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

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2016-03-07, at 13:08, egarrulo <egarrulo@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 07/03/16 04:21, Robert Thorpe wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Your indirect explanation for the lack of a key for `delete-region` 
> sounds plausible.
>
> Maybe my question is a symptom of a more general problem: inexperienced 
> Emacs users, don't know how to edit effectively with vanilla Emacs, 
> especially when they come from mainstream editors.  The manual explains 
> Emacs commands, but not how they "work" together.  For example, I 
> remember a Emacs user commenting that it is often quicker to kill and 
> yank some text, than to copy it.  Not very intuitive, I would say. 
> Therefore, some users might feel frustrated because they are trying to 
> accomplish something by unknowingly "going against the grain" of Emacs.

0. Good points.

1. Mickey Petersen's blog and book.

2. M-w.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University