I stumbled across the package Auto-YASnippet, by the prodigious
abo-abo, again the other day. I vaguely remember reading about it a
couple of years ago when it was first released. The idea is to create
a temporary yasnippet on the fly without leaving your current buffer.
That can be really useful when you want to create a series of nearly
identical entries in a program that differ only in a term or two.
Abo-abo describes it as a hybrid of keyboard macros and yasnippet.
You can do the same sort of thing with keyboard macros if you can
remember how to invoke the recursive editing features. Abo-abo’s
solution is much easier: you just write the body of your text, marking
the fields that will change by a ~. Then you can create as many
additional instances as you like, substituting different values for
the marked field(s). Take a look at the README for some examples of
how it works.
I’m not sure why this didn’t register with me more when I first saw
it. It’s probably because I don’t program in languages like Java or
JavaScript where a tool like Auto-YASnippet makes more sense and can
save some time. If you find yourself regularly writing nearly
identical definitions or other boiler plate, take a look at
Auto-YASnippet; it may save you some time.
Postscript: I had originally planned to publish this yesterday but
serendipitously Mike Zamansky scooped me by posting a video
demonstrating Auto-YASnippet in action. As I wrote then, that was
indeed fortunate because now you can see the package in action. If you
haven’t already, be sure to watch the video.