How to display the currently running function in the echo area?

Question

I have this function:

(defun foo ()
  (interactive)

  (call-interactively 'bar)
  (call-interactively 'baz)
  (call-interactively 'qux)
  (call-interactively 'quux)
  (call-interactively 'fred))

When I call foo, I would like to see in the echo area a message like X is running as long as the X function is running, where X is bar, baz and so on, but without hiding any messages that emacs might show when foo itself is running. I mean something like this:

bar is running
Query replacing regexp foo with bar: (? for help)

Just I have no idea how to do such a thing.

---

Clarification

db84x pointed out to me that my question is unclear, so I'm going to clarify it.

Suppose bar contains this line:

(query-replace-regexp "bar" "qwerty" nil (point-min) (point-max))

When emacs finds this line, the following will appear in your echo area:

--- Echo area ---
Query replacing regexp bar with qwerty: (? for help)
--- Echo area ---

When I call bar, I first want a message to appear in echo area:

--- Echo area ---
bar is running
--- Echo area ---

and this message must not disapper as long as bar is running. So, when emacs finds the query-replace-regexpabove, the echo area should appear this way:

--- Echo area ---
bar is running
Query replacing regexp bar with qwerty: (? for help)
--- Echo area ---

I'm sorry if my question was unclear. Hope now it is.

---

Attempt 1

I picked up Drew's suggestion about message and I found with-temp-message:

Macro: with-temp-message message &rest body

This construct displays a message in the echo area temporarily, during the execution of body. It displays message, executes body, then returns the value of the last body form while restoring the previous echo area contents.

It seems this macro is just what I am looking for, so I defined this function:

(defun fred ()
  (interactive)
  (with-temp-message
      (message "Time's up! Three bucks off!")
    (query-replace-regexp "foo" "bar" nil (point-min) (point-max))))

When I call fred, my message is shown only at the end of its execution and not during. Where am I wrong?

Answer 1

Ok, now that we’ve discovered that you actually want to display two messages, your own message plus whatever the code you are running wants to display, we may be able to answer the question.

I think you could potentially do what you want by changing the set-message-function variable temporarily. I don’t have time to verify that this will work, but something like this might work:

(defun foo ()
  (interactive)
  (let* ((prefix "")
         (set-message-function
          (lambda (message)
            (concat prefix "\n" message))))
    (setq prefix "bar is running")
    (call-interactively 'bar)
    (setq prefix "baz is running")
    (call-interactively 'baz)
    (setq prefix "qux is running")
    (call-interactively 'qux)
    (setq prefix "quux is running")
    (call-interactively 'quux)
    (setq prefix "fred is running")
    (call-interactively 'fred)))

Check out 39.4.1 Displaying Messages in the Echo Area in the Emacs Lisp manual for more information. You can also open the Emacs manuals inside of Emacs with C-h i.