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(autotype)Wrapping Skeletons

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Wrapping Skeletons Around Existing Text
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   Often you will find yourself with some code that for whatever reason
suddenly becomes conditional.  Or you have written a bit of text and
want to put it in the middle of a form letter.  Skeletons provide a
means for accomplishing this, and can even, in the case of programming
languages, reindent the wrapped code for you.

   Skeleton commands take an optional numeric prefix argument (Note:
(emacs)Arguments).  This is interpreted in two different ways
depending on whether the prefix is positive, i.e. forwards oriented or
negative, i.e. backwards oriented.

   A positive prefix means to wrap the skeleton around that many
following words.  This is accomplished by putting the words there where
the point is normally left after that skeleton is inserted (Note: Using
Skeletons).  The point (Note: (emacs)Point) is left at the next
interesting spot in the skeleton instead.

   A negative prefix means to do something similar with that many
precedingly marked interregions (Note: (emacs)Mark).  In the simplest
case, if you type `M--' just before issuing the skeleton command, that
will wrap the skeleton around the current region, just like a positive
argument would have wrapped it around a number of words.

   Smaller negative arguments will wrap that many interregions into
successive interesting spots within the skeleton, again leaving the
point at the next one.  We speak about interregions rather than regions
here, because we treat them in the order they appear in the buffer,
which coincides with successive regions only if they were marked in
order.

   That is, if you marked in alphabetical order the points A B C []
(where [] represents the point) and call a skeleton command with `M--
3', you will wrap the text from A to B into the first interesting spot
of the skeleton, the text from B to C into the next one, the text from
C to the point into the third one, and leave the point in the fourth
one.  If there are less marks in the buffer, or if the skeleton defines
less interesting points, the surplus is ignored.

   If, on the other hand, you marked in alphabetical order the points
[] A C B, and call a skeleton command with `M-- 3', you will wrap the
text from point to A, then the text from A to C and finally the text
from C to B.  This is done because the regions overlap and Emacs would
be helplessly lost if it tried to follow the order in which you marked
these points.