Re: replacing a function with another one

[lee]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> (defadvice hi-lock-set-file-patterns (after my-test-obtain-patterns)
>>   ...
>>   (ad-deactivate 'hi-lock-set-file-patterns)
> [...]
>> (defun my-test ()
>>   ...
>>   (ad-activate 'hi-lock-set-file-patterns)
>
> I recommend you don't use ad-activate and ad-deactivate (among other
> reasons because they activate/deactivate all advices applied to the
> function rather than only the one you know about; but also because they
> hide the existence of an advice).
>
> Instead, use an auxiliary variable, e.g.

Hm, I have experimented with variables and found that things don´t work
when the variables are local.  But then, I can´t get add-advice to work,
not even with global variables.  It´s too complicated, and the
documentation is not understandable at all.

It also seems that it is not possible at all to make a mode on top of
hi-lock-mode which does what I want.  Variables have to be local per
buffer, and with that, it´s not possible to read patterns from different
buffers because the variables change because buffers must be switched to
read the patterns.

Perhaps I can fork hi-lock.el and somehow make it work with multiple
buffers, but I doubt it.

> BTW, I recommend you then merge my-set-patterns-in-original-buffer and
> original-buffer, so the advice is always active but only does something
> if original-buffer is non-nil.

That doesn´t work with global variables because for one buffer, the
original-buffer may be nil when patterns are not read from another
buffer.

> Also, use with-current-buffer rather than pop-to-buffer (pop-to-buffer
> has *many* side-effects, so using it in an advice is a recipe for
> disaster):

ok

>                 ;; FIXME: usually from Lisp we should call find-file-noselect,
>                 ;; but I don't know what's the intention here.
>               (find-file filename)

The intention was to load the file so that hi-lock-mode reads the
patterns from it.  I simply didn´t know what else to use.  It would be
nice if things like this would be mentioned in the documentation ...


-- 
Knowledge is volatile and fluid.  Software is power.