Re: Interpretation of a space in regexp isearch?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 15.08.2012 17:59, Drew Adams wrote:
> By default, "magic-space" searching should be OFF for both simple and regexp
> search.  Each SPC you type should search for a single SPC, by default.  Simple.
> No surprise.
>
> Others have given reasons for the regexp case (+1).  For the simple-search case:
> I do not think it is appropriate for users, especially newbies, to have to
> figure out and use `C-q SPC' (WTF?) to search for a single SPC char.

I have had `isearch-forward-regexp' bound to C-s for about as long as 
I'm using Emacs (thanks to starter-kit.el), and I've never encountered a 
situation where the current default behavior caused a problem. I never 
even knew that SPC did something special until I read the doc yesterday. 
Still, logically, it doesn't make sense since the `-regexp' version is 
supposed to be fine-controlled by the user, and they can easily write 
the required regexp.

On the flip side, I've seen many times that less-technical users can be 
sloppy with the amount of whitespace between words. If the non-regexp 
version is supposed to be easy to use, then `search-whitespace-regexp' 
behavior might be quite useful there. And `fill-paragraph' behavior adds 
to that argument, too.