Re: What is the difference between forward-list and forward-sexp?

[Jambunathan K]

I am not familiar with the technical details.  Let me share how I use
those two.

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Diff. between C-M-f and C-M-n
=============================

sexp => An expression.

You can use C-M-f to move a symbol at a time.  C-M-n will look for a
parenthesis and skip past it.

    (defun message (msg)
      (message msg))

Put your cursor on the 'd' character of defun above and do a C-M-f and a
C-M-n.  You will see a difference.

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Difference between M-f and C-M-f
================================

M-f considers word as a unit.  C-M-f takes symbol as a unit.  Likewise
for M-k cuts a word and C-M-k will cut a symbol.

    (string-match "\\^" markers)

Put your cursor on the 's' of the string-match and do a M-f and C-M-f.
See what happens.

The above example is in elisp.  One can try the above exercise with C
symbols that have underscores in them.

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Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> the subject says it all.  A simple test (involving two *very* simple
> cases) didn't show any difference.  The source code is quite similar,
> and (at least if forward-sexp-function is undefined) the difference
> boils down to calling scan-lists or scan-sexps.  These in turn are
> defined in the C source code, which I don't have on my disk (and I'm
> not fluent in C, so the source code wouldn't help me very much anyway).
>
> Best,