emacs n00b here.
I face this problem at least once a week, I have a function call with its arguments one per line, but I'd like to reformat that such that all the arguments go to one line, i.e. I want to go from:
f(
x,
y,
z
);
to:
f(x, y, z);
what's the best way to do that?
In general, a simple approach to custom reformatting requirements is to create a keyboard macro which does the required editing in a generic way.
Abilities like moving across sexps & balanced expressions, searching and replacing within regions, and narrowing and widening the buffer all make this sort of thing pretty straightforward.
You can then give the macro a name, output its definition into your init file, and bind it to a key for future usage, all with no elisp knowledge required.
C-hig (emacs) Keyboard Macros RET
Edit: (for "Emacs n00bs" everywhere).
DO learn how to use keyboard macros. The learning curve is pretty shallow1, and they will pay amazing dividends in the long term.
Once you've learned how they work, force yourself to use them: Whenever you encounter a problem, say to yourself "Can I do this with a keyboard macro?" and if you think the answer is yes, then give it a try.
If you don't make yourself use them to begin with, you probably won't often think about them when use-cases crop up; but once they're a familiar part of your tool kit you'll find yourself using them very regularly.
1 Shallow, but probably longer than you expect, as you gradually come to realise just how much you can actually accomplish with the things. My own moment of clarity came when it occurred to me that I wasn't restricted to a single buffer, and correlating/extracting/transforming data from multiple buffers was something I could automate easily.
And of course macros can do anything that you can do, so their power grows with your own knowledge of Emacs.
Well, I doubt that it is the best way to do it but I wrote a function anyways. So here it goes:
(defun format-args-column-to-inline()
"Takes a c-style function whose arguments listed one per line and puts them inline."
(interactive)
(beginning-of-line 1)
(re-search-forward "(")
(forward-char -1)
(let ((start (point)))
(save-restriction
(save-excursion
(forward-sexp 1)
(narrow-to-region start (point)))
(while (re-search-forward "$")
(progn
(delete-forward-char 1)
(just-one-space 1))))))
Put your cursor somewhere in the first line and call the function.
Edit: Just saw that you wanted something slightly different. The output of this function is f( x, y, z ); [note the trailing and leading space of the argument list].
Related
I'm trying to write an emacs LISP function to un-indent the region
(rigidly). I can pass prefix arguments to indent-code-rigidly or
indent-rigidly or indent-region and they all work fine, but I don't
want to always have to pass a negative prefix argument to shift things
left.
My current code is as below but it seems to do nothing:
(defun undent ()
"un-indent rigidly."
(interactive)
(list
(setq fline (line-number-at-pos (region-beginning)))
(setq lline (line-number-at-pos (region-end)))
(setq curIndent (current-indentation))
;;(indent-rigidly fline lline (- curIndent 1))
(indent-region fline lline 2)
;;(message "%d %d" curIndent (- curIndent 1))
)
)
I gather that (current-indentation) won't get me the indentation of the first line
of the region, but of the first line following the region (so a second quesiton is
how to get that!). But even when I just use a constant for the column (as shown,
I don't see this function do any change.
Though if I uncomment the (message) call, it displays reasonable numbers.
GNU Emacs 24.3.1, on Ubuntu. And in case it matters, I use
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil) and (cua-mode).
I must be missing something obvious... ?
All of what Tim X said is true, but if you just need something that works, or an example to show you what direction to take your own code, I think you're looking for something like this:
(defun unindent-rigidly (start end arg &optional interactive)
"As `indent-rigidly', but reversed."
(interactive "r\np\np")
(indent-rigidly start end (- arg) interactive))
All this does is call indent-rigidly with an appropriately transformed prefix argument. If you call this with a prefix argument n, it will act as if you had called indent-rigidly with the argument -n. If you omit the prefix argument, it will behave as if you called indent-rigidly with the argument -1 (instead of going into indent-rigidly's interactive mode).
There are a number of problems with your function, including some vary
fundamental elisp requirements. Highly recommend reading the Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual (bundled with emacs). If you are new to programming and lisp,
you may also find An Introduction to Emacs Lisp useful (also bundled with
Emacs).
A few things to read about which will probably help
Read the section on the command loop from the elisp reference. In particular,
look at the node which describes how to define a new command and the use of
'interactive', which you will need if you want to bind your function to a key
or call it with M-x.
Read the section on variables from the lisp reference
and understand variable scope (local v global). Look at using 'let' rather
than 'setq' and what the difference is.
