ah brilliant didn't know about the , trick @dpsutton

Am I the only one occasionally capturing a value in the REPL? Did someone make emacs helpers for this? (I am aware of https://github.com/vvvvalvalval/scope-capture btw, not really what I am after) In other words, how do I go from:

(defn test-fn [a b]
  (let [c [a b]]
    ;; <- cursor there
    [(+ a b) c]))

(defn test-fn [a b]
  (let [c [a b]]
    (def a a)
    (def b b)
    (def c c)
    [(+ a b) c]))

@nha I think @dpsutton has something like that and I probably have the same. Not at the keyboard now, will check and write later.

let me dig it up. you have to run it while stepping through with the debugger

(defun cider-debug-create-local-let (start end)
  "During debugging, grab the locally bound vars and create a let
  binding. Place this let binding in the kill ring for future use."
  (interactive "r")
  (if cider--debug-mode-response
      (nrepl-dbind-response cider--debug-mode-response (locals)
        (let* ((code (buffer-substring-no-properties start end))
               (bindings (apply #'append locals))
               (formatted-bindings (mapconcat 'identity bindings " ")))
          (kill-new (format "(let [%s]\n %s)" formatted-bindings code))
          (message "copied let form to kill ring")))
    (message "No debugging information found.")))

oh and do it while highlighting code

with a region, it will capture that region as the body of the let and the locals in your debugger state as the let bindings above it

(kill-new (format "(let [%s]\n %s)" formatted-bindings code)) is the formatting

Oh I see. Interesting, I don’t use the debugger though (I probably should, although I am quite sure some of our params are too big for it)

I suspect what I am after is simpler (ie. does not require any of cider’s functionality) - but my elisp is still fairly weak

depends on how smart you want it. you could create an interactive function that would ask for a list of variable names and then insert a bunch of (def [name] [name]) inside a do block

trivial example:

(defun ask-for-variable-names (names)
  (interactive "sEnter the variable names: ")
  (let ((bindings (mapcar (lambda (name)
                            (format "(def %s %s)" name name))
                          (s-split " " names))))
    (kill-new (format "(do %s)"
                      (s-join "\n" bindings)))))