forward-word and non-letter “words”

Question

Using forward-word with this line:

foo *** *** bar,

I want to have the folowing behavior:

foo| ***| ***| bar|,

Not:

foo| *** *** bar|,

So, if between spaces there are only non-letter symbols, let's consider this a word too. forward-whitespace is not good enough, cause it loses distinction between letters and non-letters at all. How this can be done?

Answer 1

Just use forward-sexp instead (bound to C-M-f). Likewise, backward-sexp (C-M-b).

See (elisp) List Motion.

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If you don't want to do that then you'll need to change the syntax for character * in your buffer to be word syntax:

(modify-syntax-entry ?* "w")

Or for a given syntax table, my-table:

(modify-syntax-entry ?* "w" my-table)