* About This is emacs.info, produced by makeinfo version 5.1 from emacs.texi. This is the ‘GNU Emacs Manual’, updated for Emacs version 26.1.50. Copyright © 1985–1987, 1993–2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being “The GNU Manifesto,” “Distribution” and “GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE,” with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.” (a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual. Buying copies from the FSF supports it in developing GNU and promoting software freedom.” The Emacs Editor Emacs is the extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor. This manual describes how to edit with Emacs and some of the ways to customize it; it corresponds to GNU Emacs version 26.1.50. If you are reading this in Emacs, type ‘h’ to read a basic introduction to the Info documentation system. For information on extending Emacs, see *note Emacs Lisp: (elisp)Top. This is the ‘GNU Emacs Manual’, updated for Emacs version 26.1.50. Copyright © 1985–1987, 1993–2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being “The GNU Manifesto,” “Distribution” and “GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE,” with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.” (a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual. Buying copies from the FSF supports it in developing GNU and promoting software freedom.” * Index + Distrib:: How to get the latest Emacs distribution. + Intro:: An introduction to Emacs concepts. ** Important General Concepts + Screen:: How to interpret what you see on the screen. + User Input:: Kinds of input events (characters, buttons, function keys). + Keys:: Key sequences: what you type to request one editing action. + Commands:: Named functions run by key sequences to do editing. + Entering Emacs:: Starting Emacs from the shell. + Exiting:: Stopping or killing Emacs. ** Fundamental Editing Commands + Basic:: The most basic editing commands. + Minibuffer:: Entering arguments that are prompted for. + M-x:: Invoking commands by their names. + Help:: Commands for asking Emacs about its commands. ** Important Text-Changing Commands + Mark:: The mark: how to delimit a region of text. + Killing:: Killing (cutting) and yanking (copying) text. + Registers:: Saving a text string or a location in the buffer. + Display:: Controlling what text is displayed. + Search:: Finding or replacing occurrences of a string. + Fixit:: Commands especially useful for fixing typos. + Keyboard Macros:: Recording a sequence of keystrokes to be replayed. ** Major Structures of Emacs + Files:: All about handling files. + Buffers:: Multiple buffers; editing several files at once. + Windows:: Viewing multiple pieces of text in one frame. + Frames:: Using multiple windows on your display. + International:: Using non-ASCII character sets. ** Advanced Features + Modes:: Major and minor modes alter Emacs’s basic behavior. + Indentation:: Editing the white space at the beginnings of lines. + Text:: Commands and modes for editing human languages. + Programs:: Commands and modes for editing programs. + Building:: Compiling, running and debugging programs. + Maintaining:: Features for maintaining large programs. + Abbrevs:: Defining text abbreviations to reduce typing. + Dired:: Directory and file manager. + Calendar/Diary:: Calendar and diary facilities. + Sending Mail:: Sending mail in Emacs. + Rmail:: Reading mail in Emacs. + Gnus:: A flexible mail and news reader. + Host Security:: Security issues on a single computer. + Network Security:: Managing the network security. + Document View:: Viewing PDF, PS and DVI files. + Shell:: Executing shell commands from Emacs. + Emacs Server:: Using Emacs as an editing server. + Printing:: Printing hardcopies of buffers or regions. + Sorting:: Sorting lines, paragraphs or pages within Emacs. + Picture Mode:: Editing pictures made up of text characters. + Editing Binary Files:: Editing binary files with Hexl mode. + Saving Emacs Sessions:: Saving Emacs state from one session to the next. + Recursive Edit:: Performing edits while within another command. + Hyperlinking:: Following links in buffers. + Amusements:: Various games and hacks. + Packages:: Installing additional features. + Customization:: Modifying the behavior of Emacs. ** Recovery from Problems + Quitting:: Quitting and aborting. + Lossage:: What to do if Emacs is hung or malfunctioning. + Bugs:: How and when to report a bug. + Contributing:: How to contribute improvements to Emacs. + Service:: How to get help for your own Emacs needs. ** Appendices + Copying:: The GNU General Public License gives you permission to redistribute GNU Emacs on certain terms; it also explains that there is no warranty. + GNU Free Documentation License:: The license for this documentation. + Emacs Invocation:: Hairy startup options. + X Resources:: X resources for customizing Emacs. + Antinews:: Information about Emacs version 25. + Mac OS / GNUstep:: Using Emacs under macOS and GNUstep. + Microsoft Windows:: Using Emacs on Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS. + Manifesto:: What’s GNU? Gnu’s Not Unix! + Glossary:: Terms used in this manual. + Acknowledgments:: Major contributors to GNU Emacs. ** Indexes (each index contains a large menu) + Key Index:: An item for each standard Emacs key sequence. + Option Index:: An item for every command-line option. + Command Index:: An item for each standard command name. + Variable Index:: An item for each variable documented in this manual. + Concept Index:: An item for concepts and other general subjects. * Detailed Index Here are some other nodes which are really subnodes of the ones already listed, mentioned here so you can get to them in one step: ** The Organization of the Screen + Point:: The place in the text where editing commands operate. + Echo Area:: Short messages appear at the bottom of the screen. + Mode Line:: Interpreting the mode line. + Menu Bar:: How to use the menu bar. ** Basic Editing Commands + Inserting Text:: Inserting text by simply typing it. + Moving Point:: Moving the cursor to the place where you want to change something. + Erasing:: Deleting and killing text. + Basic Undo:: Undoing recent changes in the text. + Basic Files:: Visiting, creating, and saving files. + Basic Help:: Asking what a character does. + Blank Lines:: Making and deleting blank lines. + Continuation Lines:: How Emacs displays lines too wide for the screen. + Position Info:: What line, row, or column is point on? + Arguments:: Numeric arguments for repeating a command N times. + Repeating:: Repeating the previous command quickly. ** The Minibuffer + Basic Minibuffer:: Basic usage of the minibuffer. + Minibuffer File:: Entering file names with the minibuffer. + Minibuffer Edit:: How to edit in the minibuffer. + Completion:: An abbreviation facility for minibuffer input. + Minibuffer History:: Reusing recent minibuffer arguments. + Repetition:: Re-executing