Re: No copy-rectangle-as-kill?

[Mathias Dahl]

"Chris F.A. Johnson" <cfajohnson@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, 01 Jun 2005 at 09:50 GMT, Hattuari wrote:
>> Am I overlooking something, or is there no command in Emacs to copy a
>> rectangle into the last killed rectangle "special place" without also
>> removing it from the current buffer?  I gotta tell y'all, XEmacs has better
>> rectangle support than Emacs. ;)
>
> (defun copy-rectangle-as-kill ()
>     (interactive)
>     (save-excursion
>     (kill-rectangle (mark) (point))
>     (exchange-point-and-mark)
>     (yank-rectangle)))

I like this better:

(defun copy-rectangle-as-kill (start end)
  "Copy rectangle with corners at point and mark; save as last killed one.
Calling from program, supply two args START and END, buffer positions.
But in programs you might prefer to use `extract-rectangle'."
  (interactive "r")
  (setq killed-rectangle (extract-rectangle start end))
  (message "Rectangle saved."))

It does not feel right to me messing with the buffer just to get a
copy of some of it.

/Mathias