RE: [External] : Re: Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master)

[Drew Adams]

> Tools that understand the symbolic nature of the Lisp
> family of languages. For the example you have since,
> Tools that rely on way or the other really on the
> 'read' Lisp primitive.

https://github.com/emacsmirror/el-search

(Not sure that's the latest or best or only location.
Ccing Michael H.)
___

As for grep etc. _versus_ Lisp-aware searching:

Both Lisp-aware and ad-hoc searches (searching for
_anything_ in any kind of code or text, including
Lisp code) are useful.  It's not either/or.

As for the proposal: I do hope Phil S's points get
addressed thoughtfully.

> Grep, as you very well note, is already flawed,
> not only for Lisp, but for many languages.
> By "flawed" I mean: it is not suitable for
> categorically answering questions e.g. about how
> functions relate to each other (callers and
> callees).

Of course.  Regexps are limited.  `grep' is
limited.  It's only "flawed" if you expect it to
be something it's not.  Such tools, and regexp
search in particular, are handy and useful, even
though they have limitations.  Even if you use
regexp search to do nothing more than substring
searching, it's useful.

Some use regexps for things they're awful for
(useless or worse than useless).

Some other people go beyond usefully pointing
out the limitations of regexps to crusade
against using regexps.  Both are misguided, IMO.

A hammer is a useful tool; it's just not the
only tool, and for many jobs it's not the best
tool.  Howling against hammers is, well, as
dumb as thinking they're useful for everything.

/s/hammer/duct tape, if you like. ;-)