Re: getting output from external process in a variable

[Kevin Rodgers]

Daan Hoogland wrote:

> H all,
>
> I'm doing some application programming in elisp. I read /etc/group with 
> grep and edit the temporary buffer with results. now I end up with 
> groupname:member1,member2 and I want it in a list:
> (list "groupname" (list "member1" "member2"))
> now I can edit the buffer to cantain the lisp expression and then 
> evaluate it like:
> (set 'var (list "groupname" (list "member1" "member2")))
> and use var. But I was wondering wether there was somewhere maybe an api 
> that can set a var to a region in the current buffer directly.


C-h v buffer-string
C-h v buffer-substring


> Am I understanding emacs and lisp here?
> Is there maybe a better/quicker solution?

I think so:

(let ((group-members (split-string (buffer-string) ":")))
  (list (car group-members) (split-string (cadr group-members) ",")))

--
Kevin Rodgers