using ido for find file completion, is it possible to select and edit the first completion? Eg., if I had this, I'd like to complete with apples, but not to ido-exit-minibuffer so I can add to the end of apples:
From:
Find file: /home/me/{apples | pears | armadillos | ...}
To:
Find file: /home/me/apples
Cheers,
Tim
C-e (edit input string) seems to do what you want.
Just start typing the thing you are looking for and hit <TAB> this will attempt to complete the value, if it's not unique ido will list the possible completions, if it is unique then it will complete the selection.
Related
Suppose I want to install a new package. To do this I need to remember that M-x package-install RET package-name is the sequence of keystrokes to type into emacs to do this.
If I forget this keystroke, my go to solution is to google the action I want to complete and browse through the results until I find the right command.
I suspect there is a better way to look up emacs commands and what they do though. If so, can anybody point me to it?
Thanks!
The number one goto command for this would be the apropos-command, which is invoked by using C-h a (or M-x apropos-command), and then typing a search query for the command.
If you know the name of a function, you can use C-h f which runs the describe-function command to get more details about the command.
Lastly, if you know the key sequence, and want more details regarding the command you run, you can use C-h k - describe-key to have emacs tell you what command and the documentation for that command when typing a sequence of keys.
You can get a more complete list of help commands by typing C-h ?.
The built-in manuals are the other obvious places to look, and you can search each one using its index, or isearch through the full-text of the manual.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/22380057/324105
If you use Icicles then the equivalent of apropos-command is built into every command that reads a command name, and you can change the pattern on the fly to tweak the set of matches. See apropos completion.
Whereas with apropos-command you need to provide at the outset the regexp or the complete list of keywords to match (and you need to get them right), with Icicles you can modify/correct them incrementally, and you can add more patterns progressively (progressive completion).
And when you have a set of matches for your pattern(s), you can see the complete doc for each on demand, as opposed to searching the output from apropos-command (which only shows partial doc anyway).
In addition, Icicles extends the standard apropos commands in various ways.
I have a list of tab-separated values that I Select using C-<space> down down down...
If I use M-x org-table-create-or-convert-from-region, it perfectly converts that region to an org-table. However, the shortcut associate with that command C-c | doesn't work. It simply adds the | character at the end of the region.
I'm in the process of creating 100 or so tables through this process and I'd really want my keyboard binding to work. Unfortunately, this command doesn't disambiguate until I type a lot.
Am i missing something very obvious?
Edit: From a great tip from Andrey I typed C-h k C-c | . I can confirm, the key is bound as seen in the following output
C-c | runs the command org-table-create-or-convert-from-region, which
is an interactive autoloaded Lisp function in `org-table.el'.
It is bound to C-c |.
In Emacs - is there a way I can search an extended command by regex right in the minibuffer? That is - I want to filter commands by regexp and then choose the one I need using IDO or Icicles.
When using ido you can turn on regexp matching by pressing C-t. I use smex and ido together and it works beautifully.
While they are not regexps, the default completion mechanism accepts a * to stand for "anything", so you can do M-x foo*bar ? and it will list all the commands whose name looks like "...foo...bar...".
I've always suspected that Icicles provdies that.
M-x <command-regexp> [PageUp/PageDown]
to browse the commands mathching regexp, and
M-x <command-regexp> [Shift-Tab]
to see the list of commands matching regexp. More here.
I have 2 columns, separated by comma. How can I swap those columns with Emacs?
I have the following:
column 1,column2
x1,x2
y1,y2
f1,f2
and I want it like this:
column2,column 1
x2,x1
y2,y1
f2,f1
Use M-x query-replace-regexp and then:
\(.+\),\(.+\)
as replace regexp and
\2,\1
for replacement.
In Emacs, you need to escape grouping parentheses with \. So, above regexp would be usually written as
(.+),(.+)
which means that you want everything before comma in first group and everything after comma in second group.
\2,\1
means: write second group, then comma, then first group.
While you can apply techniques given by other people, you can also use the org-mode tables.
Once you convert the data into org-mode table, it is very easy to swap the columns by simple keystrokes. You can have M-x org-mode, select the region then do M-x org-table-convert-region, and then M- on the right most column. I am not sure, how to export the data as CSV, but that should be very easy for you with replace-regexp. This can be helpful: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Tables.html#Tables
Similar to the answer given by #darioo, type the following into the top of your buffer:
(query-replace-regexp "\\(.*?\\),\\(.*\\)" "\\2,\\1")
Then, put your cursor at the end of this line and press ctrl-x, ctrl-e.
You will have an interactive search-and-replace for which you press the space bar to make the change, and press ctrl-g to quit. If you press ! (exclamation mark) then the search will cease being interactive and take place on all matching text.
