Emacs, one of the most famous Lisp applications today, has for a while now the ability to combine both of these, to reach entirely new levels of usefulness. Combining regular expressions and Lisp can do really magical things.

An example that I recently used a few times is parsing & de-humanizing numbers in dstat output. The output of dstat includes numbers that are printed with a suffix, like ‘B’ for bytes, ‘k’ for kilobytes and ‘M’ for megabytes, e.g.:

----system---- ----total-cpu-usage---- --net/eth0- -dsk/total- sda-
     time     |usr sys idl wai hiq siq| recv  send| read  writ|util
16-05 08:36:15|  2   3  96   0   0   0|  66B  178B|   0     0 |   0
16-05 08:36:16| 42  14  37   0   0   7|  92M 1268k|   0     0 |   0
16-05 08:36:17| 45  11  36   0   0   7|  76M 1135k|   0     0 |   0
16-05 08:36:18| 27  55   8   0   0  11|  67M  754k|   0    99M|79.6
16-05 08:36:19| 29  41  16   5   0  10| 113M 2079k|4096B   63M|59.6
16-05 08:36:20| 28  48  12   4   0   8|  58M  397k|   0    95M|76.0
16-05 08:36:21| 38  37  14   1   0  10| 114M 2620k|4096B   52M|23.2
16-05 08:36:22| 37  54   0   1   0   8|  76M 1506k|8192B   76M|33.6

So if you want to graph one of the columns, it’s useful to convert all the numbers in the same unit. Bytes would be nice in this case.

Separating all columns with ‘|’ characters is a good start, so you can use e.g. a CSV-capable graphing tool, or even simple awk scripts to extract a specific column. ‘C-x r t’ can do that in Emacs, and you end up with something like this:

|     time     |cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|eth0 |eth0 | disk| disk|sda-|
|     time     |usr|sys|idl|wai|hiq|siq| recv| send| read| writ|util|
|16-05 08:36:15|  2|  3| 96|  0|  0|  0|  66B| 178B|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:16| 42| 14| 37|  0|  0|  7|  92M|1268k|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:17| 45| 11| 36|  0|  0|  7|  76M|1135k|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:18| 27| 55|  8|  0|  0| 11|  67M| 754k|   0 |  99M|79.6|
|16-05 08:36:19| 29| 41| 16|  5|  0| 10| 113M|2079k|4096B|  63M|59.6|
|16-05 08:36:20| 28| 48| 12|  4|  0|  8|  58M| 397k|   0 |  95M|76.0|
|16-05 08:36:21| 38| 37| 14|  1|  0| 10| 114M|2620k|4096B|  52M|23.2|
|16-05 08:36:22| 37| 54|  0|  1|  0|  8|  76M|1506k|8192B|  76M|33.6|

The leading and trailing ‘|’ characters are there so we can later use orgtbl-mode, an awesome table editing and realignment tool of Emacs. Now to the really magical step: regular expressions and lisp working together.

What we would like to do is convert text like “408B” to just “408″, text like “1268k” to the value of (1268 * 1024), and finally text like “67M” to the value of (67 * 1024 * 1024). The first part is easy:

M-x replace-regexp RET \([0-9]+\)B RET \1 RET

This should just strip the “B” suffix from byte values.

For the kilobyte and megabyte values what we would like is to be able to evaluate an arithmetic expression that involves \1. Something like “replace \1 with the value of (expression \1)“. This is possible in Emacs by prefixing the substitution pattern with \,. This instructs Emacs to evaluate the rest of the substitution pattern as a Lisp expression, and use its string representation as the “real” substitution text.

So if we match all numeric values that are suffixed by ‘k’, we can use (string-to-number \1) to convert the matching digits to an integer, multiply by 1024 and insert the resulting value by using the following substitution pattern:

\,(* 1024 (string-to-number \1))

The full Emacs command would then become:

M-x replace-regexp RET \([0-9]+\)k RET \,(* 1024 (string-to-number \1)) RET

This, and the byte suffix removal, yield now the following text in our Emacs buffer:

|     time     |cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|eth0 |eth0 | disk| disk|sda-|
|     time     |usr|sys|idl|wai|hiq|siq| recv| send| read| writ|util|
|16-05 08:36:15|  2|  3| 96|  0|  0|  0|  66| 178|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:16| 42| 14| 37|  0|  0|  7|  92M|1298432|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:17| 45| 11| 36|  0|  0|  7|  76M|1162240|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:18| 27| 55|  8|  0|  0| 11|  67M| 772096|   0 |  99M|79.6|
|16-05 08:36:19| 29| 41| 16|  5|  0| 10| 113M|2128896|4096|  63M|59.6|
|16-05 08:36:20| 28| 48| 12|  4|  0|  8|  58M| 406528|   0 |  95M|76.0|
|16-05 08:36:21| 38| 37| 14|  1|  0| 10| 114M|2682880|4096|  52M|23.2|
|16-05 08:36:22| 37| 54|  0|  1|  0|  8|  76M|1542144|8192|  76M|33.6|

