Add pseudo classes with Stylus CSS preprocessor

Question

I am new to the Stylus CSS preprocessor, but what I have seen so far I really like. Anyway, I have the following css:

$link
    color #777
    display block

...
a.className, a.className:hover, a.className:visited
    @extends $link

$link is used elsewhere as well. This works just fine. However I am sure there must be some way to avoid having to repeatedly enter a.className in the line: 'a.className, a.className:hover, a.className:visited'. That is, what I would like to be able to do is something like:

a.className, &:hover, &:visited
    @extends $link

OR, say

anchor(className)
    @extends $link

where 'anchor' is a mixin that creates the selector. However my attempts at either approach haven't really been successful. The best I could come up with was:

a.className
    &:link
    &:hover
    &:visited
        @extends $link

While this works I am not sure it's any clearer than the original. Any guidance/help much appreciated!

Answer 1

In the interest of answering the question, you don't need a mixin here, since those generate attributes. You need a function that will a return a manipulated string, which can then be interpolated later:

mono-link(className)
  states = 'link', 'hover', 'visited'
  parent = 'a.' + className
  retList = (parent)
  for state in states
    push(retList, parent + ':' + state)
  return join(',', retList)

$link
  color #777
  display block

{mono-link(someclass)}
  @extend $link

yields

a.someclass,
a.someclass:link,
a.someclass:hover,
a.someclass:visited {
  color: #777;
  display: block;
}

Nevertheless, this really isn't CSS you should be writing, particularly the display: block part, since that would be inherited from the a.someclass selector.