REDUCE Integrated Development Environment

GNU Emacs Major Modes for Editing and Running REDUCE Source Code
[Software Version 1.0]
Manual Last Updated Time-stamp: <26 November 1999>

Francis J. Wright
School of Mathematical Sciences
Queen Mary and Westfield College (University of London)
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK

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Introduction to the REDUCE IDE

This manual documents the Emacs Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for REDUCE, which comprises a primary major mode for syntax-directed editing of REDUCE source code (edit mode) and a subsidiary major mode for running REDUCE as an inferior process with input and output via a buffer (run mode). REDUCE is a system and language for algebraic computing developed by Anthony C. Hearn. REDUCE is a commercial product - it is definitely not free software. (For further details, visit the REDUCE web home page or contact A. C. Hearn, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138). Nevertheless, REDUCE is an open system in the sense that full source code is available to licensed users. It therefore shares much of the GNU spirit of collaborative software development. This spirit provided part of my motivation to begin this project. REDUCE is also written in Lisp, as is (most of) Emacs. However, the REDUCE user language is similar to Algol-60 (which looks a bit like a cross between Pascal and FORTRAN-77).

Development of REDUCE edit mode began tentatively in late 1992, and serious development of the current version began in early 1994, and has continued sporadically ever since. Development of REDUCE run mode began in late 1998. The latest released versions of the software and documentation are available from my web server. Comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc. are welcome.

Initial development of REDUCE mode used GNU Emacs 18, actually the pioneering Japanese port for MS-DOS called "Demacs". Subsequent development used various MS-DOS ports of GNU Emacs under Microsoft Windows, and recent development has used NTEmacs under Windows 95. The current version of the REDUCE IDE is intended for use with GNU Emacs version 20.3 and later, which I will endeavour to support under most flavours of 32-bit Microsoft Windows and UNIX, including GNU/Linux; it might run under closely related versions of GNU Emacs but I do not currently explicitly support either XEmacs[1] or other platforms. The most significant recent development is the facility for running REDUCE under Emacs.

This manual assumes that the reader is familiar in general with both Emacs and REDUCE.

The purpose of REDUCE edit mode is to provide editing commands that are aware of the syntax of the REDUCE language, and therefore allow operations to be performed on the major syntactic elements, namely statements, procedures and comments. To the reader who has never used a syntax-directed editor, I can only say that it is surprisingly useful! In particular, the automatic indentation code provides valuable clues to potential REDUCE programming errors by showing how the REDUCE parser is likely to interpret the code (see [Indenting REDUCE code automatically]).

The purpose of REDUCE run mode is to provide a friendly interface to a command-line version of REDUCE running as an inferior process in an Emacs buffer. REDUCE run mode inherits much of its functionality from REDUCE edit mode and cannot be run alone. The assumption is that normal use will involve editing one or more REDUCE source files and running REDUCE simultaneously, and this is what REDUCE run mode aims to support.

All REDUCE IDE commands are self-documenting as usual in Emacs, including in particular the modes themselves. Hence, for an overview of the version of a REDUCE mode that is actually installed in your Emacs, select it in some buffer and then give the command C-h m (describe-mode) or use the Help menu option Describe.

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Installation of the REDUCE IDE

The recommended procedure for installing the REDUCE IDE is to load or evaluate the Emacs Lisp (ELisp) file reduce-ide-install.el within Emacs, after copying it and all the other REDUCE IDE files that you wish to install into some chosen directory, probably by down-loading them from my web server. The installer will try to configure Emacs to use whichever files are present in its directory; reduce-mode.el is required and all other files are optional. If the info version of this document is present then it will be configured for browsing within Emacs. The installer asks the user a few questions and updates the user's Emacs initialization file. It tries to avoid adding unnecessary code by testing the current configuration.

The rest of this chapter, and the related section of the chapter on REDUCE run mode, are for users who want to install and configure the REDUCE IDE "by hand", or who want to understand what is necessary and what should be done by the installer program.

REDUCE edit mode is provided by a file called reduce-mode.el, which is a file of ELisp source code. This file should be byte-compiled, and the compiled file reduce-mode.elc should be installed in the normal directory from which Emacs loads its Lisp code (if you have suitable permission). Otherwise, customize your Emacs load-path so that Emacs can find reduce-mode.elc. See [Customization].

Emacs initialization and customization is stored in a file, which is normally called .emacs and lives under UNIX in your home directory or under Windows (by default) in the root of the primary Windows disk drive (usually C:\). It is updated automatically by the Emacs customization facility and can also be edited by hand to add other configuration. See [Init File].

Before REDUCE mode can be used, the file reduce-mode.elc must be loaded. This is necessary only once per Emacs session. It can be loaded explicitly, most easily by giving the command M-x load-library reduce-mode. However, you will probably want reduce-mode.elc to be loaded automatically the first time you (explicitly or implicitly) turn on REDUCE mode. The way to do this, on a per-user basis, is to put the following statement into your .emacs file: 

(autoload 'reduce-mode "reduce-mode"
          "Major mode for REDUCE code editing" t)

This statement is completely innocuous and will have no effect unless the user selects REDUCE mode. It could therefore quite safely be put in a system-wide configuration file (e.g. default.el or site-start.el). See [Init File].

It is also very convenient to have REDUCE mode turned on automatically when editing a REDUCE source code file. This can be done based on the "extension" of the filename. Provided you end all REDUCE source code file names with the standard extension .red, the following statement in your .emacs file will have the desired effect: 

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.red\\'" . reduce-mode))

Other extensions can be used as well or instead; if you use a different file naming convention then make the appropriate change(s) to the above statement. Emacs also provides other facilities that can be used for controlling major modes.

Installation of REDUCE run mode is documented separately. See [Running REDUCE in a buffer].

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Changes since REDUCE mode version 0.35

This chapter outlines the main user-visible changes since REDUCE mode version 0.35, which was the last fully documented public release. You may find it useful if you are familiar with that version; otherwise, ignore this chapter! The main changes are these:

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General features of REDUCE edit mode

REDUCE edit mode can be selected by giving the command M-x reduce-mode, although normally it will be selected automatically, probably via the filename extension (see [Installation of the REDUCE IDE]).

The commands provided by REDUCE mode are aware of REDUCE syntax and ignore the contents of strings and the case of characters. Except for the special comment commands (see [Support for REDUCE comments]), they also ignore comments. The standard GNU Emacs indentation (see [Indenting REDUCE code automatically]) and comment commands are supported, either via the general Emacs mechanisms or by re-binding the standard keys to REDUCE-mode versions of standard commands. The design of this mode is modelled primarily on Lisp mode and at present the comment conventions basically follow those of Lisp mode, except that comments are started by percent (%) signs or the keyword comment. It has also taken some ideas from FORTRAN mode.

