kill-word & friends in ZLE

kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Hrvoje Niksic]

It is quite irritating for me that in zsh's Emacs mode functions like
backward-kill-word and similar behave in a different fashion. Examples:

fly% cd /usr/local/lib/gwembljh[Esc-Backspace]

and everything is erased, instead of just gwembljh. The same applies for
{backward,forward}-word. Since zshparam man-page states that zsh uses the
value of WORDCHARS for this purpose, I think the default value should be
changed at least not to contain '/', if not to an empty string (for strict
Emacs compliance, since Emacs recognizes all of the default wordchars as
word boundaries).

If I understood the situation correctly, the patch should be something like:
*** Src/system.h.orig	Thu May 16 00:29:00 1996
--- Src/system.h	Thu May 16 01:01:54 1996
***************
*** 305,311 ****
  # define DEFAULT_WATCHFMT "%n has %a %l."
  #endif
  
! #define DEFAULT_WORDCHARS "*?_-.[]~=/&;!#$%^(){}<>"
  #define DEFAULT_TIMEFMT   "%J  %U user %S system %P cpu %*E total"
  
  /* Posix getpgrp takes no argument, while the BSD version *
--- 305,311 ----
  # define DEFAULT_WATCHFMT "%n has %a %l."
  #endif
  
! #define DEFAULT_WORDCHARS "" /* For Emacs compliance */
  #define DEFAULT_TIMEFMT   "%J  %U user %S system %P cpu %*E total"
  
  /* Posix getpgrp takes no argument, while the BSD version *


-- 
hniksic@srce.hr              |  Student of electrical engineering
hniksic@fly.cc.fer.hr        |  University of Zagreb, Croatia
------------------------------------------------------------------
`VI' - An editor used by those heretics that don't subscribe to
       the Emacs religion.

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Zefram]

>It is quite irritating for me that in zsh's Emacs mode functions like
>backward-kill-word and similar behave in a different fashion. Examples:
>
>fly% cd /usr/local/lib/gwembljh[Esc-Backspace]
>
>and everything is erased, instead of just gwembljh.

The vi word functions (vi-{for,back}ward-word, etc.) are more like what
you want.  Or you could just modify WORDCHARS in your .zshrc.

-zefram

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Mike Kazda]

>>>>> "Zefram" == Zefram  <A.Main@dcs.warwick.ac.uk> writes:

    >> It is quite irritating for me that in zsh's Emacs mode
    >> functions like backward-kill-word and similar behave in a
    >> different fashion. Examples:
    >>
    >> fly% cd /usr/local/lib/gwembljh[Esc-Backspace]
    >>
    >> and everything is erased, instead of just gwembljh.

I've had this problem ever since switching to zsh and I never really
complained about it.  But it is a big complaint of mine.

    Zefram> The vi word functions (vi-{for,back}ward-word, etc.) are
    Zefram> more like what you want.  Or you could just modify
    Zefram> WORDCHARS in your .zshrc.

I tried setting the following in zsh (beta17) and it had no effect:

WORDCHARS='*?_-.[]~=/&;!#$%^(){}<>'

Do you have any hints?  I feel that the default behavior should work
like emacs or ksh using emacs mode.  Meaning if you do
[Escape-Backspace] on something which has slashes in it (which I would do
all the time on pathnames that I mess up in typing) it should kill
only back to the next slash.

Mike

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Barton E. Schaefer]

On May 16,  2:00pm, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
} Subject: Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE
}
} In your mail, you said:
} [...]
} > Another satisifactory option would be something like "yank-word", so I
} > could yank back the most-recently-killed word, rather the whole line,
} 
} Why don't you use C-y? This works for me:
} fly% ls foo bar[Esc-Backspace][C-y]
} erases and returns bar on the line.

Yes, but:

% ls foo bar[esc-backspace][esc-backspace][c-y]

erases and then returns "foo bar".  What I want to do is erase "foo bar"
and then return only "foo".  "Undo" is the closest approximation.

} Furthermore, all the kills enter the
} kill-ring and are reaccessible.

Doesn't help, because "foo" isn't in the kill ring all by itself, it's
in the same kill-ring entry with "bar".

On May 16, 10:56am,  (Mike Kazda) wrote:
} Subject: Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE
}
} I tried setting the following in zsh (beta17) and it had no effect:
} 
} WORDCHARS='*?_-.[]~=/&;!#$%^(){}<>'
} 
} Do you have any hints?

