Re: Can I use Emacs as pipe-thru formatter?

[Oliver Scholz]

Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com> writes:

> Emacs doesn't read and write stdin/stdout, so it can't be used as a filter
> in a pipeline.  

Well, indeed you can not get a buffer from stdin (AFAICS). But you do
have some limited options. `print' for example prints to stdout in
batch-mode and `read' reads from stdin.

emacs -q --batch --eval '(print "hello")'

emacs -q --batch --eval '(princ (progn (insert initial-scratch-message) 
(buffer-substring (point-min) (point-max))))'

echo "\"lirum larum\"" | emacs -q --batch --eval '(message (read))'

Of course also:

echo '(print "Hello")' | emacs -q --batch --eval '(eval (read))'

There is even some interactivity possible:

emacs -q --batch --eval '(progn (find-file "~/.emacs") (if (y-or-n-p "Shall I 
print your .emacs? ") (print (buffer-substring (point-min) (point-max))) (print 
"O.k. Bye.")))'

    Oliver 
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