What is a word?

[Florian Lindner]

Hello,

ofter I find it, that the emacs function acting on a word not behave like I 
expect.

I'm not sure if the definiton of a word is major-mode dependent?

Talking about kill-word, forward-word and alike.

Example, | represents cursor position, shell-script mode:

cd $BASE| -> backward-kill-word cd $|
;; what I expected

cd $| -> backward-kill-word -> |
;; not what I expected, rather expected only the $, with or without the 
whitespace between cd, same for "cd .."

Very much disturbing I find, is killing over linebreaks (python-mode):

    |])
        return True

above being remains from previous kills, | is still cursor. kill-word does:

    | True

In generell the word functions are too greedy.

I don't know if I want to try to change that... Is there a quick fix?

But want to know what's emacs model of a word and what's wrong with mine.

Best Regards,
Florian