WORDCHARS has always bugged me because it does NOT specify characters that
are word *breaks*, it specifies characters *in addition to alphabetics and
numerals* that are *included* in words.

So you need to *remove* characters from WORDCHARS to get them to be taken
as word breaks.  That's why this thread started with a patch to default
WORDCHARS to nothing at all.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                     Vice President, Technology, Z-Code Software
schaefer@z-code.com                  Division of NCD Software Corporation
http://www.well.com/www/barts           http://www.ncdsoft.com/ZMail/

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Bart Schaefer]

On May 16,  1:02am, Hrvoje Niksic wrote:
} Subject: kill-word & friends in ZLE
}
} It is quite irritating for me that in zsh's Emacs mode functions like
} backward-kill-word and similar behave in a different fashion. Examples:
} 
} fly% cd /usr/local/lib/gwembljh[Esc-Backspace]
} 
} and everything is erased, instead of just gwembljh. The same applies for
} {backward,forward}-word.

An annoying effect of removing '/' from WORDCHARS is:

	diff -u /usr/tmp/foo
			    ^
			    With cursor here, press alt-backspace
			    four times.
	diff 
             ^
	     Cursor is now here.  I really didn't want to erase the -u,
	     just up through the slash.

My fingers just don't let go of the alt key automatically enough when I
get down to only the single slash.

If I switch to vi-backward-kill-word, then you have to press ctrl-W *six*
times to erase the whole path.  Using kill-word to erase a single slash
seems far too jerky, except when the slash is by itself.

What I really want is for the word-erase to treat a trailing slash (or
one all by itself) as part of a word, but to treat a leading or embedded
slash as a word boundary.

I'd settle for this:

	diff -u /usr/tmp/foo
			    ^
			    With cursor here, something-kill-word
			    leaves you with:
	diff -u /usr/tmp
			^
			Cursor here.  Two more kills leave:
	diff -u
	       ^
	       Cursor here.

I.e., consume the word *and* the non-word to its left, up to the end of
the previous word.  (The emacs behavior is to first kill the non-word
at the *right* and then kill the word.)  Its much easier to retype the
space or slash than to retype an entire accidentally-killed word.

Yes, I know this is neither emacs behavior nor vi behavior, but it would
be nice if there were some way it could be programmed.

Another satisifactory option would be something like "yank-word", so I
could yank back the most-recently-killed word, rather the whole line,
when I accidentally press alt-backspace once too often.

Oh, well, I'm just grumbling.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                             Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts            http://www.nbn.com/people/lantern

New male in /home/schaefer:
>N  2 Justin William Schaefer  Sat May 11 03:43  53/4040  "Happy Birthday"

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Wayne Davison]

Bart Schaefer writes:
> Another satisifactory option would be something like "yank-word", so I
> could yank back the most-recently-killed word, rather the whole line,
> when I accidentally press alt-backspace once too often.

Use Ctrl-_ (control underscore) to undo the last word delete.

..wayne..

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Bart Schaefer]

On May 15,  6:12pm, Wayne Davison wrote:
} Subject: Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE
}
} Bart Schaefer writes:
} > yank back the most-recently-killed word, rather the whole line,
} 
} Use Ctrl-_ (control underscore) to undo the last word delete.

(Hand smacks forehead)

I never think of using that "undo" binding, because ctrl-shift-minus !=
ctrl-underscore on the keyboards I used to use.  I'll just have to
think of another key to bind it to ...

I'd still rather have more complicated solution, though. :-)

-- 
Bart Schaefer                             Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts            http://www.nbn.com/people/lantern

New male in /home/schaefer:
>N  2 Justin William Schaefer  Sat May 11 03:43  53/4040  "Happy Birthday"

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Wayne Davison]

Bart Schaefer writes:
> I'd still rather have more complicated solution, though. :-)

Here's a more complicated solution for you:

I've added an environment variable ``WORDCHARS2'' (which should probably
have a better name...) that lists the characters that you want to
SOMETIMES be treated as word chars (it's OK if WORDCHARS contains these
characters as well).  In the context of word movement and deletion, the
code will allow WORDCHARS words to be broken up by the delimiters listed
in WORDCHARS2, but it also allows WORDCHARS2 words to be broken up by
non-word characters.  It doesn't stop at every single transition from one
set to the next, though -- it tries to be smarter than that (whether it
succeeds or not is for you to decide).