Note: Some of the columns are indeed not aligned very well. We’ll fix that later. On to the megabyte conversion:

M-x replace-regexp RET \([0-9]+\)M RET \,(* 1024 1024 (string-to-number \1)) RET

Which produces a version that has no suffixes at all:

|     time     |cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|cpu|eth0 |eth0 | disk| disk|sda-|
|     time     |usr|sys|idl|wai|hiq|siq| recv| send| read| writ|util|
|16-05 08:36:15|  2|  3| 96|  0|  0|  0|  66| 178|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:16| 42| 14| 37|  0|  0|  7|  96468992|1298432|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:17| 45| 11| 36|  0|  0|  7|  79691776|1162240|   0 |   0 |   0|
|16-05 08:36:18| 27| 55|  8|  0|  0| 11|  70254592| 772096|   0 |  103809024|79.6|
|16-05 08:36:19| 29| 41| 16|  5|  0| 10| 118489088|2128896|4096|  66060288|59.6|
|16-05 08:36:20| 28| 48| 12|  4|  0|  8|  60817408| 406528|   0 |  99614720|76.0|
|16-05 08:36:21| 38| 37| 14|  1|  0| 10| 119537664|2682880|4096|  54525952|23.2|
|16-05 08:36:22| 37| 54|  0|  1|  0|  8|  79691776|1542144|8192|  79691776|33.6|

Finally, to align everything in neat, pipe-separated columns, we enable M-x orgtbl-mode, and type “C-c C-c” with the pointer somewhere inside the transformed dstat output. The buffer now becomes something usable for pretty-much any graphing tool out there:

| time           | cpu | cpu | cpu | cpu | cpu | cpu |      eth0 |    eth0 |  disk |      disk | sda- |
| time           | usr | sys | idl | wai | hiq | siq |      recv |    send |  read |      writ | util |
| 16-05 08:36:15 |   2 |   3 |  96 |   0 |   0 |   0 |        66 |     178 |     0 |         0 |    0 |
| 16-05 08:36:16 |  42 |  14 |  37 |   0 |   0 |   7 |  96468992 | 1298432 |     0 |         0 |    0 |
| 16-05 08:36:17 |  45 |  11 |  36 |   0 |   0 |   7 |  79691776 | 1162240 |     0 |         0 |    0 |
| 16-05 08:36:18 |  27 |  55 |   8 |   0 |   0 |  11 |  70254592 |  772096 |     0 | 103809024 | 79.6 |
| 16-05 08:36:19 |  29 |  41 |  16 |   5 |   0 |  10 | 118489088 | 2128896 |  4096 |  66060288 | 59.6 |
| 16-05 08:36:20 |  28 |  48 |  12 |   4 |   0 |   8 |  60817408 |  406528 |     0 |  99614720 | 76.0 |
| 16-05 08:36:21 |  38 |  37 |  14 |   1 |   0 |  10 | 119537664 | 2682880 |  4096 |  54525952 | 23.2 |
| 16-05 08:36:22 |  37 |  54 |   0 |   1 |   0 |   8 |  79691776 | 1542144 |  8192 |  79691776 | 33.6 |

The trick of combining arbitrary Lisp expressions with regexp substitution patterns like \1, \2 … \9 is something I have found immensely useful in Emacs. Now that you know how it works, I hope you can find even more amusing use-cases for it.

Update: The Emacs manual has a few more useful examples of \, in action, as pointed out by tunixman on Twitter.

