Re: Suppress user-prompting when calling commands in programs

[Thorsten Jolitz]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> I tried convincing upstream before and never made it! And I actually
>> understand the authors of code like that and even copied that technique
>> sometimes, because it might be harder to write the interactive spec for
>> both interactive and programmatical use than to write the function
>> itself, and then there is no need for a wrapper command or interactive
>> (lambda ...) expression when it comes to define a key for that command.
>
> I don't know what complications you're referring to.
>
> In 99% of the cases you can just turn
>
>     (defun foo (&optional arg)
>       (interactive "P")
>       (let ((bar (org-icompleting-read ...)))))
>
> into
>
>     (defun foo (bar &optional arg)
>       (interactive
>        (list (org-icompleting-read ...) current-prefix-arg))
>
> I'm not saying it's always perfect, but there's clearly some difference
> between my experience and yours, so if you give some examples, it would help.

Maybe I just find the Emacs Lisp Manual too dense and lacking examples
and templates for using lists in the interactive spec?

  * It may be a Lisp expression that is not a string; then it should
    be a form that is evaluated to get a list of arguments to pass
    to the command. Usually this form will call various functions to
    read input from the user, most often through the minibuffer (see
    Minibuffers) or directly from the keyboard (see Reading Input).
   
    Providing point or the mark as an argument value is also common,
    but if you do this and read input (whether using the minibuffer
    or not), be sure to get the integer values of point or the mark
    after reading. The current buffer may be receiving subprocess
    output; if subprocess output arrives while the command is
    waiting for input, it could relocate point and the mark.
   
    Here's an example of what not to do:
   
              (interactive
               (list (region-beginning) (region-end)
                     (read-string "Foo: " nil 'my-history)))
    
    Here's how to avoid the problem, by examining point and the mark
    after reading the keyboard input:
   
              (interactive
               (let ((string (read-string "Foo: " nil 'my-history)))
                 (list (region-beginning) (region-end) string)))



#+begin_src emacs-lisp 
;; Start a REPL
(defun iorg-scrape-repl (&optional port host how local)
  "Run inferior Picolisp and setup process for GUI-scripting."
  (interactive
   (cond
    ((equal current-prefix-arg nil) nil)
    ((equal current-prefix-arg '(4))
     (list
      (read-number "Port: ")))
    ((equal current-prefix-arg '(16))
     (list
      (read-number "Port: ")
      (read-string "Host: ")))
    ((equal current-prefix-arg '(32))
     (list
      (read-number "Port: ")
      (read-string "Host: ")
      (read-string "How: ")))
    (t
     (list
      (read-number "Port: ")
      (read-string "Host: ")
      (read-string "How: ")
      (read-string "Local: ")))))
  (let* ((hst (or host "localhost"))
         (prt (or port 5000)) [...]
#+end_src
-- 
cheers,
Thorsten