A simple addition to occur key map to add instant highlighting of occurences in context

This isn't really intended to be a package (although you can go ahead and install it, if you like! (I don't recommend it, see Caveat Emptor below.))

It's a demonstration to show what's possible in Emacs without a lot of extensions, and just a couple of additional key-bound functions.

The source code is fully annotated, so it should be dead easy to follow what it's doing.

Anyway, a little demo is worth a thousand words...

C-s C-w (start searching on the word at point^†, 'occur')

M-s o (start Occur from iSearch^†)

With the functions in this package loaded, up and down arrow move to the next occurence and highlight/navigate to it in the file being searched.

That's all folks.

(^†Emacs default bindings)

Buyer beware - I should point out that buried in the Occur mode there is already a feature very similar to occur-follow, it will also work in modes like rgrep, Ag.el, Ack etc.

C-c C-f

When in Occur (and these other modes) will turn on Next-Error-Follow mode... doing C-c C-f again will toggle it off.

So before you install this little package ... Don't.

Just use Next-Error-Follow.

Also, take note, Emacs is so deep, you may want a feature that doesn't seem to exist. But it might exist tucked away somewhere, with a not so intuitive name.

So...

No matter how long you've been using Emacs, ask the people at http://reddit.com/r/emacs and other Emacs hangouts first!