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11.3 System Defined Logical Key-Events

There are many default logical key-events, some of which are used by functions documented in this manual. If a command wants to read a single key-event command that fits one of these descriptions then the key-event read should be compared to the corresponding logical key-event instead of explicitly mentioning the particular key-event in the code. In many cases you can use the command-case macro. It makes logical key-events easy to use and takes care of prompting and displaying help messages.

:yes

Indicates the prompter should take the action under consideration.

:no

Indicates the prompter should NOT take the action under consideration.

:do-all

Indicates the prompter should repeat the action under consideration as many times as possible.

:do-once

Indicates the prompter should execute the action under consideration once and then exit.

:exit

Indicates the prompter should terminate its activity in a normal fashion.

:abort

Indicates the prompter should terminate its activity without performing any closing actions of convenience, for example.

:keep

Indicates the prompter should preserve something.

:help

Indicates the prompter should display some help information.

:confirm

Indicates the prompter should take any input provided or use the default if the user entered nothing.

:quote

Indicates the prompter should take the following key-event as itself without any sort of command interpretation.

:recursive-edit

Indicates the prompter should enter a recursive edit in the current context.

:cancel

Indicates the prompter should cancel the effect of a previous key-event input.

:forward-search

Indicates the prompter should search forward in the current context.

:backward-search

Indicates the prompter should search backward in the current context.

Define a new logical key-event whenever:

1. The key-event concerned represents a general class of actions, and several commands may want to take a similar action of this type.
2. The exact key-event a command implementor chooses may generate violent taste disputes among users, and then the users can trivially change the command in their init files.
3. You are using command-case which prevents implementors from specifying non-standard characters for dispatching in otherwise possibly portable code, and you can define and set the logical key-event in a site dependent file where you can mention implementation dependent characters.