$ wc -l BACKUP/.emacs $( find BACKUP/elisp -name '*.el')
   119 BACKUP/.emacs
    84 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-w3m.el
    90 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-keys.el
   156 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-irc.el
  5449 BACKUP/elisp/erlang.el
   892 BACKUP/elisp/fill-column-indicator.el
   344 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-erc.el
    87 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-chrome.el
    89 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-autoload.el
   141 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-ui.el
    42 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-slime.el
  1082 BACKUP/elisp/ace-jump-mode.el
     2 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2-pkg.el
   907 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2-indent.el
    26 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2-lib.el
   502 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2-fontlock.el
    37 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2-map.el
   808 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2-syntax.el
   111 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2.el
   121 BACKUP/elisp/scala-mode2/scala-mode2-paragraph.el
  1103 BACKUP/elisp/php-mode.el
   142 BACKUP/elisp/themes/cobalt-theme.el
   665 BACKUP/elisp/themes/zenburn-theme.el
   142 BACKUP/elisp/themes/sublime-themes/cobalt-theme.el
    80 BACKUP/elisp/themes/tomorrow-night-blue-theme.el
    80 BACKUP/elisp/themes/tomorrow-night-eighties-theme.el
   115 BACKUP/elisp/themes/tomorrow-theme.el
    80 BACKUP/elisp/themes/tomorrow-night-bright-theme.el
   339 BACKUP/elisp/cmake-mode.el
    95 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-cc-extra.el
  1341 BACKUP/elisp/lua-mode.el
  2324 BACKUP/elisp/markdown-mode.el
   184 BACKUP/elisp/rcirc-notify.el
   167 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-defaults.el
   203 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-hooks.el
    43 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-lang.el
   435 BACKUP/elisp/edit-server.el
   709 BACKUP/elisp/slang-mode.el
    66 BACKUP/elisp/keramida-eshell.el
 19402 total

20,000 lines of code is far too much bloat. It’s obvious that this was getting out of hand, especially if you consider that I had full configuration files for at least two different IRC clients (rcirc and erc) in this ever growing blob of complexity.

What I did was make a backup copy of everything in ~/BACKUP and start over. This time I decided to go a different route from 2008 though. All my configuration lives in a single file, in ~/.emacs, and I threw away any library from my old ~/elisp tree which I haven’t actively used in the past few weeks. I imported the rest of them into the standard user-emacs-directory of modern Emacsen: at ~/.emacs.d/. I also started using eval-after-load pretty extensively, to speed up the startup of Emacs, and only configure extras after the related packages are loaded. This means I could trim down the list of preloaded packages even more.

The result, as I tweeted yesterday was an impressive speedup of the entire startup process of Emacs. Now it can start, load everything and print a message in approximately 0.028 seconds, which is more than 53 times faster than the ~1.5 seconds it required before the cleanup!

I suspected that the main contributor to this speedup was the increased use of eval-after-load forms, but what percentage of the entire file used them?

So I wrote a tiny bit of Emacs Lisp to count how many times each top-level forms appears in my new ~/.emacs file:

(defun file-forms-list (file-name)
  (let ((file-forms nil))
    ;; Keep reading Lisp expressions, until we hit EOF,
    ;; and just add one entry for each toplevel form
    ;; to `file-forms'.
    (condition-case err
        (with-temp-buffer
          (insert-file file-name)
          (goto-char (point-min))
          (while (< (point) (point-max))
            (let* ((expr (read (current-buffer)))
                   (form (first expr)))
              (setq file-forms (cons form file-forms)))))
      (end-of-file nil))
    (reverse file-forms)))

(defun file-forms-alist (file-name)
  (let ((forms-table (make-hash-table :test #'equal)))
    ;; Build a hash that maps form-name => count for all the
    ;; top-level forms of the `file-name' file.
    (dolist (form (file-forms-list file-name))
      (let ((form-name (format "%s" form)))
        (puthash form-name (1+ (gethash form-name forms-table 0))
                 forms-table)))
    ;; Convert the hash table to an alist of the form:
    ;;    ((form-name . count) (form-name-2 . count-2) ...)
    (let ((forms-alist nil))
      (maphash (lambda (form-name form-count)
                 (setq forms-alist (cons (cons form-name form-count)
                                         forms-alist)))
               forms-table)
      forms-alist)))

(progn
  (insert "\n")
  (insert (format "%7s %s\n" "COUNT" "FORM-NAME"))
  (let ((total-forms 0))
    (dolist (fc (sort (file-forms-alist "~/.emacs")
                      (lambda (left right)
                        (> (cdr left) (cdr right)))))
      (insert (format "%7d %s\n" (cdr fc) (car fc)))
      (setq total-forms (+ total-forms (cdr fc))))
    (insert (format "%7d %s\n" total-forms "TOTAL"))))

Evaluating this in a scratch buffer shows output like this:

