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Autotyping
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Under certain circumstances you will find yourself typing similar things
over and over again.  This is especially true of form letters and
programming language constructs.  Project-specific header comments,
flow-control constructs or magic numbers are essentially the same every
time.  Emacs has various features for doing tedious and repetitive
typing chores for you in addition to the Abbrev features (Note:
(emacs)Abbrevs).

   One solution is using skeletons, flexible rules that say what to
insert, and how to do it.  Various programming language modes offer some
ready-to-use skeletons, and you can adapt them to suit your needs or
taste, or define new ones.

   Another feature is automatic insertion of what you want into empty
files, depending on the file-name or the mode as appropriate.  You can
have a file or a skeleton inserted, or you can call a function.  Then
there is the possibility to have Un*x interpreter scripts automatically
take on a magic number and be executable as soon as they are saved.  Or
you can have a copyright notice's year updated, if necessary, every
time you save a file.  Similarly for time stamps in the file.

   URLs can be inserted based on a word at point.  Flexible templates
can be defined for inserting and navigating between text more
generally.  A sort of meta-expansion facility can be used to try a set
of alternative completions and expansions of text at point.

Using Skeletons

How to insert a skeleton into your text.

Wrapping Skeletons

Putting existing text within a skeleton.

Skeletons as Abbrevs

An alternative for issuing skeleton commands.

Skeleton Language

Making skeleton commands insert what you want.

Inserting Pairs

Typing one character and getting another

after point.

Autoinserting

Filling up empty files as soon as you visit them.

Copyrights

Inserting and updating copyrights.

Executables

Turning interpreter scripts into executables.

Timestamps

Updating dates and times in modified files.

QuickURL

Inserting URLs based on text at point.

Tempo

Flexible template insertion.

Hippie Expand

Expansion of text trying various methods.

GNU Free Documentation License

The license for this documentation.

Concept Index

Command Index

Variable Index