Re: Inserting output from a program into a buffer

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Tim Johnson <tim@johnsons-web.com> writes:

> On 2010-02-21, Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> wrote:
>>>   Thanks
>>
>> I'm just interested in what the external program you need to call is and
>> what it does?
>>
>> I only mention this as I handle some timeclock/timecard requirements I
>> have using existing emacs functionality. Maybe there is an alternative
>> way to approach this issue that would give a better result. 
>   Hi Tim:
>       The following data structure:
>       [[13:22 13:41][14:50 15:04][15:58 16:03][16:53 16:58]]
>       Is a nested block or list recognized by the rebol programming
>       language. Each value: 13:22, 15:04 etc is a value of datatype "time!"
>       and rebol has the ability of easily doing math on such datatypes.
>       Regardless of what programming language that I might be working in,
>       I use this approach to "pipe" such a data structure to a simple
>       application that I have written. That application then returns
>       the sum, which is inserted into the buffer. (See my initial post)
>
>       The rebol binary is very easy to install. Small footprint, no
>       external libraries are necessary. I would be happy to provide
>       the application as well as the elisp code to manipulate it.
>
>       As for the elisp code, I now have a function that grabs the data
>       structure and puts it in the kill-ring.
>
>       I now have to ask another question myself, related to this subject.
>       I'd like to copy _only_ the text at the car of the kill ring to a
>       variable, for further processing use:
>       Example:
>       alt-: (car kill-ring) => 
>       #("[0:58 1:42 0:43 1:41]" 0 20 (fontified t) 20 21 (rear-nonsticky t
>       fontified t))
>       How I can copy the first item
>       "[0:58 1:42 0:43 1:41]"
>       from the car of kill-ring into a variable?
>       Thanks again

This is the first item!

You can check that:

(string= #("[0:58 1:42 0:43 1:41]" 0 20 (fontified t) 20 21 (rear-nonsticky t
               fontified t))
         "[0:58 1:42 0:43 1:41]") --> t

What appears as #("[0:58 1:42 0:43 1:41]" 0 20 (fontified t) 20 21
(rear-nonsticky t fontified t)) is a string, with properties.


You could get a string without attribute using the function
buffer-substring-no-properties instead of buffer-substring.

or using gnus-string-remove-all-properties:

(defun gnus-string-remove-all-properties (string)
  (condition-case ()
      (let ((s string))
         (set-text-properties 0 (length string) nil string)
         s)
    (error string)))

but there is no reason to lose time removing them in general.

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__