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I'm writing a function and I would like to operate on the current org heading and its content. For example:

* Head 1
  Text
** Head 2
   - Item 1
   - Item 2[p]
   - Item 3

If we look at the above text, with the location of point at [p], I would like to get the location right before "Head 2" and right after "Item 3".

Extra brownie points if I could pass in an optional parameter that would indicate the number of levels to include. So, 0 would do what I describe above, 1 would include "Head 1", etc.

Here's the code I have thus far:

(defun my-eval-org (&optional levels)
  "Evaluate the current Org mode heading and its content"
  (interactive "p")
  (if (eq major-mode 'org-mode)
      (save-excursion
        (while (and (> levels 0) (org-up-heading-safe)) ; Go up by 'levels' number of headings
          (setq levels (1- levels)))
        (let* ((element (org-element-at-point)) ; Get the org element at the current point
               (start (org-element-property :begin element)) ; The start point is the beginning of the element
               (end (org-element-property :end element))) ; The end point is the end of the element
          (my-eval-region start end)))
    (message "Not in org-mode")))

(defun my-eval-region (start end)
  "Evaluate the region from START to END and does something with it"
  (interactive "r")
  ;; Do something cool with the region contents
  )

The problem with this code is that if it runs within a list element, it will only evaluate the list element itself and not the enclosing heading.

Any help would be appreciated.

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4
  • Please explain what "it will only evaluate the list element itself" means. Are you talking about what my-eval-region does? If so, you should realize that you have not provided its definition in your question, so we are left guessing.
    – NickD
    Commented Nov 21, 2023 at 21:44
  • my-eval-region processes the contents in some way that's not important to the question. I can add a stud implementation just for completeness.
    – oneself
    Commented Nov 22, 2023 at 9:03
  • That's what I guessed, but you should make it a practice to add that kind of info to the question (questions need to stand alone). Thanks for adding it in this case!
    – NickD
    Commented Nov 22, 2023 at 15:19
  • I ran your code with a dummy implementation of my-eval-region: I would suggest that you first eliminate the code that deals with levels and get it working in the levels=0 case. That will require navigating to the heading of the current level if you are not there already: org-back-to-heading will do that. Once that works, you can then test the loop to march up the hierarchy - the loop logic seems correct to me. One caveat is that org-up-heading-safe assumes that everything is visible: make sure to org-cycle your buffer to full visibility before you run the function.
    – NickD
    Commented Nov 22, 2023 at 15:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

My suggestions in the comment above amount to the following implementation of your function:

(defun my-eval-org (&optional levels)
  "Evaluate the current Org mode heading and its content"
  (interactive "p")
  (if (eq major-mode 'org-mode)
      (save-excursion
        (org-back-to-heading)    ;;; <--- the only change needed I think.
        (while (and (> levels 0) (org-up-heading-safe)) ; Go up by 'levels' number of headings
          (setq levels (1- levels)))
        (let* ((element (org-element-at-point)) ; Get the org element at the current point
               (start (org-element-property :begin element)) ; The start point is the beginning of the element
               (end (org-element-property :end element))) ; The end point is the end of the element
          (my-eval-region start end)))
    (message "Not in org-mode")))
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