regex edit mode

[Sam Halliday]

Hi all,

It is sometimes confusing, when writing a regex in elisp, to remember all the 
escaping rules that are in play.

Does anybody on this list know of a minor mode that would allow the user to 
edit regexes so that escaping is not necessary, but for the escaping to occur 
"under the hood".

Imagine being able to place the point over a string containing a regex (which 
is using escapes) and then call an interactive function which makes the escape 
characters go away and if special characters are entered, the escapes are added 
automagically. When exiting the minor mode, the raw string with escapes would 
appear again.

It would be equally fantastic to be able to do this for other languages that 
have their own escaping rules: java/scala come to mind.

Just a thought. It would really brighten up my day if it were possible.

Sam