RE: [ELPA] New package: transient

[Drew Adams]

[Please consider using plain-text mail for Emacs
mailing lists.  Thx.]

> With alist, searching for `.*alist.*`  is not
> so bad, but with `file-name` the problem shows
> more clearly: you have a lot of results that
> you'd like to ignore (functions from tramp, etc).

The question is how to tell the program
(Emacs, here) which results you'd like to
ignore.

You can try using a fancy search pattern.
You can try to use a fancy matching method.
Or you can try to _combine_ simple matches
(patterns and methods).

But with all of that it's hard to filter
out just what _you know_ you don't want.

You can use matching itself to exclude an
existing set of matches.  But that has to
be a separate operation - after matching:
Toss these results from matching.

That was the subject of a previous message
of mine, where I pointed out the value of
having a key that removes a set of matches.

You _cannot_ express non-matching with a
regexp, for example.  The approach to take
is to instead explicitly get matches for
what you do NOT want, and then subtract
those from a larger set of matches that
includes what you want.

That's what we do in Lisp code.  And it's
what's most helpful interactively, as well.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Nutshell_View#ChippingAway