Hookey.el

hookey is a lightweight Emacs Lisp framework designed to trigger actions by matching regex patterns against the context surrounding the cursor immediately after text insertion.

Usually, writing regex to handle post-insertion logic is cumbersome. Hookey simplifies this by creating a temporary string where the current cursor position is represented by a virtual null character (\0).

This allows you to write a single, intuitive regex that spans across the insertion point, matching both "left-of-cursor" and "right-of-cursor" contexts simultaneously.

• https://github.com/cohama/lexima.vim
• https://github.com/hrsh7th/nvim-insx

• Simple Pattern Matching: Represent the cursor position as \0 in your regex.
• Back-references: Since it preserves match-data, you can easily use \1, \2, etc., for smart expansions.
• Lightweight: Zero external dependencies (only requires subr-x).

Place hookey.el in your load-path and add the following to your init.el:

(use-package :hookey
  :vc (:url "https://github.com/tani/hookey")
  :config
  (global-hookey-mode 1))

Add a function that accepts a position pos to hookey-after-insert-functions.

For instance, you can easily implement a rule: "If the user presses > to complete the open tag, insert the corresponding close tag."

(defun hookey-html-tag (pos)
   (when-let* ((_ (not (nth 3 (syntax-ppss))))
               (m (hookey-match "<\\(\\w+\\)>\0" pos)))
     (hookey-insert "</\\1>" pos m)))

(add-hook 'hookey-after-insert-functions #'hookey-html-tag)

The Unlicense

Copyright 2025 Taniguchi Masaya. All Rights Reserved.