elmacro

Shows keyboard macros or latest interactive commands as emacs lisp.

Examples

upcase-last-word

Say you have the following text:

violets are blue
roses are red

With the cursor somewhere on the first line. Press the following keys:

F3 C-e M-b M-u C-a C-n F4

Then doing M-x elmacro-show-last-macro upcase-last-word RET produces a buffer with:

(defun upcase-last-word ()
  (interactive)
  (move-end-of-line 1)
  (backward-word 1)
  (upcase-word 1)
  (move-beginning-of-line 1)
  (next-line 1 1))

You can now do M-x eval-buffer followed by M-x upcase-last-word or call it from your emacs lisp code.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Commands
  • elmacro-show-last-macro
  • elmacro-show-last-commands
  • elmacro-clear-command-history
• Customization
  • elmacro-processors
  • elmacro-show-last-commands-default
  • elmacro-additional-recorded-functions
  • elmacro-unwanted-commands-regexps
  • elmacro-special-objects
  • elmacro-debug
• Processors
  • elmacro-processor-filter-unwanted
  • elmacro-processor-prettify-inserts
  • elmacro-processor-concatenate-inserts
  • elmacro-processor-handle-special-objects
• FAQ
  • org-mode, smartparens, etc
  • Mouse events
• Contributions welcome!

Installation

The recommended way to install elmacro is through MELPA.

Otherwise, simply add elmacro.el to your load-path and then (require 'elmacro).

To enable elmacro, do M-x elmacro-mode or enable it from your config file like this:

(elmacro-mode)

Commands

elmacro-show-last-macro

M-x elmacro-show-last-macro shows your latest macro as emacs lisp.

In order to use this, you must first record a keyboard macro. Then, when you do M-x elmacro-show-last-macro it will ask you for a defun name and show the latest macro as emacs lisp.

elmacro-show-last-commands

M-x elmacro-show-last-commands shows your latest emacs activity as emacs lisp.

This is basically a better version of kmacro-edit-lossage.

The default number of commands shown is modifiable in variable elmacro-show-last-commands-default.

You can also modify this number by using a numeric prefix argument or by using the universal argument, in which case it’ll ask for how many in the minibuffer.

elmacro-clear-command-history

Clears the list of recorded commands.

Customization

elmacro-processors

Default value: (elmacro-processor-filter-unwanted elmacro-processor-prettify-inserts elmacro-processor-concatenate-inserts elmacro-processor-handle-special-objects)

List of processors functions used to improve code listing.

Each function is passed the list of commands meant to be displayed and is expected to return a modified list of commands.

elmacro-show-last-commands-default

Default value: 30

Number of commands shown by default in elmacro-show-last-commands.

elmacro-additional-recorded-functions

Default value: (copy-file copy-directory rename-file delete-file make-directory)

List of non-interactive functions that you also want to be recorded.

For example, dired-copy-file (C key in dired) doesn't reads its arguments as an interactive specification, and thus the file name is never stored.

elmacro-unwanted-commands-regexps

Default value: ("^(ido.*)$" "^(smex)$")

Regexps used to filter unwanted commands.

elmacro-special-objects

Default value:

'(("#<frame [^0]+\\(0x[0-9a-f]+\\)>" ",(elmacro-get-frame \"\\1\")")
  ("#<window \\([0-9]+\\)[^>]+>"     ",(elmacro-get-window \\1)")
  ("#<buffer \\([^>]+\\)>"           ",(get-buffer \"\\1\")"))

List of (regexp replacement) for special objects.

This will be used as arguments for replace-regexp-in-string.

elmacro-debug

Default value: nil

Set to true to turn debugging in buffer * elmacro debug *.

Processors

The way elmacro processes commands can be modified using processors.

A processor is an emacs lisp function that takes a list the commands meant to be displayed and is expected to return a modified list of commands.

For example, a simple processor that filters anything you insert in a buffer:

(defun filter-insert-processor (commands)
  (--remove (eq 'insert (car it)) commands))

elmacro-processor-filter-unwanted

Remove unwanted commands using elmacro-unwanted-commands-regexps.

elmacro-processor-prettify-inserts

Transform all occurences of self-insert-command into insert. This filter should be not be enabled with packages that advice self-insert-command, see the FAQ for more information.

Before:

(setq last-command-event 97)
(self-insert-command 1)
(setq last-command-event 98)
(self-insert-command 1)
(setq last-command-event 99)
(self-insert-command 3)

After:

(insert "a")
(insert "b")
(insert "ccc")

elmacro-processor-concatenate-inserts

Concatenate multiple text insertion together.

Before:

(insert "a")
(insert "b")
(insert "c")

After:

(insert "abc")

elmacro-processor-handle-special-objects

Turn special objects into usable objects using elmacro-special-objects.

FAQ

org-mode, smartparens, etc

Normally elmacro works reasonably well with these, but if you want to ensure the most accurate experience you should disable the elmacro-processor-prettify-inserts processor (see elmacro-processors).

This is necessary because these packages usually advice self-insert-command, and by transforming it into an insert the advice does not run and we miss functionnality.

Mouse events

A nice addition to normal macros is that mouse events (clicks / scroll) are also recorded and elmacro can figure which emacs window / frame was the target.

For example, by default clicking in a window will generate code like:

(mouse-set-point '(mouse-1 (#<window 75 on foo.el> 913 (90 . 286) 185432429 nil 913 (10 . 15) nil (90 . 1) (9 . 19))))

We see that the <#window 75 on foo.el> part is not very useful. Thanks to the processor elmacro-processor-handle-special-objects, the following code is generated instead (elmacro-get-window is a helper that returns the correct emacs window object):

(mouse-set-point `(mouse-1 (,(elmacro-get-window 75) 913 (90 . 286) 185432429 nil 913 (10 . 15) nil (90 . 1) (9 . 19))))

Contributions welcome!

Either as suggestions or as pull requests by opening tickets on the issue tracker.