commands that used the minibuffer. + Passwords:: Entering passwords in the echo area. + Yes or No Prompts:: Replying yes or no in the echo area. ** Completion + Completion Example:: Examples of using completion. + Completion Commands:: A list of completion commands. + Completion Exit:: Completion and minibuffer text submission. + Completion Styles:: How completion matches are chosen. + Completion Options:: Options for completion. ** Help + Help Summary:: Brief list of all Help commands. + Key Help:: Asking what a key does in Emacs. + Name Help:: Asking about a command, variable or function name. + Apropos:: Asking what pertains to a given topic. + Help Mode:: Special features of Help mode and Help buffers. + Package Keywords:: Finding Lisp libraries by keywords (topics). + Language Help:: Help relating to international language support. + Misc Help:: Other help commands. + Help Files:: Commands to display auxiliary help files. + Help Echo:: Help on active text and tooltips. ** The Mark and the Region + Setting Mark:: Commands to set the mark. + Marking Objects:: Commands to put region around textual units. + Using Region:: Summary of ways to operate on contents of the region. + Mark Ring:: Previous mark positions saved so you can go back there. + Global Mark Ring:: Previous mark positions in various buffers. + Shift Selection:: Using shifted cursor motion keys. + Disabled Transient Mark:: Leaving regions unhighlighted by default. ** Killing and Moving Text + Deletion and Killing:: Commands that remove text. + Yanking:: Commands that insert text. + Cut and Paste:: Clipboard and selections on graphical displays. + Accumulating Text:: Other methods to add text to the buffer. + Rectangles:: Operating on text in rectangular areas. + CUA Bindings:: Using ‘C-x’/‘C-c’/‘C-v’ to kill and yank. ** Deletion and Killing + Deletion:: Commands for deleting small amounts of text and blank areas. + Killing by Lines:: How to kill entire lines of text at one time. + Other Kill Commands:: Commands to kill large regions of text and syntactic units such as words and sentences. + Kill Options:: Options that affect killing. ** Yanking + Kill Ring:: Where killed text is stored. + Earlier Kills:: Yanking something killed some time ago. + Appending Kills:: Several kills in a row all yank together. ** Cut and Paste Operations on Graphical Displays + Clipboard:: How Emacs uses the system clipboard. + Primary Selection:: The temporarily selected text selection. + Secondary Selection:: Cutting without altering point and mark. ** Registers + Position Registers:: Saving positions in registers. + Text Registers:: Saving text in registers. + Rectangle Registers:: Saving rectangles in registers. + Configuration Registers:: Saving window configurations in registers. + Number Registers:: Numbers in registers. + File Registers:: File names in registers. + Keyboard Macro Registers:: Keyboard macros in registers. + Bookmarks:: Bookmarks are like registers, but persistent. ** Controlling the Display + Scrolling:: Commands to move text up and down in a window. + Recentering:: A scroll command that centers the current line. + Auto Scrolling:: Redisplay scrolls text automatically when needed. + Horizontal Scrolling:: Moving text left and right in a window. + Narrowing:: Restricting display and editing to a portion of the buffer. + View Mode:: Viewing read-only buffers. + Follow Mode:: Follow mode lets two windows scroll as one. + Faces:: How to change the display style using faces. + Colors:: Specifying colors for faces. + Standard Faces:: The main predefined faces. + Text Scale:: Increasing or decreasing text size in a buffer. + Font Lock:: Minor mode for syntactic highlighting using faces. + Highlight Interactively:: Tell Emacs what text to highlight. + Fringes:: Enabling or disabling window fringes. + Displaying Boundaries:: Displaying top and bottom of the buffer. + Useless Whitespace:: Showing possibly spurious trailing whitespace. + Selective Display:: Hiding lines with lots of indentation. + Optional Mode Line:: Optional mode line display features. + Text Display:: How text characters are normally displayed. + Cursor Display:: Features for displaying the cursor. + Line Truncation:: Truncating lines to fit the screen width instead of continuing them to multiple screen lines. + Visual Line Mode:: Word wrap and screen line-based editing. + Display Custom:: Information on variables for customizing display. ** Searching and Replacement + Incremental Search:: Search happens as you type the string. + Nonincremental Search:: Specify entire string and then search. + Word Search:: Search for sequence of words. + Symbol Search:: Search for a source code symbol. + Regexp Search:: Search for match for a regexp. + Regexps:: Syntax of regular expressions. + Regexp Backslash:: Regular expression constructs starting with ‘\’. + Regexp Example:: A complex regular expression explained. + Lax Search:: Search ignores some distinctions between similar characters, like letter-case. + Replace:: Search, and replace some or all matches. + Other Repeating Search:: Operating on all matches for some regexp. + Search Customizations:: Various search customizations. ** Incremental Search + Basic Isearch:: Basic incremental search commands. + Repeat Isearch:: Searching for the same string again. + Isearch Yank:: Commands that grab text into the search string or else edit the search string. + Error in Isearch:: When your string is not found. + Special Isearch:: Special input in incremental search. + Not Exiting Isearch:: Prefix argument and scrolling commands. + Isearch Minibuffer:: Incremental search of the minibuffer history. ** Replacement Commands + Unconditional Replace:: Replacing all matches for a string. + Regexp Replace:: Replacing all matches for a regexp. + Replacement and Lax Matches:: Lax searching for text to replace. + Query Replace:: How to use querying. ** Commands for Fixing Typos + Undo:: The Undo commands. + Transpose:: Exchanging two characters, words, lines, lists... + Fixing Case:: Correcting case of last word entered. + Spelling:: Apply spelling checker to a word, or a whole file. ** Keyboard Macros + Basic Keyboard Macro:: Defining and running keyboard macros. + Keyboard Macro Ring:: Where previous keyboard macros are saved. + Keyboard Macro Counter:: Inserting incrementing numbers in macros. + Keyboard Macro Query:: Making keyboard macros do different things each time. + Save Keyboard Macro:: Giving keyboard macros names; saving them in files. + Edit Keyboard Macro:: Editing keyboard macros. + Keyboard Macro Step-Edit:: Interactively executing and editing a keyboard macro. ** File Handling + File Names:: How to type and edit file-name arguments. + Visiting:: Visiting a file prepares Emacs to edit the file. + Saving:: Saving makes your changes permanent. + Reverting:: Reverting cancels all the changes not saved. + Autorevert:: Auto Reverting non-file buffers. + Auto Save:: Auto Save