Need help improving my workflow

Consider I have the following lines pub net_current_desktop => b"_NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP", pub net_desktop_names => b"_NET_DESKTOP_NAMES", pub net_active_window => b"_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW", Now I have many more lines that are like this that I want to type. Currently I just paste the previous line and do a Query Replace. But this is inefficient because the pattern is that only the part after the `net_` changes and it is common on both sides (except for capitalization). Is there some workflow where I can define some temporary elisp code, then call it with just the suffix, and it automatically generates the next line (with the proper indent and everything). For example: Some Keybind + workarea Should generate pub net_workarea => b"_NET_WORKAREA", I know that by the time somone points me in the right direction and I figure it out I could just manually write it :) But I would like to take this opportunity to learn if there is an efficient way of doing this.

you can try [https://github.com/abo-abo/auto-yasnippet](https://github.com/abo-abo/auto-yasnippet)

I would look into using the insert function, which does exactly that: inserts its argument string into the buffer at point. So you can write a function that takes in a string, turns it into all caps, then appends it to your “common” string, and then calls the insert function with the resulting string as the argument (edit: I didn’t realize your resulting string is slightly more complex than that, but you should still be able to construct it given the argument and the common parts). I haven’t looked into each of these steps specifically so let me know if you encounter some issues or if my explanation isn’t clear

Hmmm... Maybe [yasnippet](https://github.com/joaotavora/yasnippet)? It's pretty powerful, with tabbing between placeholders, mirroring and transforming. You can then type the snippet key, like `pub-net` and then `C-<tab>` to expand the snippet, type and have it capitalized and mirrored ... ?

Sure, it's easy to transform only the variable text into the desired end result. current_desktop desktop_names active_window Option 1: Keyboard macros. * `workarea` * `<f3> C-a C-k` * `pub net_` * `C-y` * ` => b"_NET_` * `C-y C-x C-u` * `",` * `RET <f4>` then: * `foo<f4>` * `bar<f4>` Or if you have the whole list entered in advance, then omit the final `RET` from the recording (you can use `C-x C-k e` to edit the macro and remove it), and then mark that region and use: * `C-x C-k r` Option 2: regexp search and replace: `.*` => `pub net_\& => b"_NET_\,(upcase \&)",`

This is the best for temporary micro snippeting.An alternative is minad's tempel