Favorite Hacks in Emacs

[jaschwartz]

While I have come across a few very cool hacks in emacs, I'm always in the mood to learn a few more. What tricks do you commonly use or hacks that have helped you?

[Joost]

Couple of things from the top of my head:

M-x rgrep recursive grep. Very useful for coding in general.

M-x compile also works for perl programs, with error file/line navigation, like rgrep.

Sepia is pretty cool.

Version control: psvn (M-x svn-status) is good for SVN. GIT's own git.el is OK, but there might be something better.

[artist]

M-x org-mode
I export the lists to HTML or Freemind.

Here is a good survey of such features. Also see the most useful ones.

[Porculus]

shell-command-on-region. With a prefix argument it replaces the region with the shell command's output. Great way to run Perl one-liners on whatever you're editing!

Also, align-regexp. Ideal for picky types who want a bunch of assignments to line up on the =. ;)

[juster]

that reminds me! I forgot cperl-mode's C-M-| for lining up stuff. I use that alot.

Just don't miss and hit backspace in X windows...

[Your Mother]

I hope these are pasted right.

(global-set-key "\M-3" 'script-blank)
(global-set-key "\M-4" 'subroutine-blank)

(define-skeleton script-blank
  "Insert a blank script."
  nil
  "#!/usr/bin/perl
\n
use strict;
use warnings;
# et cetera... Looooooong list of modules which
# are easier to cut when unused than type otherwise.
\n
_
\n
\n
"exit 0;


__DATA__
"
  )
;;--------------------------------------------------------------------
(define-skeleton subroutine-blank
  "Insert a blank sub."
  nil
"sub " _ " {"
\n
\n
\n
\n
"}"
  )

[shem]

(defun cw_save_check ()
  "Run the Perl syntax checker on this buffer after saving."
  (cond
   ((equal mode-name "CPerl")
    (progn
      (save-current-buffer
        (set-buffer (get-buffer-create "*Perl cw output*"))
        (erase-buffer))
      (call-process-region (point-min) (point-max) "/usr/bin/perl" nil
+ "*Perl cw output*" n
il "-c -I.")
      (save-current-buffer
        (set-buffer "*Perl cw output*")
        (cond
         ((equal (buffer-string) "- syntax OK\n") (message "%s" "Synta
+x OK"))
         (t (message "%s" "The program has errors."))))))
   (t nil)))

(add-hook 'after-save-hook 'cw_save_check)

[juster]

I use C-c C-h p aka M-x cperl-perldoc to lookup module and builtin docs but maybe I should try Sepia! I just recently started using 'Emacs Got Git' (egg) and it's pretty cool.

[monarch]

<Ctrl>-x, <enter>, f

Changes encoding of a file (useful when converting to/from DOS/Unix line formats).

e.g. I might be on a Unix system and I need to create a MS-DOS compatible text file, I type <ctrl>-x, <enter>, f and type "undecided-DOS".

Or I might be on a Win32 machine and want to save a file in unix format for transfer to a remote system as a shell script. <ctrl>-x, <enter>, f and type "undecided-unix".

[jplindstrom]

Libs

• org-mode
• ediff-buffers / ediff-regions-linewise (bet you didn't know about the last one)
• SVN integration, with ediff (awesome)
• Keyboard macros
• PerlySense <-- on top of cperl-mode
• project-root
• sql-mysql - buffer
• yasnippet

Snippets:

;; Display trailing whitespace (use a very very light color)
(defun my-turn-on-show-trailing-whitespace ()
  "Set `show-trailing-whitespace' to t."
  (setq show-trailing-whitespace t))

(mapc (lambda (hook)
        (add-hook hook 'my-turn-on-show-trailing-whitespace))
      '(cperl-mode-hook))

[morgon]

Don't listen to these people.

They follow a dangerous cult.

I'll post "favourite hacks in vim" soon :-)

[metaperl]

:)

Perl and Emacs are very similar - kitchen sink philosophy.

VI falls in line with Unix toolbox philosophy.

RDBMSes are a similar software prison to Perl and Emacs.

Never forget: the car is in the cdr, not the cdr in the car

[Bloodnok]

You beat me to it morgon :-D

When a sysadmin on Solaris, my favourite emacs hack was to remove the damn thing - one of 2 scenarios kept recurring (both directly traceable to emacs):

• filling /tmp ... causing kernel panic.
• process table filling up - preventing any other operation - self-evidently a hard reset was always required as the fix

[Nkuvu]

I've seen this in a few places, so you are probably already aware of it:


;;run the current perl program
(defun run-perl ()
  (interactive "*")
  (setq perl-buffer-name buffer-file-name)
  (shell)
  (setq perl-run-command "perl ")
  (insert perl-run-command)
  (insert perl-buffer-name)
)

(global-set-key [f7] 'run-perl)

But I have to say that I don't do many perl-specific things from within emacs. I'd rather jump over to a command window instead (somehow the green letters on black background mean "shell" to me a lot more than an emacs window, and black text on a white background means "write code here").

[LanX]

> What tricks do you commonly use or hacks that have helped you?

Humor helps a lot!
...and of course C-x M-c M-butterfly 8 )

[skangas]

I'm sure you've heard about it already, but I like outline-minor-mode. Not at all essential, but still very nice to have sometimes.

CPerlModeOutlineMode at EmacsWiki.

[joojar]

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs-en/PerlLanguage
http://nschum.de/src/emacs/ # highlight-parenthese, company-mode, window-numbering-mode
http://coderepos.org/share/browser/lang/elisp # perl-completion
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Ye_Wenbin # some stuff for Perl
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CPerlAutoName # cperl-auto-name


modes: cperl-mode, flymake, flymake-extensions, yasnippet, org-mode,..

REPL: in Sepia and PDE we have REPL's, but nice REPL is Stylish, but need perl 5.10 and Devel::REPL from jrockway's repositary (or test with Devel::REPL from CPAN, may be it already works), see screencast

;; To highlight a region between parenthesis
(setq show-paren-delay 0 show-paren-style 'expression)
(show-paren-mode 1)
(set-face-background 'show-paren-match-face "#efedd2")

Anyway emacswiki and emacs planet -- our friends

[perlsyntax]

I found a better perl tool for emacs call Sepia and it have everything