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Is there a way to fold the first comment of a file on load?

While I don't like code folding in general, it can be handy in this one instance when every file has a boiler plate header which isn't useful to see each time.

Is there a way to setup emacs to do this?

I'm not looking for an advanced code-folding feature, just the most simple code folding, with a way to see the first comment if it's needed.

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1 Answer 1

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I use elide-head.el (which comes with Emacs) specifically for this purpose.

Setup

Add the following to your init.el.

;; enable elide-head to hide boilerplate
(require 'elide-head)
;; automatically enable it for CC-mode's languages
(add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook 'elide-head)

Result

By default elide-head understands GNU, BSD, and X11 preambles. So, with the above initialization, whenever you load a C/C++ file, the display of your code could go from something like this:

/**
 *  $Id: main.cc 2993 2011-11-11 01:11:11Z you $
 *
 *  Copyright (C) 1969
 *  you <[email protected]>
 *  Some "Other" Author
 *  Some "Dude Who Didn't Really" Help
 *  and Bunch of Fools <http://yousjob.cc/fools/>
 *
 *  This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 *  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 *  the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
 *  (at your option) any later version.
 *
 *  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 *  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 *  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 *  GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 *  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 *  along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
 *
 */

To:

/**
 *  $Id: main.cc 2993 2011-11-11 01:11:11Z you $
 *
 *  Copyright (C) 1969
 *  you <[email protected]>
 *  Some "Other" Author
 *  Some "Dude Who Didn't Really" Help
 *  and Bunch of Fools <http://yousjob.cc/fools/>
 *
 *  This file is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify...
 *
 */

Customization

The above is enough for me as I often want to cursepraise who was there before me, but you could tighten things up if you wanted. Continuing with our example, if you changed your elide-head setup to:

;; enable elide-head to hide boilerplate
(require 'elide-head)
(add-to-list 'elide-head-headers-to-hide 
             '("Copyright (C)" . "If not, see <http://www\\.gnu\\.org/licenses/>\\.?"))
(add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook 'elide-head)

whenever you loaded a C/C++ file your code would look like:

/**
 *  $Id: main.cc 2993 2011-11-11 01:11:11Z you $
 *
 *  Copyright (C) 1969...
 *
 */

elide-head-headers-to-hide is an alist of regexp pairs that mark the start and end of the area that you want to elide. Read the source for complete details. elide-head.el is less than 120 lines.

Another option

The comments in elide-head.el note that hs-minor-mode can act similarly, but is not as selective, which maybe something that you want.

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