Month: September 2017

Parsing compiler or grep output for emacsclient

This short bash snippet allows you to copy and paste any grep or compiler output of the form some/file.java:12:34 to emacsclient to jump to the specified file, line and column in Emacs:

function emacsClient()
{
  local IFS=":"
  set $1
  if [ $# -eq 3 ]
  then
    emacsclient -n +"$2:$3" "$1"
  elif [ $# -eq 2 ]
  then
    emacsclient -n +"$2:1" "$1"
  else
    emacsclient -n "$1"
  fi
}

alias ec=emacsClient

Example call:

$ grep -nH custom init.el
init.el:93:  (setq custom-file (expand-file-name "custom.el" (or (file-name-directory user-init-file) default-directory)))
init.el:94:  (load custom-file)
init.el:95:  (global-set-key (kbd "") '(lambda () (interactive) (load custom-file)))
$ ec init.el:95:
$

Update: I forgot to make the IFS variable local to the function. This would break things like git-bash-prompt, if the IFS is suddenly set to something else.