[gnu.emacs] GNU emacs: 'remembered' fields?

moss@ibis.cs.umass.edu (Eliot Moss) (03/19/90)

I note that an earlier reply, suggesting that one use a command replay
feature, does *not* do what was requested. Specifically, the request was
something like: if I just searched for some string s1 and would now like to
replace all s1's with s2, is there any way I can do this without having to
re-type s1 to the "replace" command? I think the request is for a feature not
present in GNU Emacs and which would in fact be quite convenient. I can think
of two sets of functionality of interest:

1) Keep track of the last value of typed interactive arguments. Even better,
keep track of the last value of the first, second, third, etc., argument
independently, and when in the nth field give an easy way to insert the last
value of the nth argument in the previous command that had n or more
arguments.

2) Possibly even more appealing would be to keep a "history" of typed
arguments, with a user-controllable number of entries, and simple commands to
go through that history (similar to the emacs style command line recall
facility of ksh and (I believe) bash).

I'm not up for implementing it myself, and one problem is that this requires
global changes, or ones fairly deep in the system, but it would be useful ...
--

		J. Eliot B. Moss, Assistant Professor
		Department of Computer and Information Science
		Lederle Graduate Research Center
		University of Massachusetts
		Amherst, MA  01003
		(413) 545-4206; Moss@cs.umass.edu