The standard Emacs syntax tables have been modified to reflect REDUCE syntax, so that for example Emacs knows that the REDUCE escape character is !. However, there remain some unresolved problems concerning the REDUCE escape character. See [Font-lock support for automatic font selection]. See [Miscellaneous minor features and bugs].

Blank lines separate "paragraphs".

Loading the REDUCE mode library runs any functions on reduce-mode-load-hook, which can be used to customize global features of REDUCE mode such as its key map. Entry to REDUCE mode runs any functions on reduce-mode-hook, which can be used to customize buffer-local features of REDUCE mode, e.g. to turn on font-lock mode. See [Installation of the REDUCE IDE]. See [Customization of the REDUCE IDE].

REDUCE mode is intended to support both the algebraic and symbolic modes of REDUCE. It provides very limited support for Lisp syntax to the extent that it is likely to be used in symbolic-mode code, and hence it understands the significance of the quote symbol (') to some extent. Syntax-directed editing naturally works correctly only if the syntax of the source code being edited is correct. If it is not then strange things can happen, and the services of the Emacs undo facilities may be required!

DEL
M-x backward-delete-char-untabify
Delete one character backwards, converting tabs to spaces if necessary.

A major mode menu provides convenient access to most of the major facilities of REDUCE mode.

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Statement-oriented commands

The most basic facility provided by REDUCE mode is the ability to move forward and backward by statement through a file of REDUCE source code. Moving by one statement means moving to the beginning or end of the logical statement currently containing (or respectively preceding or following) point, which may involve skipping many actual statements that are contained within the current statement. In particular, as Emacs looks for the beginning or end of a statement it will skip complete compound statements (begin … end), group statements (<< … >>), and bracketed expressions ((…), {…} and […], even though square brackets are not normally used in REDUCE). Bracket skipping is controlled entirely by the Emacs syntax table.

Hence, "statement" in this manual will normally mean a complete logical statement. A syntax-directed editor clearly must perform a limited amount of parsing, but it must be remembered that a syntax-directed editor has the following important differences from a normal parser, because their basic purposes are different:

  • A syntax-directed editor must be able to parse both forwards and backwards.

  • It will typically parse only locally for speed and must therefore parse based on incomplete information.

  • It is provided for the convenience of the user and therefore need not obey precisely the full syntax of the language, provided it is consistent and reliable.

Emacs considers REDUCE statements to be terminated by the statement separator characters ; and $. It also considers statements contained within any kind of brackets to be terminated by those brackets, statements within compound statements (begin … end) to be terminated by the begin and end keywords, and statements within group statements (<< … >>) to be terminated by the << and >> tokens. Commas are not considered to separate statements.

More precisely, a statement is considered to begin at the first non-white-space character following the previous statement separator, opening bracket, begin or <<. It is considered to end immediately after the first statement separator or immediately after the last non-white-space character preceding a closing bracket, end or >>.

The current philosophy of REDUCE mode is that the statements within compound or group statements form essentially isolated systems, and that the basic statement-oriented commands should not move point either into or out of this system. Separate commands are provided to move into and out of compound and group statements. However, if you try hard enough, REDUCE mode will let a simple statement-oriented command move out of (but never into) a compound or group statement. Trying hard enough means repeating the same command enough times, which is determined by the value of the user option reduce-max-up-tries (see [Customization of the REDUCE IDE]), which currently has the default value 2. The overall effect of this is to enforce a brief pause (one ineffective command execution) that serves to prevent you from skipping out of a compound or group statement accidentally, but without causing any serious inconvenience.

There is special code to handle the keyword end when it is used as the end-of-file marker. The following commands all accept a numerical argument, which defaults to 1. The commands to move forward or backward by statements do not move in the opposite direction if given a negative argument, in which case they do not move at all.

C-c C-n
M-x reduce-forward-statement
Move forward to the end of the statement. With an argument, do it that many times. If looking at the end of a block or group, or the end-of-file marker, move over it after reduce-max-up-tries consecutive interactive tries.
C-c C-p
M-x reduce-backward-statement
Move backward to the start of the statement. With an argument, do it that many times. If looking at the beginning of a block or group move over it after reduce-max-up-tries consecutive interactive tries. The end-of-file marker is treated as a statement.
C-c C-k
M-x reduce-kill-statement
Kill the rest of the current statement; if there are no non-blank characters kill through the newline. With an argument, kill that many statements from point. Negative arguments kill complete statements backwards, cf. kill-line.
C-c C-u
M-x reduce-up-block-or-group
Move backward up one level of block or group, i.e. to the beginning of the nearest unpaired begin or <<. A universal argument means move forward, i.e. to the end of the nearest unpaired end or >>. With a numeric argument, do it that many times, where a negative argument means move forward instead of backward.
C-c C-d
M-x reduce-down-block-or-group
Move forward down one level of block or group, i.e. to the end of the nearest unpaired begin or <<. A universal argument means move backward to the beginning of the nearest unpaired end or >>. With a numeric argument, do it that many times, where a negative argument means move backward instead of forward.

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Procedure-oriented commands

Files of REDUCE source code frequently consist mainly of procedure definitions. This is certainly true of symbolic-mode code, and hence it is true of most of the source code of the REDUCE system itself. REDUCE mode provides the following operations on procedures. They work on all kinds of REDUCE procedures provided they contain the keyword procedure somewhere within the first statement of their definition.

A procedure is considered to begin at the first non-white-space character of the definition, and to end after the statement defining the procedure body. White space and the first newline after the procedure body are always considered to be part of the procedure. The commands to mark, kill and reformat a procedure also include all blank lines after the procedure definition, because this seems most convenient in practice. Some procedure-oriented commands support a prefix argument.

The two commands for moving over procedures accept a positive integer argument that indicates by how many procedures to move - the default is 1. These commands do not move in the opposite direction if given a negative argument, in which case they do not move at all.

C-M-e
M-x reduce-forward-procedure
Move forward to the next end of a procedure. With a numeric argument, do it that many times.
C-M-a
M-x reduce-backward-procedure
Move backward to the next start of a procedure. With a numeric argument, do it that many times.

Regardless of whether point is within a procedure or not, these two commands move respectively to the first following end of a procedure, or the first preceding start of a procedure. To move to the start of the next procedure, move forward to its end and then move backward to its start.