periodically protects against loss of data. + File Aliases:: Handling multiple names for one file. + Directories:: Creating, deleting, and listing file directories. + Comparing Files:: Finding where two files differ. + Diff Mode:: Mode for editing file differences. + Copying and Naming:: Copying, naming and renaming files. + Misc File Ops:: Other things you can do on files. + Compressed Files:: Accessing compressed files. + File Archives:: Operating on tar, zip, jar etc. archive files. + Remote Files:: Accessing files on other machines. + Quoted File Names:: Quoting special characters in file names. + File Name Cache:: Completion against a list of files you often use. + File Conveniences:: Convenience Features for Finding Files. + Filesets:: Handling sets of files. ** Saving Files + Save Commands:: Commands for saving files. + Backup:: How Emacs saves the old version of your file. + Customize Save:: Customizing the saving of files. + Interlocking:: How Emacs protects against simultaneous editing of one file by two users. + File Shadowing:: Copying files to shadows automatically. + Time Stamps:: Emacs can update time stamps on saved files. ** Backup Files + Backup Names:: How backup files are named. + Backup Deletion:: Emacs deletes excess numbered backups. + Backup Copying:: Backups can be made by copying or renaming. ** Auto Reverting Non-File Buffers + Auto Reverting the Buffer Menu:: Auto Revert of the Buffer Menu. + Auto Reverting Dired:: Auto Revert of Dired buffers. ** Auto-Saving: Protection Against Disasters + Auto Save Files:: The file where auto-saved changes are actually made until you save the file. + Auto Save Control:: Controlling when and how often to auto-save. + Recover:: Recovering text from auto-save files. ** Using Multiple Buffers + Select Buffer:: Creating a new buffer or reselecting an old one. + List Buffers:: Getting a list of buffers that exist. + Misc Buffer:: Renaming; changing read-only status; copying text. + Kill Buffer:: Killing buffers you no longer need. + Several Buffers:: How to go through the list of all buffers and operate variously on several of them. + Indirect Buffers:: An indirect buffer shares the text of another buffer. + Buffer Convenience:: Convenience and customization features for buffer handling. ** Convenience Features and Customization of Buffer Handling + Uniquify:: Making buffer names unique with directory parts. + Icomplete:: Fast minibuffer selection. + Buffer Menus:: Configurable buffer menu. ** Multiple Windows + Basic Window:: Introduction to Emacs windows. + Split Window:: New windows are made by splitting existing windows. + Other Window:: Moving to another window or doing something to it. + Pop Up Window:: Finding a file or buffer in another window. + Change Window:: Deleting windows and changing their sizes. + Displaying Buffers:: How Emacs picks a window for displaying a buffer. + Temporary Displays:: Displaying non-editable buffers. + Window Convenience:: Convenience functions for window handling. ** Displaying a Buffer in a Window + Window Choice:: How ‘display-buffer’ works. ** Frames and Graphical Displays + Mouse Commands:: Moving, cutting, and pasting, with the mouse. + Word and Line Mouse:: Mouse commands for selecting whole words or lines. + Mouse References:: Using the mouse to select an item from a list. + Menu Mouse Clicks:: Mouse clicks that bring up menus. + Mode Line Mouse:: Mouse clicks on the mode line. + Creating Frames:: Creating additional Emacs frames with various contents. + Frame Commands:: Iconifying, deleting, and switching frames. + Fonts:: Changing the frame font. + Speedbar:: How to make and use a speedbar frame. + Multiple Displays:: How one Emacs instance can talk to several displays. + Frame Parameters:: Changing the colors and other modes of frames. + Scroll Bars:: How to enable and disable scroll bars; how to use them. + Window Dividers:: Window separators that can be dragged with the mouse. + Drag and Drop:: Using drag and drop to open files and insert text. + Menu Bars:: Enabling and disabling the menu bar. + Tool Bars:: Enabling and disabling the tool bar. + Dialog Boxes:: Controlling use of dialog boxes. + Tooltips:: Displaying information at the current mouse position. + Mouse Avoidance:: Preventing the mouse pointer from obscuring text. + Non-Window Terminals:: Multiple frames on terminals that show only one. + Text-Only Mouse:: Using the mouse in text terminals. ** International Character Set Support + International Chars:: Basic concepts of multibyte characters. + Language Environments:: Setting things up for the language you use. + Input Methods:: Entering text characters not on your keyboard. + Select Input Method:: Specifying your choice of input methods. + Coding Systems:: Character set conversion when you read and write files, and so on. + Recognize Coding:: How Emacs figures out which conversion to use. + Specify Coding:: Specifying a file’s coding system explicitly. + Output Coding:: Choosing coding systems for output. + Text Coding:: Choosing conversion to use for file text. + Communication Coding:: Coding systems for interprocess communication. + File Name Coding:: Coding systems for file _names_. + Terminal Coding:: Specifying coding systems for converting terminal input and output. + Fontsets:: Fontsets are collections of fonts that cover the whole spectrum of characters. + Defining Fontsets:: Defining a new fontset. + Modifying Fontsets:: Modifying an existing fontset. + Undisplayable Characters::When characters don’t display. + Unibyte Mode:: You can pick one European character set to use without multibyte characters. + Charsets:: How Emacs groups its internal character codes. + Bidirectional Editing:: Support for right-to-left scripts. ** Major and Minor Modes + Major Modes:: Text mode vs. Lisp mode vs. C mode... + Minor Modes:: Each minor mode is a feature you can turn on independently of any others. + Choosing Modes:: How modes are chosen when visiting files. ** Indentation + Indentation Commands:: More commands for performing indentation. + Tab Stops:: Stop points for indentation in Text modes. + Just Spaces:: Using only space characters for indentation. + Indent Convenience:: Optional indentation features. ** Commands for Human Languages + Words:: Moving over and killing words. + Sentences:: Moving over and killing sentences. + Paragraphs:: Moving over paragraphs. + Pages:: Moving over pages. + Quotation Marks:: Inserting quotation marks. + Filling:: Filling or justifying text. + Case:: Changing the case of text. + Text Mode:: The major modes for editing text files. + Outline Mode:: Editing outlines. + Org Mode:: The Emacs organizer. + TeX Mode:: Editing TeX and LaTeX files. + HTML Mode:: Editing HTML and SGML files. + Nroff Mode:: Editing input to the nroff formatter. + Enriched Text:: Editing text enriched with fonts, colors, etc. + Text Based Tables:: Commands for editing text-based tables. + Two-Column:: Splitting text