From: Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org,
Subject: bulk replacement on region, buffer, file?
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2015 19:21:24 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87vb87t55n.fsf@pobox.com> (raw)
I would appreciate pointers to code that enables "bulk replacement" of numerous string tuples ({to-replace, replace-with}) in a single call. What I mean, why I ask:
I frequently scrape blocks of text from PDFs into Emacs text buffers. After I do so, I usually want to replace lots of strings in the buffer. E.g. (using '|' to delimit the strings),
|CO 2| -> |CO2|
|- | -> ||
|“| -> |"|
|”| -> |"|
|[weird unicodes used for bulleting]| -> |*|
which I do manually by calling `M-x replace-string` or similar interactive or regexp function. I'd prefer instead to call something that
1. could be called on a region (if selected) or buffer (if not)
2. could read from a user-editable property file of replacement tuples (like those above), similar to `abbrev_defs` but without some constraints of the latter that annoy in this usecase. E.g. (unless I'm missing something), I cannot use `abbrev` to replace the space-delimited 'CO 2' with 'CO2'.
3. would, for every {to-replace, replace-with} tuple in the file,
* if `to-replace` found, replace every instance with `replace-with`
* if `to-replace` not found, goto next tuple
Is there elisp to do this? Alternatively, pointers to non-elisp (that I could invoke on a buffer's file and then `revert-buffer`) would also be appreciated. (And, yes, I know this sounds easy to write, but I have other priorities at present and no wish to reinvent any well-working wheels.)
Apologies if this is a FAQ, but a brief websearch found nothing that looked useful.
TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>
next reply other threads:[~2015-12-10 2:21 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-12-10 2:21 Tom Roche [this message]
2015-12-10 3:21 ` bulk replacement on region, buffer, file? Emanuel Berg
2015-12-10 16:40 ` Bob Proulx
[not found] <mailman.1767.1449714096.31583.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2015-12-10 3:13 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2015-12-15 4:16 ` Tom Roche
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