Emacs, echo mike alpha charlie sierra

Having moved to a different country spelling words over the phone is a real pain as its not easy for people to understand a foreign name, and because I don’t know the military alphabet in english. So even when I decide spell things out I get stuck on letters as I don’t know what the common word would be. After not remembering how to spell out my last name over the phone again today I decide to create a quick little helper, after all I almost always take notes on my laptop anyway when calling.

Here we go quick emacs string-to-military, with configurable alphabet.

(defun string-to-military (s)
  (interactive "sEnter string to transfor to military: ")
  (flet ((string-blank-p (s) (string-match-p "^\\s-*$" s))
         (military-get-string (s)
                              (if (string-blank-p s) " "
                                  (alist-get s military-alphabet "" nil #'equal))))
    (let* ((chars (mapcar 'string s))
           (normalized-chars (mapcar 'downcase chars)))
      (string-join (mapcar 'military-get-string normalized-chars) " "))))


(defun string-to-military-region (start end)
  (interactive "r")
  (let ((content (buffer-substring-no-properties start end)))
    (delete-region start end)
    (insert (string-to-military content))))

and for the curious

(defvar military-alphabet '(("a" . "alpha")
                            ("b" . "bravo")
                            ("c" . "charlie")
                            ("d" . "delta")
                            ("e" . "echo")
                            ("f" . "foxtrot")
                            ("g" . "golf")
                            ("h" . "hotel")
                            ("i" . "india")
                            ("j" . "juliet")
                            ("k" . "kilo")
                            ("l" . "lima")
                            ("m" . "mike")
                            ("n" . "november")
                            ("o" . "oscar")
                            ("p" . "papa")
                            ("q" . "quebec")
                            ("r" . "romeo")
                            ("s" . "sierra")
                            ("t" . "tango")
                            ("u" . "uniform")
                            ("v" . "victor")
                            ("w" . "whiskey")
                            ("x" . "x-Ray")
                            ("y" . "yankee")
                            ("z" . "zulu"))
  "Military alphabet alist (CHARACTER . WORD), all characters are
lowercase for lookup.")

now part of my coders-little-helper.el in my local emacs.

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