Re: New to elisp, learning by doing

[Ehud Karni]

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On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 08:16:51 +0100, kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de wrote:
> 
> > My goal in elisp is a .el that writes a table of contents from HTML
> > headers. The program would search for header tags in the buffer beginning
> > at point and write them in order one under the other.
> 
> I would collect the header tags and/or their contents in a list of
> strings, I think.  Then, after reaching the end of the buffer, I'd
> write them out near the beginning of the buffer.
> 
> (let ((toc nil))
>   (goto-char (point-max))
>   (while (re-search-backward REGEXP nil t)
>     (setq toc (cons TOC-ENTRY toc)))
>   INSERT-TOC)

I would do it with strings in a straight forward logic:

(let ((toc "")   ;; this the same as nil (but gives its usage intent)
      (RGXP "<[hH][1-6]>.*</[hH][1-6]>"))
   (goto-char (point-min))
   (while (re-search-forward RGXP nil t)
          (setq toc (concat toc (match-string 0) "\n")))
   (goto-char (point-min))
   (insert toc))

Please note:
1. The search will not cross lines (it will not find a header if the
   opening tag is on one line and the closing tag on another line).
2. The search does check that the opening and closing tags are the 
   same level (e.g. <H1> .... </H3>).

If you want to overcome these problem its is better to do the search
in 2 steps, finding the opening tag and THEN searching its MATCHING
closing tag.

Ehud.


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