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Abbrevs are usually expanded by certain interactive commands,
including self-insert-command. This section
describes the subroutines used in writing such commands, as well
as the variables they use for communication.
This function returns the symbol representing the abbrev
named abbrev. It returns nil if that
abbrev is not defined. The optional second argument
table is the abbrev table in which to look it up.
If table is nil, this function tries
first the current buffer’s local abbrev table, and
second the global abbrev table.
This function returns the string that abbrev
would expand into (as defined by the abbrev tables used for
the current buffer). It returns nil if
abbrev is not a valid abbrev. The optional
argument table specifies the abbrev table to use,
as in abbrev-symbol.
This command expands the abbrev before point, if any. If
point does not follow an abbrev, this command does nothing.
To do the expansion, it calls the function that is the value
of the abbrev-expand-function variable, with no
arguments, and returns whatever that function does.
The default expansion function returns the abbrev symbol
if it did expansion, and nil otherwise. If the
abbrev symbol has a hook function that is a symbol whose
no-self-insert property is non-nil,
and if the hook function returns nil as its
value, then the default expansion function returns
nil, even though expansion did occur.
This function inserts the abbrev expansion of
abbrev, replacing the text between
start and end. If
start is omitted, it defaults to point.
name, if non-nil, should be the
name by which this abbrev was found (a string); it is used to
figure out whether to adjust the capitalization of the
expansion. The function returns abbrev if the
abbrev was successfully inserted, otherwise it returns
nil.
This command marks the current location of point as the
beginning of an abbrev. The next call to
expand-abbrev will use the text from here to
point (where it is then) as the abbrev to expand, rather than
using the previous word as usual.
First, this command expands any abbrev before point,
unless arg is non-nil.
(Interactively, arg is the prefix argument.) Then
it inserts a hyphen before point, to indicate the start of
the next abbrev to be expanded. The actual expansion removes
the hyphen.
When this is set non-nil, an abbrev entered
entirely in upper case is expanded using all upper case.
Otherwise, an abbrev entered entirely in upper case is
expanded by capitalizing each word of the expansion.
The value of this variable is a buffer position (an
integer or a marker) for expand-abbrev to use as
the start of the next abbrev to be expanded. The value can
also be nil, which means to use the word before
point instead. abbrev-start-location is set to
nil each time expand-abbrev is
called. This variable is also set by
abbrev-prefix-mark.
The value of this variable is the buffer for which
abbrev-start-location has been set. Trying to
expand an abbrev in any other buffer clears
abbrev-start-location. This variable is set by
abbrev-prefix-mark.
This is the abbrev-symbol of the most recent
abbrev expanded. This information is left by
expand-abbrev for the sake of the
unexpand-abbrev command (see
Expanding Abbrevs in The GNU Emacs
Manual).
This is the location of the most recent abbrev expanded.
This contains information left by expand-abbrev
for the sake of the unexpand-abbrev command.
This is the exact expansion text of the most recent abbrev
expanded, after case conversion (if any). Its value is
nil if the abbrev has already been unexpanded.
This contains information left by expand-abbrev
for the sake of the unexpand-abbrev command.
The value of this variable is a function that
expand-abbrev will call with no arguments to do
the expansion. The function can do anything it wants before
and after performing the expansion. It should return the
abbrev symbol if expansion took place.
The following sample code shows a simple use of
abbrev-expand-function. It assumes that
foo-mode is a mode for editing certain files in
which lines that start with ‘#’ are
comments. You want to use Text mode abbrevs for those lines. The
regular local abbrev table, foo-mode-abbrev-table is
appropriate for all other lines. See Standard
Abbrev Tables, for the definitions of
local-abbrev-table and
text-mode-abbrev-table. See Advising
Functions, for details of add-function.
(defun foo-mode-abbrev-expand-function (expand)
(if (not (save-excursion (forward-line 0) (eq (char-after) ?#)))
;; Performs normal expansion.
(funcall expand)
;; We're inside a comment: use the text-mode abbrevs.
(let ((local-abbrev-table text-mode-abbrev-table))
(funcall expand))))
(add-hook 'foo-mode-hook
#'(lambda ()
(add-function :around (local 'abbrev-expand-function)
#'foo-mode-abbrev-expand-function)))
Next: Standard Abbrev Tables, Previous: Abbrev Files, Up: Abbrevs [Contents][Index]