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From: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: ARGH!  Ahem.  Umm, answering prompts & abbreviating
Summary: close, but the cigar requires recompiling
Message-ID: <35648@bbn.COM>
Date: 6 Feb 89 15:26:20 GMT
References: <17901@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU> <TALE.89Feb6091941@consult1.its.rpi.edu>
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Reply-To: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Distribution: comp
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation, Cambridge MA
Lines: 49
In-reply-to: tale@its.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)

In article <TALE.89Feb6091941@consult1.its.rpi.edu>, tale@its (David C Lawrence) writes:
>In article <17901@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU> rad@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU writes:
>
>> Well.  Does anyone have something that will let me type 'y' or 'n' in
>> response to any prompt that asks for 'yes' or 'no'? ...
>
>> I'd give my left arm for a hook/hack/etc. that would do this for me.  (Well,
>> maybe not the whole arm, but you get the point. ;^)
>
>(defun yes-or-no-p (prompt)
>  "This is -not- the original yes-or-no-p, it is a workaround that
>calls y-or-n-p in place of it."
>  (y-or-n-p prompt))

If you really want to make them the same, right down to the
documentation, try:

  (fset 'yes-or-no-p (symbol-function 'y-or-n-p))

Both of these attempts, however, will fail to change the behavior of
uses of this function by C code.  This includes:

 buffer.c:574:      tem = Fyes_or_no_p (format1 ("Buffer %s modified; kill anyway? ",
 emacs.c:452:	  && (answer = Fyes_or_no_p (format1 (
 "%d modified buffer%s exist%s, do you really want to exit? ",
 emacs.c:461:	  && (answer = Fyes_or_no_p (format1 (
 "Subprocesses are executing; kill them and exit? ")),
 fileio.c:956:      tem = Fyes_or_no_p (format1 ("File %s already exists; %s anyway? ",

The latter use is in the function with the flowery name
barf_or_query_if_file_exists(), which is called with four completions
for the %s in its format string:

 fileio.c:986:     barf_or_query_if_file_exists (newname, "copy to it",
 fileio.c:1066:    barf_or_query_if_file_exists (newname, "rename to it",
 fileio.c:1114:    barf_or_query_if_file_exists (newname, "make it a new name",
 fileio.c:1152:    barf_or_query_if_file_exists (newname, "make it a link",

No doubt some of these are the annoying ones.  To change them requires
modifying the source and recompiling.  At that point, maybe a defvar
for a user customization would be in order, like say yes_or_no_p_relax.

>I'm kind of full up on left arms; would you happen to have a leg to
>spare instead?

I've got a left hook I'd trade for an arm...
--
/jr
jr@bbn.com or bbn!jr