Stack of bookmarks

Stack of bookmarks

[stephan.zimmer]

Quite often while I'm browsing through source code I would like to
remember the current position to return to it later after having
looked for something else. I know that this can be achieved with
bookmarks. What I would like to have is a generalization of this:
instead of only returning once, I would like to do this recursively,
i.e., to maintain a stack of bookmarks. So somehow like

L1: push-current-location-to-bookmarks
L2: push-current-location-to-bookmarks
L3: push-current-location-to-bookmarks
pop-current-location-from-bookmarks ;; arrive again at L3
pop-current-location-from-bookmarks ;; arrive again at L2
pop-current-location-from-bookmarks ;; arrive again at L1

At the end this would be somehow similar to the "pop-tag-mark"
command, with the difference, that I can remember and go back to
arbitrary locations in the code. Has someone an idea?

Stephan

Re: Stack of bookmarks

[Anselm Helbig]

Hi!

> Quite often while I'm browsing through source code I would like to
> remember the current position to return to it later after having
> looked for something else. I know that this can be achieved with
> bookmarks. What I would like to have is a generalization of this:
> instead of only returning once, I would like to do this recursively,
> i.e., to maintain a stack of bookmarks. So somehow like
> 
> L1: push-current-location-to-bookmarks
> L2: push-current-location-to-bookmarks
> L3: push-current-location-to-bookmarks
> pop-current-location-from-bookmarks ;; arrive again at L3
> pop-current-location-from-bookmarks ;; arrive again at L2
> pop-current-location-from-bookmarks ;; arrive again at L1
> 
> At the end this would be somehow similar to the "pop-tag-mark"
> command, with the difference, that I can remember and go back to
> arbitrary locations in the code. Has someone an idea?

I use pop-global-mark for this purpose, bound to C-x C-SPACE here. You
can also call it by giving a prefix argument to set-mark-command: C-u
C-SPACE. 

HTH, 

Anselm


-- 
Anselm Helbig 
mailto:anselm.helbig+news2009@googlemail.com

Re: Stack of bookmarks

[Stefan Kamphausen]

Hi Stephan,

"stephan.zimmer" <stephan.zimmer@googlemail.com> writes:

> Quite often while I'm browsing through source code I would like to
> remember the current position to return to it later after having
> looked for something else.
[...]
> At the end this would be somehow similar to the "pop-tag-mark"
> command, with the difference, that I can remember and go back to
> arbitrary locations in the code. Has someone an idea?

I once needed exactly that and wrote some stack-handling of markers (not
bookmarks) only to find that I didn't want a stack but a ring.  The
result was mtorus:
http://www.skamphausen.de/cgi-bin/ska/mtorus

(it was later re-written by Sebastian Freundt resulting in a much more
complex and probably more powerful implementation, but I don't really
know about the state of that version, I still use my old version.  See 
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?MTorus
)


Cheers,
Stefan
-- 
Stefan Kamphausen --- http://www.skamphausen.de
a blessed +42 regexp of confusion (weapon in hand)
You hit. The format string crumbles and turns to dust.

Re: Stack of bookmarks

[stephan.zimmer]

Many thanks for your answers. I installed the mtorus, and it exactly
suits my needs. Definitively very nice!

One question I still have in mind, though: what is the difference
between bookmarks and markers? Both encapsulate a buffer and a buffer
position, right?

Stephan

Re: Stack of bookmarks

[Stefan Kamphausen]

Hi,

"stephan.zimmer" <stephan.zimmer@googlemail.com> writes:

> Many thanks for your answers. I installed the mtorus, and it exactly
> suits my needs. Definitively very nice!

:-)

>
> One question I still have in mind, though: what is the difference
> between bookmarks and markers? Both encapsulate a buffer and a buffer
> position, right?

I never use bookmarks, but from what I read they have names and are
persisted automatically.  A feature I wanted to implement in mtorus
years ago and got to.  Markers are actually not stored positions, they
shift along when text inserted somewhere earlier in the buffer.  Don't
know what bookmarks will do if you change the buffer.

Cheers,
Stefan
-- 
Stefan Kamphausen --- http://www.skamphausen.de
a blessed +42 regexp of confusion (weapon in hand)
You hit. The format string crumbles and turns to dust.

RE: Stack of bookmarks

[Drew Adams]

> One question I still have in mind, though: what is the difference
> between bookmarks and markers? Both encapsulate a buffer and a buffer
> position, right?

Bookmarks are persistent and they have names; not so, markers. Bookmarked
positions can also be relocated (found) if they move slightly because of text
changes.

(Yes, beyond emacs -Q one can find other kinds of bookmarks and markers that
blend these differences. This is the difference for vanilla GNU Emacs.)