The remaining commands do not accept an argument because (even without an argument) they can change large portions of text. Marking a procedure is the basis of the other operations on procedures.

C-M-h
M-x reduce-mark-procedure
Put the mark after the next end of a procedure and point at the start of that procedure. A procedure ends after any trailing white space. With a numeric argument, mark that many following procedures including this one.
C-c k
M-x reduce-kill-procedure
Kill the procedure (and trailing white space) ending after point.
C-M-q
M-x reduce-indent-procedure
Indent the procedure (and trailing white space) ending after point. See [Indenting REDUCE code automatically].

It is often desirable to be able to see as much as possible of a procedure definition within the current window. The standard Emacs command reposition-window (see [Scrolling]) attempts to do this for Lisp functions, and the command reduce-reposition-window provides a harness to apply this function to REDUCE procedures, to which the standard key C-M-l is rebound.

C-M-l
M-x reduce-reposition-window
Reposition the procedure containing point to maximize its visibility within the window. See [Scrolling], and see the documentation for the function reposition-window for details.

To restrict all editing to a single REDUCE procedure, the standard Emacs key C-x n d that runs the command narrow-to-defun is rebound to a function to narrow to the current procedure.

C-x n d
M-x reduce-narrow-to-procedure
Make text outside the current procedure invisible. The procedure visible is the one that contains point or follows point. With a prefix argument, narrow to the following arg procedures including this one. See [Narrowing].

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Support for REDUCE comments

There are two comment conventions used in REDUCE. One is the comment statement, which is a statement that begins with the keyword comment and ends with a statement separator. This is not used much in modern REDUCE code. The most commonly used form of comment begins with a % character and ends at the end of the line. Hence, it can appear either on its own on a line or at the end of a line after other code.

Comments are ignored (skipped) by all syntax-directed commands. (This is not trivial to achieve, since comments can contain essentially arbitrary text including keywords, and %-comments can contain statement separators, which do not have any syntactic significance.) There is currently no way to use any of the REDUCE syntax-directed commands on comment statements.

There is no special support for comment statements other than that they are currently completely ignored. There is considerably more support for %-comments, much of which is already built into Emacs because %-comments are very similar to the comments used in Emacs Lisp. Indeed, the comment conventions supported by REDUCE mode are modelled primarily on those used in Emacs Lisp mode.

The comment commands are intimately related to the automatic comment indentation conventions. (These are the indentation conventions enforced by the Emacs comment and indentation commands, although the user is not otherwise forced to follow them.) See [Indenting REDUCE code automatically].

The indentation of a %-comment that begins with no more than 2 % characters together and appears alone on a line is determined by the previous non-blank line. If this is a procedure (header) statement then the comment line is indented relative to it, otherwise it has no indent relative to the previous line, and at the beginning of a file it is not indented at all. A %-comment at the end of a line of code is indented to the column specified by the value of the standard Emacs buffer-local variable comment-column, which by default is 40 (half way across a "standard" 80 column page), unless the code extends beyond this column. In that case, the comment begins one space later.

This convention can be over-ridden as follows. If the comment begins with 3 or more % characters then the comment indentation is not changed. This allows a comment to be placed anywhere on an empty line without any risk of it being automatically re-indented.

A new single-%-comment can be introduced and/or automatically indented by the standard Emacs command indent-for-comment, normally bound to the key Meta-;. An existing %-comment can be automatically continued on the next line by the standard Emacs command indent-new-comment-line, normally bound to the key Meta-<LFD>. This will copy the structure of the %-comment to be continued, including the number of % characters and the indentation. All other indentation commands will also indent %-comments, in particular those bound to the <TAB> and <BACKTAB> (i.e. Shift-<TAB>) keys. See [Indenting REDUCE code automatically].

M-;
M-x indent-for-comment
Indent this line's comment appropriately, or insert an empty comment.
M-LFD
M-x indent-new-comment-line
Break the line at point and indent, continuing a comment if presently within one. The body of the continued comment is indented under the previous comment line.

The only program text that it normally makes sense to fill or justify is comment text. Hence, REDUCE mode rebinds the key M-q that normally fills or justifies a paragraph to the command reduce-fill-comment. This should be completely safe to use in REDUCE code (unlike fill-paragraph etc., which would be a potential disaster were there no undo facility!), and makes it easy to keep comments formatted tidily. Currently this command fills or justifies only %-comments and not comment statements.

M-q
M-x reduce-fill-comment
Fill successive %-comment lines around or immediately following point. A prefix argument means justify as well.

REDUCE mode also provides commands for turning sections of text into %-comments by adding % characters at the start of each line, which will be referred to as "start-comments". These commands are intended primarily for temporarily preventing REDUCE from executing sections of code without actually removing them. Such a section can be either the current region or the procedure ending after point. By default, these commands automatically toggle the comment status. When given an interactive argument, they remove any start-commenting of the specified section of text if the argument is negative (or null) and insert start-commenting if the argument is positive. The precise text that is added to or removed from each line is the value of the variable reduce-comment-region, which defaults to %% .

C-c ;
M-x reduce-comment-region
Comment/uncomment every line in the region. By default, it toggles the commenting, i.e. it comments the region if it is uncommented and uncomments if it is commented. With an interactive argument, comment if non-negative, uncomment if null or negative (cf. minor modes). When commenting, it puts the value of the variable reduce-comment-region at the beginning of every line in the region.
C-c :
M-x reduce-comment-procedure
As for reduce-comment-region, but applies to the procedure ending after point.

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Indenting REDUCE code automatically

Indentation refers to the white space at the left of a line, which therefore determines the column in which the actual text of the line begins. Indentation is used in normal English text to indicate the beginning of paragraphs, quotations, lists, etc. and hence to indicate the logical structure of a document.

It is very important to use systematic indentation to indicate the logical structure of the source code of a computer program. Whilst the general principles of indentation are largely agreed, precise indentation conventions vary from author to author. The automatic indentation currently provided by REDUCE mode is very inflexible and reflects very much my own style of indentation. Future versions may provide more flexible and customizable indentation.

Currently all indentation is done in steps consisting of a fixed number of columns determined by the value of the variable reduce-indentation (see [Customization of the REDUCE IDE]), the default value of which is 3. This is the indentation recommended by A. C. Hearn (the principal author of REDUCE) for the indentation of the first line after a procedure (header) statement.

