Reverse search <a-/> orthoganality

[vbauerster]

While regular searching with / directions of n and <a-n> are natural and orthogonal i.e. former jumps down and latter jumps up. However while reverse searching with <a-/> directions of n and <a-n> are the same as in regular search. I expected that in reverse search n and <a-n> would reverse their directions respectively, but this is not the case. The reverse part of <a-/> is only in its initial jump and afterwards I still have to hold alt key to keep reverse direction, which in my opinion is not so orthogonal.

[lenormf]

Setting a side effect on primitives predicated on which one was used previously doesn't sound great, it's not predictable.

One problem I can see would occur upon a user using a-/, then *. I think the user would expect that subsequently hitting n would select the next (downward) match, but since * modifies the search register / directly (and shouldn't assume that the user's intent is to search downward), hitting n would select the previous (upward) match.

[lenormf]

I think this behaviour could make for a good plugin, or at least a good snippet for the users' configuration. Here's my quick implementation of it:

define-command -hidden -params 1 search_direction %{ evaluate-commands %sh{
    case "$1" in
        up) echo "
            map global normal n <a-n>
            map global normal <a-n> n
            exec <a-/>
        ";;

        down) echo "
            map global normal n n
            map global normal <a-n> <a-n>
            exec /
        ";;
    esac
} }

map global normal <a-/> ': search_direction up<ret>'
map global normal / ': search_direction down<ret>'

If you do decide to adapt the above code and use it in your user configuration, could you please document it in the wiki?

[vbauerster]

Nice solution!

could you please document it in the wiki?

Yes of course, I think placing it under Editing paragraph. Is it ok?

[lenormf]

Sounds good, I rarely care about what's on the wiki, so feel free to create pages as you see fit.

[vbauerster]

https://github.com/mawww/kakoune/wiki/Reverse-search