How to track user changes in the buffer?

Question

I would like to make a mode that would react to user changing the buffer. One way i know is to use hooks.

What hooks, other then post-self-insert-hook, should i use?

What changes i am interested in:

• entering text
• changing indentation
• deleting text
• yanking

And maybe, in future, so-to-sy:

• changes in cursor position

In general, some way to react to changes in the buffer would be sufficient.

Answer 1

To react to buffer changes, you generally want to use after-change-functions (or sometimes before-change-functions).

These hooks are run everytime some part of the buffer is modified, either by inserting or by deleting a chunk of text (or text-properties). Be aware that some commands work by applying several modifications to the buffer, so those hooks can be run several (or even many) times in a single command. So if you need to perform a a significant amount of work, it is often useful to use 2-step approach, where an after-change-function only keeps track of the affected region, and then a post-command-hook uses that data to perform the heavy lifting.

E.g.

(defvar foo-unhandled-changes nil)
(defun foo-after-change-function (beg end _len)
  "Remember to fixup the text between BEG and END."
  (unless undo-in-progress
    (if foo-unhandled-changes
        (setq foo-unhandled-changes
              (cons (min beg (car foo-unhandled-changes))
                    (max end (cdr foo-unhandled-changes))))
      (setq foo-unhandled-changes (cons beg end)))))

then use (add-hook 'after-change-functions #'foo-after-change-function nil t) where needed, plus a post-command-hook which can use foo-unhandled-changes to know which part of the buffer (if any) was modified since last time it was run (and which should reset foo-unhandled-changes to nil).