REDUCE mode provides fairly intelligent automatic indentation. The style used is as follows, where the indentation of a child statement is expressed relative to the parent statement. Each top-level statement is indented to the left margin. Procedure bodies are indented by one step. Bodies of multi-line compound and group statements are indented by one step and labels are exdented to match the beginning of the enclosing block. Lines that begin with end or >> are exdented to match the line containing the matching begin or <<. Bodies of control structures and lines that continue a previous statement are indented by one step. As parts of larger statements, compound and group statements themselves are generally not indented if they occupy multiple lines (because their bodies are indented) but they are indented if they occupy only a single line.

When a new line that is empty is being indented, the indentation can be based only on the preceding code, and not on the code that will appear in the line. Therefore, it is often necessary to re-indent a line in order to get consistent indentation. This seems a little strange, but it is unavoidable (given the syntax of REDUCE and the indentation style that I have chosen). It is for this reason that the key <LFD> runs the command reindent-then-newline-and-indent rather than just newline-and-indent. But see also below.

The command to indent, or re-indent, a line of text is reduce-indent-line, normally bound to the key <TAB>. If re-run immediately after itself (or run immediately after reindent-then-newline-and-indent (<LFD>) or newline-and-indent (M-x newline-and-indent)) then it indents by one further step. This is non-standard additional flexibility provided by REDUCE mode. To force a line back to its standard indentation after multiple use of the <TAB> key, simply execute any other command(s) and then press <TAB> once. The execution of reduce-indent-line is independent of the position of point within the line. It does not move point relative to the text around it unless point was within the indentation, in which case it is left before the first non-blank character (i.e. at the end of the indentation), or at the end of the line if it is empty. Normally, however, the most convenient way to use automatic indentation is to terminate each line of code with <LFD> rather than <RET>. See [Miscellaneous minor features and bugs].

When called with any argument, reduce-indent-line will indent the current line correctly and then re-indent the rest of the logical statement containing point by the same amount that the current line was re-indented. This is not the same as correctly re-indenting the subsequent lines - it re-indents them rigidly, without changing their relative indentations at all, and is much faster.

TAB
M-x reduce-indent-line
Indent or re-indent the current line as REDUCE code. Indents to a fixed style determined by the current and previous non-blank lines. Subsequent consecutive calls indent additionally by reduce-indentation. With an interactive argument, indent any additional lines of the same statement rigidly together with this one.
LFD
M-x reindent-then-newline-and-indent
Re-indent the current line, insert a newline, then indent the new line. Indentation of both lines is done using reduce-indent-line, which is bound by default to TAB.

With the current indentation style, it is not possible in all cases to determine the correct indentation until after some text has been entered on a line. This applies to the terminal delimiter of a block end or group >> when it appears alone on a line and to an else clause. Therefore, REDUCE mode can automatically re-indent the current line once there is enough text to recognise that this is necessary. It does this only when it is otherwise idle and only when the relevant text has just been typed. It is not done if the cursor is later moved onto such a line since it is assumed that the desired indentation has been set by then. (The indentation of any text can, of course, be changed at any time, but it will never be automatically changed retrospectively!) This facility is turned on and off by the command reduce-auto-indent-mode, the length of idle time required before the facility will operate is controlled by the user option reduce-auto-indent-delay, and whether the current line is auto-indented by this facility is controlled by the regular expression that is the value of the user option reduce-auto-indent-regexp. Auto-indentation is on by default. See [Customization of the REDUCE IDE].

M-x reduce-auto-indent-mode
Toggle REDUCE Auto Indent mode. With a prefix argument, turn the mode on if and only if the argument is positive. When REDUCE Auto Indent mode is enabled, after reduce-auto-indent-delay seconds of Emacs idle time re-indent the current line if the text just typed matches reduce-auto-indent-regexp.

A section of code can be re-indented using one command if it is first marked as the current region, or the whole buffer or a complete procedure definition can be re-indented by a single command. The latter command works by marking the procedure and then re-indenting the region; it currently leaves the procedure marked. Region (and hence procedure) indenting is currently implemented inefficiently by applying the single-line indentation algorithm line-by-line, and hence is very slow for a large region or procedure. In some future version it may be re-implemented more efficiently.

C-M-\
M-x reduce-indent-region
Indent or re-indent the region as REDUCE source code by applying reduce-indent-line to each line. With a prefix argument it indents the whole buffer.
C-M-q
M-x reduce-indent-procedure
Indent or re-indent the procedure (and trailing white space) ending after point by applying reduce-indent-line to each line.

An inverse of the extra-indentation facility is provided to decrease the indentation by one step. This command is bound to Shift-<TAB> (i.e. <BACKTAB>) if possible, but not all platforms support this (because it has no ASCII representation). It may be no different from <TAB> alone, or it may generate an obscure ASCII sequence, so just try Shift-<TAB>, or ask Emacs what function is bound to Shift-<TAB> (by using C-h k). A default key binding, which should work on all platforms, is provided as C-c <TAB>. (However, currently this is rebound by REDUCE run mode. See [Run mode key bindings and menu].)

With an argument, reduce-unindent-line rigidly unindents by one step the current line and the rest of the logical statement as an inverse of extra applications of reduce-indent-line with an argument.

BACKTAB
Shift-TAB
C-c TAB
M-x reduce-unindent-line
Unindent the current line as REDUCE code by deleting reduce-indentation spaces from the beginning of the line. With an interactive argument, unindent any additional lines of the same statement rigidly along with this one.

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Templates for REDUCE structures

Commands are provided to insert and format the major REDUCE language structures; currently block or compound (begin … end), group (<< … >>) and conditional (if … then … else …) statements are supported. By default they are formatted to be multi-line. If given a prefix argument, the commands to insert block and group statements (composites) format them on a single line (appropriate in some very simple cases).

If there is text on the line after where a composite is inserted then it is moved into the body of the composite; if transient mark mode is on and the mark is active then the whole region is moved into the composite; the composite is then re-indented.

The cursor is left in place to enter the body statements of a group, whereas a block is inserted complete with an empty scalar declaration and the cursor is left in place to enter the names of the scalar variables.

C-c b
M-x reduce-insert-block
Insert and indent a begin scalar ; … end block and position point inside. With an argument put begin and end on the same line.
C-c <
M-x reduce-insert-group
Insert and indent a << … >> group and position point inside. With an argument put << and >> on the same line.
C-c i
M-x reduce-insert-if-then
Insert if … then and position point inside. With argument include a correctly indented else on a second line.

Probably the easiest way to access these templates from the keyboard is not directly as described above but via the generalized completion facilities described in the next chapter. See [Keyword completion and abbreviation expansion].

