bug#14742: 24.3.50; enhancement request: be able to prepend stuff from buffer when search backward

[Juri Linkov]

> Is this the idea: cursor movements would extend isearch by yanking the
> text the cursor would move over in the buffer, starting from `point'
> (where isearch starts)?
>
> E.g., for forward search C-f, M-f, C-M-f, C-e, etc. would yank the next
> char, word, symbol, line etc. to the end of the search string.  And for
> reverse search C-b, M-b, C-M-b, C-a, etc. would yank the previous (next
> going backward) char, word, symbol, line etc. to the beginning of the
> search string.
>
> And presumably backward cursor movements when searching forward (e.g.,
> C-b, M-b, C-M-b, C-a) would undo, in the sense of removing yanked text
> (but only yanked text, presumably) from the end.  And forward cursor
> movements when searching backward would remove yanked text from the
> beginning.
>
> Is that the idea?

Exactly.

> Do you have this working already?  Have you described what you have in
> mind somewhere?  Did you bring this up in emacs-devel?  If not, please
> consider it - that is the best place to toss such an idea around.

Yes, it is working and I described it on emacs-devel a month ago.
Now I'll prepare a minimal patch that implements low-level support, then
send separate high-level code to activate it, so everyone could try it.