Re: Beginning Hobbyist Programmer Question

[Andreas Röhler]

Am Donnerstag, 17. Januar 2008 23:04 schrieb signups17@gmail.com:
> I'm
> starting with Python and I've built a few scripts that have increased
> my productivity tremendously at work, doing a lot of data crunching,
> etc.

Beside of regexp search and replace,
font-highlighting--where all valid editors are able
to--I see Emacs strength in integration to another
processes whose output might be edited or handled
afterwards.

For example you may get the output of the shell into
some buffer and editing it then. You may run
shell-commands directly on the buffers code.

Or browse the net with Emacs-w3m and have the output
ready for further editing, if not calling functions on
them.

With some Emacs-Lisp knowledge the tasks turn a lot
easier again. Because regexps tend to be complicated,
quite often it's faster to write a function addressing
the special case than relying at interactive regexp
search and replace alone.

With Emacs you may automatize this function-writing
again, using skeletons, templates etc.

Not to forget key-board macros: Even if operating with
interactive regexp-search and replace sometimes it's
useful to record your steps for further repeats.

Andreas Röhler