Re: use Elisp to improve your Elisp - some code issues

["Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

>   ;; find the construct (if a a b) if you want to replace it with (or a b)
>   ;; if it works, when applied to this file, it should find the example above!
>   (search-regexp-in-files (buffer-file-name)
>    "([[:space:]\n]*if[[:space:]\n]+\\(.*\\)[[:space:]\n]+\\1[[:space:]\n]+\\(.*\\))"

Perhaps you have notied some discrepancy here.
Check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy

You may use read, or forward-sexp / backward-sexp and down-lisp /
up-list, to walk the sexps of the buffer in such a way that now you can
check for source patterns instead of text patterns.

Not that in this case you may want to use it, but it might still be
better to write:

    (map-sexp-in-files
       (lambda (form)
         (cond
           ((atom form) form)
           ((and (eql (first form) 'if)
                 (eql (second form) (third form))) ; eql ensures we don't
                 ;;  substitute expressions that may have side effects.
             `(or ,(second form) ,@(cdddr form)))
           (t form)))
       (list  (buffer-file-name)))

or:

    (require 'pjb-pmatch)
    (map-sexp-in-files
       (lambda (form)
         (match-case form
            ((if (!v a) (!v a) (!! (!x e)))
              `(or ,a ,e))
            (otherwise form)))
        (list (buffer-file-name)))


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