Selective Display

Marcin Borkowski (mbork) has a post that reminds me of a useful command that I always forget about: selective-display. Borkowski uses it to make working with some large JSON files easier. Take a look at his post for the details.

I first wrote about selective-display back in 2012 and thought it would be very handy. Of course, I promptly forgot about it until 2015 when John Wiegley demonstrated it in a video discussion with Sacha Chua. I don’t think I remembered writing about it before but I did think that it would be useful and resolved to integrate it into my workflow. I didn’t manage to do that but at least I remembered it.

Borkowski’s post gives me a third chance to start using it. The problem, of course, is that it’s not something you need very often so it’s hard to remember to use it. Still, when you want to hide part of a file based on indentation, it’s just what you need. If you want to see it in action, it comes near the end of the Wiegley/Chua video at the 31:04 point. Actually, it’s a great video (on use-package) so you should watch it all.

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