function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

[Paul]

Hallo people.

(buffer-substring-no-properties (point) (mark)) on some part of an org 
buffer that contains a link returns the following example:

"while [[(some-link)][description]] does not"


Do You know a ready to use function that would return the following?:

"while description does not"

best regards,
Paul

Re: function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

[Alexis]

Paul <mafeuser@gmail.com> writes:

> (buffer-substring-no-properties (point) (mark)) on some part of 
> an org buffer that contains a link returns the following 
> example:
>
> "while [[(some-link)][description]] does not"
>
>
> Do You know a ready to use function that would return the 
> following?:
>
> "while description does not"

i'm not aware of any existing function that does this, so here's a 
function that's at least a start:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp

    (defun org-delinkify-region (start end) 
      "Replace all Org-style links within the region with only the 
    link description text, and return the result." 
      (interactive "r") (let ((text 
      (buffer-substring-no-properties start end))) 
        (with-temp-buffer 
          (insert text) (goto-char (point-min)) (while 
          (re-search-forward "\\[\\[[^\\]+?]\\[\\(.+?\\)]\\]" 
          (point-max) t) 
            (replace-match (match-string 1))) 
          (buffer-substring (point-min) (point-max)))))

#+END_SRC 

Hope that helps!


Alexis.

Re: function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

[Paul]

thank YOu for the function

I believe that there must be something ready to be used, because 
org-mode does provide function that is able to export document or its 
part as text file. Of course such function probably removes more 
elements than link only, but that would be no harm.

best regards

Re: function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

[Alexis]

Paul <mafeuser@gmail.com> writes:

> thank YOu for the function
>
> I believe that there must be something ready to be used, because 
> org-mode does provide function that is able to export document 
> or its  part as text file. Of course such function probably 
> removes more  elements than link only, but that would be no 
> harm.

Oh, well, if you're not worried about affecting other elements, 
then you could wrap the `org-export-as` function like so:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp

    (defun org-delinkify-region-2 () 
      "Replace all Org-style links within the region with only the 
    link description text, and return the result." 
      (interactive) (org-export-as 'ascii nil t t)) 

#+END_SRC 

The four arguments to `org-export-as` mean:

- Use the 'ascii export backend;
- Don't transcode the sub-tree at point; we're relying on 
  `org-export-as` working on the 
  region if the region is active.
- Don't export the contents of hidden elements.
- Don't add a surrounding template.

Note that `ox-ascii.el`, which defines the 'ascii export backend, 
/does/ have an `ox-ascii-link` function, but that function needs 
to be /passed/ the 'description' part of the link, the very thing 
we want to extract. In usual usage, this extraction is done by 
building a parse tree of an Org buffer, then calling 
`ox-ascii-link` with the relevant parse tree data for all links in 
the parse tree. So if i understand correctly, my code above is 
probably as simple as one can get for your use-case.

Hope that helps!


Alexis.

Re: function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

[Paul]

That's the function I was looking for!

The missing part for me is to have the same signature as 
`buffer-substring` has, but this is much easier task and I should manage.

Thank You very much for Your help!!!

best regards!

Re: function to copy org buffer substring with link description only

[Gene]

On Sunday, December 6, 2015 at 3:46:00 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
> Hallo people.
> 
> (buffer-substring-no-properties (point) (mark)) on some part of an org 
> buffer that contains a link returns the following example:
> 
> "while [[(some-link)][description]] does not"
> 
> 
> Do You know a ready to use function that would return the following?:
> 
> "while description does not"
> 
> best regards,
> Paul

I think you might want to consider how you'd use this in practice.
It seems that you want to perform a destructive, non-restorable edit, rather than using two views of the same data via lentic or such.
As the string returned by the example contains the ASCII text of/for an org link this string can be parsed via split-string for both "[[" and "]]" to find beginning and end of the link to use as point and mark.
Or -- if you think about it -- searching for "][" should drop the cursor/point at the start of the description string of interest which ends at "]]"

As a general pointer/clue, `elt' is your friend because it operates on any sequence ... both strings and vectors in your case.
The structure of an org-mode link is a vector containing two vectors.
The description can be stripped from the vector either as a vector or while it's embedded in the string produced from the substring function.

The function which generates an org link is org-make-link-string.
Perhaps if you read the source for that function you will discover how links are assembled and therein obtain insights into how to disassemble them.

Here's a snippet of some code I crafted while going the other way ... starting with an URL then generating an org-mode link:

(defun 
  ddg2org-link 
 (
  lst ; the argument
 )
 "For every duckduckgo URL in lst produce an org-mode link"
 (interactive)
 (mapcar
 (lambda (ddg-URL)
    (org-make-link-string 
        ddg-URL              ; LINK
        (mapconcat
           #'identity                    ; FUNCTION 
           (split-string 
            (cadr                   ;\
              (split-string         ; \
                ddg-URL ; STRING    ;  > ; SEQUENCE 
               "?q="    ; SEPARATOR ; /
              )                     ;/
             )
             "%20"                       ; SEPARATOR for split-string
            );split-string
           " "                           ; SEPARATOR for mapconcat
        ) ; mapconcat
   ) ;org-make-link-string
  ) ; lambda
  lst
 );mapcar
)

; test it with a list of ddg URLs
(ddg2org-link 
'(
  "https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=monsters%20are%20real%20stephen%20king"
  "https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=love%20map"
))


I hope these clues help you think your way through to a workable solution.

Cheers!