Emacs Lisp: Using thing-at-point

thing-at-point is a function that grabs the current word, file path, url, etc and return a string.

thing-at-point

thing-at-point

(thing-at-point THING &optional NO-PROPERTIES)

Return a string that's the current THING under cursor. THING should be any of

• 'filename
• 'url

• 'word
• 'symbol
• 'number
• 'whitespace

• 'line
• 'sentence
• 'page

• 'list
• 'sexp
• 'defun
• 'email
• 'uuid

(defun ff ()
  "print current word."
  (interactive)
  (message "%s" (thing-at-point 'word)))

Get Boundary Positions of a Thing

Sometimes you also need to know a thing's boundary (the begin and end positions) , because you may need to delete it.

bounds-of-thing-at-point

Return a Cons Pair that's the boundary positions of the text unit under cursor.

(defun my-get-boundary-and-thing ()
  "example of using `bounds-of-thing-at-point'"
  (interactive)
  (let (xbounds xpos1 xpos2 xthing)
    (setq xbounds (bounds-of-thing-at-point 'symbol)
          xpos1 (car xbounds)
          xpos2 (cdr xbounds)
          xthing (buffer-substring-no-properties xpos1 xpos2))
    (message
     "thing begin at [%s], end at [%s], thing is [%s]"
     xpos1 xpos2 xthing)))

thing-at-point and Syntax Table

The exact meaning of “thing”, depends on current buffer's syntax table.

[see Emacs Lisp: Syntax Table]

Problems of thing-at-point

Emacs Lisp: Problems of thing-at-point