Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!bpa!sjuvax!tmoody
From: tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP (T. Moody)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Micro-emacs  replacement strings
Keywords: micro-emacs replacement-strings
Message-ID: <1593@sjuvax.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jun 88 04:05:02 GMT
References: <1538@sjuvax.UUCP> <530@ndbs.UUCP>
Reply-To: tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP (T. Moody)
Organization: St. Joseph's University, Phila. PA.
Lines: 34

In article <530@ndbs.UUCP> zessel@ndbs.UUCP (Holger Zessel AG Nehmer) writes:
>I think, you do nothing wrong. It's an editor bug with an easy workaround.
>You mustn't take query-replace-string instead of replace-string. Also you
>have to answer every question for replacement, because the bug appears with
>answer '(!) Do rest' in query-replace-mode too.

Thank you.  There is some satisfaction in knowing that I wasn't simply
misunderstanding the metalanguage.  Since my objective is to write a
macro to do this task automatically, the query-replace solution isn't
optimal.  In fact, I have already written a macro that does the job
without using regular expressions; instead, it makes ten or so passes
through the file, changing one letter sequence at a time.

But this is inelegant and slow.  I hope the bug is fixed soon.  As of
version 3.9n, it isn't.

>Micro-emacs 3.9i seems to replace all occurrences of the search string
>with the replacement string of the last match or something like this.
>My result of your example was the following line:
>
>    \^{g}u \^{g}i \^{g}emas
>
>It's an interesting bug. I'll take a look at the sources and try to find it
>out.

Yes, that's what happens.  Unfortunately, I am no C programmer (nor any
kind of a programmer, really), so I doubt that the "happy hacking" will
be mine.  Perhaps it's not a fiendishly difficult bug to repair.  But
then, I presume it has been a know bug for some time.


-- 
Todd Moody * {allegra|astrovax|bpa|burdvax}!sjuvax!tmoody * SJU Phil. Dept.
            "The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."  -- William Blake