Elisp

Why am I learning elisp?

• I have a file that has a bunch of shell scripts in it.
• I would like to be able to call shell commands directly using keybindings in emacs.

Is this possible? Yes, just following the tutorial by Mr. Xah. This is how to launch shell commands from elisp (go to scratch, which is in lisp interaction mode first):

(shell-command "dir")

Try it by placing the cursor after the last parenthesis then typing C-x C-e.

Here is how to define functions

(defun myFunction ()
  "testing"
  (message "Yay!"))

Now let’s make it interactive.

(defun yay ()
  "Insert “Yay!” at cursor position."
  (interactive)
  (insert "Yay!"))

Nice. Now let’s make the function we wanted:

(defun runBackup ()
  "Runs the shell script "backup"."
  (interactive)
  (shell-command "/location/of/script/script.sh")
  ;; you can try it with, for example, 
  ;; (shell-command "date")
  (message "I'm done. Yay!"))

Now it can be run with M-x runBackup. Yay!