Read the section on 'positions' in the elisp reference. In particular, look at
'save-excursion' and 'save-restriction'. Understanding how to define and use
the region is also important.
It isn't clear if your writing this function just as a learning exercise or
not. However, just in case you are doing it because it is something you need to
do rather than just something to learn elisp, be sure to go through the Emacs
manual and index. What you appear to need is a common and fairly well supported
requirement. It can get a little complicated if programming modes are involved
(as opposed to plain text). However, with emacs, if what you need seems like
something which would be a common requirement, you can be fairly confident it is
already there - you just need to find it (which can be a challenge at first).
A common convention is for functions/commands to be defined which act 'in
reverse' when supplied with a negative or universal argument. Any command which
has this ability can also be called as a function in elisp code with the
argument necessary to get that behaviour, so understanding the inter-play
between commands, functions and calling conventions is important.
I'm looking for an elisp function that is the equivalent of the one written in C for vertical-motion.
I would like to implement my own bug-fixes caused by whitespace-mode [(setq whitespace-style '(face space-mark tab-mark newline-mark) )] and visual-line-mode and perhaps some other contributing factors (e.g., linum-mode and tabbar-mode) -- e.g., when point is one more or one less than it should be; or when the last word in a line gets wrapped because the end of line is exactly equal to the window-width (and vertical-motion doesn't know the word has been wrapped).
It is still premature to file a bug report, so I thought I'd try to fix the function instead of creating several contingency plans as bug workarounds -- e.g., if (vertical-motion 0) should place (point) at (window-start) but (point) ends up being one more than it should be, then pretend (point) is really one less.
vertical-motion is a complex function. Re-implementing it in Elisp would be difficult/impossible. Better just report the problems you see as bugs.
I'm trying to write a small system of macros to do iterative tasks in Emacs Lisp. I had taken it for granted that there is nothing beyond while loop. No more primitives or some hidden features, but I decided, I'd better ask.
By "hidden features" I mean something akin to tagbody in Common Lisp, i.e. the very primitive form to model the code in terms of blocks, jumps and labels. Are there any such thing in eLisp? Not even in any "hackish" way, like, for example, through the bytecode? Of course, I know about (catch ... (throw ... )) construct, but it is not quite the same, because it only allows jumping "backwards", but never forward. I also assumed it is a rather complex construct, not suitable for building fast iteration primitives.
Another thing that bugs me is that there doesn't seem to be a way to create an iterator for hash-tables. I.e. a hash-table must be itereated using maphash and once you exit the maphash function, there's no coming back to where you left it. So far I understand, it has to do something like, exporting a vector of keys and a vector of values and iterating over these, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get hold of these vectors / lists / whichever those are. Or am I again wrong?
I've looked into how cl package generates code for loop and dotimes / dolist / do, but they just use while or maphash, whichever is appropriate, and, frankly, I'm not so fond of their code... More than that, if, say, in the loop there are two for-as-hash clauses, they simply ignore the first (you don't even get a warning for that) and generate code for the second :|
Any chance there are some tricks to get hold of these iteration primitives from the user code in eLisp? If not, how feasible it is, and is it really, to write an extension in C?
You can tagbody as a macro:
(defmacro cl-tagbody (&rest tags-or-stmts)
(let ((blocks '()))
(let ((block (list 'cl--preamble)))
(dolist (tag-or-stmt tags-or-stmts)
(if (consp tag-or-stmt) (push tag-or-stmt block)
;; Add a "go to next block" to implement the fallthrough.
(push (nreverse (cons `(go ,tag-or-stmt) block)) blocks)
(setq block (list tag-or-stmt))))
(push (nreverse (cons `(go cl--exit) block)) blocks))
(let ((catch-tag (make-symbol "cl--tagbody-tag")))
(macroexpand-all
`(let ((next-tag 'cl--preamble))
(while
(not (eq (setq next-tag
(catch ',catch-tag
(cl-case next-tag
,#blocks)))
'cl--exit))))
`((go . (lambda (tag) `(throw ',catch-tag ',tag)))
,#macroexpand-all-environment)))))
1. Other looping constructs?
The only general-purpose built-in looping construct in Emacs Lisp is while (see eval.c). The macros dolist and dotimes (in subr.el) are both implemented using while.
There are also built-in functions for mapping over various data structures: mapatoms, mapc, mapcar, map-char-table, mapconcat, maphash, and map-keymap. But these are implemented in such a way that you can't interleave their execution with other Lisp code (see for example maphash in fns.c). If you want to loop over two such data structures, you have to loop over one and then over the other.
So I think you're basically out of luck.
