Why does replace-regexp backwards work so differently?

C-u - M-x replace-regexp \w+

The - prefix arg replaces backwards but it hits one char at a time, as if the plus sign weren’t there. The same replacement forwards (without the prefix arg) does hit one word at a time. What’s going on, @emacs@lemmy.ml?

  • Sandra@idiomdrottning.orgOP
    3·
    1 year ago

    Yes, I got that, that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part is why the matcher is searching char-by-char backwards in the first place as opposed to skipping match-by-match.

    I’ll use “\b\w+”, that seems to work well. \W\w+ was not good since it caught the spaces.

    (Thanks for your patient repeated replies, BTW, I don’t mean to come across as ungrateful.)

    @0v0 @emacs