Subject: Prevent ‘electric-quote-mode’ from merging single quotes

From: Andrea Greselin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2022 14:25:59 +0200

Hello everyone,

I stumbled a couple of times across a behaviour by
‘electric-quote-mode’ where it replaces two consecutive single
electric quotes with a single double quote. To see what I mean open
‘emacs -Q’, enable ‘electric-quote-mode’ and ‘text-mode’, then hit `
or ' twice. I find it more annoying than helpful so I changed
‘electric-quote-post-self-insert-function’ to make it check an option
that can disable this behaviour. Do you think it can be included in
Emacs?

Best of wishes,
Andrea
diff --git a/lisp/electric.el b/lisp/electric.el
index 042fc90..08ac447 100644
--- a/lisp/electric.el
+++ b/lisp/electric.el
@@ -534,6 +534,13 @@ closing double quote otherwise."
   :version "26.1"
   :type 'boolean :safe #'booleanp :group 'electricity)
 
+(defcustom electric-quote-replace-consecutive t
+  "Non-nil means to replace a pair of opening or closing single
+quotes with the corresponding double quote when the second quote
+of the pair is entered electrically (i.e. by typing ` or ')."
+  :version "29.1"
+  :type 'boolean :safe #'booleanp :group 'electricity)
+
 (defvar electric-quote-inhibit-functions ()
   "List of functions that should inhibit electric quoting.
 When the variable `electric-quote-mode' is non-nil, Emacs will
@@ -586,7 +593,8 @@ This requotes when a quoting key is typed."
                               (memq (char-syntax (char-before))
                                     '(?\s ?\())))
                         (setq backtick ?\')))
-               (cond ((search-backward (string q< backtick) (- (point) 2) t)
+               (cond ((and electric-quote-replace-consecutive
+                           (search-backward (string q< backtick) (- (point) 2) t))
                       (replace-match (string q<<))
                       (when (and electric-pair-mode
                                  (eq (cdr-safe
@@ -600,7 +608,8 @@ This requotes when a quoting key is typed."
                      ((search-backward "\"" (1- (point)) t)
                       (replace-match (string q<<))
                       (setq last-command-event q<<)))
-             (cond ((search-backward (string q> ?') (- (point) 2) t)
+             (cond ((and electric-quote-replace-consecutive
+                         (search-backward (string q> ?') (- (point) 2) t))
                     (replace-match (string q>>))
                     (setq last-command-event q>>))
                    ((search-backward "'" (1- (point)) t)