Emacs ruby symbol word completion

Question

Quite often I define a ruby symbol (eg. :some_value), then I want to create a method with the same name def some_value.

Unfortunately, the autocompletion(M + /) for the second occurrence of some_value string does not work, being slightly different (:some_value vs some_value).

How can I setup emacs to handle such events?

Answer 1

Assuming that M-/ is bound to dabbrev-expand, you can configure dabbrev-mode to ignore certain prefixes when expanding strings. To make a single colon a prefix to be ignored, type

M-x customize-group

and then

dabbrev

This will take you to the customization page for dabbrev-mode. Go to the point Dabbrev Abbrev Skip Leading Regexp and click on Value menu. From the menu, pick "Regexp".

Now you see a textfield labeled "Regexp: " next to the value menu in which you enter a single colon.

:

Then click on the button State in the next line and choose the value "Save for Future Sessions".

Answer 2

First, my results! I typed :some_crazy_symbol in my model. On a newline, I typed def so, hit M-/ twice, and ended up with

def some_crazy_symbol
end

(Rinari supplied the end.)

I got this to work quite well by using hippie-expand. If you want to test it out, bind hippie-expand to M-/ like so:

(global-set-key (kbd "M-/") 'hippie-expand)

Heres' the documentation. Hippie expand works by trying out a number of different expansions on the current point. These expansions are stored in the hippie-expand-try-functions-list variable. On my system (and be default), this variable is set to:

(try-complete-file-name-partially try-complete-file-name try-expand-all-abbrevs try-expand-list try-expand-line try-expand-dabbrev try-expand-dabbrev-all-buffers try-expand-dabbrev-from-kill try-complete-lisp-symbol-partially try-complete-lisp-symbol)

The minibuffer readout showed that this particular expansion was accomplished using the try-expand-dabbrev function.

Answer 3

Not a direct answer to your question, but you should get more intelligent Ruby autocompletion by using auto complete mode paired with rsense.