RE: New feature idea: isearch with autocorrection

[Drew Adams]

> I learned about this so long ago that my fingers sometimes do 
> it without conscious thought, but I somehow _do_ associate 
> this as an 'abort' of sorts: it's aborting the failing 
> search, returning me to the successful search I had started.  
> (I also agree it's not exactly intuitive, because the 
> I-search itself continues.  Pressing Control-G during a 
> successful I-search aborts that too, of course, and at that 
> point, there is no search running.)

BTW, a related feature from Isearch+ was added to vanilla Emacs also: If you hit
`M-e' (to edit the search string), the cursor is moved to the mismatch position.

This is handy if you want to insert or change a char or two at that position,
for example.

(I took this idea from Icicles, where, when there is a completion mismatch, a
first `C-M-l' puts the cursor at the mismatch position.  A second `C-M-l'
removes the mismatched suffix.)

I also have a comment wrt the idea of "autocorrecting" the search string (which
I am not enthusiastic about personally, although I do support encouraging a
hundred flowers to bloom):

Isearch is often started using a previous search string, and sometimes that is
done in a different, but perhaps related, context.

In such a situation, a previous search string, even if it does not match
anything, can be useful if there is a partial match - `M-e' is your friend.
IMO, it is not necessarily desirable to automatically throw away non-matching
chars.

(More generally, I am not a big fan of autocorrection elsewhere either.)