Writing to buffer/file

[Michael Powe]

Hello,

I am writing a function in elisp to do the following:

open and read an .ini file
search the file for header lines of format [someheader]
put header value as key of hash
continue to search for string value (e.g., "profilename=.*")
add found string value to list which is set as value for the header key 
for each header, a small number of items will be added to the list
after reading through ini file and filling the hash:
open another buffer and write the contents of the hash to the buffer
write the buffer to file

Here is my function:

(defun extract-ini-settings ()
  (interactive)
  (let (myhash mybuff myfile header strmatch results output strvalues mylist)
        (setq myfile "c:\\share\\reports_default.ini")
        (setq myhash (make-hash-table :test 'equal))
        (setq mybuff (find-file myfile))
        (set-buffer mybuff)
        (setq strvalues "")
        (while
                (re-search-forward
                 "\\[customtableprofile[0-9]+\\]"
                 nil t)
          (when (match-string 0)
                (setq header (match-string 0))
                (puthash header '() myhash)
                (while 
                        (re-search-forward
                         "profilename=.*" nil t)
                  (when (match-string 0)
                        (setq strmatch (match-string 0))
                        (puthash header (cons strmatch (gethash header myhash)) 
myhash)))))
        (kill-buffer mybuff)
        (message (number-to-string (hash-table-count myhash)))
        (setq output "c:\\share\\reports_headers.txt")
        (setq results (find-file output))
        (set-buffer results)
        (point-min)
    ;; this works, i.e. writes the string to the `results' buffer
    ;; and each time I run the function, a new copy of the string
    ;; is appended to the buffer.
        (insert "Start of file\n")
        (point-max)
        (hash-to-list (myhash mylist))
        (insert mylist)
        ))

Here is the helper function hash-to-list:

(defun hash-to-list (hashtable mylist)
  "Return a list that represent the hashtable."
    (maphash (lambda (kk vv) (setq mylist (cons (list kk vv) mylist))) 
hashtable)
    mylist)

I am evidently grossly misunderstanding the mechanism for writing to
file. The (message ...) to write the hash count to *Messages* writes
112, which is the correct count of header lines for my test file.  When
I inserted a (message ...) in the loop for capturing the headers, they
were all written as expected to the *Messages* buffer.  

I don't know if I'm a victim of scope rules, or my data capture is f'ed
up. Or what.  I sort of took this up as a challenge after reading an
article the other day comparing perl vs elisp for text processing, in
which elisp was given the nod as the superior language.  I could write
this text processor pretty easily in Python.  But it would not be nearly
as compact as what I have so far.  True, it would work.

Here is a sample of the .ini file text:

;; [customtableprofile0]
;; column0label = %%genLab_SessionViews%%
;; column0measureid = Visits
;; description = %%CT_SD_Activity_by_DMA%%
;; dimension0guid = iQTtYWnnPQ5
;; dimension0label = %%CD_On_Site_Search_Phrase%%
;; profilename = On-Site Search Phrases Performance
;; profileid = Q5DJTuwS5e6

(Not preceded by comment markers in the original.)

Any help in correcting my errors would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

mp

-- 
Michael Powe            michael@trollope.org            Naugatuck CT USA
"Mutable stateful objects is the new spaghetti code." - Rich Hickey