COUNT FORM-NAME
   32 setq-default
   24 eval-after-load
   14 set-face-attribute
   14 global-set-key
    5 autoload
    4 require
    4 setq
    4 put
    3 defun
    2 when
    1 add-hook
    1 let
    1 set-display-table-slot
    1 fset
    1 tool-bar-mode
    1 scroll-bar-mode
    1 menu-bar-mode
    1 ido-mode
    1 global-hl-line-mode
    1 show-paren-mode
    1 iswitchb-mode
    1 global-font-lock-mode
    1 cua-mode
    1 column-number-mode
    1 add-to-list
    1 prefer-coding-system
  122 TOTAL

This showed that I’m still using a lot of setq-default forms: 26.23% of the top-level forms are of this type. Some of these may still be candidates for lazy initialization, since I can see that many of them are indeed mode-specific, like these two:

(setq-default diff-switches "-u")
(setq-default ps-font-size '(8 . 10))

But eval-after-load is a close second, with 19.67% of all the top-level forms. That seems to agree with the original idea of speeding up the startup of everything by delaying package-loading and configuration until it’s actually needed.

10 of the remaining forms are one-off mode setting calls, like (tool-bar-mode -1), so 8.2% of the total calls is probably going to stay this way for a long time. That’s probably ok though, since the list includes several features I find really useful, very very often.

THis afternoon I got bored enough of losing my selected region in Emacs, because I forgot that I was typing in a terminal launched by a Linux desktop. SO I thought “what the heck… let’s give the FreeBSD termcap entry for xterm-256color a try”:

keramida> scp bsd:/etc/termcap /tmp/termcap-bsd
keramida> captoinfo -e $(                                  \
  echo $( grep '^xterm' termcap | sed -e 's/[:|].*//' ) |  \
  sed -e 's/ /,/g'                                         \
  ) /tmp/termcap  > /tmp/terminfo.src
keramida> tic /tmp/terminfo.src

Restarted my terminal, and quite unsurprisingly, the problem of Shift-Up keys was gone.

The broken xterm-256color terminfo entry from /lib/terminfo/x/xterm-256color is now shadowed by ~/.terminfo/x/xterm-256color, and I can happily keep typing without having to worry about losing mental state because of this annoying little misfeature of Linux terminfo entries.

The official terminfo database sources[1], also work fine. So now I think some extra digging is required to see what ncurses-base ships with. There’s definitely something broken in the terminfo entry of ncurses-base, but it will be nice to know which terminal capabilities the Linux package botched.

Notes:
[1] http://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html#which_terminfo

Being able to auto-join channels after connecting to an IRC server is a must have for any serious IRC client. This way the user doesn’t have to laboriously type /join commands again and again, every time the IRC client start, or when there’s a network problem and the IRC server temporarily disconnects. Typing long lists of channel names gets old really fast if one has to type stuff like this for example:

/join #public
/join #secret somekeyword
/join #interest
/join #hobby hobbykey

Most serious IRC clients have some form of ‘autojoin’ feature, that lets you configure the channels they should join when connected to a specific IRC network or to a specific IRC server. ERC supports auto-joining with a loadable module called erc-join. You can load this module in your ERC startup code, and then use erc-autojoin-channels-alist to specify which channels to join on a per-server basis.

Loading the erc-join module and enabling auto-join support is the easy bit:

(require 'erc-join)             ; autojoin support is implemented by erc-join.el
(erc-autojoin-enable)           ; enable channel autojoin support, by default

Setting up the list of channels in erc-autojoin-channel-alist is also easy, but it does lend itself to a bit of upfront explanation. When auto-join code looks at erc-autojoin-channel-alist it expects to find there a list of ‘server patterns’ and their associated channels. So its value should look like this:

((SERVER-PATTERN-1 . CHANNEL-1 CHANNEL-2 ...)
 (SERVER-PATTERN-2 . CHANNEL-3 CHANNEL-4 CHANNEL-5 ...))

When a connection to a new IRC server is established, erc-join has set things up so that erc-autojoin-channels is called. The erc-autojoin-channels function iterates through erc-autojoin-channels-alist and checks if the server pattern matches the current server-name. If it does, it calls erc-server-join-channel for each of the channels attached to this server pattern.

