Re: HOW TO GIVE A DEFAULT TO A TRULY INTERACTIVE FUNCTION

[Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de>]

gnuist006@hotmail.com (gnuist006) writes:
[...]
> They say emacs is customizable. OK it is if you only want to do what
> it
> can do, and never try to do what you want to do.

I don't understand this.

[...]
> I prefer it display the default 5 in the message and there is
> SINGLE instance of 5 in the function. ie using defaultval.

AFAIK you can not get this with the spec-string to `interactive', but
there is nothing wrong with an explicit call to `read-from-minibuffer'
in this case. 

(read-from-minibuffer "Hello: " (number-to-string 5))
 
The return value is a string. I only glanced quickly over this thread
(sorry for this!), but I seem to recall that someone already told how
to check if a string contains the decimal representation of a number.

To repeat this until the input is a valid number, use `while'.

[untested:]

(while (not (string-match 
              "^[-0-9]+\\(?:\\\\.[0-9]\\)*$"
              (setq my-number
                (read-from-minibuffer "Hello: "
                                      (number-to-string 5))))))

... or something less cluttered ...

> If this cannot do this and you were all lying to yourself that
> emacs is customizable, infinitely extensible, then I atleast want
> quick fix for this.

I can not parse this.

    -- Oliver

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