manipulating abbreviation mode hooks

[Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure I'll be able to explain what I am trying to do but I'll 
give it a shot nonetheless. I wrote some abbreviations for the c++ mode 
(e.g. `for' expands to the entire for loop construct, if..else, ...). 
However when ever I use any of those abbrevs within a comment, it still 
expands to the loop.

 From the info node, "(elisp)Top:: > *Note Abbrevs:: > Abbrev Expansion" 
I got the hint to use `abbrev-expand-functions' hook. To start out 
simple, I tried to implement this for shell-script mode abbrev table, 
and the text-mode abbrev table.

So in a scratch buffer I tried this,

> (defun foo ()
>   (interactive)
>   (if (not (save-excursion
> 	     (and
> 	      (forward-line 0)
> 	      (eq (char-after) ?#))))
>       (print "src")
>     (let ((local-abbrev-table text-mode-abbrev-table))
>       (print "comments")
>       (funcall 'expand-abbrev))
>     ))

This worked as expected, my text mode abbreviations were expanded on a 
line starting with #, but didn't expand otherwise.

But when I put the following in my ~/.emacs, I get no such behaviour.

> (defun my-shell-script-mode-abbrev-expand-function ()
>   (if (not (save-excursion
> 	     (forward-line 0)
> 	     (eq (char-after) ?#)))
>       (funcall 'expand-abbrev)
>     (let ((local-abbrev-table text-mode-abbrev-table))
>       (funcall 'expand-abbrev))))
>
> (add-hook 'shell-script-mode-hook
> 	  '(lambda ()
> 	     (add-hook 'abbrev-expand-functions
> 		       'my-shell-script-mode-abbrev-expand-function
> 		       nil t)))


Once this is solved, my second question is how do I implement this for 
c++-mode? I can't figure out how to match to `//' or a `/* ... */' 
block. I'm a newbie in lisp, so a little guidance would be very 
appreciated. :)

TIA
-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.