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Keyword completion and abbreviation expansion

Emacs provides various standard facilities for semi-automatic completion of key words and phrases (see [Symbol Completion], see [Dynamic Abbrevs]). REDUCE mode provides completion of common REDUCE key words and phrases, such as procedure, by typing the first few letters of a key word or phrase and then pressing Meta-<TAB>. (For use under Microsoft Window see [Miscellaneous minor features and bugs]) This works in a similar way to completion in other major modes (see [Symbol Completion]).

REDUCE mode also provides abbreviations that are expanded like completions, except that they are replaced by their expansions rather than completed. Examples of the abbreviations currently defined are: 

    ("ap" . "algebraic procedure ")
    ("st" . "such that ")
    ("sop" . "symbolic operator ")
    ("sp" . "symbolic procedure ")

The following symbols currently trigger structure completion: 

    ("begin" . reduce-insert-block)
    ("ift" . reduce-expand-if-then)
    ("ife" . reduce-expand-if-then-else)
    ("<<" . reduce-insert-group)

They operate in exactly the same way as if the appropriate structure insertion command had been executed directly, and they receive any prefix argument entered before the completion key.

For the full set of completions and abbreviations see the customizable user option reduce-completion-alist.

M-TAB
M-x reduce-complete-symbol
Perform completion on the REDUCE symbol preceding point (or preceding the region if it is active). Compare that symbol against the elements of reduce-completion-alist. If a perfect match (only) has a cdr then delete the match and insert the cdr if it is a string or call it if it is a (nullary) function, passing on any prefix argument (in raw form).

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Font-lock support for automatic font selection

Font-lock mode causes Emacs to select automatically the font in which text is displayed ("fontify" it) so as to indicate its logical status. See [Font Lock]. The first version of font-lock support for REDUCE mode was contributed by Rainer Schoepf. The current version provides 4 levels of decoration, which can be selected using the standard font-lock facilities, or interactively most easily via the REDUCE mode font-lock sub-menu. The levels and corresponding highlighting are as follows.

  1. Minimum: main keywords and group delimiters, procedure and other main type declarations, strings, %-comments

  2. Algebraic: minimum plus labels, algebraic-mode declarations and variables

  3. Symbolic: minimum plus labels, symbolic-mode declarations and variables

  4. Maximum: all the above plus function calls and all uses of variables

Minimum highlighting is probably a good general-purpose level for normal use, but if you program almost exclusively in either the algebraic or symbolic mode of REDUCE then you might prefer the highlighting tailored to that mode. Maximum highlighting is probably too gaudy and too slow for general use; also the code is complicated and not well tested, so maximum highlighting is likely to be the least reliable.

REDUCE mode does not make any (user configurable) face definitions of its own and only standard font-lock faces are used. The faces used to highlight particular syntactic elements are as follows:

font-lock-builtin-face
not currently used
font-lock-comment-face
%-comments (only)
font-lock-constant-face
labels
font-lock-function-name-face
procedure, operator and module names in their definition statements only (which may change in a later version)
font-lock-keyword-face
main REDUCE keywords
font-lock-string-face
strings
font-lock-type-face
type declaration keywords
font-lock-variable-name-face
variables
font-lock-warning-face
currently used only by REDUCE run mode
font-lock-reference-face
obsolete and replaced by font-lock-constant-face

Font-lock mode can be turned on interactively in the normal way that any minor mode is turned on, e.g. it can be toggled on and off by the command font-lock-mode. It can also be turned on and off via the REDUCE mode font-lock sub-menu. To turn on font-lock mode automatically with REDUCE mode, put this in your .emacs file: 

(add-hook 'reduce-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock)

To control the operation of font-lock mode use the customization buffer for the Font Lock group. The default level of fontification used by any mode can be specified by customizing the user option font-lock-maximum-decoration, which REDUCE mode respects.

Emacs provides standard facilities to control the use of different display faces. See [Faces]. See [Faces], for further technical detail. To alter the appearance of a Font Lock face, use the customization buffer for the Font Lock Highlighting Faces group. See [Face Customization].

REDUCE mode passes information to font-lock mode via the value of the buffer-local variable font-lock-defaults, which could be re-set or modified via the REDUCE mode hook, although this is not recommended.

For more information see the description of the command font-lock-mode and related commands and variables, and/or the ELisp source code file font-lock.el.

Standard font-lock fontification can be slow. An elegant solution is provided by the lazy-lock package, which immediately fontifies only the visible part of the buffer and fontifies the remainder "stealthily" in the background when Emacs is not otherwise busy. This makes font-lock mode eminently usable even on a relatively low-powered computer (provided it has a suitable display) and I recommend it!

Font-locking of major syntactic elements, such as comments and strings, is normally controlled by the syntax table for the text being edited. This leads to a problem with a language such as REDUCE, because the character ! represents an escape character within an identifier but not within a string. This is different from the convention in the languages (C and Emacs Lisp) that Emacs was primarily designed to support, in which the significance of the escape character does not depend on the context. I have not found a completely satisfactory way to deal with this problem. The solution currently adopted in REDUCE mode is to use a recently added font-lock facility that allows the syntax of ! to be reset from escape to punctuation when it occurs immediately followed by a double quote, i.e. as !". This avoids most of the difficulties, but it fails in the (fairly rare) case that !" appears in an identifier (which it does in one or two of the core REDUCE system files).

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Access to procedures and operators

REDUCE mode can provide information about the procedure that point is currently in, and easy access via the Imenu facility to all the procedure and operator definitions within the current file. Whilst Imenu provides a convenient way to find a procedure or operator definition rapidly in the current file, the standard Emacs "tag" facility is the best way to find a procedure or operator definition rapidly in another file.

  • Show Proc: Showing the current procedure
  • Imenu: Menu access to procedures and operators
  • Tags: Tag access to procedures and operators

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Show procedure mode

When editing or viewing long procedure definitions it is easy to forget which procedure you are looking at when the procedure statement itself is off the top of the screen. REDUCE mode can show in the mode line the name of the procedure (if any) that point is in. This facility is turned on and off by the command M-x reduce-show-proc-mode or via the REDUCE mode menu; it is off by default. (It is analogous to the standard Emacs "Which Function" mode, but it is implemented differently and largely independently.)

M-x reduce-show-proc-mode
Toggle REDUCE Show Proc mode. With a prefix argument, turn REDUCE Show Proc mode on if and only if the argument is positive. When REDUCE Show Proc mode is enabled, display the current procedure name in the mode line after reduce-show-proc-delay seconds of Emacs idle time.

