It has been complained to me that I use long variable names in my code, which I think is a defendable practice. Worse, I also use stupidly long “abbreviations” in LaTeX
\newcommand{\LovaszLocalLemma}{Lov\'asz Local Lemma}
which doesn’t abbreviate at all…
Well, these complaints are understandable, but what if you don’t have to type these long words in full?
Type this_super_very_super_long_word into Emacs. Press Enter. Now type th and then hit Alt-/. Bang!
I can’t imagine how many seconds of my life I have saved with this feature (surely more than the time it takes me to compose this post to share it with you). These days, even when I type moderately long word like moderately, I use completion.
Vim users don’t have to feel left out. Try Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N instead.
P.S. The next complaint I will get is that Alt-/ is not all that easy to hit. I agree. That’s why I have this line in my .emacs:
(global-set-key [(control ?h)] ‘dabbrev-expand)
Your key choice may vary.
22:03 on February 28th, 2006
Having a macro for Lovász is probably a good idea because of the accent, but I wouldn’t go so far as to have one for the whole phrase.
I don’t use dabbrev-expand much for random words like “moderately”, but it’s very handy for SML identifiers, TeX macros, and TeX labels (though I have less trouble with those since I got label names to appear in the margins next to where the \label “appears”).
22:56 on February 28th, 2006
Once you’ve seen “local lemma” in all lowercase, or the other two capitalization possibilities, you will agree to have the whole phrase…