Re: Quickly finding out a function or a variable you need?

[Tim X]

Elena <egarrulo@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> while writing Emacs Lisp code, I often use `describe-function' and
> `describe-variable' to search for functions and variables related to
> the task at hand.
>
> This commands, however - unlike `apropos' - require you to know the
> first characters. This means you'll have an hard time, for instance,
> finding `kill-buffer' when looking for functions which operate on
> buffers. Moreover, in both `describe-*', completion buffer is lost as
> soon as you choose a completion, thus if you want to check another
> interesting function/variable you just saw, you have to start all over
> again.
>
> I know I must be missing something... Maybe there is some super-search
> facility inside Emacs which I don't know about (besides using Internet
> search engines I mean)? How do you quickly find out a function or a
> variable you need in your code, instead?
>

I find that in addition to the apropos set of commands and the describe
facilities, that the elisp manual is extremely useful. Normally, I open
a frame with info running on the elisp manual. When looking for
something which I suspect is there, but have no idea what its name is, I
jump to the manual. Using either the menus, which are group into fairly
high level topics, such as buffers, strings, regexp, etc a quick read of
one of the relevant subsedtions usually gives me what I want fairly
quickly. The search facilities of info are also  very useful and then of
course their is the indexes. This combination seems to work pretty well.

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au