keyboard regexp shortcuts

[Perry Smith]

Very often, I do a regex search (M-C-s) of \_<foo\_> because I don't want to find bad_foo_dog.

Typing the \ _ < and \ _ > is tedious. Can someone suggest a way to make that easier?

Thank you,
Perry

[Scott Frazer]

Here's what I use:

(defun my-isearch-word ()
"Surround current input with word/symbol delimiters and turn on regexp matching if necessary."
(interactive)
(unless isearch-regexp
(isearch-toggle-regexp))
(setq isearch-string (concat "\\_<" isearch-string "\\_>")
isearch-message (mapconcat 'isearch-text-char-description isearch-string ""))
(isearch-search-and-update))

(define-key isearch-mode-map (kbd "M-w") 'my-isearch-word)

[Jambunathan K]

In development version of Emacs, there is a better way.

,---- NEWS
| * Editing Changes in Emacs 24.3
|
| ** Search changes
|
| *** Global `M-s _' starts a symbol (identifier) incremental search,
| and `M-s _' in Isearch toggles symbol search mode.
| `M-s c' in Isearch toggles search case-sensitivity.
`----



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