Fixed width record mode?

Fixed width record mode?

[Sean LeBlanc]

I'm just wondering if there is any mode in Emacs in which you could 
supply the "schema" of a fixed-width record format and view, possibly 
edit, files of that type?

Re: Fixed width record mode?

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Sean LeBlanc <seanleblanc@gmail.com> writes:

> I'm just wondering if there is any mode in Emacs in which you could
> supply the "schema" of a fixed-width record format and view, possibly
> edit, files of that type?

To edit files of record, there's forms-mode.

It uses a separator bound to forms-field-sep to separate the various
fields in a record, and records are lines as per forward-line as used in
forms--goto-record.

However, it has a set of filter hooks: forms-read-file-filter
forms-write-file-filter forms-new-record-filter
forms-modified-record-filter, that could be used to transform between a
fixed-length record to a fields with separator line and back.  Those
hooks work on the whole buffer, so they would be able to insert lines
in addition to field separators too.




-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a
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