The default value for WORDCHARS2 is empty, so the word functions behave
as they did before unless you customize it.  To give the new stuff a try,
do something like this:

WORDCHARS2='''"/'

and see if you like it.  

Internally:

I've created a level of wordishness.  0 is never a word character, 1 is
sometimes a word character, and 2 is always a word character.  When we
are searching for words we look for certain increasing or decreasing
transitions in the wordishness and stop when we find the one we like.

I also removed the support for "wordflag" from the emacsforwardword
function since this kludge would only potentially limit some vi word
function to any non-word characters before a word.  That's not what
a vi user would want even if they were silly enough to be using the
emacs function in the first place.

Otherwise, no vi functions were modified.

..wayne..
---8<------8<------8<------8<---cut here--->8------>8------>8------>8---
Index: Src/globals.h
@@ -332,7 +332,8 @@
 EXTERN char *rprompt;		/* $RPROMPT    */
 EXTERN char *sprompt;
 
-EXTERN char *wordchars;
+EXTERN char *wordchars;		/* $WORDCHARS  */
+EXTERN char *wordchars2;	/* $WORDCHARS2 */
 EXTERN char *rstring, *Rstring;
 EXTERN char *postedit;
 
Index: Src/hashtable.h
@@ -106,6 +106,7 @@
 IPDEF2("HOME", homegetfn, homesetfn, 0),
 IPDEF2("TERM", termgetfn, termsetfn, 0),
 IPDEF2("WORDCHARS", wordcharsgetfn, wordcharssetfn, 0),
+IPDEF2("WORDCHARS2", wordchars2getfn, wordchars2setfn, 0),
 IPDEF2("IFS", ifsgetfn, ifssetfn, 0),
 IPDEF2("_", underscoregetfn, IFN(nullsetfn), PM_READONLY),
 #ifdef LC_ALL
Index: Src/init.c
@@ -599,6 +599,7 @@
     ifs         = ztrdup(" \t\n  ");
     ifs[3]      = Meta;
     wordchars   = ztrdup(DEFAULT_WORDCHARS);
+    wordchars2  = ztrdup("");
     postedit    = ztrdup("");
     underscore  = ztrdup("");
 
Index: Src/params.c
@@ -1694,6 +1694,29 @@
     inittyptab();
 }
 
+/* Function to get value for special parameter `WORDCHARS2' */
+
+/**/
+char *
+wordchars2getfn(Param pm)
+{
+    return wordchars2;
+}
+
+/* Function to set value of special parameter `WORDCHARS2' */
+
+/**/
+void
+wordchars2setfn(Param pm, char *x)
+{
+    zsfree(wordchars2);
+    if (x)
+	wordchars2 = x;
+    else
+ 	wordchars2 = ztrdup("");
+    inittyptab();
+}
+
 /* Function to get value for special parameter `_' */
 
 /**/
Index: Src/utils.c
@@ -2472,6 +2472,8 @@
 	typtab[STOUC(*s == Meta ? *++s ^ 32 : *s)] |= ISEP;
     for (s = wordchars; *s; s++)
 	typtab[STOUC(*s == Meta ? *++s ^ 32 : *s)] |= IWORD;
+    for (s = wordchars2; *s; s++)
+	typtab[STOUC(*s == Meta ? *++s ^ 32 : *s)] |= IWORD2;
     for (s = SPECCHARS; *s; s++)
 	typtab[STOUC(*s)] |= ISPECIAL;
     if (unset(NOBANGHIST) && bangchar)
Index: Src/zle_word.c
@@ -36,17 +36,20 @@
 void
 forwardword(void)
 {
+    int ci, nci;
+
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
 	backwardword();
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (cs != ll && iword(line[cs]))
-	    cs++;
-	if (wordflag && !mult)
+	if (wordflag && !mult) {
+	    while (cs != ll && iword(line[cs]))
+		cs++;
 	    return;
-	while (cs != ll && !iword(line[cs]))
+	}
+	for (ci = 2; cs != ll && (nci = iindex(line[cs])) <= ci; ci = nci)
 	    cs++;
     }
 }
@@ -97,17 +100,15 @@
 void
 emacsforwardword(void)
 {
+    int ci, nci;
+
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
 	emacsbackwardword();
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (cs != ll && !iword(line[cs]))
-	    cs++;
-	if (wordflag && !mult)
-	    return;
-	while (cs != ll && iword(line[cs]))
+	for (ci = 0; cs != ll && (nci = iindex(line[cs])) >= ci; ci = nci)
 	    cs++;
     }
 }
@@ -156,15 +157,15 @@
 void
 backwardword(void)
 {
+    int ci, nci;
+
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
 	forwardword();
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (cs && !iword(line[cs - 1]))
-	    cs--;
-	while (cs && iword(line[cs - 1]))
+	for (ci = 0; cs && (nci = iindex(line[cs - 1])) >= ci; ci = nci)
 	    cs--;
     }
 }
@@ -211,15 +212,15 @@
 void
 emacsbackwardword(void)
 {
+    int ci, nci;
+
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
 	emacsforwardword();
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (cs && !iword(line[cs - 1]))
-	    cs--;
-	while (cs && iword(line[cs - 1]))
+	for (ci = 0; cs && (nci = iindex(line[cs - 1])) >= ci; ci = nci)
 	    cs--;
     }
 }
@@ -228,7 +229,7 @@
 void
 backwarddeleteword(void)
 {
-    int x = cs;
+    int ci, nci, x = cs;
 
