RE: How to prompt for string?

[Dirk-Jan.Binnema]

You can use 'interactive', which uses to some 'magic' chars to specify
what to prompt for.

  (interactive "r\nsSummary:")

The 'r' will get you the region (begin and and), and 's' will get you
a string. The function with the interactive when then be called as
if it were called with these parameters.

My Example:

;; remove parts of old email, and replace with [snip: ... ]
(defun snip-mail (r-begin r-end summary)
  (interactive "r\nsSummary:")
  (let ((line-num (count-lines r-begin r-end)))
    (delete-region r-begin r-end)
    (insert (format "[snip%s (%d line%s)]\n" 
              (if (= 0 (length summary)) "" (concat ": " summary))
              line-num 
              (if (= line-num 1) "" "s")))))


Best wishes,
Dirk.