Replace "ﬂ"like two-letter combo with two letters

Question

I have a text file, whose content is from a pdf file.

I would like to replace two letter combos, such as "ﬂ" and more, with the two letters.

Is it possible to do that in Emacs just once, without repeating for each specific combo?

Thanks.

Aside: the term you're looking for is "ligature." – Dan Jan 05 '15 at 01:52 — Dan, Jan 05 '15 at 01:52

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 04 '15 at 23:16

2

I don't think there's a built-in function to do that. The obvious candidate would be translate-region, but it uses an extremely unwieldy data structure.

Fortunately, this is easily solved with just a little bit of ELisp hacking:

(defvar funky-chars-alist '((?ﬂ . "fl") (?ﬁ . "fi")))

(defun replace-all-funky-chars ()
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (while (not (eobp))
      (let ((string (cdr (assoc (char-after) funky-chars-alist))))
        (cond
          (string (delete-char 1) (insert string))
          (t (forward-char)))))))

answered Jan 04 '15 at 23:16

jch

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Is it possible to enumerate all such combos and include them in the code? (the combos are generated from latex) – Tim Jan 04 '15 at 23:26
Tim, if I understand correctly, these are called ligatures and it seems there's a relatively small number of them in Latin alphabets that you could add to funky-chars-alist. – Greg Hendershott Jan 05 '15 at 03:55

Replace "ﬂ"like two-letter combo with two letters

1 Answers1