columns into separate windows. ** Filling Text + Auto Fill:: Auto Fill mode breaks long lines automatically. + Fill Commands:: Commands to refill paragraphs and center lines. + Fill Prefix:: Filling paragraphs that are indented or in a comment, etc. + Adaptive Fill:: How Emacs can determine the fill prefix automatically. ** Outline Mode + Outline Format:: What the text of an outline looks like. + Outline Motion:: Special commands for moving through outlines. + Outline Visibility:: Commands to control what is visible. + Outline Views:: Outlines and multiple views. + Foldout:: Folding means zooming in on outlines. ** Org Mode + Org Organizer:: Managing TODO lists and agendas. + Org Authoring:: Exporting Org buffers to various formats. ** TeX Mode + TeX Editing:: Special commands for editing in TeX mode. + LaTeX Editing:: Additional commands for LaTeX input files. + TeX Print:: Commands for printing part of a file with TeX. + TeX Misc:: Customization of TeX mode, and related features. ** Enriched Text + Enriched Mode:: Entering and exiting Enriched mode. + Hard and Soft Newlines:: There are two different kinds of newlines. + Editing Format Info:: How to edit text properties. + Enriched Faces:: Bold, italic, underline, etc. + Enriched Indentation:: Changing the left and right margins. + Enriched Justification:: Centering, setting text flush with the left or right margin, etc. + Enriched Properties:: The “Special text properties” submenu. ** Editing Text-based Tables + Table Definition:: What is a text based table. + Table Creation:: How to create a table. + Table Recognition:: How to activate and deactivate tables. + Cell Commands:: Cell-oriented commands in a table. + Cell Justification:: Justifying cell contents. + Table Rows and Columns:: Inserting and deleting rows and columns. + Table Conversion:: Converting between plain text and tables. + Table Misc:: Table miscellany. ** Editing Programs + Program Modes:: Major modes for editing programs. + Defuns:: Commands to operate on major top-level parts of a program. + Program Indent:: Adjusting indentation to show the nesting. + Parentheses:: Commands that operate on parentheses. + Comments:: Inserting, killing, and aligning comments. + Documentation:: Getting documentation of functions you plan to call. + Hideshow:: Displaying blocks selectively. + Symbol Completion:: Completion on symbol names of your program or language. + MixedCase Words:: Dealing with identifiersLikeThis. + Semantic:: Suite of editing tools based on source code parsing. + Misc for Programs:: Other Emacs features useful for editing programs. + C Modes:: Special commands of C, C++, Objective-C, Java, IDL, Pike and AWK modes. + Asm Mode:: Asm mode and its special features. + Fortran:: Fortran mode and its special features. ** Top-Level Definitions, or Defuns + Left Margin Paren:: An open-paren or similar opening delimiter starts a defun if it is at the left margin. + Moving by Defuns:: Commands to move over or mark a major definition. + Imenu:: Making buffer indexes as menus. + Which Function:: Which Function mode shows which function you are in. ** Indentation for Programs + Basic Indent:: Indenting a single line. + Multi-line Indent:: Commands to reindent many lines at once. + Lisp Indent:: Specifying how each Lisp function should be indented. + C Indent:: Extra features for indenting C and related modes. + Custom C Indent:: Controlling indentation style for C and related modes. ** Commands for Editing with Parentheses + Expressions:: Expressions with balanced parentheses. + Moving by Parens:: Commands for moving up, down and across in the structure of parentheses. + Matching:: Insertion of a close-delimiter flashes matching open. ** Manipulating Comments + Comment Commands:: Inserting, killing, and aligning comments. + Multi-Line Comments:: Commands for adding and editing multi-line comments. + Options for Comments::Customizing the comment features. ** Documentation Lookup + Info Lookup:: Looking up library functions and commands in Info files. + Man Page:: Looking up man pages of library functions and commands. + Lisp Doc:: Looking up Emacs Lisp functions, etc. ** C and Related Modes + Motion in C:: Commands to move by C statements, etc. + Electric C:: Colon and other chars can automatically reindent. + Hungry Delete:: A more powerful DEL command. + Other C Commands:: Filling comments, viewing expansion of macros, and other neat features. ** Fortran Mode + Fortran Motion:: Moving point by statements or subprograms. + Fortran Indent:: Indentation commands for Fortran. + Fortran Comments:: Inserting and aligning comments. + Fortran Autofill:: Auto fill support for Fortran. + Fortran Columns:: Measuring columns for valid Fortran. + Fortran Abbrev:: Built-in abbrevs for Fortran keywords. ** Fortran Indentation + ForIndent Commands:: Commands for indenting and filling Fortran. + ForIndent Cont:: How continuation lines indent. + ForIndent Num:: How line numbers auto-indent. + ForIndent Conv:: Conventions you must obey to avoid trouble. + ForIndent Vars:: Variables controlling Fortran indent style. ** Compiling and Testing Programs + Compilation:: Compiling programs in languages other than Lisp (C, Pascal, etc.). + Compilation Mode:: The mode for visiting compiler errors. + Compilation Shell:: Customizing your shell properly for use in the compilation buffer. + Grep Searching:: Searching with grep. + Flymake:: Finding syntax errors on the fly. + Debuggers:: Running symbolic debuggers for non-Lisp programs. + Executing Lisp:: Various modes for editing Lisp programs, with different facilities for running the Lisp programs. + Lisp Libraries:: How Lisp programs are loaded into Emacs. + Lisp Eval:: Executing a single Lisp expression in Emacs. + Lisp Interaction:: Executing Lisp in an Emacs buffer. + External Lisp:: Communicating through Emacs with a separate Lisp. ** Running Debuggers Under Emacs + Starting GUD:: How to start a debugger subprocess. + Debugger Operation:: Connection between the debugger and source buffers. + Commands of GUD:: Key bindings for common commands. + GUD Customization:: Defining your own commands for GUD. + GDB Graphical Interface:: An enhanced mode that uses GDB features to implement a graphical debugging environment. ** GDB Graphical Interface + GDB User Interface Layout:: Control the number of displayed buffers. + Source Buffers:: Use the mouse in the fringe/margin to control your program. + Breakpoints Buffer:: A breakpoint control panel. + Threads Buffer:: Displays your threads. + Stack Buffer:: Select a frame from the call stack. + Other GDB Buffers:: Other buffers for controlling the GDB state. + Watch Expressions:: Monitor variable values in the speedbar. + Multithreaded Debugging:: Debugging programs with several threads. ** Maintaining Large Programs + Version Control:: Using version control systems. + Change Log:: Maintaining a change history for your program. + Xref:: Find definitions and references