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Imenu support

REDUCE mode supports the standard Emacs Imenu facilities (see [Imenu]). The easiest way to use them is via the REDUCE menu entry that builds a new (nested) menu of REDUCE procedure and operator names. Selecting an entry in this menu moves point to the start of the definition of the specified procedure or operator. Another way to use Imenu is by entering the extended command M-x imenu and then using the standard Emacs completion facilities to select a procedure or operator name. The REDUCE mode Imenu menu-bar menu name and the regular expression used to build menu entries can be customized (see [Customization of the REDUCE IDE]).

[ Previous: Imenu | Up: Access ]

Support for tag files

A REDUCE mode submenu provides rapid access to some of the main facilities for finding a definition via a tag file. Two commands (and submenu options) are also provided to facilitate tagging all the files in one directory or all the files in all subdirectories (one level deep) of a directory. The former is useful for tagging all the files associated with a single project or package; the latter for tagging all REDUCE packages in a single tag file.

Beware: Both the tagging commands currently require a UNIX-compatible command shell called sh in a directory in Emacs' exec-path. A standard Microsoft Windows (or MS-DOS) command shell will not suffice for this application, but there are plenty of suitable free shells that will work under Windows. I recommend the port of ash included in the Cygwin package, which includes a port of a great deal of excellent GNU (and other) free software to Microsoft Windows. (Note that, whilst bash will work perfectly well, it is overkill for this application.)

M-x reduce-tagify-dir
Generate a REDUCE TAGS file for (all .red files in) a directory, by default the current directory.
M-x reduce-tagify-subdirs
Generate a REDUCE TAGS file for (all .red files in) all subdirectories of a directory, by default the parent of the current directory.

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Miscellaneous minor features and bugs

REDUCE mode extends some of the standard Emacs handling of parenthesised "lists" to include REDUCE group and block constructs. It provides a major mode menu and easy access to its version information. This chapter also discusses known and potential problems using REDUCE mode, and describes how to access some special function keys that are useful in Emacs in general and in REDUCE mode in particular.

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Groups and blocks: delimiter highlighting and moving over

Delimiters for groups (<< and >>) and blocks (begin and end) are treated as brackets. Either highlighting of matching group and block delimiters (consistent with the paren library (see [Matching])) or (group only) blink matching is toggled by the command reduce-show-delim-mode. Highlighting is turned on automatically when REDUCE mode is selected if reduce-show-delim-mode is non-nil, which it is by default if the paren library is in use. See [Matching], all of which applies to this extended bracket matching facility.

Beware: Currently highlighting of matching group and block delimiters works only when point is at the end of the delimiter. This may be changed in future.

M-x reduce-show-delim-mode
Toggle REDUCE Show Delim mode. With a prefix argument, turn REDUCE Show Delim mode on if and only if the argument is positive. When REDUCE Show Delim mode is enabled, any matching delimiter is highlighted after show-paren-delay seconds of Emacs idle time. See [Customization of the REDUCE IDE].

Groups and blocks are regarded as "symbolic expressions" (sexp's) by the commands reduce-backward-sexp and reduce-forward-sexp.

C-M-f
M-x reduce-forward-sexp
Move forward across one balanced expression. With an argument, do it that many times.
C-M-b
M-x reduce-backward-sexp
Move backward across one balanced expression. With an argument, do it that many times.

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Major mode menu

REDUCE mode adds a major-mode menu called "REDUCE" to the menu bar, which is also available as a pop-up menu activated by the command mouse-major-mode-menu on the standard key C-down-mouse-3.

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REDUCE mode version information

The version of REDUCE mode that is running is available as the value of the variable reduce-mode-version, which is a string that can be displayed in the echo area either by selecting the Show Version menu option from the REDUCE major mode menu or by running the command M-x reduce-mode-version (both of which also record it in the *Messages* buffer). If REDUCE mode is not running then an easy way to start it is to switch to a temporary buffer (e.g. by using C-x b tmp) and then switch it to REDUCE mode (by using M-x reduce-mode).

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Known and potential problems

There is a problem with the way that REDUCE mode handles an exclamation mark (!) followed immediately by a double quote ". See [Font-lock support for automatic font selection]. This should not be a problem in "normal" code, but it may upset the parsing of code that uses this character sequence within an identifier. It is caused by a limitation in the way that Emacs currently handles the syntax of the text being edited and is not easy to avoid completely! I am looking for a better resolution of this problem.

There is no guarantee that an arbitrary minor mode or other extension will be compatible with REDUCE mode, although I am not aware of any conflicts. Two minor modes that are known to be compatible with REDUCE mode are transient-mark-mode and delete-selection-mode (because I always use them and I recommend them!).

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Special function keys

A number of "special function" keys are useful in Emacs in general and in REDUCE mode in particular, which are not directly accessible on all platforms. The following comments apply particularly to Microsoft Windows.

The standard key to terminate lines of indented code is <LFD> and the standard key to continue a comment is Meta-<LFD>, but <LFD> does not exist on a standard PC keyboard. Note that <LFD> can always be accessed via its ASCII code as C-j, or on some keyboards Control-<RET> generates <LFD>. In some situations, the keyboard can be re-programmed to provide this very convenient synonym, which is true of the better terminal emulators.

The standard key to complete a symbol is Meta-<TAB>, but Microsoft Windows uses this key combination for fast task switching.

When Emacs is able to read the keyboard directly, as when it is run under X or Microsoft Windows, <LFD> can be conveniently emulated as Control-<RET> and Meta-<TAB> as Control-<TAB>. A good way to generate these and similar emulations is to put the following code in your .emacs file: 

(define-key function-key-map [(control return)] [?\C-J])
(define-key function-key-map [(control meta return)] [?\C-\M-J])
(define-key function-key-map [(control tab)] [?\M-\t])

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Customization of the REDUCE IDE

REDUCE IDE supports a small amount of customization. The following edit-mode user options can be changed using the standard Emacs customization facilities. The main REDUCE customization group is called "REDUCE", under which are the two sub-groups "REDUCE Interface" and "REDUCE Format & Display" and two hooks.

REDUCE IDE font-lock support can be customized by resetting standard font-lock variables (see [Font-lock support for automatic font selection]).

Customization of REDUCE run mode is documented separately. See [Customization of REDUCE run mode].

