Re: yank without indentation?

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> Has anyone come up with a yank-without-indentation routine? Why am I
>> always killing multi-line text with enormous left-hand whitespace, and
>> wanting to yank it without that whitespace in place? Has anyone dealt
>> with this?
>
> This should do pretty much what you want.
>
> (defun yank-sans-indent (&optional arg)
>   "Like `yank', but remove indentation."
>   (interactive "*P")
>   (setq yank-window-start  (window-start)
>         this-command       t)
>   (push-mark (point))
>   (insert-for-yank (string-trim (current-kill (cond ((listp arg) 0)
>                                                     ((eq arg '-) -2)
>                                                     (t (1- arg))))))
>   (when (consp arg)
>     (goto-char (prog1 (mark t)
>                  (set-marker (mark-marker) (point) (current-buffer)))))
>   (when (eq this-command t) (setq this-command  'yank-sans-indent))
>   nil)
>
> (defun string-trim (string)
>   "Trim SPC and TAB chars from ends of STRING and each of its eols."
>   (let* ((start    (progn (string-match "\\`[ \t]*" string)
>                           (match-end 0)))
>          (end      (progn (string-match "[ \t]*\\'" string start)
>                           (match-beginning 0)))
>          (trimmed  (substring string start end)))
>     (replace-regexp-in-string "\\(\n\\)[ \t]+" "\\1" trimmed)))
>
> (global-set-key "\C-y" 'yank-sans-indent)
>
> (You can also bind `M-y' to a command that is `yank-pop' but with
> references to `yank' replaced by `yank-sans-indent'.)
>
> [If you want the string that is placed on the `kill-ring' to be the
> complete selected text, instead of that text trimmed to remove
> indentation, then you can use an alternative approach of placing
> a `yank-handler' property on the first character, and define a
> yank handler that trims the indenting whitespace at the time of
> insertion.]

Whoa, that was pretty intense -- I didn't know anything about yank
handlers or insert-for-yank, etc. As usual, what seems to be a
straightforward operation has a lot of stuff going on in the background!
Thanks a lot for this code, I'll probably end up using it or something
like it, though I'm also going to go learn about yank handlers first.

Thanks again,
E