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Date:Mon Mar 13 03:04:02 1995 
Subject:Re: ved search and replace in poplog v14.5 (PS) 
From:A . Sloman 
Volume-ID:950313.01 

I wrote
> > In situations when you don't know whether the thing you are looking for
> > is above or below your current location in the editor buffer, why do you
> > ever search backwards? I would have thought that having the forward
> > search was all you need in that context?
James replied

> wrapping to the start of the file during a forward search, realising
> that you want to do something at the previous location, and not being
> able to use backward search to get back to it.  of course one can go to
> the end of the file, and then search backwards, but quite apart from
> that being a longer keystroke sequence than backward search, it is a
> different action to that which one would apply at any other search
> location during forward search.

OK. I had not thought of that. I suspect that if I needed that often I'd
be happy to have a special command to do it.

> i can see your reasoning aaron, but this asymmetry has always annoyed me
> as well, so i'm with adrian on this one.

So it turns into a question whether more people are upset by the lack of
symmetry in forward and backward searching, which makes it easy to
search ONLY for something earlier in the file, than are upset by the
symmetry, which makes it easy to do what you've described.

Answering that would require a survey, which I guess nobody is going to
have the resources to do properly!

Since so few people have responded to my query about this I have begun
to suspect that the vast majority of VED users never use backward search
anyway. (I've even found some who don't use any search: they always
manually scroll up and down the file looking for things.)

I wonder whether the change was based on some sort of consultation, or
whether it was put in by accident, or whether it was done deliberately
but without consultation.

Cheers.
Aaron