How to really escape a double quote?

How to really escape a double quote?

[MarkS.]

This is a two part question, but both parts are looking for how to
escape a double quote AND have it work with Emacs.

I was looking for a way to make Emacs delete inside of delimiters the
way Vim does. I found some code that some nice person had written. The
key search line is like:

  (skip-chars-backward "^(<[“") (setq p1 (point))

but there's no double quote, which is what I need most often. I looked
up Emacs/lisp documentation on-line, and it said that I could escape a
double-quote with a slash. So I tried changing the line to:

  (skip-chars-backward "\"^(<[“") (setq p1 (point))

But when I run the code, it can't find the escaped double quote. It
seems to ignore it.

So, how do I get code like this to recognize an escaped quote mark?

The other part of the question is, how do I get a key mapping that
uses double quotes?

I tried

  (global-set-key "\c-x\"" 'delete-stuff)

but this gave me all sorts of errors. However, if I activate global-
set-key interactively, I can set control-x " and it works to activate
the function. So there must be some way to make emacs recognize double
quotes in a key-mapping.

Thanks!

Re: How to really escape a double quote?

[David Kastrup]

"MarkS." <throaway@yahoo.com> writes:

> This is a two part question, but both parts are looking for how to
> escape a double quote AND have it work with Emacs.
>
> I was looking for a way to make Emacs delete inside of delimiters the
> way Vim does. I found some code that some nice person had written. The
> key search line is like:
>
>   (skip-chars-backward "^(<[“") (setq p1 (point))
>
> but there's no double quote, which is what I need most often. I looked
> up Emacs/lisp documentation on-line, and it said that I could escape a
> double-quote with a slash. So I tried changing the line to:
>
>   (skip-chars-backward "\"^(<[“") (setq p1 (point))

^ loses its special meaning if it is not the first character of the
string.  So move your escaped double-quote one position to the right.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: How to really escape a double quote?

[MarkS.]

On Feb 24, 4:00 pm, David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> wrote:
> ^ loses its special meaning if it is not the first character of the
> string.  So move your escaped double-quote one position to the right.
>
> --
> David Kastrup

Thank you! I didn't realize there was a special meaning to the caret
in this context. Now just need to figure out how to get the global key
definition to work.

Thanks again!

Re: How to really escape a double quote?

[Le Wang]

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> Thank you! I didn't realize there was a special meaning to the caret
> in this context. Now just need to figure out how to get the global key
> definition to work.
>
> Thanks again!
>

The vector representation of key sequence always seems to much cleaner to
me.  Does this do what you want?

(global-set-key [(control x) (\")] 'delete-stuff)

-- 
Le

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Re: How to really escape a double quote?

[MarkS.]

On Feb 25, 6:05 pm, Le Wang <l26w...@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes! Thank you! That was the ticket. I suppose there's a page out
there that talks about vector representations? I'm still working
mainly out of a book.

Thanks again!
Mark

> > Thank you! I didn't realize there was a special meaning to the caret
> > in this context. Now just need to figure out how to get the global key
> > definition to work.
>
> > Thanks again!
>
> The vector representation of key sequence always seems to much cleaner to
> me.  Does this do what you want?
>
> (global-set-key [(control x) (\")] 'delete-stuff)
>
> --
> Le

Re: How to really escape a double quote?

[Le Wang]

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On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 12:04 PM, MarkS. <throaway@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Feb 25, 6:05 pm, Le Wang <l26w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes! Thank you! That was the ticket. I suppose there's a page out
> there that talks about vector representations? I'm still working
> mainly out of a book.
>
>
Okay, you can look at the GNU Emacs manual section for the "kbd" macro.
 This way looks fairly straight forward.

http://www.gnu.org/s/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Key-Sequences.html#Key-Sequences

I can't find the vector notation clearly discussed in the GNU Emacs manual.
 I know it from XEmacs and just always preferred it.  As far as I can tell,
it works the same in GNU Emacs.

You can read more about key sequence vectors in the XEmacs manual:

http://www.gnu.org/s/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Key-Sequences.html#Key-Sequences

A note about your original question, the "^" prefix to skip-chars-backward
is discusses in the doc string (well it links to skip-chars-forward, and
discusses it there).  The doc string of functions and variables is a great
way to explore Emacs.

-- 
Le

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Re: How to really escape a double quote?

[Kevin Rodgers]

On 2/24/11 5:00 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
...
> ^ loses its special meaning if it is not the first character of the
> string.  So move your escaped double-quote one position to the right.

I didn't know that!  Here's the reference from (elisp)Regexp Special:

      For historical compatibility reasons, `^' can be used only at the
      beginning of the regular expression, or after `\(', `\(?:' or `\|'.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA

Re: How to really escape a double quote?

[David Kastrup]

Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2/24/11 5:00 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
> ...
>> ^ loses its special meaning if it is not the first character of the
>> string.  So move your escaped double-quote one position to the right.
>
> I didn't know that!  Here's the reference from (elisp)Regexp Special:
>
>      For historical compatibility reasons, `^' can be used only at the
>      beginning of the regular expression, or after `\(', `\(?:' or
>      `\|'.

You are looking in a non-obvious place for information which you then
somehow map to the required one, making it appear like using Emacs is a
black art.  It would suffice to consult the DOC string of the function
in question:

skip-chars-forward is a built-in function in `C source code'.

(skip-chars-forward STRING &optional LIM)

Move point forward, stopping before a char not in STRING, or at pos LIM.
STRING is like the inside of a `[...]' in a regular expression
except that `]' is never special and `\' quotes `^', `-' or `\'
 (but not at the end of a range; quoting is never needed there).
Thus, with arg "a-zA-Z", this skips letters stopping before first nonletter.
With arg "^a-zA-Z", skips nonletters stopping before first letter.
Char classes, e.g. `[:alpha:]', are supported.

Returns the distance traveled, either zero or positive.

[back]


-- 
David Kastrup