space in regexp-search

[Rommerskirchen, Heinrich]

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Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

During regexp-searches I want the <space> key to behave like any other
"printable" key, like e. g. "a". For this reason I have in my .emacs the
line

  (define-key isearch-mode-map " " 'isearch-printing-char)

This worked in Emacs 20.x and 21.x, but stopped working in the developer
version.
(Precompiled w32-binary from the Auctex project; download from
alpha.gnu.org)
In spite of this .emacs-line a single <space> searches for arbitrary
whitespace. I
couldn't find anything in the NEWS file explaining this change.

After reading the chapter "Regular Expression Search" in the info file I
got the
idea the following line should do what I want:

  (setq search-whitespace-regexp "[ ]")

But this leads to other trouble. <space> now doesn't look for tabs,
newlines,
etc. but pressing <space> twice, also finds only places in the text
where there
is a single space. E.g. with a buffer containing "a b  c", pressing 
"C-M-s [ a - z ] SPC SPC [ a - z ]" finds the substring from a to b but
not the
substring from b to c. (emacs started with '-Q', the setq above
evaluated in
*scratch*, no other customizations)



In GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.0.2195)
 of 2006-01-29 on NEUTRINO
X server distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.0.2195
configured using `configure --with-gcc (3.4) --cflags
-Ic:/Programme/GnuWin32/include'

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: DEU
  locale-coding-system: cp1252
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Text

Minor modes in effect:
  encoded-kbd-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t

Recent input:
C-y C-x C-e C-x C-f t m p / t m p . t x t <return> 
C-M-s [ a - z ] SPC SPC [ a - z ] <return> <left> <left> 
C-M-s C-s <return> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <menu-bar> <help-menu> <re
port-emacs-bug>

Recent messages:
(C:\LocalData\rh042591\bin\emacs\bin\emacs.exe -Q --debug-init)
Loading encoded-kb...done
For information about the GNU Project and its goals, type C-h C-p.
Mark set
"[ ]"
Mark saved where search started
Loading emacsbug...
Loading regexp-opt...done
Loading emacsbug...done