Re: How to successively log stuff to a file?

[Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net>]

On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 00:41:00 +0100 Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have written a little library for logging stuff, i.e. hit keys and
> executed commands, messages, and file loads [1].
>
> I want that you can define a dribble file where all my logged output
> would be written to.  That would be a good help to reconstruct what you
> did before a crash, or for writing bug reports (Yes, I know about
> `open-dribble-file', but it's in C).
>
> What is the smartest way to do that (in LISP, of course)?
>
> I could save the buffer content to a file regularly.  To have a complete
> log after crashes, I would have to save the buffer after each
> keystroke.  This seems very dumb.
>
> There is also `write-region'.  But that prints a message in the echo
> area after each call, i.e. in my case, after each hit key.

You can suppress the message:

   write-region is an interactive built-in function in `C source code'.
   
   (write-region START END FILENAME &optional APPEND VISIT LOCKNAME MUSTBENEW)
   
   Write current region into specified file.
   [...]
   If VISIT is neither t nor nil nor a string,
     that means do not display the "Wrote file" message.

Steve Berman