M-x emacs-thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > M-x emacs-thread

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Your Computer posted:

Disclaimer: This applies just as much to vim, I'm just posting it here since it's a relevant thread.

What makes these text editors better than an IDE? I guess I'm very "new-school" with how I program, but I wouldn't want to switch over to something that does not have autocomplete, method-lookups, auto-import and other niceties such as browsing project folders by the click of a mouse and copy-pasting code between files/projects. I get that they're more portable than an IDE, but I only have one workstation so that's not a very strong point to me. To me these text editors feel more like a cult in which members embrace an obsolete technology. I mean, haven't we since invented graphic displays and mice?

Pardon my ignorance, I honestly want to know what's great about these!

You can easily configure Vim and emacs to have autocomplete. I find moving between files and copy / pasting stuff 500x easier in Vim than in the built in Visual Studio editor. The first thing I do with a fresh Visual Studio install is install VSVim.

These tools are not at all obsolete. In many respects, they are far superior to IDE-based tools.

Note: I am reading this thread to learn about emacs as I am utterly inexperienced with it, hence speaking of Vim above.

e: to summarize what I like about Vim in one quick bite: Every time you use a mouse you're wasting time, and Vim is optimized to never require touching your mouse.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2011 21:38

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 12:57

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Is there any facility in emacs (either built in, or through scripting) for comment-aware search? I tried to find that functionality in Vim, and I found some scripts that people had written... didn't work too well. That might be something that would really spur me to use emacs

# ¿ Oct 5, 2011 13:24

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

I want to be able to search through files using arbitrary regexes, but I want to exclude comments from the search. I also want to be able to search ONLY inside comments, and exclude code. Ideally this would be aware of any style of comment, based on the file extension

code:


C-style /* this is a comment */
C++-style //this is a comment
Python style #this is a comment
Python doc-string style '''this is a comment'''
VB style 'this is a comment
MATLAB style %this is a comment

That kind of thing.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2011 15:25

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

h_double posted:

Those keybindings are pretty universal in Unix-type operating systems (they work in bash too), and OSX is basically BSD Unix under the hood.

A little off topic, and you might already know this, but you can configure bash to work in Vi mode with $ set -o vi -- you can change it back with $ set -o emacs, so the keybindings are definitely emacs inspired, at least in the case of bash.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2011 14:42

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