Re: xref-query-replace-in-results error message after xref-find-definitions, was: Re: bug#58158: 29.0.50; [overlay] Interval tree iteration considered harmful

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 12.10.2022 08:17, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Let's drop the "global" adjective, though: whether the command works
> > "globally", "locally", or etc, depends on how the user made the search.
> The "global" part is important, though: it's supposed to hint on why
> find-definition results cannot be used.  The opposite of "global" here
> is "partial", not "local".  If you can suggest a better word for
> "global" here, please do.

I think you're trying hard to make it clearer, but it still won't have 
100% the intended effect.

And it makes the error more likely to confuse the user and make them 
misunderstand how things work:

1) Saying "Cannot perform global replacement in find-definition 
results", with the explicit qualifier "global", potentially implies that 
a "local" replacement in find-definition results can be done. But it 
cannot. We can't do either currently for technical reasons.

We don't want to do "local" replacements in find-definition results also 
for logical reasons, but that's just the reason why we're not in a hurry 
to remove the technical limitation.

2) The message implies 'r' is limited to "global" replacement. But it 
can easily do "partial" replacement, as long as the command that 
produces the list returns "match xrefs". dired-do-find-regexp, for 
example. Or project-find-regexp, when called with C-u, and the user 
specifies a specific directory. They will return a "partial" list of 
matches, compared to the full project search.