Emacs Function of the Day: propertize

sneakin — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 21:23:12 -0700

Today's Emacs function of the day is propertize. It allows you to format text in ways that are plain pretty. As an example, here's code to insert "Gah! I'm green!" into a buffer:

(insert (propertize "Gah! I'm green!" 'face '(:foreground "#00ff00" :background "#005000")))

Random Emacs Functions

sneakin — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 02:41:28 -0700

I created some functions for Emacs because I really didn't want to do this stuff by hand. I have here four functions: count-occurences, line-empty?, unfill-region, unfill-buffer. You can either read the rest of this post, or click here to get the file.

Here's the code for each:

count-occurences

(defun count-occurences (string)
  "Counts the number of occurences of STRING in the buffer."
  (interactive (list (read-string "Count: ")))
  (let ((point (point))
	(counter 0))
    (beginning-of-buffer)
    (loop with pos = t
	  until (not (search-forward string (point-max) t))
	  do (incf counter))
    (goto-char point)
    (message (format "%d occurences" counter))
    counter))

line-empty?

(defun line-empty? ()
  "Returns true if the current line is empty."
  (eq (line-beginning-position) (line-end-position)))

unfill-region

(defun unfill-region (min max)
  "Joins the lines in the paragraphs inside a
region defined by MIN and MAX. If this is called
interactively then the mark and point are used to
define the region."
  (interactive (list (mark)
		     (point)))
  (if (> min max)
      (let ((temp min))
	(setq min max)
	(setq max temp)))
  (goto-char min)
  (message (format "%d %d" min max))
  (let ((empty nil))
    (message "Unfilling...")
    (loop with end = min
	  always (< end max)
	  do
	  (setq end (line-end-position))
	  (setq empty (line-empty?))
	  (next-line 1)
	  (if (not empty)
	      (if (not (line-empty?))
		  (join-line))))
    (message "Unfilled")))

unfill-buffer