🚀 go-pugleaf

These three functions complement the standard distribution underline.el.
They will remove overstriking (a character, a backspace, and the
character again) from a region.  Also, unattribute-region will remove
both underline and overstrike.  underline.el already defines
underline-region and ununderline-region.

Dedicated to online readers of P1003.0.

(defun unoverstrike-region (start end)
  "Remove all overstriking (character-backspace-character) in the region.
Called from program, takes two arguments START and END which specify the
range to operate on."
  (interactive "r")
  (save-excursion
   (let ((end1 (make-marker)))
     (move-marker end1 (max start end))
     (goto-char (min start end))
     (while (re-search-forward "\\(.\\)\\1" end1 t)
       (delete-char -2)))))

(defun overstrike-region (start end)
  "Overstrike (character-backspace-character) all nonblank characters in 
the region. Called from program, takes two arguments START and END which
specify the range to operate on."
  (interactive "r")
  (save-excursion
   (let ((end1 (make-marker)))
     (move-marker end1 (max start end))
     (goto-char (min start end))
     (while (< (point) end1)
       (or (looking-at "[_\^@- ]")
	   (insert (char-after (point)) 8))
       (forward-char 1)))))

(defun unattribute-region (start end)
  "Remove underlining and overstriking in the region.  Called from a program,
takes two arguments START and END which specify the range to operate on."
  (interactive "r")
  (save-excursion
    ;; This is a piece of nuke-nroff-bs from standard `man.el'.
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (while (search-forward "\b" (max start end) t)
      (let* ((preceding (char-after (- (point) 2)))
	     (following (following-char)))
	(cond ((= preceding following)
	       ;; x\bx
	       (delete-char -2))
	      ((= preceding ?\_)
	       ;; _\b
	       (delete-char -2))
	      ((= following ?\_)
	       ;; \b_
	       (delete-region (1- (point)) (1+ (point)))))))))

Happy/Merry,
---
 Mitchell N. Perilstein   CAD Language Systems, Inc.   410-992-5700 x225 
 Member, League for Programming Freedom.  Mail lpf@uunet.uu.net for info.