Re: How to write the "interactive" form for a command acting on a region

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> so I want to have a function which should do something on the region.
> If no region is active, I want it to act on the whole buffer.  If called
> from Lisp code, I want to be able to supply "begin" and/or "end"
> parameters, which (if nil) should default to (point-min) and
> (point-max).  Finally, I want my command to behave differently depending
> on whether it was called interactively or programmatically.  


If you want a different behavior, then you should have different
functions:

    (defun my-FUNCTION (…)
       …)

    (defun my-COMMAND (…)
       (interactive …)
       …
       (my-function …)
       …)

(defun my-command (start end)
   (interactive "r")
   (message "start=%s end=%s" start end))


A region is always defined, whether transient-mark-mode is on or off,
and whether the region is active or not.

Therefore interactive "r" will always give you start and end points.
You could have a command such as:

    (defun my-command (start end)
       (interactive "r")
       (if (use-region-p) ; region is active
          (my-function start end)
          (my-function (point-min) (point-max))))


Otherwise, if the behavior of your command and your function was the
same, you could write a single command, using (require 'cl) to deal with
the default values.  

But since you want to force the arguments when it's called interactively
without an active region, you will have to duplicate some code.
Separating the function and command is probablyh preferable in your
situation.

    (require 'cl)
    (defun* my-command (&optional (start (point-min)) (end (point-max)))
       (interactive "r")
       (when (and (called-interactively-p)
                  (not (use-region-p)))
          (setf start (point-min)
                end   (point-max)))
       …)


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
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