# Yet Another Snippet extension

- Intro and tutorial
- Howto: organize
- Howto: expand
- Howto: write
- Howto: menu
- FAQ
- ChangeLog
- Download

Important: This documentation applies to the SVN trunk of YASnippet, which you get here. Documentation for other versions can be found here.

Contents

- Video Demo
- Installation
  - Install with `yasnippet-bundle.el`
  - Normal Install
- How to use YASnippet
- Bugs, Contribution and Support

YASnippet is a template system for Emacs. It allows you to type an abbreviation and automatically expand it into function templates. Bundled language templates includes: C, C++, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby, SQL, LaTeX, HTML, CSS and more.

The snippet syntax is inspired from TextMate's syntax, you can even import import most TextMate templates. YASnippet is a re-write of the extension smart-snippet. Both are original creations of pluskid.

# Video Demo

Watch the demo at YouTube (download a higher resolution version: yasnippet.avi).

# Installation

There are two archives you can download. To quickly tryout YASnippet, download the simpler "bundle" version. If you plan to modify the bundled templates and/or build your own, download the "normal" package.

## Install with `yasnippet-bundle.el`

1. Download the latest `yasnippet-bundle-x.y.z.el.tgz` and unpack it.
2. You'll get a file named `yasnippet-bundle.el`, put it under `~/.emacs.d/plugins/` (create the directory if not exists).
3. Open the file in Emacs, and type `Alt+x eval-buffer`.

That's it. Now open any one of your language file, you'll see a menu YASnippet. you can pull the menu to insert a template. Or, you can type the a trigger key then press `TAB` to expand it.

To have Emacs load YASnippet automatically when it starts, put the following in your `~/.emacs` file:

>     (add-to-list 'load-path
>                   "~/.emacs.d/plugins")
>     (require 'yasnippet-bundle)

The youtube video demonstrates this quick installation.

## Normal Install

To install YASnippet as a normal emacs package, download and unpack the latest `yasnippet-x.y.z.tar.bz2`. You'll get a directory named `yasnippet-x.y.z`, which you can put it in your `~/.emacs.d/plugins` and add the following in your `.emacs` file:

>     (add-to-list 'load-path
>                   "~/.emacs.d/plugins/yasnippet-x.y.z")
>     (require 'yasnippet) ;; not yasnippet-bundle
>     (yas/initialize)
>     (yas/load-directory "~/.emacs.d/plugins/yasnippet-x.y.z/snippets")

Please refer to the documentation for full customization, or use the customization group.

# How to use YASnippet

Since version 0.6, YASnippet contains more functionality. You don't need to know all of it to use it successfully, but you it can improve your snippeting experience.

Hence this section has been split into separate documents:

1. Organizing Snippets

> Describes ways to organize your snippets in the hard disk (or not organize them at all and just use `yasnippet-bundle.el`.

2. Expanding Snippets

> Describes how YASnippet chooses snippets for expansion at point.

> Maybe, you'll want some snippets to be expanded in a particular mode, or only under certain conditions, or be prompted using `ido`, etc...

3. Writing Snippets

> Describes the YASnippet definition syntax, which is very close (but not equivalent) to Textmate's. Includes a section about converting TextMate snippets.

4. The YASnippet menu

> Explains how to use the YASnippet menu to explore, learn and modify snippets.

# Bugs, Contribution and Support

- If you find a bug, please report it at Issue List.
- If you have problem using YASnippet, or have some new ideas, including snippets, please post to the discussion group.

Thank you very much for using YASnippet!