Re: help: howto call ediff from elisp, interactive and multiple args ...

[Thierry Volpiatto]

Peter Daum <gator_ml@yahoo.de> writes:

> Sorry, I couldn't find an appropriate subject line:
>
> I have to compare many similar binary files and the best tool I could
> find so far for this purpose is a combination of emacs, hexl-mode and
> ediff. Because this involves far too much typing, I am trying to write a
> little lisp function to set up everything. I already know several ways
> how not to do this ;-)
>
> (defun hexl-ediff (file1 file2)
>   "hexl-find 2 files and run ediff on them"
>   (interactive "fFile 1:" "fFile2:")
>   (hexl-find-file file1)
>   (let*
>       (
>        (buffer1 (last-buffer))
>        (bn1 (buffer-name buffer1))
>        (void (hexl-find-file file2))
>        (buffer2 (last-buffer))
>        (bn2 (buffer-name buffer2))
>        (void (message "b1: %s b2: %s" bn1 bn2))
>        )
>     (ediff-buffers bn1 bn2)
>     ))
>
> There are several problems with this:
>
> 1) I could not find a way how to interactively call this with 2 files.
> I'll get prompted for the 1st file and then I run into an error about
> the wrong #args without any chance to enter the 2nd file name
> 2) More severe: I could not come up with any reliable way how to get the
> names of the buffers that the calls to hexl-find-file created (the
> desperate attempt with "last-buffer" will return "*Completions*" ;-)
>
> Any ideas?


(defun hexl-ediff (file1 file2)
  "hexl-find 2 files and run ediff on them"
  (interactive "fFile 1: \nfFile2:")
  (let ((buffer1 (progn
                     (hexl-find-file file1)
                     (buffer-name (current-buffer))))
        (buffer2 (progn
                     (hexl-find-file file2)
                     (buffer-name (current-buffer)))))
    (ediff-buffers buffer1 buffer2)))

> Regards,
>                             Peter
>
>
>

-- 
A+ Thierry
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