wgrep and Meow

[zetashift]

Does anybody have some sortof quick tutorial on how to use multicursor/beacon mode for Meow and wgrep in a Emacs buffer?
I'm a bit lost on:

• how to move around the MOTION grep buffer
• how to use multicursor to edit the buffer and save using wgrep

[Linerre]

Hi, sorry for the late reply. If you need to edit the buffer, then insertion mode is a better choice for the buffer's initial Meow state.
You can customize the meow-mode-state-list¹ in your config, for example:

(add-to-list 'meow-mode-state-list '(rg-mode . normal))

which instructs Meow to enter the rg-mode buffer (showing the results of ripgrep search) with normal-mode.

Footnotes

1. https://github.com/meow-edit/meow/blob/master/CUSTOMIZATIONS.org#meow-mode-state-list ↩

[Linerre]

The above suggestion is generally fine if you want to enter a buffer (say, the results buffer of a grep search) with Meow's normal-mode. But it's a bit misleading if we take into account the defaults provided by rg.el ¹, which offers a better approach:

1. Meow by default now enters the search results buffer with Motion mode
2. You are supposed to navigate through the buffer using the keybindings set for this buffer ², although you can also move the point with Emacs's default keybindings for movement ³
3. You can edit the buffer by pressing e and save the buffer via C-c C-c ⁴. In my case, when I press e, the buffer automatically enables Meow normal mode. I have not configured anything about this behavior, and I'm happy with this default behavior

Just in case whoever sees this in the future want to edit the search results buffer (of rg) with Meow

Footnotes

1. https://github.com/dajva/rg.el ↩

2. https://rgel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html#results-buffer ↩

3. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Moving-Point.html ↩

4. https://rgel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html#edit-and-apply-wgrep ↩

[DogLooksGood]

When you start wgrep, meow should switch to normal state automatically. Then you can do simple query/replace. Usually, you don't need beacon state here, if you do, just do it the same way as you do in normal text buffer.