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
@@ -236,9 +237,7 @@
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (x && !iword(line[x - 1]))
-	    x--;
-	while (x && iword(line[x - 1]))
+	for (ci = 0; x && (nci = iindex(line[x - 1])) >= ci; ci = nci)
 	    x--;
     }
     backdel(cs - x);
@@ -272,7 +271,7 @@
 void
 backwardkillword(void)
 {
-    int x = cs;
+    int ci, nci, x = cs;
 
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
@@ -280,9 +279,7 @@
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (x && !iword(line[x - 1]))
-	    x--;
-	while (x && iword(line[x - 1]))
+	for (ci = 0; x && (nci = iindex(line[x - 1])) >= ci; ci = nci)
 	    x--;
     }
     backkill(cs - x, 1);
@@ -357,7 +354,7 @@
 void
 deleteword(void)
 {
-    int x = cs;
+    int ci, nci, x = cs;
 
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
@@ -365,9 +362,7 @@
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (x != ll && !iword(line[x]))
-	    x++;
-	while (x != ll && iword(line[x]))
+	for (ci = 0; x != ll && (nci = iindex(line[x])) >= ci; ci = nci)
 	    x++;
     }
     foredel(x - cs);
@@ -377,7 +372,7 @@
 void
 killword(void)
 {
-    int x = cs;
+    int ci, nci, x = cs;
 
     if (mult < 0) {
 	mult = -mult;
@@ -385,9 +380,7 @@
 	return;
     }
     while (mult--) {
-	while (x != ll && !iword(line[x]))
-	    x++;
-	while (x != ll && iword(line[x]))
+	for (ci = 0; x != ll && (nci = iindex(line[x])) >= ci; ci = nci)
 	    x++;
     }
     forekill(x - cs, 0);
Index: Src/ztype.h
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@
 #define IWORD	 1024
 #define ISPECIAL 2048
 #define IMETA	4096
+#define IWORD2	8192
 #define _icom(X,Y) (typtab[(int) (unsigned char) (X)] & Y)
 #define idigit(X) _icom(X,IDIGIT)
 #define ialnum(X) _icom(X,IALNUM)
@@ -56,3 +57,5 @@
 #define iword(X) _icom(X,IWORD)
 #define ispecial(X) _icom(X,ISPECIAL)
 #define imeta(X) _icom(X,IMETA)
+#define iword2(X) _icom(X,IWORD2)
+#define iindex(X) (iword2(X)? 1 : (iword(X)? 2 : 0))
---8<------8<------8<------8<---cut here--->8------>8------>8------>8---

Re: kill-word & friends in ZLE

[Hrvoje Niksic]

In your mail, you said:
[...]
> Another satisifactory option would be something like "yank-word", so I
> could yank back the most-recently-killed word, rather the whole line,
> when I accidentally press alt-backspace once too often.

Why don't you use C-y? This works for me:
fly% ls foo bar[Esc-Backspace][C-y]
erases and returns bar on the line. Furthermore, all the kills enter the
kill-ring and are reaccessible.

-- 
hniksic@srce.hr              |  Student of electrical engineering
hniksic@fly.cc.fer.hr        |  University of Zagreb, Croatia
------------------------------------------------------------------
`VI' - An editor used by those heretics that don't subscribe to
       the Emacs religion.