Re: find-file-noselect needs save-match-data

[Stefan Monnier]

>     Anyway, such a function should likely _return_ the corresponding
>     match-data (rather than setting a global variable to it), and things
>     like match-beginning should optionally take an argument for this
>     particular match-data.

> That is a good idea.  If there is no match, it returns nil; if there
> is a match, it returns the match data.

Then what's the advantage compared to using save-match-data?  This whole
discussion started because people want to add save-match-data everywhere and
I pointed out that it's very rarely necessary, and it can be costly (where
the "it" is generating the Lisp-level match data).
The suggestion to have a specialized string-match operation that preserves
match-data was for performance reasons, AFAICT, like fast_c_string_match.


        Stefan