Re: Why does Emacs lack `backward-delete-word`?

[Robert Thorpe]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> I should have been clearer, sorry.  `backward-kill-word` kills.  I wonder
>> why there is no corresponding command to delete instead.
>
> Emacs's UI generally assumes that the difference between "delete" and
> "kill" is sufficiently minor that the trouble of providing both versions
> is higher than the gain.
>
> IOW, use M-y (or a prefix arg to C-y) to get to the kill you care about.

As Stefan says, it's not usually necessary.  M-y can skip past
irrelevant kills.  Also, if you know you're going to add something
useless to the kill ring, then you can just use backspace.  Getting rid
of a word with backspace, in the few occasions when it's necessary,
isn't that slow.

But, in keyboard macros it can be troublesome.  If M-y has to be used in
a macro that generally spells trouble.  Also, kills are slower than
deletes.  For those reasons I define delete-word in the obvious way,
like kill-word but using delete-region instead of kill-region.  I don't
bind it to a key though, I just use M-x when I need it, which is only
when using keyboard macros.

BR,
Robert Thorpe