Swap Shift/non-shift key behavior for particular mode

Question

I want to press - on my keyboard and have _ be inserted and vice-versa only for a particular mode.

The following does this globally using the post-self-insert-hook, It checks the character just inserted and makes a replacement accordingly:

(defun my-swap-dash ()
  "Make dash insert and underscore and vice-versa."
  (interactive)
  (let ((just-inserted (char-before (point))))
    (cond
     ((equal just-inserted 45) ;; '-'
      (progn
    (delete-backward-char 1)
    (insert "_")))
     ((equal just-inserted 95) ;; '_'
      (progn
    (delete-backward-char 1)
    (insert "-"))))))

(add-hook 'post-self-insert-hook #'my-swap-dash)

How could I get this same behavior for only python-mode?

My first thought is to define a minor mode and then enable it through the python-mode-hook. However, using the post-self-insert-hook means the replacement must happen globally.

As a work-around, I created a method of toggling the behavior manually:

(defvar swap-dash-state-p nil
  "Is swap-undash enabled?")

(defun toggle-swap-dash ()
  "Toggle `my-swap-dash'."
  (interactive)
  (if swap-dash-state-p
      (progn
        (remove-hook 'post-self-insert-hook #'my-swap-dash)
        (setq swap-dash-state-p nil))
    (progn
      (add-hook 'post-self-insert-hook #'my-swap-dash)
      (setq swap-dash-state-p t))))

Thoughts and coding style comments welcome!

Answer 1

You can simply map the keys - and _ to do what you want in python mode:

(defun insert-underscore ()
  "Guess what!"
  (interactive)
  (insert "_"))

(defun insert-hyphen ()
   "You know it!"
   (interactive)
   (insert "-"))

(defun python-remap-hyphen-and-underscore ()
  (define-key python-mode-map "-" 'insert-underscore)
  (define-key python-mode-map "_" 'insert-hyphen))

(if (boundp 'python-mode-map)
    (python-remap-hyphen-and-underscore)
  (add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'python-remap-hyphen-and-underscore))

What we do here is to define two commands to insert an underscore and an hyphen, then a function to associate these commands to the - and _ keys in python-mode-map (the variable that holds the key bindings in python-mode).

If you insert this snippet in your init file, before python-mode is loaded, you can replace the last three lines simply by

(add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'python-remap-hyphen-and-underscore)

Answer 2

What I actually implemented is a modification of @JeanPierre's solution:

(defun my-remap-dash-and-underscore ()
  (interactive)
  (define-key python-mode-map "-" #'(lambda () (interactive) (insert "_")))
  (define-key python-mode-map "_" #'(lambda () (interactive) (insert "-"))))

(defun my-undo-remap-dash-and-underscore ()
  (interactive)
  (define-key python-mode-map "-" 'self-insert-command)
  (define-key python-mode-map "_" 'self-insert-command))

(add-hook 'python-mode-hook 'my-remap-dash-and-underscore)

This sets the swap up by default in python-mode. It can be toggled manually via the appropriate function with M-x.

Answer 3

you can achieve this with evil-swap-keys.el (which is not tied to evil):

(global-evil-swap-keys-mode)
(add-hook 'python-mode-hook #'evil-swap-keys-swap-underscore-dash)