Re: symbols verses words

[Perry Smith]

On Mar 3, 2011, at 4:19 AM, Tassilo Horn wrote:

> Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> Hi Perry,
> 
>> I need some help understanding Emac's design.  I use a lot of "word"
>> constructs where I *think* I should be using symbol.  For example, if
>> I'm writing C code and I want to find foo but not foo_bar, I usually
>> do \<foo\> but really it seems that I should be doing \_<foo\_>
>> ... fine.  I can make that adjustment.  But when I do incremental
>> search, I often hit ^w to pull in the next word but what I really want
>> (often but not always) is to pull in the next symbol (into the search
>> string).  So if I'm sitting at this_that, I'd ilke to hit ^W (perhaps)
>> and pull in this_that instead of just this.
> 
> I think, something like that should do the trick:
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> (defun isearch-yank-symbol-or-char ()
>  "Pull next character or symbol from buffer into search string."
>  (interactive)
>  (isearch-yank-internal
>   (lambda ()
>     (if (or (memq (char-syntax (or (char-after) 0)) '(?w ?_))
>             (memq (char-syntax (or (char-after (1+ (point))) 0)) '(?w ?_)))
>         (forward-symbol 1)
>       (forward-char 1))
>     (point))))
> 
> (define-key isearch-mode-map (kbd "C-S-w") 'isearch-yank-symbol-or-char)
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> So when you are on a word constituent (?w) or on a symbol constituent
> (?_), then do `forward-symbol', else `forward-char'.

Thanks.  The problem is that my emacs (GNU 23.2) doesn't have 
forward-symbol.  I didn't know how to do that.  

Thanks again,
Perry