of any function, method, struct, macro, … in your program. + EDE:: An integrated development environment for Emacs. + Emerge:: A convenient way of merging two versions of a program. ** Version Control + Introduction to VC:: How version control works in general. + VC Mode Line:: How the mode line shows version control status. + Basic VC Editing:: How to edit a file under version control. + Log Buffer:: Features available in log entry buffers. + Registering:: Putting a file under version control. + Old Revisions:: Examining and comparing old versions. + VC Change Log:: Viewing the VC Change Log. + VC Undo:: Canceling changes before or after committing. + VC Ignore:: Ignore files under version control system. + VC Directory Mode:: Listing files managed by version control. + Branches:: Multiple lines of development. + Miscellaneous VC:: Various other commands and features of VC. + Customizing VC:: Variables that change VC’s behavior. ** Introduction to Version Control + Why Version Control?:: Understanding the problems it addresses. + Version Control Systems:: Supported version control back-end systems. + VCS Concepts:: Words and concepts related to version control. + VCS Merging:: How file conflicts are handled. + VCS Changesets:: How changes are grouped. + VCS Repositories:: Where version control repositories are stored. + Types of Log File:: The VCS log in contrast to the ChangeLog. ** Basic Editing under Version Control + VC With A Merging VCS:: Without locking: default mode for CVS. + VC With A Locking VCS:: RCS in its default mode, SCCS, and optionally CVS. + Advanced C-x v v:: Advanced features available with a prefix argument. ** VC Directory Mode + VC Directory Buffer:: What the buffer looks like and means. + VC Directory Commands:: Commands to use in a VC directory buffer. ** Version Control Branches + Switching Branches:: How to get to another existing branch. + Pulling / Pushing:: Receiving/sending changes from/to elsewhere. + Merging:: Transferring changes between branches. + Creating Branches:: How to start a new branch. ** Miscellaneous Commands and Features of VC + Change Logs and VC:: Generating a change log file from log entries. + VC Delete/Rename:: Deleting and renaming version-controlled files. + Revision Tags:: Symbolic names for revisions. + Version Headers:: Inserting version control headers into working files. ** Customizing VC + General VC Options:: Options that apply to multiple back ends. + RCS and SCCS:: Options for RCS and SCCS. + CVS Options:: Options for CVS. ** Change Logs + Change Log Commands:: Commands for editing change log files. + Format of ChangeLog:: What the change log file looks like. ** Xref + Find Identifiers:: Commands to find where an identifier is defined or referenced, to list identifiers, etc. + Tags Tables:: Tags table records which file defines a symbol. + Select Tags Table:: How to visit a specific tags table. ** Find Identifiers + Looking Up Identifiers:: Commands to find the definition of a specific tag. + Xref Commands:: Commands in the ‘*xref*’ buffer. + Identifier Search:: Searching and replacing identifiers. + List Identifiers:: Listing identifiers and completing on them. ** Tags Tables + Tag Syntax:: Tag syntax for various types of code and text files. + Create Tags Table:: Creating a tags table with ‘etags’. + Etags Regexps:: Create arbitrary tags using regular expressions. ** Merging Files with Emerge + Overview of Emerge:: How to start Emerge. Basic concepts. + Submodes of Emerge:: Fast mode vs. Edit mode. Skip Prefers mode and Auto Advance mode. + State of Difference:: You do the merge by specifying state A or B for each difference. + Merge Commands:: Commands for selecting a difference, changing states of differences, etc. + Exiting Emerge:: What to do when you’ve finished the merge. + Combining in Emerge:: How to keep both alternatives for a difference. + Fine Points of Emerge:: Miscellaneous issues. ** Abbrevs + Abbrev Concepts:: Fundamentals of defined abbrevs. + Defining Abbrevs:: Defining an abbrev, so it will expand when typed. + Expanding Abbrevs:: Controlling expansion: prefixes, canceling expansion. + Editing Abbrevs:: Viewing or editing the entire list of defined abbrevs. + Saving Abbrevs:: Saving the entire list of abbrevs for another session. + Dynamic Abbrevs:: Abbreviations for words already in the buffer. + Dabbrev Customization:: What is a word, for dynamic abbrevs. Case handling. ** Editing Pictures + Basic Picture:: Basic concepts and simple commands of Picture Mode. + Insert in Picture:: Controlling direction of cursor motion after self-inserting characters. + Tabs in Picture:: Various features for tab stops and indentation. + Rectangles in Picture:: Clearing and superimposing rectangles. ** Dired, the Directory Editor + Dired Enter:: How to invoke Dired. + Dired Navigation:: Special motion commands in the Dired buffer. + Dired Deletion:: Deleting files with Dired. + Flagging Many Files:: Flagging files based on their names. + Dired Visiting:: Other file operations through Dired. + Marks vs Flags:: Flagging for deletion vs marking. + Operating on Files:: How to copy, rename, print, compress, etc. either one file or several files. + Shell Commands in Dired:: Running a shell command on the marked files. + Transforming File Names:: Using patterns to rename multiple files. + Comparison in Dired:: Running ‘diff’ by way of Dired. + Subdirectories in Dired:: Adding subdirectories to the Dired buffer. + Subdir Switches:: Subdirectory switches in Dired. + Subdirectory Motion:: Moving across subdirectories, and up and down. + Hiding Subdirectories:: Making subdirectories visible or invisible. + Dired Updating:: Discarding lines for files of no interest. + Dired and Find:: Using ‘find’ to choose the files for Dired. + Wdired:: Operating on files by editing the Dired buffer. + Image-Dired:: Viewing image thumbnails in Dired. + Misc Dired Features:: Various other features. ** The Calendar and the Diary + Calendar Motion:: Moving through the calendar; selecting a date. + Scroll Calendar:: Bringing earlier or later months onto the screen. + Counting Days:: How many days are there between two dates? + General Calendar:: Exiting or recomputing the calendar. + Writing Calendar Files:: Writing calendars to files of various formats. + Holidays:: Displaying dates of holidays. + Sunrise/Sunset:: Displaying local times of sunrise and sunset. + Lunar Phases:: Displaying phases of the moon. + Other Calendars:: Converting dates to other calendar systems. + Diary:: Displaying events from your diary. + Daylight Saving:: How to specify when daylight saving time is active. + Time Intervals:: Keeping track of time intervals. + Advanced Calendar/Diary Usage:: Advanced Calendar/Diary customization. ** Movement in the Calendar + Calendar Unit Motion:: Moving by days, weeks, months, and years. + Move to Beginning or End:: Moving to start/end of weeks, months, and years. + Specified Dates:: Moving