I have recently started using BBDB, and am finding it extremely
useful; thanks Jamie.
I had previously used a 1986 vintage rolodex mode, but it didn't have
half the utility of BBDB. However, it did have the feature that its
info was stored in a textual form (single line entries with embedded
C-m's) which was accessible outside emacs (yes, there is life outside
emacs). In fact, I have a ksh function that I use frequently for
finding phone numbers
phone() { grep -i -h $1 ~/.rolodex | tr '\015' '\012'; }
In order to make the BBDB info accessible in the same way I've written
a simple function to dump phone nos out of BBDB, so now my phone
function is
phone() { grep -i -h $1 ~/.rolodex ~/.bbdb-phones | tr '\015' '\012'; }
Hope someone else finds it useful
Graham
;; bbdb-dump.el
;;
;; Time-stamp: <June 28, 1994 10:31:04 graham>
;;
(defvar bbdb-phones (expand-file-name "~/.bbdb-phones")
"Name of file in which to dump phone numbers from bbdb")
(defun bbdb-dump-phones ()
"Dump BBDB phone numbers in .rolodex form for use with phone alias
(GDG local function)"
(interactive)
(let ((bbdb-electric-p nil))
(require 'bbdb-print)
(bbdb-phone "" nil)
(set-buffer bbdb-buffer-name)
(save-excursion
(set-buffer (find-file-noselect bbdb-phones))
(delete-region (point-min) (point-max))
(insert-buffer bbdb-buffer-name)
(goto-char (point-min))
(replace-string "\C-j" "\C-m")
(goto-char (point-min))
(replace-string "\C-m\C-m" "\C-j")
(save-buffer))
))
