how to control cursor placement in Emacs abbrev expansion?

Question

In Emacs, is there a way control where the cursor/point gets placed in abbrev-mode expansion?

You know, something like this?

("orgfootnote" "[fn:: %?]" nil 0)

Answer 1

Abbrev do not offer this feature themselves, but they offer enough hooks to do it externally. E.g.

(define-skeleton my-orgfootnote "Docstring." nil
  "fn::" _ "]")

and then use an abbrev like

("orgfootnote" "" my-orgfootnote)

Answer 2

If you mean the builtin abbrev feature then here's my take on the problem. With this deafdvice if you have an abbrev containing the string @@ then after exapnsion the cursor will be placed at that position in the expanded text where the @@ occurs.

 (defadvice expand-abbrev (after my-expand-abbrev activate)
   ;; if there was an expansion
   (if ad-return-value
       ;; start idle timer to ensure insertion of abbrev activator
       ;; character (e.g. space) is finished
       (run-with-idle-timer 0 nil
                            (lambda ()
                              ;; if there is the string "@@" in the
                              ;; expansion then move cursor there and
                              ;; delete the string
                              (let ((cursor "@@"))
                                (if (search-backward cursor last-abbrev-location t)
                                    (delete-char (length cursor))))))))

Answer 3

If you need to fill out a template, then abbrev is the wrong facility. I highly recommend yasnippet. abbrev is very useful for correcting frequent typos though.