emacs-support.org

Supporting Emacs Functions

Perhaps I should just use the CL package, and not bother with my own filter function.

Filter

While Emacs Lisp has a mapcar, it doesn’t have a filter function.

(defun filter (condp lst)
  "Emacs Lisp doesn’t come with a ‘filter’ function to keep
elements that satisfy a conditional and excise the elements that
do not satisfy it. One can use ‘mapcar’ to iterate over a list
with a conditional, and then use ‘delq’ to remove the ‘nil’
values."
  (delq nil
        (mapcar (lambda (x) (and (funcall condp x) x)) lst)))

Might as well have an inverse-filter to filter out everything that doesn’t match the predicate function:

(defun inverse-filter (condp lst)
  "A filter function, but returns a list of the entries that
don't match the predicate."
  (delq nil
        (mapcar (lambda (x) (and (not (funcall condp x)) x)) lst)))

Curry and Compose

I like this Eric Schulte’s ‘curry’ functions. Allows for more compact anonymous functions. The following examples demonstrate the usage.

;; partial application with `curry'
(mapcar (» #'+ 2) '(1 2 3 4)) ; => (3 4 5 6)

;; alternate order of arguments with `rcurry'
(mapcar (« #'- 1) '(1 2 3 4)) ; => (0 1 2 3)

;; function composition with `compose'
(mapcar (∘ #'list (» #'* 2)) '(1 2 3 4)) ; => ((2) (4) (6) (8))

First, define the curry function:

(defsubst curry (function &rest arguments)
  (lexical-let ((function function)
                (arguments arguments))
    (lambda (&rest more) (apply function (append arguments more)))))

And the right-oriented rcurry function:

(defsubst rcurry (function &rest arguments)
  (lexical-let ((function function)
                (arguments arguments))
    (lambda (&rest more) (apply function (append more arguments)))))

And the compose function that can accept a number of functions:

(defsubst compose (function &rest more-functions)
  (cl-reduce (lambda (f g)
               (lexical-let ((f f) (g g))
                 (lambda (&rest arguments)
                   (funcall f (apply g arguments)))))))

Key Sequences

As I wrote in key sequences essay, the following macro makes it trivial to create a key sequence, like what I have in emacs-client initialization file.

(defmacro define-sequence (map-name prefix func seqs)
  "Define a collection of key sequences associated with MAP-NAME
and begin with PREFIX that call a function, FUNC.  The SEQS is a
list where each element is a list that begins with a final key
binding. The rest of the list is given as parameters to the
function, FUNC."
  `(progn
     (define-prefix-command ,map-name)
     (global-set-key (kbd ,prefix) ,map-name)
     (dolist (el ,seqs)
       (lexical-let ((keystroke (car el))
                     (the-rest  (cdr el)))
         (define-key ,map-name (kbd keystroke)
           (lambda ()
             (interactive)
             (apply ,func the-rest)))))))

Technical Artifacts

Make sure that we can simply require this library.

(provide 'init-support)

Before you can build this on a new system, make sure that you put the cursor over any of these properties, and hit: C-c C-c