to the current date or another specific date. ** Conversion To and From Other Calendars + Calendar Systems:: The calendars Emacs understands (aside from Gregorian). + To Other Calendar:: Converting the selected date to various calendars. + From Other Calendar:: Moving to a date specified in another calendar. ** The Diary + Format of Diary File:: Entering events in your diary. + Displaying the Diary:: Viewing diary entries and associated calendar dates. + Date Formats:: Various ways you can specify dates. + Adding to Diary:: Commands to create diary entries. + Special Diary Entries:: Anniversaries, blocks of dates, cyclic entries, etc. + Appointments:: Reminders when it’s time to do something. + Importing Diary:: Converting diary events to/from other formats. ** More advanced features of the Calendar and Diary + Calendar Customizing:: Calendar layout and hooks. + Holiday Customizing:: Defining your own holidays. + Mayan Calendar:: Moving to a date specified in a Mayan calendar. + Date Display Format:: Changing the format. + Time Display Format:: Changing the format. + Diary Customizing:: Defaults you can set. + Non-Gregorian Diary:: Diary entries based on other calendars. + Diary Display:: A choice of ways to display the diary. + Fancy Diary Display:: Sorting diary entries, using included diary files. + Sexp Diary Entries:: More flexible diary entries. ** Sending Mail + Mail Format:: Format of a mail message. + Mail Headers:: Details of some standard mail header fields. + Mail Aliases:: Abbreviating and grouping mail addresses. + Mail Commands:: Special commands for editing mail being composed. + Mail Signature:: Adding a signature to every message. + Mail Amusements:: Distracting the NSA; adding fortune messages. + Mail Methods:: Using alternative mail-composition methods. ** Mail Commands + Mail Sending:: Commands to send the message. + Header Editing:: Commands to move to header fields and edit them. + Citing Mail:: Quoting a message you are replying to. + Mail Misc:: Attachments, spell checking, etc. ** Reading Mail with Rmail + Rmail Basics:: Basic concepts of Rmail, and simple use. + Rmail Scrolling:: Scrolling through a message. + Rmail Motion:: Moving to another message. + Rmail Deletion:: Deleting and expunging messages. + Rmail Inbox:: How mail gets into the Rmail file. + Rmail Files:: Using multiple Rmail files. + Rmail Output:: Copying message out to files. + Rmail Labels:: Classifying messages by labeling them. + Rmail Attributes:: Certain standard labels, called attributes. + Rmail Reply:: Sending replies to messages you are viewing. + Rmail Summary:: Summaries show brief info on many messages. + Rmail Sorting:: Sorting messages in Rmail. + Rmail Display:: How Rmail displays a message; customization. + Rmail Coding:: How Rmail handles decoding character sets. + Rmail Editing:: Editing message text and headers in Rmail. + Rmail Digest:: Extracting the messages from a digest message. + Rmail Rot13:: Reading messages encoded in the rot13 code. + Movemail:: More details of fetching new mail. + Remote Mailboxes:: Retrieving mail from remote mailboxes. + Other Mailbox Formats:: Retrieving mail from local mailboxes in various formats. ** Rmail Summaries + Rmail Make Summary:: Making various sorts of summaries. + Rmail Summary Edit:: Manipulating messages from the summary. ** Gnus + Buffers of Gnus:: The group, summary, and article buffers. + Gnus Startup:: What you should know about starting Gnus. + Gnus Group Buffer:: A short description of Gnus group commands. + Gnus Summary Buffer:: A short description of Gnus summary commands. ** Document Viewing + DocView Navigation:: Navigating DocView buffers. + DocView Searching:: Searching inside documents. + DocView Slicing:: Specifying which part of a page is displayed. + DocView Conversion:: Influencing and triggering conversion. ** Running Shell Commands from Emacs + Single Shell:: How to run one shell command and return. + Interactive Shell:: Permanent shell taking input via Emacs. + Shell Mode:: Special Emacs commands used with permanent shell. + Shell Prompts:: Two ways to recognize shell prompts. + Shell History:: Repeating previous commands in a shell buffer. + Directory Tracking:: Keeping track when the subshell changes directory. + Shell Options:: Options for customizing Shell mode. + Terminal emulator:: An Emacs window as a terminal emulator. + Term Mode:: Special Emacs commands used in Term mode. + Remote Host:: Connecting to another computer. + Serial Terminal:: Connecting to a serial port. ** Shell Command History + Shell Ring:: Fetching commands from the history list. + Shell History Copying::Moving to a command and then copying it. + History References:: Expanding ‘!’-style history references. ** Using Emacs as a Server + TCP Emacs server:: Listening to a TCP socket. + Invoking emacsclient:: Connecting to the Emacs server. + emacsclient Options:: Emacs client startup options. ** Printing Hard Copies + PostScript:: Printing buffers or regions as PostScript. + PostScript Variables:: Customizing the PostScript printing commands. + Printing Package:: An optional advanced printing interface. ** Hyperlinking and Navigation Features + EWW:: A web browser in Emacs. + Embedded WebKit Widgets:: Embedding browser widgets in Emacs buffers. + Browse-URL:: Following URLs. + Goto Address mode:: Activating URLs. + FFAP:: Finding files etc. at point. ** Emacs Lisp Packages + Package Menu:: Buffer for viewing and managing packages. + Package Installation:: Options for package installation. + Package Files:: Where packages are installed. ** Customization + Easy Customization:: Convenient way to browse and change settings. + Variables:: Many Emacs commands examine Emacs variables to decide what to do; by setting variables, you can control their functioning. + Key Bindings:: The keymaps say what command each key runs. By changing them, you can redefine keys. + Init File:: How to write common customizations in the initialization file. ** Easy Customization Interface + Customization Groups:: How settings are classified. + Browsing Custom:: Browsing and searching for settings. + Changing a Variable:: How to edit an option’s value and set the option. + Saving Customizations:: Saving customizations for future Emacs sessions. + Face Customization:: How to edit the attributes of a face. + Specific Customization:: Customizing specific settings or groups. + Custom Themes:: Collections of customization settings. + Creating Custom Themes:: How to create a new custom theme. ** Variables + Examining:: Examining or setting one variable’s value. + Hooks:: Hook variables let you specify programs for parts of Emacs to run on particular occasions. + Locals:: Per-buffer values of variables. + File Variables:: How files can specify variable values. + Directory Variables:: How variable values can be specified by directory. ** Local Variables in Files + Specifying File Variables:: Specifying file local variables. + Safe