not-instantly-obvious method to get output of shell command to variable

not-instantly-obvious method to get output of shell command to variable

[Emanuel Berg]

Just wrote this to load the configuration files from
.emacs.

Did spend some (pleasant) time getting the output of
the shell (zsh) command "ls" into the variable `files'
(check it out).

Perhaps that is yet another thing to add for everyone
to use from the holster?

I agree silly configuration and cool hacks shouldn't be
added (unless they are really cool) but such basic
building blocks are great. It boosts creativity if
people don't have to get stuck on details all the time
when they want to do creative stuff.

(let ((files (with-temp-buffer
               (call-process-shell-command
                "ls ~/.emacs.d/emacs-init/**/*.elc ~/.emacs-no-bc"
                nil ; no INFILE
                t)  ; BUFFER (t = current buffer, i.e. the temp one)
               (buffer-substring (point-min) (point-max)) )))
  (dolist (f (split-string files)) (load-file f)) )
  
-- 
underground experts united

Re: not-instantly-obvious method to get output of shell command to variable

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>
> Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 00:39:48 +0200
> 
> Just wrote this to load the configuration files from
> .emacs.
> 
> Did spend some (pleasant) time getting the output of
> the shell (zsh) command "ls" into the variable `files'
> (check it out).
> 
> Perhaps that is yet another thing to add for everyone
> to use from the holster?

No need to add it, see below.

> (let ((files (with-temp-buffer
>                (call-process-shell-command
>                 "ls ~/.emacs.d/emacs-init/**/*.elc ~/.emacs-no-bc"
>                 nil ; no INFILE
>                 t)  ; BUFFER (t = current buffer, i.e. the temp one)
>                (buffer-substring (point-min) (point-max)) )))
>   (dolist (f (split-string files)) (load-file f)) )

Emacs has the shell-command-to-string function to do this.  No need to
roll your own.

We also have the find-lisp package that can recursively traverse
directories, so no need to employ zsh-specific features.

Re: not-instantly-obvious method to get output of shell command to variable

[Nicolas Richard]

>   (dolist (f (split-string files)) (load-file f)) )

If you have filenames with spaces in them, this will fail. 

-- 
Nico.

Re: not-instantly-obvious method to get output of shell command to variable

[Emanuel Berg]

Nicolas Richard <theonewiththeevillook@yahoo.fr>
writes:

>> (dolist (f (split-string files)) (load-file f)) )
>
> If you have filenames with spaces in them, this will
> fail.

Of course I don't have that.

-- 
underground experts united