2. Extensions?
Emacs is deliberately designed not to have dynamic C-level extensions, to make it more difficult for someone to mount an "embrace and extend" attack on the freedom of Emacs users (see the emacs-devel thread starting here, for example).
So if you want to add C-level functionality, you have to edit the source code. Good luck!
What problem can happen if the goto-line function is used in a non-interactive elisp program? Its docstring gives a warning saying that:
This function is usually the wrong thing to use in a Lisp program.
What you probably want instead is something like:
(goto-char (point-min)) (forward-line (1- N))
Moreover, when I try to byte-compile-file my init file including goto-line, I get a unpleasant warning like this once again:
.emacs:170:19:Warning: `goto-line' used from Lisp code
That command is designed for interactive use only
Is using goto-line in a non-interactive program really so dangerous? Relatedly, why is the suggested forward-line solution preferable?
Firstly, this prevents Elisp programmers from fall into bad habits -- writing
inefficient code in a line-number centric way. i.e. instead of using
(forward-line 1) calculating the current line number, incrementing, and using
goto-line.
From this mailing list article:
In a nutshell, the reason why goto-line should not be a frequently
used command is that normally there's no reason to want to get to line
number N unless you have a program that told you there's something
interesting on that line.
Secondly, goto-line manipulates the user's environment in addition to moving
the point (i.e. push-mark). For non-interactive use, this may not be what
you want. On the other hand if having considered all this, you believe
goto-line is exactly what you need, then just call it like this:
(defun foo ()
(interactive)
(with-no-warnings
(goto-line N)))
And you won't get any compiler warnings.
in addition to what was said:
"goto-line" finally recurs onto "(forward-line (1- line)", which in effect does the work. All other of the 43 lines of "goto-line" command body deal with interactive use. For example considering a possibly universal argument.
When writing a program resp. when running it, your computer is in another state than following an interactive call. Thus you should address this state by using "forward-line" straight on.
I've defined the \ character to behave as a word constituent in latex-mode, and I'm pretty happy with the results. The only thing bothering me is that a sequence like \alpha\beta gets treated as a single word (which is the expected behavior, of course).
Is there a way to make emacs interpret a specific character as a word "starter"? This way it would always be considered part of the word following it, but never part of the word preceding it.
For clarity, here's an example:
\alpha\beta
^ ^
1 2
If the point is at 1 and I press M-d, the string "\alpha" should be killed.
If the point is at 2 and I press M-<backspace>, the string "\beta" should be killed.
How can I achieve this?
Another thought:
Your requirement is very like what subword-mode provides for camelCase.
You can't customize subword-mode's behaviour -- the regexps are hard-coded -- but you could certainly copy that library and modify it for your purposes.
M-x find-library RET subword RET
That would presumably be a pretty robust solution.
Edit: updated from the comments, as suggested:
For the record, changing every instance of [[:upper:]] to [\\\\[:upper:]] in the functions subword-forward-internal and subword-backward-internal inside subword.el works great =) (as long as "\" is defined as "w" syntax).
Personally I would be more inclined to make a copy of the library than edit it directly, unless for the purpose of making the existing library a little more general-purpose, for which the simplest solution would seem to be to move those regexps into variables -- after which it would be trivial to have buffer-local modified versions for this kind of purpose.
Edit 2: As of Emacs 24.3 (currently a release candidate), subword-mode facilitates this with the new subword-forward-regexp and subword-backward-regexp variables (for simple modifications), and the subword-forward-function and subword-backward-function variables (for more complex modifications).
By making those regexp variables buffer-local in latex-mode with the desired values, you can just use subword-mode directly.
You should be able to implement this using syntax text properties:
M-: (info "(elisp) Syntax Properties") RET
Edit: Actually, I'm not sure if you can do precisely this?
The following (which is just experimentation) is close, but M-<backspace> at 2 will only delete "beta" and not the preceding "\".
I suppose you could remap backward-kill-word to a function which checked for that preceding "\" and killed that as well. Fairly hacky, but it would probably do the trick if there's not a cleaner solution.
I haven't played with this functionality before; perhaps someone else can clarify.
(modify-syntax-entry ?\\ "w")
(setq parse-sexp-lookup-properties t)
(setq syntax-propertize-function 'my-propertize-syntax)
(defun my-propertize-syntax (start end)
"Set custom syntax properties."
(save-excursion
(goto-char start)
(while (re-search-forward "\\w\\\\" end t)
(put-text-property
(1- (point)) (point) 'syntax-table (cons "." ?\\)))))