If you want to reverse the changes then press M-x (usually ESC followed by x) and type undo and press enter.
Emacs has a rectangular selection mode, see for example: http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2008/12/working-with-rectangular-selections.html
Even better, if you enable cua-mode, entering Ctrl-Enter will put you in rectangle selection mode that is very easy to use.
http://trey-jackson.blogspot.com/2008/10/emacs-tip-26-cua-mode-specifically.html
Use a macro !
Go to the first line of the buffer
Start recording a macro (F3)
Move to the beginning of the line (^a)
Search for comma (^s ,)
Transpose (M-t)
Move cursor down one line
Stop recording macro (F4)
Select the rest of the lines and:
M-x apply-macro-to-region-lines
UPDATE: This doesn't work properly if you have multiple words in a column. Looking for a more general solution...
I know there is a way to list mappings via :map (or :imap, :cmap, etc.), but I can't find a way to list macros I have stored in my vimrc file (as in let #a = 'blahblah').
Is there a way to do this without having to manually looking inside it (via :split [myvimrcfile] or whatever way)?
Also, if it is possible, is there a way to attach some sort of documentation that would display with the macro to explain what it is for? I have a handful that I use quite a bit, but about 6 weeks apart. It would be nice to just quickly list them along with a comment that tells me what the macro does (or even just a name so I make sure I use the right one).
Thanks
In vim, the macros are just stored in registers. You can recall the content of any register and execute it as a macro (which is what the # does). To see a list of what is in your registers, use :reg.
You can see the contents of all the registers using the
:reg
command. Or an argument string like this
:reg ahx
will show you the contents of registers a, h, and x.
That way you can at least see what sequence of commands will be run and hopefully that will be clear enough for you to tell one from another.
The registers simply contain text. You can paste the command sequence in as text or you can copy text into a register and then run it as a command, depending on how you access the register.
I have not found any direct way to edit the contents of a register, but you can paste it into the file, edit it, and then save it back to the same register.
IHTH.
As /u/jheddings wrote the macros are stored as registers and what counts is the assignment of the code to the register (usually done in the vimrc files with let #a=blahblah
To ease the way to display the macros you defined in your vimrc file (in my case it is in the ~/.vimrc path) you can use this vim function:
function! ShowMacros()
10new
exe 'r!' . 'grep -B 1 -E "^\s*let #" ~/.vimrc'
call cursor(1,1)
endfunction
What it does:
10new - open a new vim window with ten lines size
exe ... - execute a command and put in the window
call ... - go to the first line first column
You can execute this function by tipping in the normal mode
:call ShowMacros
You could additionally create a key mapping or a command to fasten the way to call the function:
:cnoremap sm call ShowMacros()<CR>
command! sm call ShowMacros()`
This is the original post where I wrote the function similar to the above.
The OP asked, "is there a way to attach some sort of documentation that would display with the macro to explain what it is for?"
I have found VI / VIM macros extremely obtuse to understand even a week after I've written them, so I heartily support the idea of documentation. I have a suggestion for that, in two parts.
First is the process of documenting the macro in your .vimrc. I've developed the following .vimrc comment format that helps me understand, a week or a year or more later, what a macro is supposed to be doing. E.g.:
"
"= GENERIC CLIPBOARD YANK <F2>y (Y for Yank)
"= Yank the entire contents of the file into the clipboard; quit without saving.
"
"define F2 followed by y to be:
"| Go to line 1.
"| | From there, into the * buffer (system clipboard),
"| | | yank to the end of the file.
"| | | | Go to sleep for 1 second (to allow the clipboard to be updated).
"| | | | | Quit without saving the file.
"| | | | | |
map #2y 1G"*yG1gs:q!<CR>
"-------"-"-"-"--"------
Second, I am imagining that Jakub's ShowMacros() function above could be modified to grep a specific set of Help lines for each macro that would be in the file along with the definition, much the way the above command-line breakdown is attached to the definition, that would provide the needed User Help.
I've flagged two lines above with "= at the beginning of each, so that they can become the User Help. Then Jakub's grep command would search for "^\"= ". Here's the command I used. I'm not sure if the -E for Extended Regular Expressions is needed and the -B 1 is a nice touch to include one line previous to a matching sequence, so here I have an explicitly empty comment line.
In my vimrc, I only needed one backslash, for the initial parsing of the definitions. Here's the line, replacing the one in Jakub's function definition above:
exe 'r!' . 'grep -B 1 -E "^\"= " ~/.vimrc'
Thanks to Jakub's hint, I now can generate help from my .vimrc in pretty much exactly the way the OP is asking for. I've been using vi since 1983, so I'm pretty stoked.
Thanks Jakub!
IHTH,
August