Question

I’m looking for a way to simulate minibuffer input. So, some-func takes some input from the minibuffer and does something with it. The problem is that I have to call some-func from some other function calling-func and I need to do it interactively so I cant just pass an argument.

(defun some-func (arg)
  (interactive "*sEnter something: ")
  ;; Do something with arg
  )

(defun calling-func ()
  (call-interactively 'some-func)
  ;; Type to minibuffer
  )

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Answer 1

It might be interesting to explore why you need to call the other function interactively… but that’s not what you asked.

Here’s an example of “calling” a function interactively and sending text to the minibuffer. You just use Emacs keyboard macros:

(defun my-call-find-file (something)
  "An example of how to have emacs 'interact' with the minibuffer
use a kbd macro"
  (interactive "sEnter something:")
  (let ((base-vector [?\M-x ?f ?i ?n ?d ?- ?f ?i ?l ?e return]))
    ;; create new macro of the form
    ;; M-x find-file RET <userinput> RET
    (execute-kbd-macro (vconcat base-vector 
                                (string-to-vector something) 
                                (vector 'return)))))

The relevant documentation are Keyboard Macros and Functions for Vectors.