File Variables:: Making sure file local variables are safe. ** Customizing Key Bindings + Keymaps:: Generalities. The global keymap. + Prefix Keymaps:: Keymaps for prefix keys. + Local Keymaps:: Major and minor modes have their own keymaps. + Minibuffer Maps:: The minibuffer uses its own local keymaps. + Rebinding:: How to redefine one key’s meaning conveniently. + Init Rebinding:: Rebinding keys with your initialization file. + Modifier Keys:: Using modifier keys in key bindings. + Function Keys:: Rebinding terminal function keys. + Named ASCII Chars:: Distinguishing from ‘C-i’, and so on. + Mouse Buttons:: Rebinding mouse buttons in Emacs. + Disabling:: Disabling a command means confirmation is required before it can be executed. This is done to protect beginners from surprises. ** The Emacs Initialization File + Init Syntax:: Syntax of constants in Emacs Lisp. + Init Examples:: How to do some things with an init file. + Terminal Init:: Each terminal type can have an init file. + Find Init:: How Emacs finds the init file. + Init Non-ASCII:: Using non-ASCII characters in an init file. ** Dealing with Emacs Trouble + DEL Does Not Delete:: What to do if doesn’t delete. + Stuck Recursive:: ’[...]’ in mode line around the parentheses. + Screen Garbled:: Garbage on the screen. + Text Garbled:: Garbage in the text. + Memory Full:: How to cope when you run out of memory. + Crashing:: What Emacs does when it crashes. + After a Crash:: Recovering editing in an Emacs session that crashed. + Emergency Escape:: What to do if Emacs stops responding. ** Reporting Bugs + Known Problems:: How to read about known problems and bugs. + Bug Criteria:: Have you really found a bug? + Understanding Bug Reporting:: How to report a bug effectively. + Checklist:: Steps to follow for a good bug report. + Sending Patches:: How to send a patch for GNU Emacs. ** Contributing to Emacs Development + Coding Standards:: GNU Emacs coding standards. + Copyright Assignment:: Assigning copyright to the FSF. ** Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation + Action Arguments:: Arguments to visit files, load libraries, and call functions. + Initial Options:: Arguments that take effect while starting Emacs. + Command Example:: Examples of using command line arguments. + Environment:: Environment variables that Emacs uses. + Display X:: Changing the default display and using remote login. + Font X:: Choosing a font for text, under X. + Colors X:: Choosing display colors. + Window Size X:: Start-up window size, under X. + Borders X:: Internal and outer borders, under X. + Title X:: Specifying the initial frame’s title. + Icons X:: Choosing what sort of icon to use, under X. + Misc X:: Other display options. ** Environment Variables + General Variables:: Environment variables that all versions of Emacs use. + Misc Variables:: Certain system-specific variables. + MS-Windows Registry:: An alternative to the environment on MS-Windows. ** X Options and Resources + Resources:: Using X resources with Emacs (in general). + Table of Resources:: Table of specific X resources that affect Emacs. + Lucid Resources:: X resources for Lucid menus. + Motif Resources:: X resources for Motif and LessTif menus. + GTK resources:: Resources for GTK widgets. ** GTK resources + GTK Resource Basics:: Basic usage of GTK+ resources. + GTK Widget Names:: How GTK+ widgets are named. + GTK Names in Emacs:: GTK+ widgets used by Emacs. + GTK styles:: What can be customized in a GTK+ widget. ** Emacs and macOS / GNUstep + Mac / GNUstep Basics:: Basic Emacs usage under GNUstep or macOS. + Mac / GNUstep Customization:: Customizations under GNUstep or macOS. + Mac / GNUstep Events:: How window system events are handled. + GNUstep Support:: Details on status of GNUstep support. ** Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS + Windows Startup:: How to start Emacs on Windows. + Text and Binary:: Text files use CRLF to terminate lines. + Windows Files:: File-name conventions on Windows. + ls in Lisp:: Emulation of ‘ls’ for Dired. + Windows HOME:: Where Emacs looks for your ‘.emacs’ and where it starts up. + Windows Keyboard:: Windows-specific keyboard features. + Windows Mouse:: Windows-specific mouse features. + Windows Processes:: Running subprocesses on Windows. + Windows Printing:: How to specify the printer on MS-Windows. + Windows Fonts:: Specifying fonts on MS-Windows. + Windows Misc:: Miscellaneous Windows features. + MS-DOS:: Using Emacs on MS-DOS. ** Emacs and MS-DOS + MS-DOS Keyboard:: Keyboard conventions on MS-DOS. + MS-DOS Mouse:: Mouse conventions on MS-DOS. + MS-DOS Display:: Fonts, frames and display size on MS-DOS. + MS-DOS File Names:: File name conventions on MS-DOS. + MS-DOS Printing:: Printing specifics on MS-DOS. + MS-DOS and MULE:: Support for internationalization on MS-DOS. + MS-DOS Processes:: Running subprocesses on MS-DOS. * Distribution GNU Emacs is "free software"; this means that everyone is free to use it and free to redistribute it under certain conditions. GNU Emacs is not in the public domain; it is copyrighted and there are restrictions on its distribution, but these restrictions are designed to permit everything that a good cooperating citizen would want to do. What is not allowed is to try to prevent others from further sharing any version of GNU Emacs that they might get from you. The precise conditions are found in the GNU General Public License that comes with Emacs and also appears in this manual(1). *Note Copying::. One way to get a copy of GNU Emacs is from someone else who has it. You need not ask for our permission to do so, or tell anyone else; just copy it. If you have access to the Internet, you can get the latest distribution version of GNU Emacs by anonymous FTP; see on our website for more information. You may also receive GNU Emacs when you buy a computer. Computer manufacturers are free to distribute copies on the same terms that apply to everyone else. These terms require them to give you the full sources, including whatever changes they may have made, and to permit you to redistribute the GNU Emacs received from them under the usual terms of the General Public License. In other words, the program must be free for you when you get it, not just free for the manufacturer. If you find GNU Emacs useful, please *send a donation* to the Free Software Foundation to support our work. Donations to the Free Software Foundation are tax-deductible in the US. If you use GNU Emacs at your workplace, please suggest that the company make a donation. To donate, see . For other ways in which you can help, see . We also sell hardcopy versions of this manual and ‘An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp’, by Robert J. Chassell. You can visit our online store at . The income from sales goes to support the foundation’s purpose: the development of new free software, and improvements to our existing programs including GNU Emacs. If you need to contact