Re: emacs 22 - regular-expression isearch on spaces extremely lenient

[Richard Stallman]

    > I haven't the slightest idea how to toggle it, which of course is the
    > important question.  But I do have an idea: for regexp searches, if
    > while I'm typing my regexp, and I type a space, and this feature is
    > on, it'd be lovely if Emacs would simply insert the appropriate regexp
    > for whitespace -- such as \s-+ -- into the mini-buffer.  That way I
    > will learn a bit more about regexps.

That could help clarify matters for some users, but it could be
confusing for other users.

That space in regexp i-search matches all whitespace is not a new
feature.  We have only changed the way it is implemented, to make
quoting spaces more reliable.  So I see no urgent need to change this.

But I would not mind adding an option to make SPC echo as some other
string in regexp i-search.  Then, after the release, we could
ask users to try turning it on and say whether they like it.