[h-e-w] what is a word?

[Eric De Mund]

Hello,

What is a word? Or, rather, is this following behavior possible:

    I want to have a double-click anywhere in the middle string between
    "<" and ">", below, result in that entire middle string being
    selected (even if the string contains "."s):

        non-whitespace-chars>non-whitespace-chars<non-whitespace-chars

    , but I *don't* want other (generally keyboard-invoked) functions'
    definition of a word changed.

I'd like this behavior because out in my shell running in an xterm(1),
I've set up character classes so that double-clicking gets me everything
up to the nearest whitespace or "<" or ">" character, while, in my
shell, Ctrl-W or Esc-D only deletes up to the nearest punctuation
character, similar to Esc-D in Emacs.

As a bonus, if anyone can help me understand the variables
word-separating-categories and word-combining-categories, I'd be much
obliged.

Thanks,
Eric

"We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the
people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug
them." --Larry Wall
--
Eric De Mund <address@hidden> | Ixian Systems, Inc. | 53 49 B2 23 AF 6C 20 81
http://www.ixian.com/ead/    | Mountain View, CA   | ED DD 4C 81 AA C9 D1 A5