The server pattern can be a regular expression and pattern matching for the ‘server’ part of each erc-autojoin-channels-alist item does not stop when it finds a match. This means that you can mix and match server patterns in all sorts of amusing ways, e.g. to set up a channel that is automatically joined for all IRC networks, by having an erc-autojoin-channels-alist entry whose server pattern is ".*":

(setq erc-autojoin-channels-alist
      '((".*" . "#everywhere")))

Now, for the interesting part. What happens when you want to automatically join channels that require a key. That’s where the real magic behind erc-server-join-channel kicks in, and lets you store your passwords in a secure place, like e.g. a PGP-encrypted ~/.authinfo file in your home directory!

Every time erc-server-join-channel is called it tries to look up a matching entry for the current IRC server and channel names in what Emacs calls “authentication sources”. These are, basically, files in ‘netrc’ file format (traditionally used by FTP clients). If a matching entry is found for the current combination of server and channel in one of the configured netrc files, the password key of this netrc file entry is used as the key for joining the IRC channel. The service name used for netrc entry lookup is also conveniently set to “irc”, so that ERC will not pick up unrelated passwords from your netrc files.

A valid netrc file entry, one which ERC can use to locate the key for an IRC channel, looks like this:

machine irc.freenode.net login "#mychannel" password "supersecret" port irc

If this line is present in your ~/.authinfo or ~/.netrc file, and one of the erc-autojoin-channels-alist entries specifies that “#mychannel” should be automatically joined when connected to the IRC server “irc.freenode.net”, then ERC will use “supersecret” as the key for joining the channel. This is a much safer alternative than typing the channel passwords yourself at an ERC prompt (because the channel passwords may then be logged on disk, if you have enabled server-buffer logging), and it’s definitely safer than listing the password in your ~/.emacs startup code or other place that can be world-readable.

Putting it All Together

To summarize, configuring ERC to automatically join channels “#public” and “#secret” when connecting to IRC server “irc.example.net”, and to use the secret key “supersecret” for the “#secret” channel, you can put the following in your ERC startup code:

(require 'erc-join)
(erc-autojoin-enable)

(setq erc-autojoin-channels-alist
      '(("irc.example.net" . "#public" "#secret"))))

and the following in your ~/.authinfo or ~/.netrc file:

machine irc.example.net login "#secret" password "supersecret" port irc

;;;
;; Scrolling like mutt for group, summary, and article buffers.
;;
;; Being able to scroll the current buffer view by one line with a
;; single key, rather than having to guess a random number and recenter
;; with `C-u NUM C-l' is _very_ convenient.  Mutt binds scrolling by one
;; line to '<' and '>', and it's something I often miss when working
;; with Gnus buffers.  Thanks to the practically infinite customizability
;; of Gnus, this doesn't have to be an annoyance anymore.

(defun keramida-mutt-like-scrolling ()
  "Set up '<' and '>' keys to scroll down/up one line, like mutt."
  ;; mutt-like scrolling of summary buffers with '<' and '>' keys.
  (local-set-key (kbd ">") 'scroll-up-line)
  (local-set-key (kbd "<") 'scroll-down-line))

(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'keramida-mutt-like-scrolling)
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'keramida-mutt-like-scrolling)
(add-hook 'gnus-article-prepare-hook 'keramida-mutt-like-scrolling)

This is now the latest addition to my ~/.gnus startup code, and we’re one step closer to making Gnus behave like my favorite old-time mailer.

It would be silly to list all the extensions supported by Firefox here. There are some extensions, however, which I consider vastly more useful than all the others. These are usually the first things I add to every new Firefox installation before using it for browsing web pages. This is a list of these extensions:

It’s All Text! — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125

An extension that permits editing the text of web forms in an external editor. Many web pages have obnoxious bits of JavaScript code that grabs keyboard shortcuts and make editing a pain. Other web pages have too small areas for textual input. This extension solves both of these problems, by allowing you to edit web form text in a full-screen window of a real editor, like Emacs, VIM, Kate, or GEdit.

NoScript — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

An extension that can be used to disable JavaScript code by default and then selectively enable the use of JavaScript for only a select subset of the web. JavaScript can often bloat and slow-down the browser, especially if used haphazardly and without proper care by the authors of a web site. Sometimes it even poses a security risk. NoScript can help a lot with these two problems that plague many of the “modern” web sites.

Open in Browser — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8207

A “convenience extension”, the Open in Browser addon adds an extra option to the open dialog that Firefox pops up when it cannot render a web object inside the browser window. Some web sites report a rather conservative MIME type for the objects they serve, commonly reporting that an object is a raw byte stream, even if the object itself is the source code of a script. In these cases, the Open in Browser extension enables Firefox to temporarily ignore the MIME type reported by the web server, and display the web object directly inside the browser window; saving you from the trouble of storing a local disk copy and manually launching an external viewer.

