38.6 Abbrev Properties

Abbrevs have properties, some of which influence the way they work. You can provide them as arguments to define-abbrev, and manipulate them with the following functions:

Function: abbrev-put abbrev prop val

Set the property prop of abbrev to value val.

Function: abbrev-get abbrev prop

Return the property prop of abbrev, or nil if the abbrev has no such property.

The following properties have special meanings:

:count

This property counts the number of times the abbrev has been expanded. If not explicitly set, it is initialized to 0 by define-abbrev.

:system

If non-nil, this property marks the abbrev as a system abbrev. Such abbrevs are not saved (see Saving Abbrevs in Files).

:enable-function

If non-nil, this property should be a function of no arguments which returns nil if the abbrev should not be used and t otherwise.

:case-fixed

If non-nil, this property indicates that the case of the abbrev’s name is significant and should only match a text with the same pattern of capitalization. It also disables the code that modifies the capitalization of the expansion.