Re: simple useful functions

[Tak Ota]

Thanks for the quick feedback.

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:39:38 -0700: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Tak Ota writes:
>  > If you think the following two functions are universally useful please
>  > consider incorporating them in simple.el or any appropriate package.
>  > If not disregard.
>  > 
>  > -Tak
>  > 
>  > (defun collect-string (regexp &optional num)
>  >   "Collect strings of REGEXP (or optional NUM paren) from the
>  > current buffer into a collection buffer."
> 
> What does this do that M-x occur doesn't do?  Could it be added to
> occur or to occur-mode?

I don't think you can perform M-1 M-x collect-string with an input
string of (defun \([^ ]+\)

It's handy to collect function names from source code or make a list
of image URLs from a given HTML file and so on.

Correct me if I'm wrong.  To my understanding occur is like running
grep to the current buffer while collect-string is running a special
case of sed or awk to the current buffer.

>  > (defun source (script &optional shell keep-current-directory)
>  >   "Source the specified shell script.
>  > Source the shell SCRIPT and import the environment into this
>  > emacs.  The optional SHELL specifies the shell other than the
>  > default `shell-file-name'.  When KEEP-CURRENT-DIRECTORY is nil,
>  > which is the default, the current directory is temporarily
>  > changed to the directory where the script resides while sourcing
>  > the script."
> 
> Probably this should be in the "shell-" namespace.

I agree.  That makes sense.

> I can see why the side effect of importing the environment might be
> useful, but I think that should be explicit in the name.
> 
>  >     (call-process shell nil t nil "-c" (concat "source " script "; 
> printenv"))
> 
> Isn't "." rather than "source" the portable idiom here?

You are correct.  "." is better.

-Tak