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REDUCE mode interface customization

reduce-imenu-generic-expression
Imenu support for procedure definitions and operator declarations. An alist with elements of the form (MENU-TITLE REGEXP INDEX) - see the documentation for imenu-generic-expression.
reduce-imenu
Default value nil. If non-nil then REDUCE mode automatically calls imenu-add-to-menubar to add a Contents menu to the menubar.
reduce-imenu-title
Default value "Procs/Ops". The title to use if REDUCE mode adds a procedure/operator menu to the menubar.
reduce-max-up-tries
Default value 2. Number of repeats of reduce-forward or backward-statement required to move up out of a block or group.
reduce-completion-alist
Association list of REDUCE-mode completions searched by reduce-complete-symbol. Each key word or phrase to be simply completed should be a list containing a single string. If a perfectly matched string (only) is a non-trivial pair then the match is deleted and the cdr inserted if it is a string or called if it is a (nullary) function, passing on any prefix argument (in raw form).

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REDUCE mode format & display customization

Format

reduce-indentation
Default value 3. Depth of successive indentation in REDUCE code.
reduce-comment-region
Default value %% . String inserted by reduce-comment-region or reduce-comment-procedure at the start of each line.
reduce-auto-indent-mode
Default value t. If non-nil then conditionally re-indent the current line after reduce-auto-indent-delay seconds of Emacs idle time if the text just typed matches reduce-auto-indent-regex.
reduce-auto-indent-delay
Default value 0.125. Time in seconds to delay before maybe re-indenting current line.
reduce-auto-indent-regexp
Default value "\\(else\\|end\\|>>\\)\\=". Auto indent the current line if the text just typed matches this regexp. It should end with \=.

Display

reduce-show-delim-mode
Default value is "on" if this makes sense. If non-nil then highlight matching group and block delimiters. Otherwise blink the open-group matching an inserted close-group.
reduce-show-delim-match-face
Default value as for standard paren match highlighting (Show Paren mode). Face used for a matching REDUCE delimiter.
reduce-show-delim-mismatch-face
Default value as for standard paren match highlighting (Show Paren mode). Face used for a mismatching REDUCE delimiter.
reduce-show-proc-mode
Default value nil. If non-nil then display the current procedure name in the mode line after reduce-show-proc-delay seconds of Emacs idle time.
reduce-show-proc-delay
Default value 0.125. Time in seconds to delay before showing the current procedure name.

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REDUCE mode hooks

Hooks allow arbitrary customization that is not supported by the standard customization facilities. When the REDUCE mode library is loaded into Emacs, the last step of the loading process is to execute the function(s) assigned to the variable reduce-mode-load-hook. This hook would be appropriate for modifying global properties of REDUCE mode such as its key map.

When REDUCE mode is activated in a buffer the last step of its initialization process is to execute the function(s) assigned to the variable reduce-mode-hook. This hook would be appropriate for modifying properties local to the buffer.

See [Installation of the REDUCE IDE], for further details.

reduce-mode-load-hook
Default value nil. List of functions to be called when REDUCE mode is loaded, e.g. require-reduce-run to automatically load reduce-run. It can be used to customize global features of REDUCE mode such as its key map, i.e. it is a good place to put key bindings.
reduce-mode-hook
Default value nil. List of functions to be called when REDUCE mode is entered. It can be used to customize buffer-local features of REDUCE mode, e.g. use turn-on-font-lock to turn on font-lock mode locally.

[ Next: | Previous: Customization | Up: Top ]

Running REDUCE in a buffer

REDUCE run mode is a subsidiary of REDUCE edit mode, in the sense that it requires REDUCE edit mode to be loaded before it can be loaded. (It tries to ensure this automatically.) It provides an interface that allows a command-line (as opposed to a GUI) version of REDUCE to be run interactively in an Emacs buffer, with input from and output to that buffer.

[ Next: | Previous: Run | Up: Run ]

Introduction to REDUCE run mode

REDUCE run mode provides the following facilities for running REDUCE:

  • input editing and flexible re-execution of previous input;

  • flexible browsing of all input and output;

  • syntax highlighting of prompts, input and error messages;

  • bracket and delimiter highlighting or matching as in REDUCE edit mode;

  • easy REDUCE package loading, source file input and module compilation;

  • seamless integration with source files being edited using REDUCE edit mode, including easy input of statements, procedure definitions, arbitrary regions or the whole file to REDUCE;

  • optional automatic starting of REDUCE;

  • menu access to many facilities;

  • all other standard Emacs facilities, such as printing part or all of the interaction buffer;

  • the full source code is free, and the package is documented and user customizable.

These facilities include most, if not all, of the facilities offered by any other REDUCE interface, with the notable exception of typeset quality display of mathematical output. It may be possible to support this in some future version.

REDUCE run mode is provided as a separate library so that a user who prefers another REDUCE interface does not need to install it. However, it is subsidiary to REDUCE edit mode, and when loaded it hooks itself into and cooperates closely with REDUCE edit mode.

REDUCE run mode is based closely on the standard library inf-lisp by Olin Shivers. See [External Lisp]. Since this mode is built on top of the general command-interpreter-in-a-buffer (comint) mode, it shares a common base functionality and a common set of key bindings with all modes derived from comint mode. (Among these, shell mode is likely to be the most familiar. See [Interactive Shell].) This makes these modes easier to use.

For further documentation on the functionality provided by comint mode and the hooks available for customising it, see the file comint.el.

[ Next: | Previous: Run Introduction | Up: Run ]

Installation of REDUCE run mode

It is probably best to use the semi-automatic installation procedure described earlier. See [Installation of the REDUCE IDE]. But if you want to install by hand, or understand the details of the installation process, then read on ….

REDUCE run mode requires the library reduce-mode both when it is compiled and when it is loaded. It tries quite hard to locate this library, but normally it should be in the same directory as reduce-run.

Byte-compile the file reduce-run.el, put the result somewhere in your load-path, and put the following in your .emacs file: 

(autoload 'run-reduce "reduce-run" "Run a REDUCE process" t)

If you would like to have automatic full access to the features of REDUCE run mode from REDUCE edit mode then also put the following in your .emacs file: 

(add-hook 'reduce-mode-load-hook 'require-reduce-run)

[ Next: | Previous: Run Installation | Up: Run ]

Customization of REDUCE run mode

REDUCE run mode provides a small amount of customization. The following user options can be changed using the standard Emacs customization facilities. The main REDUCE customization group is called "REDUCE", under which REDUCE run mode provides a sub-group "REDUCE Run" that allows the following options to be customized.

