prepend a character to the lines in a region

prepend a character to the lines in a region

[B. T. Raven]

If I want to respond to an email where (for whatever reason) the sender's
text hasn't been quoted, I copy paste it into emacs and do a search
replace with this regular expression:

C-M-% \(.+\) RET >\1  RET

This works but the region is repainted before each replacement. Is there a
built in command that can accomplish this? M-; is almost right but it
might not be if I had a defined syntax and I actually wanted to use it for
commenting out a region.

Ed.

Re: prepend a character to the lines in a region

[David Kastrup]

"B. T. Raven" <ecinmn@peoplepc.com> writes:

> If I want to respond to an email where (for whatever reason) the sender's
> text hasn't been quoted, I copy paste it into emacs and do a search
> replace with this regular expression:
>
> C-M-% \(.+\) RET >\1  RET
>
> This works but the region is repainted before each replacement. Is there a
> built in command that can accomplish this? M-; is almost right but it
> might not be if I had a defined syntax and I actually wanted to use it for
> commenting out a region.

C-x r t

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: prepend a character to the lines in a region

[B. T. Raven]

"David Kastrup" <dak@gnu.org> wrote in message
news:85d5gi3wco.fsf@lola.goethe.zz...
> "B. T. Raven" <ecinmn@peoplepc.com> writes:
>
> > If I want to respond to an email where (for whatever reason) the
sender's
> > text hasn't been quoted, I copy paste it into emacs and do a search
> > replace with this regular expression:
> >
> > C-M-% \(.+\) RET >\1  RET
> >
> > This works but the region is repainted before each replacement. Is
there a
> > built in command that can accomplish this? M-; is almost right but it
> > might not be if I had a defined syntax and I actually wanted to use it
for
> > commenting out a region.
>
> C-x r t

Thanks David. Bob's my uncle. I knew about some of  rectangle functions
but I didn't think of them in that way.

Ed

Re: prepend a character to the lines in a region

[Kevin Rodgers]

B. T. Raven wrote:
> If I want to respond to an email where (for whatever reason) the sender's
> text hasn't been quoted, I copy paste it into emacs and do a search
> replace with this regular expression:
> 
> C-M-% \(.+\) RET >\1  RET
> 
> This works but the region is repainted before each replacement. Is there a
> built in command that can accomplish this? M-; is almost right but it
> might not be if I had a defined syntax and I actually wanted to use it for
> commenting out a region.

Assuming you've marked the region: C-x r t > RET

-- 
Kevin Rodgers

Re: prepend a character to the lines in a region

[Stefan Monnier]

> If I want to respond to an email where (for whatever reason) the sender's
> text hasn't been quoted, I copy paste it into emacs and do a search
> replace with this regular expression:

> C-M-% \(.+\) RET >\1  RET

There are many ways to do that, but the closest to your suggestion may be:

  C-M-% ^ RET > RET


        Stefan

Re: prepend a character to the lines in a region

[B. T. Raven]

"Stefan Monnier" <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote in message
news:87pskfenix.fsf-monnier+gnu.emacs.help@gnu.org...
> > If I want to respond to an email where (for whatever reason) the
sender's
> > text hasn't been quoted, I copy paste it into emacs and do a search
> > replace with this regular expression:
>
> > C-M-% \(.+\) RET >\1  RET
>
> There are many ways to do that, but the closest to your suggestion may
be:
>
>   C-M-% ^ RET > RET
>
>
>         Stefan

That works too. I think I'll use C-space, move point to column 1 at end
and then C-x r t >