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Re: How to search all open buffers?


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: How to search all open buffers?
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:49:43 +0300

> From: kj <socyl@987jk.com.invalid>
> Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:12:21 +0000 (UTC)
> 
> I find it hard to understand that this would not be a built-in
> command.

The reason is simple: there are almost no situations when I may wish
to use such a command.  That's because I don't think about my buffers
as a collection of similar objects: each buffer represent a different
entity.  Buffers that visit files represent files, and Emacs has
commands to search files (and will automatically look in a buffer if a
file is already being visited by Emacs).  Other buffers, like email
buffers, represent email messages, and Emacs has commands to look for
strings in headers or bodies of email messages.  Yet other buffers,
like Dired buffers represent directories, so searching in them would
simply find file names; Emacs has commands to look for files whose
names match a pattern.  Buffers that hold documentation are yet
another type of object.  And then there are buffers that hold lists of
buffers, temporary buffers with throw-away text, etc., etc.

It just doesn't help at all to search all the buffers at once, because
I will find a lot of useless matches.

On top of that, how can a human possibly remember all their buffers in
a session that runs for a long time?  If I don't remember what I have
in my buffers, how in the world would I know that I have a good chance
finding something in those buffers?

Can you explain why you would need such a command?  Perhaps there's a
more convenient solution for the problem you tried to solve with the
missing search-all-buffers command.




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