Re: Make \< and \> match symbol boundaries

[Paul Eggert]

> From: "Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 15:53:05 -0500
> 
> > Many characters have symbol syntax in text mode, including -.
> > For this reason, the change you have requested would surely
> > cause user confusion in that mode.
> 
> I don't think it would cause much confusion and we can simply
> tell them to use \b in place of \< or \>.

But that would break the current symmetry between \b, \<, and \>.
Currently \b is equivalent to \(\<\|\>\).  If we change the meaning of
\< and \>, shouldn't we change the meaning of \b (and \B) to be
consistent?

> So it would have to be specified with something like \-s^w_-w_-

I see.  That is a bit prolix, yes.

> I know that changing \< and \> to match symbol boundaries rather than
> word boundaries is a very simple change and it would be useful
> in many situations.

OK.  How about this proposal instead, then?  It's upward compatible
with the current Emacs.  It's less powerful than the more general
proposals we were talking about, but it's easier to read:

  \_< is like \<
  \_> is like \>
  \_b is like \b
  \_B is like \B
  \_w is like \w
  \_W is like \W

  except that in each case, the variant with `_' uses symbols not words.

Hence you can get the behavior that you want with \_<symbol\_>.