How do I maintain a history of ido-read-filenames?

Question

I've written a helper function for mu4e to run checkpatch against a message. However I want to be easily able to switch between previous calls to checkpatch and this seems difficult with ido-read-file-name. This is my code so far:

;;
;; Checkpatch in emails
;;
(defvar my-checkpatch-script-history nil
  "History of checkpatch invocations.")

(defun my-mu4e-action-run-check-patch (msg)
  "Run checkpatch against the [patch] `MSG'."
  (let*
      ((ido-work-file-list my-checkpatch-script-history)
       (script (ido-read-file-name
                "Checkpatch Script: " (directory-file-name (or (car
                                                                ido-work-file-list)
                                                               default-directory)))))
    (setf my-checkpatch-script-history
        (cons script (delete script my-checkpatch-script-history)))
    ;; actual check patch handling...

However C-n/C-p cycle through previous directories instead of files. The code I use to specify directories to apply patches which works a lot more naturally:

(defun mu4e-action-git-apply-patch (msg)
  "Apply the git [patch] message."
  (let ((path (ido-read-directory-name "Target directory: "
                                       (car ido-work-directory-list)
                                       "~/" t)))
    (setf ido-work-directory-list
          (cons path (delete path ido-work-directory-list)))
    ;; actual apply-patch handling

Is this just a limitation of dealing with files rather than directories?

There's a lot of code in there that isn't relevant to the question. It seems to me the important part is just `(ido-read-file-name "Checkpatch Script: " (directory-file-name (or (car ido-work-file-list) default-directory)))`. And what you want is to cycle thorough previous files instead of directories with C-p? — Malabarba, Nov 14 '14 at 11:02
@Malabarba: I didn't think it was that much but I've deleted anyway to be clear. Yes I want to navigate in history through previous checkpatch invocations. — stsquad, Nov 14 '14 at 13:32
If there's no built-in way to handle it, then modifying the main function (i.e., `ido-read-file-name`) to `push` the result into a variable of your choosing is an option. Or, if your prefer, `append`. — lawlist, Nov 14 '14 at 15:06

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 27 '14 at 13:47

ido-read-file-name already does save previously selected values in ido-file-history. However it does not allow saving in another variable which would allow keeping different histories for different uses of that function. You could work around this like so:

(defun YOUR-ido-read-file-name (prompt)
  (cl-letf (((symbol-function 'orig-ido-read-internal)
             (symbol-function 'ido-read-internal))
            ((symbol-function 'ido-read-internal)
             (lambda (item prompt hist &optional default require-match initial)
               (orig-ido-read-internal item prompt 'YOUR-ido-file-history
                                       default require-match initial))))
    (ido-read-file-name prompt)))

How do I maintain a history of ido-read-filenames?

1 Answers1