Re: Emacs Lisp Programming Questions

[Kevin Rodgers]

clint.laskowski wrote:
> Hello, gnu.emacs.help. I have a few questions about programming in
> Emacs Lisp. I hope you can help. Here they are:
>
> 1. Is this a good place to ask questions about programming in Emacs
> Lisp, especially with regards to text processing? If there's a better
> place, I'd appreciate knowing.
>
> 2. I want to write an interactive Elisp program to remove sequential
> duplicate lines from a buffer. This buffer is not sorted, and it
> should not be sorted. The program should simply look for two
> sequential lines that are identical, delete one, and then move on to
> the next line and do it over until it reaches the end of the buffer.
>
> BUT, I do not want the answer to this problem (i.e., I don't want an
> Elisp answer) ... I want hints on how to program it. I want to learn
> the answer myself, if possible.
>
> Any ideas or pointers?

Start by writing a keyboard macro that does what you want.  Then you
can translate the commands invoked interactively into function calls.

Note that you can search for sequential duplicate lines using a
regular expression.  So write a keyboard macro that removes just
1 (the next) such duplicate line -- it will be easy to wrap that
function call into a while loop that processes the whole buffer.

--
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA