[sf-perl] Debugger goodness

[Quinn Weaver]

On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 12:13:01PM -0800, David Fetter wrote:

> How could I have missed it?!? ;)
> 
> http://amadeo.blog.com/repository/2/602242.p.jpg

Y'all laugh, but this is actually one of the things I like about emacs:
it grows with you.  You can start with a few simple commands:

C-k           kill (cut)   lines
C-y           yank (paste) lines
[arrow keys] navigate
Ctrl-S        interactive search (as you type, starts searching in file)
Ctrl-R        isearch backwards
C-x C-s  Save

... but then you'll eventually think, "I want to do x.  There should
be a feature to do that".  So you'll run

M-x apropos

and search for a name that sounds reasonable (like "compile"), and,
sure enough, there's a hook for running a compile process.  The
complete documentation for the command pops up, as Joe demo'ed, and
you can run it or even jump to the source.

Pretty much any esoteric feature you could want is already
implemented, probably in the code that ships with Emacs, and it stays
out of your face until you reach for it... but when you do, it's just
there.

I consider this a sane reason to like Emacs (as opposed to my possibly
insane reasons such as liking LISP).

Don't get me wrong; I'm not promoting emacs over other editors or
saying it's the one true religion.  I'm just trying to explain why
people like it.  There's a lot more to it than weird Ctrl-key
sequences.

--
qw (Quinn Weaver); #President, San Francisco Perl Mongers
=for information, visit http://sf.pm.org/weblog =cut