Question

I write a simple defun for a region, and I want to apply it even if there’s no region – i.e. call it with no selection at all. I thought I could do something like the following:

(defun region-study (strt end)
  (interactive "r")
  (if (= strt end)
    (progn ....) ;; then
    (progn ....))) ;; else

But it doesn’t work. As it turns out, when you call (interactive "r") with no region it doesn’t just set boundaries to be equal. Try this:

(defun region-study (strt end)
  (interactive "r")
  (message "strt=%d; end=%d" strt end))

So my question is that: “how to write a defun which acts on region, but acts on point if there’s no region?”

Edit:

So I wanted to put selection in brackets or just to insert brackets and (backward-char 1). Here’s a solution:

(defun put-in-lft-rit (lft rit)
  (interactive "k")
  (if (use-region-p) ;; act on region
    (progn 
      (setq pP (point)) 

      (setq strt (region-beginning))
      (setq end (region-end))

      (setq meat (buffer-substring-no-properties strt end))
      (setq news (concat lft meat rit))
      (delete-region strt end)
      (goto-char strt)
      (insert news)

      (if (= pP strt)
      (goto-char strt) ; then
      (goto-char (+ end 1))))  ; else
    (progn ;; act on point
      (insert lft rit)
      (backward-char 1))))

(defun bk-put-in-braces ()
  (interactive)
  (put-in-lft-rit "(" ")"))

(defun bk-put-in-curly-braces ()
  (interactive)
  (put-in-lft-rit "{" "}"))

(defun bk-put-in-quotes ()
  (interactive)
  (put-in-lft-rit "'" "'"))

(defun bk-put-in-double-quotes ()
  (interactive)
  (put-in-lft-rit "\"" "\""))

(defun bk-put-in-square-brackes ()
  (interactive)
  (put-in-lft-rit "[" "]"))

And then you bind in .emacs:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-<f9>") 'bk-put-in-square-brackes)
(global-set-key (kbd "<f9>") 'bk-put-in-curly-braces)
(global-set-key (kbd "S-<f7>") 'bk-put-in-quotes)
(global-set-key (kbd "S-<f8>") 'bk-put-in-double-quotes)
(global-set-key (kbd "S-<f9>") 'bk-put-in-braces)

That’s it! Should be working in all modes.

Edit2:

@phils
Thanks. You are definetely right. One thing though – my code had an additional feature of leaving the point at the beginning or end of the region – depending on where it was in the selection. Here’s Your code with this feature added:

(defun put-in-lft-rit (lft rit)
  (interactive "k")
  (if (use-region-p) ;; act on region
      (let ((strt (region-beginning))
            (end (region-end))
            (pP (point)))

        (save-excursion
          (goto-char end)
          (insert rit)
          (goto-char strt)
          (insert lft))

        (if (= pP strt)
          (goto-char strt) ; then
          (goto-char (+ end 1))))  ; else

    (progn ;; act on point
      (insert lft rit)
      (backward-char 1))))

Answer 1

use-region-p should return t if your function should act on the region instead of at a point.