Video Download Helper — https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

A handy extension that lets you download video clips from YouTube and other web sites that require a Flash plugin. This Firefox extension makes it possible to locally store the video files, so that they can be played later with MPlayer, Totem, VLC, or other media players. Having the entire media files locally often results in improved playback, as the media player does not have to block video output, waiting for input from a slow network connection.

These are the four Firefox extensions that I install to all my Firefox profiles. I can probably browse most web sites without them, with a few annoying parts here and a few missing conveniences there, but whenever I have the option these addons are definitely part of my browsing tools.

Which extensions do you like using? Which ones are those Firefox addons that you “cannot live without”?

I noticed this tiny glitch in the first few lines of text, and then discovered that it was a buglet that occured far too often. My OCD side started feeling bad about the movie, because all the bogus capital ‘i’ letters were distracting me from the “real” fun of watching the actual movie.

So I stopped watching, and I fired up GNU Emacs on the srt file.

After 1-2 minutes of work, and a lot of fun with query-replace-regexp I found a nice replacement pattern to interactively fix all the broken ‘i’ instances:

M-x query-replace-regexp RET
    \([^I ]*\)\(I+\)\([^I ]*\) RET
    \1\,(replace-regexp-in-string "i" "l" (downcase \2))\3 RET

This had quite a few false positives, but it did 95% of the work, so I manually fixed the 5-10 instances it didn’t catch, and I was finally able to enjoy the movie.

Note: The perceptive reader who is also a fan of regular expressions will probably notice very quickly that part of the third line is Lisp code. This is an amazing feature of regexp replacement in Emacs. When the special pattern \, appears in the replacement text it evaluates the following expression as Emacs Lisp. An arbitrarily complex Lisp expression can be used after \, and its return value is used as the replacement text.

I’m positively thrilled that Emacs saved the day… again :-)

Run the command:

% ps xau | sed -n -e 1p -e /sed/d -e '/keramida.*emacs.*daemon/p'

Watch for activity in the Emacs daemon, and if you see any, well… you know that keramida is active :-)

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-02/msg00051.html

This is the first pretest release of Emacs 23.X and it includes many improvements over Emacs 22.X.

• Emacs now can link with libotf to handle complex OpenType font layouts.
• A new set of default icons is used by Emacs 23.
• Emacs now supports using both X displays and ttys in one session.
• Emacs can now start in the background, as a daemon, using the –daemon command line option. In this mode Emacs disconnects from the controlling terminal and starts a background server process. The emacsclient(1) utility can be used to create new tty windows or X frames attached to this background daemon.
• Transient mark mode is now on by default.
• “C-l” is now bound to the new command recenter-top-bottom, rather than recenter.
• “M-x butterfly” flips the desired bit on the disk platter. See http://xkcd.com/378/
• “linum” is a special mode for displaying line numbers in a buffer, similar to the “set number” command of VI.
• Many more updates and bug fixes.

The full list of changes that Emacs 23.0.90 includes are described in the file “etc/NEWS” in the source distribution of the pretest release.

This morning I updated the editors/emacs-devel of FreeBSD to install the 23.0.90 pretest version of Emacs. Boris Samorodov picked the update out of the list of submitted patches and committed it to the CVS tree of the FreeBSD Ports collection.

Users who are using emacs-devel on FreeBSD, can now update their port to grab this release of Emacs 23.X.

As the new pkg-message of the port describes, this is an experimental release of Emacs 23.X. The list of new features and bug fixes is impressive, but there may still be problems lurking in the code or even regressions from stable releases.

If you notice anything that is odd, or find something that seems to be a bug, please report it to:

• My own email address, as listed in the MAINTAINER field of the port makefile. It should be possible to see my email address by running more(1) on the Makefile, or by using the make(1) utility:
  

  % cd /usr/ports/editors/emacs-devel
  % make -V MAINTAINER

• Even if the port builds successfully on your system, and it passes all your tests, please feel free to email me and the pretesters mailing list at emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org.

One of the most important changes in this pretest; one that you should be careful about, and watch out for possible bugs, is the change of the RMAIL mail package from the old Babyl format to UNIX mbox format. This part of Emacs may be less stable than others; for safety, please back up your mail files before trying the new Rmail.

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