Re: Why does Emacs lack `backward-delete-word`?

[egarrulo]

On 07/03/16 04:21, Robert Thorpe wrote:
> As Stefan says, it's not usually necessary.  M-y can skip past
> irrelevant kills.  Also, if you know you're going to add something
> useless to the kill ring, then you can just use backspace.  Getting rid
> of a word with backspace, in the few occasions when it's necessary,
> isn't that slow.
>
> But, in keyboard macros it can be troublesome.  If M-y has to be used in
> a macro that generally spells trouble.  Also, kills are slower than
> deletes.  For those reasons I define delete-word in the obvious way,
> like kill-word but using delete-region instead of kill-region.  I don't
> bind it to a key though, I just use M-x when I need it, which is only
> when using keyboard macros.

Your indirect explanation for the lack of a key for `delete-region` 
sounds plausible.

Maybe my question is a symptom of a more general problem: inexperienced 
Emacs users, don't know how to edit effectively with vanilla Emacs, 
especially when they come from mainstream editors.  The manual explains 
Emacs commands, but not how they "work" together.  For example, I 
remember a Emacs user commenting that it is often quicker to kill and 
yank some text, than to copy it.  Not very intuitive, I would say. 
Therefore, some users might feel frustrated because they are trying to 
accomplish something by unknowingly "going against the grain" of Emacs.