Problem about `evil-visual-state` and advising `read-key-sequence` with `call-process`

Question

In Evil mode, after I enter visual-state, I can use f to expand the selection by jumping to a character. Now if I've pressed f after entering visual-state, Emacs asks me to input a character to jump to, which I think is implemented using read-key-sequence. What I want to do is to call some external process before I enter the character, so I advise the read-key-sequence function(below is a simplified version):

(defun foo (orig-func &rest args)
  (with-temp-buffer
    (call-process "ls" nil t))
  (apply orig-func args))

(advice-add 'read-key-sequence :around 'foo)

Now I enter the visual-state, press f, enter the character, jump to it, and nothing is shown selected, i.e., the region is not active.

However, if I just change the parameter of call-process by setting the fourth argument(destination) to be nil, i.e., using the following version of foo:

(defun foo (orig-func &rest args)
  (with-temp-buffer
    (call-process "ls"))
  (apply orig-func args))

Everything works fine, exactly like without adding advice to read-key-sequence.

My question is, is there something I did wrong, or something of call-process and Evil implementation will magically change the state of the region?

Answer 1

It turns out this is a very simple question...Setting the fourth argument of call-process, i.e. destination, to t will insert the output into the buffer, which sets the variable deactivate-mark to t. Therefore, the mark is deactivated afterwards. The solution is to bind deactivate-mark to nil before the call-process:

(defun foo (orig-func &rest args)
  (let (deactivate-mark)
    (with-temp-buffer
      (call-process "ls" nil t)))
  (apply orig-func args))