# Simplifying snippets (if possible)?

**URL:** <https://discuss.kakoune.com/t/simplifying-snippets-if-possible/2526>\
**Category:** Recipes & Guides\
**Tags:** scripting\
**Created:** [August 9, 2024, 3:48pm UTC](https://discuss.kakoune.com/t/simplifying-snippets-if-possible/2526 "2024-08-09T15:48:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![The-BigDaddy](https://discuss.kakoune.com/user_avatar/discuss.kakoune.com/the-bigdaddy/32/1562_2.png) [@The-BigDaddy](https://discuss.kakoune.com/u/The-BigDaddy)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2024, 3:48pm UTC](https://discuss.kakoune.com/t/simplifying-snippets-if-possible/2526/1 "2024-08-09T15:48:27Z")

</div>

Hey gang,

So I know [kakoune-snippets](https://github.com/occivink/kakoune-snippets) has been the go-to snippet plugin for awhile, but I was wondering if there’s another way of doing snippets. Let’s me go through my thought process:

We have a folder called `snippets` in wherever your kakoune configuration is.

Each subfolder in the `snippets` folder is the name of a known filetype to kakoune (be one provided by default or one you’ve created).

Each snippet file is a simple text file, like so

```auto
# it's Lisp, sorry
(defun {1} ({2})
  ""
  {3})

```

- Each `{}` denotes _where_ you would like to “jump” to next, or rather how you want the position to be ordered in some register.
- Keeping it to numbers could simplify things
- The name of the file is the name of the snippet, the above example being like `fun` or something like that

When you’re typing a snippet name (`fun` in this case) and you press some key (say `TAB` like a lot of editors) after typing said snippet name or selecting it with `b/B` or similar, a function runs that steps through like this:

- The current buffer filetype is `X`, and there’s a subfolder in `snippets` that corresponds to the buffer filetype
- The current selected thing/thing behind the cursor/thing on the current line corresponds to a file in the subfolder in `snippets`.
- We’ll inplace replace the current selected thing/thing behind the cursor with the contents of the file (excluding any comments, if any), using something with `sed -i`.
- Each resulting position of each `{}` will be put into some register, hopefully can be done in order.
- Each `{}` gets replaced with whitespace, again hopefully with using `sed -i`.
- Cursor is moved to first registery item that corresponds to the position that `{1}` in the snippet was.
- Snippet expansion is complete.

Few benefits:

- replacing text is source to programs that are specifically built for that
  - could posibbly lead to better performance?

- attempting to be more “barebones” from the start allows to maybe expand functionality
- Snippet markers/positions are organizable by the user
- Could allow for both expansion via `TAB` and other workflows

Few foreseeable problems:

- `sed` isn’t platform agnostic, some flags/options are not the same on all OS platofrm
- `sed` scripts are/can be simple and fast, but simplicity isn’t always what we need
- `awk` is useful, but scripts can be overly complex and there’s not definitive or best performance way to solve the problem “replace text in file at line number with text from other file”
- I have no idea how one would order snippet marker/positions into a register.

Thoughts?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![The-BigDaddy](https://discuss.kakoune.com/user_avatar/discuss.kakoune.com/the-bigdaddy/32/1562_2.png) [@The-BigDaddy](https://discuss.kakoune.com/u/The-BigDaddy)\
**Post date:** [August 15, 2024, 3:53pm UTC](https://discuss.kakoune.com/t/simplifying-snippets-if-possible/2526/2 "2024-08-15T15:53:05Z")

</div>

Alright just as some notes for anyone reading this, I’m beginning to slowly drive myself mad with `sed`.

So I’ve setup the the following files to do a test:

`snippet-test.txt`:

```lisp
(defvar some-var "some text")

(defparameter *some-param* 12)

fun

(defun test-fn ()
  (princ "Some text"))

```

`fun` is the text we will replace with the contents of the following file `snippet-test-snip.txt`:

```auto
(defun {} ()
  ""
  {})

```

Now the absolutely insane part. The following kind of works:

```auto
sed -e '/^fun/r snippet-test-snip.txt' -e '/^fun/d' snippet-test.txt

```

However, this isn’t inplace. I’m on MacOS, so with adding `-i`:

```auto
sed: -e: No such file or directory

```

Peachy. Can we do `'/^fun/r snippet-test-snip.txt; /^fun/d'`?

```auto
$ sed -i -e '/^fun/r snippet-test-snip.txt; /^fun/d' snippet-test.txt
$ cat snippet-test.txt
(defvar some-var "some text")

(defparameter *some-param* 12)

fun

(defun test-fn ()
  (princ "Some text"))

```

Wonderful. Okay, let’s try a [solution with awk](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25557099/replace-a-string-by-the-content-of-a-file):

```auto
$ awk 'NR==FNR{rep=(NR>1?rep RS:"") $0; next} {gsub(/^fun/,rep)}1' snippet-test-snip.txt snippet-test.txt
$ cat snippet-test.txt
(defvar some-var "some text")

(defparameter *some-param* 12)

(defun {} ()
  ""
  {})

(defun test-fn ()
  (princ "Some text"))

```

Hurray! Pity that I have no real clue how that awk command works, and even if I did it’s ugly. I hope it’s also portable. Now is the other step if replacing the `{}` with empty text, but that’s problem for another day.