Copyright (C) 2010 Thomas Kappler

• Author: Thomas Kappler [email protected]
• Created: 2010-05
• Keywords: convenience, languages
• URL: http://github.com/thomas11/delim-kill/tree/master

This file is not part of GNU Emacs.

Licensed under the GPL version 3 or later.

Kill text between two delimiters, preserving structure.

delim-kill.el contains a single convenience function for editing structured data: delim-kill. Given two characters FROM and TO, it kills the text between the first occurence of FROM before point and the first occurence of TO after point. FROM and TO may be identical.

If FROM and TO are not identical, the function preserves the balance between the two characters: For each FROM that is encountered while looking for TO, one additional TO is required; and vice versa. For example, in "{ foo X{bar} baz }", with X being point and "{" and "}" as delimiters, the text "{ foo {bar} baz }" will be killed, not "{ foo {bar}".

delim-kill is useful in programming and in editing other files with structure, such as CSV or JSON. In C-style langiuages, for instance, you can use it to easily kill the {}-delimited block you are currently in. In a CSV file you might kill the current field, regardless of where point is.

delim-kill was inspired by Damian Conway's course "The productive programmer". Thanks!

Put the file anywhere in your load path, (require 'delim-kill), and bind the function to a key.

• 2010-05: First release.