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These hook variables let you arrange to take notice of all changes in all buffers (or in a particular buffer, if you make them buffer-local). See also Special Properties, for how to detect changes to specific parts of the text.
The functions you use in these hooks should save and restore the match data if they do anything that uses regular expressions; otherwise, they will interfere in bizarre ways with the editing operations that call them.
This variable holds a list of functions to call before any buffer modification. Each function gets two arguments, the beginning and end of the region that is about to change, represented as integers. The buffer that is about to change is always the current buffer.
This variable holds a list of functions to call after any buffer modification. Each function receives three arguments: the beginning and end of the region just changed, and the length of the text that existed before the change. All three arguments are integers. The buffer that has been changed is always the current buffer.
The length of the old text is the difference between the buffer positions before and after that text as it was before the change. As for the changed text, its length is simply the difference between the first two arguments.
Output of messages into the *Messages* buffer does not call these functions.
The macro executes body normally, but arranges to call the after-change functions just once for a series of several changes—if that seems safe.
If a program makes several text changes in the same area of the buffer,
using the macro combine-after-change-calls around that part of
the program can make it run considerably faster when after-change hooks
are in use. When the after-change hooks are ultimately called, the
arguments specify a portion of the buffer including all of the changes
made within the combine-after-change-calls body.
Warning: You must not alter the values of
after-change-functions within
the body of a combine-after-change-calls form.
Warning: if the changes you combine occur in widely scattered parts of the buffer, this will still work, but it is not advisable, because it may lead to inefficient behavior for some change hook functions.
This variable is a normal hook that is run whenever a buffer is changed that was previously in the unmodified state.
If this variable is non-nil, all of the change hooks are
disabled; none of them run. This affects all the hook variables
described above in this section, as well as the hooks attached to
certain special text properties (see Special Properties) and overlay
properties (see Overlay Properties).
Also, this variable is bound to non-nil while running those
same hook variables, so that by default modifying the buffer from
a modification hook does not cause other modification hooks to be run.
If you do want modification hooks to be run in a particular piece of
code that is itself run from a modification hook, then rebind locally
inhibit-modification-hooks to nil.
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