Do not expand a given abbrev when followed by ":"

Question

Let's say I use abbrev to expand eq into equation.

Now I want eq to always expand, except when followed by a colon (:).

The logic is that in LaTeX I do not want equation identifiers (e.g., eq:xyz) to be expanded.

Any ideas about how to selectively disable abbrev expansion?

Answer 1

You could either hack the syntax table so as not to treat the : as a non-word constituent, or you could write an :enable-function that will prevent expansion on the basis of :. This one works:

(define-abbrev-table 'text-mode-abbrev-table
  '(("eq" "equation"))
  "My table."
  :enable-function (lambda ()
                     (let* ((vec  (this-command-keys-vector))
                            (char (aref vec (1- (length vec)))))
                       (not (eq ?: char)))))