Re: Is there a plan to record kbd macro as elisp code?

[yzhh]

Juri Linkov <juri <at> jurta.org> writes:

> > I think what was expected was to first record a keyboard macro and later to
> > turn that into elisp code.
> 
> That's was exactly my first attempt when I tried to implement this feature.
> However, this approach doesn't work because a macro highly depends on its
> context, and will fail when repeating it in different buffers, modes, etc.

I agree. Keymap changes caused by mode/buffer changes DURING the recording
can messup the "translation". So I didn't try this in the first place :)

> > Another approach is to use a pre-command-hook to record the value of
> > `this-command' for each command run.
> 
> After failing with the first approach, I tried to do this, but this doesn't
> work because `this-command' doesn't record the arguments of the last
> command.  So when I added a new variable `this-command-args' that records
> the arguments of the command being executed, this approach produced
> good results.
> 
> Also I added a new variable `last-kbd-macro-commands', and a new command
> `insert-last-kbd-macro-commands' to convert the recorded commands with
> their arguments to a Lisp function.  A change in isearch was also required
> to convert all isearch subcommands into one search function.

This approach looks quite promising. I vote for this.

> Since yzhh doesn't want to post his code, I will post mine.
> I ask yzhh to comment on this code, compare with his own,
> and suggest further improvements:

Great work Juri!
I'm actually busy on work these days. As soon as I have time I'll investigate
your code and give any suggestion I can. Hope this will progress into something
in the emacs CVS.

And inspired by you and others, I post my code here.

Basically, I did these:
Add a variable (V)kbd-macro-command-history, insert commands into it on ervey
ocurrence of possible insertion into command-history (that's guarded by
record_flag), when defining-kbd-macro is on. So it's not complete. You have to
M-x eval-expression kbd-macro-command-history to see the recorded thing, in
reverse order. And its length is guarded by history-length.

    regards,
yzhh