Starting any Emacs buffer with a .c extension with a template - emacs

Question

I write a lot of short throwaway programs, and one of the things I find myself doing repeatedly is typing out code like
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void){
}
To save some tendon hits I was wondering if it was possible to insert a simple template above whenever I create a buffer with the extension of .c.

Answer 1

Put somthing like this in .emacs
(define-skeleton c-throwaway
"Throwaway C skeleton"
nil
"#include <stdio.h>\n"
"#include <stdlib.h>\n"
"\n"
"int main(void){\n"
"\n"
"}\n")
And eval (C-x C-e) it. That'll give you a
function (c-throwaway) that inserts your template.
To get this inserting automaticly you'll need to activate
auto-insert-mode. Once you do this you can describe-variable
auto-mode-alist and read up on how emacs does some of its open
file magic. Then define auto-insert-alist to apply it when you
find a new file.
Maybe something like this
(define-auto-insert "\\.\\([Cc]\\|cc\\|cpp\\)\\'" 'c-throwaway)
More detail:
Auto Insert Mode
Autotype

Answer 2

I use template.el from http://emacs-template.sourceforge.net/
Basically, I create a file called ~/.templates/TEMPLATE.c, and then that gets inserted into my .c files. You can also use special markup and arbitrary lisp expressions, if you don't just want to dump text into the buffer. I use this feature so that Perl modules start with "package Foo::Bar" when they are named lib/Foo/Bar.pm. Very handy.

Answer 3

The following function will ask for a filename and then insert a file and change to c-mode. The only problem is that you have to call this function to create the buffer instead of your normal way.
(defun defaultCtemplate(cfilename)
(interactive "sFilename: ")
(switch-to-buffer (generate-new-buffer cfilename))
(insert-file-contents "~/Desktop/test.c")
(c-mode)
)
P.S Thanks for the question, now I know how to do this for myself :)

Answer 4

You can also use the YASnippet template system for Emacs, which just has a builtin template called main. So while writing your code, just type main, hit TAB, and it will expand it to the form you want. (And you can always write your own snippet templates.)

Answer 5

I use following code to create files from templates. There are several templates, that are substitutes with actual file names, etc

Answer 6

This question is old, but this might help someone. Looking at this site, I copied and pasted this part into my .emacs file:
;; automatic insertion of templates
(require 'autoinsert)
(auto-insert-mode) ;;; Adds hook to find-files-hook
(setq auto-insert-directory "~/Documents/Emacs/templates/") ;;; *NOTE* Trailing slash important
;;(setq auto-insert-query nil) ;;; If you don't want to be prompted before insertion
(define-auto-insert "\.tex" "my-latex-template.tex")
(define-auto-insert "\.cpp" "my-cpp-template.cpp")
(define-auto-insert "\.h" "my-cpp-template.h")
After changing the directory and filenames, it works perfectly.

Answer 7

Here's how I do it (because I didn't know about auto insert mode :-)
(require 'tempo)
(setq c-new-buffer-template
'(
"#include <stdio.h>\n"
"#include <stdlib.h>\n"
"\n"
"int main(void){\n"
"\n"
"}\n"
))
(defun my-c-style ()
"My editing style for .c files."
(c-mode)
(if (zerop (buffer-size))
(tempo-template-c-skeleton)))
(setq auto-mode-alist
(cons '("\\.c\\'" . my-c-style) auto-mode-alist))
(tempo-define-template "c-skeleton" c-new-buffer-template
nil
"Insert a skeleton for a .c document")

Answer 8

I use a combination of Defaultcontent.el and YASnippet.el. The former fills brand-new files with default content. The latter is a sort of lightweight code-gen macro thing. Key in "for" and hit TAB and the skeleton of a for loop is inserted. Etc. You can define your own snippets pretty easily. "swi TAB" gets you a complete switch statement. And so on.

Answer 9

yasnippet is good at expand template in your file, and is very easy to create your snippets.
auto-insert is good at fill a new file with template, but write your own template is hard. There is a great package yatemplate bridges the gap between YASnippet and auto-insert-mode, i can write auto-insert rules with YASnippet.