Re: [ELISP] How do you turn an array of chars into a string?

[pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)]

Joseph Brenner <doom@kzsu.stanford.edu> writes:

> The elisp manual has this example, using "kbd" to convert a (relatively)
> readable string into the "internal Emacs key representation":
>
>      (global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-\\") 'next-line)
>
>      (global-set-key [?\C-x ?\C-\\] 'next-line)
>
> What's the inverse of kbd?  

> What if you want to convert an array-of-chars
> into a string?

These are two radically different things.   

The inverse of kbd doesn't convert an array of characters into a
string, it would produce a string containing a text describing in a
human readable form the keychoard sequence.

So what do you really want?



To convert a vector of characters to a string you could use:

(require 'cl) ; all the good stuff is always in there!

(coerce [?c ?a ?t] 'string) --> "cat"

(concatenate 'string  "A " [?c ?a ?t] '(?  ?e ?a ?t ?s) " a mouse.")
--> "A cat eats a mouse."



To convert a vector of key chords into a human readable description of
it, I don't know.  But the command where-is seems to be knowing how to
do it, so let's read the source of where-is!  Here, we find a:
(mapconcat 'key-description keys ", ") therefore key-description might
be the right function.  Read the documentation.  Yes!  Notice how it
says nothing about converting vectors to string!!!

(key-description (kbd "C-x C-\\"))
 -->  "C-x C-\\"

(key-description (kbd "C-M-A-s-Z C-u 123 H-S-A-é")) 
 --> "A-C-M-s-z C-u 1 2 3 A-H-S-é"

Looks good...


> Things like this seem to work, but only for very simple chars:
>
>   (mapconcat 'string [?c ?a ?t] "")  ;; => "cat"

What is a non-simple character???


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/