Re: does emacs support incremental searching for partial matches?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Hi Drew, thank you for your help!
> Sometimes I would be able to know the .* part, for example, I want to
> match WindowsMemoryCacheManagement by using 'memcache'. With regular
> expression, I have to specify .*m.*e.*m.*c.*a.*c.*h.*e.*
> Is there any command or plugin I can use?

It shouldn't be too difficult to write up a quick hack to do it, using
isearch-search-fun-function.  Something like

 (defconst my-isearch-re "[^\n\s\t]*?")

 (defun my-isearch-search-fun ()
   (if isearch-forward
       (lambda (text bound noerror)
         (re-search-forward (mapconcat 'string text my-isearch-re)
                            bound noerror))
     (lambda (text bound noerror)
       (re-search-backward (mapconcat 'string text my-isearch-re)
                           bound noerror))))

 (defun my-search-end ()
   (kill-local-variable 'isearch-search-fun-function)
   (remove-hook 'isearch-mode-end-hook #'my-search-end 'local))
       
 (defun my-isearch ()
   "Like isearch but lets you omit chars."
   (interactive)
   (add-hook 'isearch-mode-end-hook #'my-search-end nil 'local)
   (set (make-local-variable 'isearch-search-fun-function)
        #'my-isearch-search-fun)
   (isearch-forward))


-- Stefan "who actually tested his code this time ;-)"