This simple major mode can be used as the initial major mode for the scratch buffer. It automatically switches to another major mode based on regexes triggered by text input.

In the default configuration it responds to the first non-whitespace character entered into the scratch buffer and switches major mode based on this. See the variable autoscratch-triggers-alist for the defaults. For example, if you enter a paren, it will switch to emacs-lisp-mode.

Configuration

The minimum configuration looks like this:

    (require 'autoscratch-mode)
    (setq initial-major-mode 'autoscratch-mode)
    (setq initial-scratch-message "")
    (setq inhibit-startup-screen t)

You may, however, configure the trigger list autoscratch-triggers-alist according to your preferences. This list consists of cons cells, where the car is a regexp and the cdr an emacs lisp form (e.g. a lambda or defun). If you want to use regexps which match more than one character, then you need to set autoscratch-trigger-on-first-char to nil and possibly tune autoscratch-trigger-after accordingly.

If no regexp matches and/or autoscratch-trigger-after is exceeded, then the autoscratch-default-trigger form will be executed, which by default is fundamental-mode, but you can of course change this.

Autoscratch can also be configured to rename the current buffer after it switched mode based on a trigger and create a new autoscratch-buffer in the background. In order to enable this feature, set autoscratch-fork-after-trigger to t.