Wand

Wand is an extension that allows users to select text and perform actions based on predefined patterns. Wand is inspired by Xiki and Acme editor.

• Screencast (Upcoming - Jan 2017)

Requirements

• Emacs 24+

• Emacs Lisp CL library (bundled with Emacs 23+)

• Dash - for list processing

• s.el - for string processing

Installation

Thanks to @yasuyk Wand is available in Melpa. Installation process is now as simple as M-x package-install RET wand RET.

Usage

Example

It's probably the best to have a look at an example.

wand:execute is a command (an interactive function) that takes the current selection (if selection is active) or a string and performs an action based on current rules residing in wand:*rules*. I use this command so frequently that I bind it to <C-return> and <C-mouse-1>.

(require 'wand)
(global-set-key (kbd "<C-return>")       'wand:execute)
(global-set-key (kbd "<C-mouse-1>")      'wand:execute)
(global-set-key (kbd "<C-down-mouse-1>")  nil)

Then, I want whenever wand:execute is called upon a selection of a string that:

• starts with $ command, command is executed as a shell command, and its output is taken back to Emacs as a popup buffer (using Popwin library),

  (wand:add-rule-by-pattern :match "\\$ "
                            :capture :after
                            :action popup-shell-command)

• starts with http://an-url or https://a-url, a-url is opened in Firefox with HTTP or HTTPS as its protocol respectively:

  (wand:add-rule-by-pattern :match "https?://"
                            :capture :whole
                            :action open-url-in-firefox)

• starts with file:path-to-a-file, that corresponding file is open with Emacs. This is particularly useful when using with openwith:

  (wand:add-rule-by-pattern :match "file:"
                            :capture :after
                            :action find-file)

• starts with #> an-emacs-lisp-expression, brackets are added to that expression if necessary and it's then evaluated:

  (wand:add-rule-by-pattern :match "#> "
                            :capture :after
                            :action add-bracket-and-eval)

Comments are skipped when the pattern-matching process is performed. The code is pretty self-explanatory.

Thanks

Special thanks to:

• @yasuyk for making Wand available in Melpa.

• @MatthewDarling for correcting code example in README.

• @syl20bnr for the issue report.

• @rubikitch for fixing the string-empty? typo.

License

This project along with its source code and all materials are released under the terms of the GNU General Public License 3.0 (GPLv3). See COPYING for more details.

Copyright (C) 2014-2017 Ha-Duong Nguyen