Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!pawl!shadow From: shadow@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: vi versus emacs regexps? (was Re: Minix, Unix) Message-ID:Date: 11 Aug 89 12:25:42 GMT References: <3352@sol.warwick.ac.uk> <4031@cps3xx.UUCP> <7559@cbmvax.UUCP> <5067@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> <439@xdos.UUCP> <441@xdos.UUCP> Sender: usenet@rpi.edu Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY Lines: 70 In-reply-to: doug@xdos.UUCP's message of 10 Aug 89 19:26:08 GMT On 10 Aug 89 19:26:08 GMT, doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt) said: Doug> Summary: Oops! I was wrong. Doug> I had said that vi's global search-and-replace surpasses emacs. Deven Doug> was surprised: In article shadow@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine) writes: Deven> *That* I find hard to believe. GNU Emacs has not only Deven> query-replace (a very nice function) but also Deven> query-replace-regexp. Doug> Correction, I was wrong. I hadn't used any version of emacs very Doug> much since about 1981 or so; I speaking on the basis of Doug> conversations with emacs fans. Turns out I was misinformed. GNU Doug> emacs adopted all of vi's regular expression features, plus Doug> egrep alternation, long ago (and yes, vi was the influence). I Doug> found this out when I actually checked the GNU Emacs Manual this Doug> morning. The one particular bit about vi regexps I had pointed out to me was the substitution of text which matched certain parts of the searching regexp when doing a replace. Whether GNU Emacs has this when you do a query-replace-regexp, I don't know. [quite possibly] Certainly, it is quite capable of it. Doug> I disagree with the default bindings (no default binding Doug> backward search), but what else is new...easy enough to Doug> customize. C-r [control-r] is normally bound to isearch-backward. Deven> [A regexp I-search would be pretty incredible...] Doug> The manual says it's supported: "isearch-forward-regexp". Indeed. Someone Emailed and pointed that out to me. I had thought I had looked, but if I did, it must have been long ago when I had no clue how to effectively search within Emacs for a specific functionality... And yes, a Regexp I-Search is very neat... Doug> So given that, only my conditioned reflexes stand in the way of Doug> my switching, and I've been trying to talk myself into taking Doug> the hit for about a year now. Someday soon... Yeah, it took me about a year to switch to Emacs from vi... but it was well worth it. (Now, I mess myself up if I try to use vi... my reflexes are now conditioned for Emacs.) For an intermediate step, check out vip-mode... it's a major mode in Emacs which emulates (closely) vi... to start it, type M-x vip-mode. [M-x is Meta-x, Alt-x or Esc-x as appropriate.] There is also "vi-mode", but it is not as close emulation of vi. Doug> Hmmm. I wonder if any of the Amiga Emacs' support as full a Doug> regexp set as full Gnu Emacs? I should hope so. Maybe in mg3a, Mike? ;-) Deven -- Deven T. Corzine Internet: deven@rpi.edu, shadow@pawl.rpi.edu Snail: 2214 12th Street, Troy, NY 12180 Phone: (518) 271-0750 Bitnet: deven@rpitsmts, userfxb6@rpitsmts UUCP: uunet!rpi!deven Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.