getting and replacing selection in vim

choices.vim

if !has('python')
    echo "Error: Required vim compiled with +python"
    finish
endif


" Vim comments start with a double quote.
" Function definition is VimL. We can mix VimL and Python in
" function definition.
" function! MakeChoices()

" We start the python code like the next line.

python << EOF

# the vim module contains everything we need to interface with vim from
# python. We need urllib2 for the web service consumer.
import vim
import re
import sys

def sanitize_enum(s):
    # @@ plenty to improve here
    s = s.upper().strip(' ()')
    s = re.sub('^[-\d ]+','',s)
    s = re.sub('[./() \-]', "_",s)
    while re.search('__',s):
        s = s.replace('__','_')
    return s

def format_choice(t):
    return "    ( %s, '%s' )," % t

def make_choices(s):
#display_list = vim.current.range[:]
    display_list = s.split('\n')

    choices = []
    i = 1
    explicit = True
    range_replacement = []

    print len(display_list)
    for choice in display_list:
        if choice:
            if explicit:
                sanitized = sanitize_enum(choice)
                # print "%s = %s" % (sanitized,i)
                range_replacement.append("%s = %s" % (sanitized,i))
                choices.append((sanitized,choice.strip()))
            else:
                choices.append((i,choice.strip()))
            i+=1

    range_replacement.append("choices = (")

    for c in choices:
        range_replacement.append(format_choice(c))
    range_replacement.append("    )")
    print '\n'.join(range_replacement)

    #vim.current.buffer[:] = range_replacement
    

EOF
" Here the python code is closed. We can continue writing VimL or python again.
" endfunction

command! -range Mchoice python make_choices('<,'>)
" command! -nargs=0 Mchoices call MakeChoices()