Hi,
motivation: I was editing some Ansible files that are in
YAML syntax with yaml-mode
(
https://github.com/yoshiki/yaml-mode). I found the YAML
type of quoting rather confusing so I mused that there
should be a yaml-yank-quoted function that, with no prefix
argument, inserts the last kill in double quotes, with a
prefix argument, inserts the last kill as a multiline block,
etc. so that I could edit the "value" in another buffer,
kill it there and yank it properly quoted in my YAML buffer.
Ideally, there would be a corresponding
kill-yaml-value-at-point function (or an extension to
thing-at-point) so that I could copy the "value" dequoted to
that other buffer. And org-mode has that nice feature
org-edit-special (C-c ') for inter alia #+BEGIN_SRC blocks
where you can edit the block's contents in another buff-
er--so why couldn't there be an equivalent for yaml-mode?
Thinking of other modes, I recalled that I have often yearn-
ed for a way to insert/edit a properly quoted string liter-
al, whether in SQL or shell scripts that call sed or perl,
just like I can in emacs-lisp-mode with prin1 et al. And
Emacs has already a notion for what a string literal looks
like in different modes by marking them up with
font-lock-string-face.
And, to complete the circle, #+BEGIN_SRC blocks in org-mode
could be interpreted as just another form of string literal.
So Emacs seems to be missing (to be bikeshedded):
- an (optional) function foo-quote for each major mode so
that (insert (foo-quote (read-string "String: ")))
inserts the input properly quoted in the current buffer,
- an (optional) function foo-read-string-literal-at-point
that returns the dequoted string literal at point, and
- a function bound to C-c ' that edits the string literal at
point just like org-mode does (if the major mode provides
the necessary foo-quote and
foo-read-string-literal-at-point functions).
Now this suggestion appears to be so obvious that it is
either already implemented or could not work :-). Comments?
Tim
Locked