reduce-run-program
Default value "reduce". The program name by which to invoke REDUCE in REDUCE run mode.
reduce-run-prompt
Default value "^\\([0-9]+[:*] \\)+". The regexp to recognise prompts in REDUCE run mode. The default works well for CSL-REDUCE. This variable is used to initialize comint-prompt-regexp in the REDUCE run buffer.
reduce-run-echo
Default value t. If non-nil then echo "automatic" input to REDUCE processes, i.e. input generated by REDUCE run mode rather than typed directly by the user.
reduce-run-autostart
Default value t. If non-nil then automatically start a REDUCE process if necessary.
reduce-run-mode-hook
Default value nil. The main hook for customising REDUCE run mode.
reduce-run-load-hook
Default value nil. The hook run when REDUCE run mode is loaded. It is a good place to put key bindings.
reduce-input-filter
Default value "\\`\\([ \t;$]*\\|[ \t]*.[ \t]*\\)\\'". What not to save on REDUCE run mode's input history. The value is a regular expression (regexp). The default matches any combination of zero or more whitespace characters and/or statement terminators, or any single character (e.g. y or n) possibly surrounded by whitespace.
reduce-run-buffer
Default value nil. The current REDUCE process buffer.
reduce-source-modes
Default value (reduce-mode). Used to determine if a buffer contains REDUCE source code. If a file is loaded into a buffer that is in one of these major modes then it is considered to be a REDUCE source file by reduce-input-file and reduce-fasl-file. Used by these commands to determine defaults.

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Multiple Process Support

To run multiple REDUCE processes, you start the first with M-x run-reduce or via a menu option. It will be in a buffer named *REDUCE*. Rename this buffer with M-x rename-buffer. You may now start a new process with another M-x run-reduce. It will be in a new buffer, named *REDUCE*. You can switch between the different process buffers with M-x switch-to-buffer.

Commands that send text from source buffers to REDUCE processes - like reduce-eval-proc or reduce-eval-region - have to choose a process to send to if there is more than one REDUCE process running. This is determined by the global variable reduce-run-buffer. Suppose you have three REDUCE processes running:

Buffer Process
foo REDUCE
bar REDUCE<2>
*REDUCE* REDUCE<3>

If you do a M-x reduce-eval-proc command on some REDUCE source code, which process is it sent to?

  • If you're in a process buffer (foo, bar, or *REDUCE*), you send it to that process.

  • If you're in some other buffer (e.g. a source file), you send it to the process attached to buffer reduce-run-buffer.

This process selection is performed by the function reduce-run-proc.

Whenever M-x run-reduce fires up a new process, it resets reduce-run-buffer to be the new process's buffer. If you only run one process, this does the right thing. If you run multiple processes, you can change reduce-run-buffer to another process buffer with M-x set-variable or by using customization.

[ Previous: Run Multiple | Up: Run ]

Run mode key bindings and menu

If the user option reduce-run-autostart is non-nil (which it is by default) then all commands that require a REDUCE process automatically start one if necessary. See [Customization of REDUCE run mode]. Where appropriate, input commands have their own history lists, and if run in REDUCE edit mode then any input file defaults to the file being edited.

The following key bindings are provided in both REDUCE edit and run modes:

C-c C-i
reduce-input-file
Input a REDUCE source file into the REDUCE process. Echo it if reduce-run-echo is non-nil. (This key binding redefines its default meaning in REDUCE mode.)
C-c C-l
reduce-load-package
Load a REDUCE package into the REDUCE process.
C-c C-f
reduce-fasl-file
Compile a REDUCE source file to a FASL image in the REDUCE process. Echo the file if reduce-run-echo is non-nil.

The following key bindings are added to REDUCE edit mode:

C-x C-e
reduce-eval-last-statement-and-go
Send the previous statement to the REDUCE process, and switch to its buffer. (This key binding follows Emacs convention.)
M-C-x
C-c C-e
reduce-eval-proc-and-go
Send the current procedure definition to the REDUCE process, and switch to its buffer. (The M-C-x key binding follows Emacs convention.)
C-c C-r
reduce-eval-region-and-go
Send the current region to the REDUCE process, and switch to its buffer.
C-c C-z
switch-to-reduce
Switch to the REDUCE process buffer. With an argument, position the cursor at the end of the buffer.

Versions of the above "and-go" commands are also defined with names that omit the "-and-go" prefix, which do not switch to the REDUCE process buffer. These seem to be less useful and so are not currently bound to any keys.

The following key bindings, in addition to the defaults provided by comint mode, are provided in REDUCE run mode:

M-TAB
reduce-complete-symbol
Perform completion on the REDUCE symbol preceding point (or preceding the region if it is active). Compare that symbol against the elements of reduce-completion-alist. If a perfect match (only) has a cdr then delete the match and insert the cdr if it is a string or call it if it is a (nullary) function, passing on any prefix argument (in raw form). (This key binding is exactly as in REDUCE mode. It is included explicitly here because it is one of the edit mode key bindings that is also particularly useful in run mode.)

The REDUCE run library provides a REDUCE run major mode menu and also adds a slightly modified version of this menu to the menu bar in REDUCE edit mode. These two menus provide appropriate access to all the above commands, and to echoing and highlighting control for REDUCE run mode. They also provide access to the following commands that are not bound to any keyboard keys.

run-reduce
Run a REDUCE process with input and output via the buffer named *REDUCE*. If there is a process already running in the buffer named *REDUCE* then just switch to that buffer. With an argument, the command allows you to edit the command line to be run (the default is the value of reduce-run-program). Runs the hook reduce-run-mode-hook (after comint-mode-hook). (Type C-h m in the process buffer for a list of commands.)
re-run-reduce
Re-run REDUCE in the current buffer, first killing REDUCE but not the buffer if necessary.

[ Next: | Previous: Run | Up: Top ]

Feedback: bug reports, suggestions, comments, …

Feedback to the author is welcome, preferably by e-mail. (I will probably reply only by e-mail.) Reports of errors or features that do not work well and suggestions for improvements or additional features are all welcome.

If possible, please include details of the version of Emacs that you are using, the platform on which you are using it, and the version of REDUCE edit (and if relevant run) mode that you are using. (This information is essential if you are reporting a bug.) An easy way to do this is to send me the Emacs and REDUCE IDE version strings. You can access the former from the standard Emacs Help menu and the latter from the REDUCE major mode menus, in all cases by selecting the Show Version menu option. The version strings can also be accessed by running the commands M-x emacs-version, M-x reduce-mode-version and M-x reduce-run-version. These menu options and commands will display the version string in the echo area at the bottom of the frame; it will also be recorded in the *Messages* buffer, from where it can easily be copied.

[ Next: | Previous: Feedback | Up: Top ]

Command Index

Menu

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Variable Index

Menu

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Keystroke Index

Menu

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Concept Index

Menu

Footnotes

[1]
I am considering explicitly supporting XEmacs.