-f no
matter how many underscores it contains -- string_to_widget, stringToWidget,
string2widget, and stringtowidget are all treated the same. It's also more
useful in constructing keyboard macros that kill-word identifiers and later
yank them from the kill ring; typing in a regexp search would be much more
annoying.
I haven't made the customization yet at my new (well, ~2 years) job -- but
that's because our coding standards use camelCaseAndNoUnderscores so the
word-motion commands already work on identifiers and not on (English) words.
(Though I've been dealing with Linux code lately, so it may be time to make the
change.) If I often wanted to deal with the individual English words making up
an identifier, the handling of underscore wouldn't be enough to make Emacs work
correctly.
I realize I'm much closer to the power-user end of the spectrum than most
typical users, but among those heavily using programming modes, is this such a
strange mind-set?
(I have no particular opinion on lua-mode specifically.)
Ken