the Free Software Foundation, see , or write to Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) This manual is itself covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. This license is similar in spirit to the General Public License, but is more suitable for documentation. *Note GNU Free Documentation License::. * Introduction You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced, self-documenting, customizable, extensible editor Emacs. (The ‘G’ in GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) is not silent.) We call Emacs "advanced" because it can do much more than simple insertion and deletion of text. It can control subprocesses, indent programs automatically, show multiple files at once, and more. Emacs editing commands operate in terms of characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages, as well as expressions and comments in various programming languages. "Self-documenting" means that at any time you can use special commands, known as "help commands", to find out what your options are, or to find out what any command does, or to find all the commands that pertain to a given topic. *Note Help::. "Customizable" means that you can easily alter the behavior of Emacs commands in simple ways. For instance, if you use a programming language in which comments start with ‘<**’ and end with ‘**>’, you can tell the Emacs comment manipulation commands to use those strings (*note Comments::). To take another example, you can rebind the basic cursor motion commands (up, down, left and right) to any keys on the keyboard that you find comfortable. *Note Customization::. "Extensible" means that you can go beyond simple customization and create entirely new commands. New commands are simply programs written in the Lisp language, which are run by Emacs’s own Lisp interpreter. Existing commands can even be redefined in the middle of an editing session, without having to restart Emacs. Most of the editing commands in Emacs are written in Lisp; the few exceptions could have been written in Lisp but use C instead for efficiency. Writing an extension is programming, but non-programmers can use it afterwards. *Note Emacs Lisp Intro: (eintr)Top, if you want to learn Emacs Lisp programming. * 1 The Organization of the Screen On a graphical display, such as on GNU/Linux using the X Window System, Emacs occupies a graphical window. On a text terminal, Emacs occupies the entire terminal screen. We will use the term "frame" to mean a graphical window or terminal screen occupied by Emacs. Emacs behaves very similarly on both kinds of frames. It normally starts out with just one frame, but you can create additional frames if you wish (*note Frames::). Each frame consists of several distinct regions. At the top of the frame is a "menu bar", which allows you to access commands via a series of menus. On a graphical display, directly below the menu bar is a "tool bar", a row of icons that perform editing commands when you click on them. At the very bottom of the frame is an "echo area", where informative messages are displayed and where you enter information when Emacs asks for it. The main area of the frame, below the tool bar (if one exists) and above the echo area, is called "the window". Henceforth in this manual, we will use the word “window” in this sense. Graphical display systems commonly use the word “window” with a different meaning; but, as stated above, we refer to those graphical windows as “frames”. An Emacs window is where the "buffer"—the text or other graphics you are editing or viewing—is displayed. On a graphical display, the window possesses a "scroll bar" on one side, which can be used to scroll through the buffer. The last line of the window is a "mode line". This displays various information about what is going on in the buffer, such as whether there are unsaved changes, the editing modes that are in use, the current line number, and so forth. When you start Emacs, there is normally only one window in the frame. However, you can subdivide this window horizontally or vertically to create multiple windows, each of which can independently display a buffer (*note Windows::). At any time, one window is the "selected window". On a graphical display, the selected window shows a more prominent cursor (usually solid and blinking); other windows show a less prominent cursor (usually a hollow box). On a text terminal, there is only one cursor, which is shown in the selected window. The buffer displayed in the selected window is called the "current buffer", and it is where editing happens. Most Emacs commands implicitly apply to the current buffer; the text displayed in unselected windows is mostly visible for reference. If you use multiple frames on a graphical display, selecting a particular frame selects a window in that frame. + Menu: - Point:: The place in the text where editing commands operate. - Echo Area:: Short messages appear at the bottom of the screen. - Mode Line:: Interpreting the mode line. - Menu Bar:: How to use the menu bar. ** 1.1 Point The cursor in the selected window shows the location where most editing commands take effect, which is called "point"(1). Many Emacs commands move point to different places in the buffer; for example, you can place point by clicking mouse button 1 (normally the left button) at the desired location. By default, the cursor in the selected window is drawn as a solid block and appears to be _on_ a character, but you should think of point as _between_ two characters; it is situated _before_ the character under the cursor. For example, if your text looks like ‘frob’ with the cursor over the ‘b’, then point is between the ‘o’ and the ‘b’. If you insert the character ‘!’ at that position, the result is ‘fro!b’, with point between the ‘!’ and the ‘b’. Thus, the cursor remains over the ‘b’, as before. If you are editing several files in Emacs, each in its own buffer, each buffer has its own value of point. A buffer that is not currently displayed remembers its value of point if you later display it again. Furthermore, if a buffer is displayed in multiple windows, each of those windows has its own value of point. *Note Cursor Display::, for options that control how Emacs displays the cursor. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) The term “point” comes from the character ‘.’, which was the command in TECO (the language in which the original Emacs was written) for accessing the editing position. ** 1.2 The Echo Area The line at the very bottom of the frame is the "echo area". It is used to display small amounts of text for various purposes. The echo area is so-named because one of the things it is used for is "echoing", which means displaying the characters of a multi-character command as you type. Single-character commands are not echoed. Multi-character commands (*note Keys::) are echoed if you pause for more than a second in the middle of a command. Emacs then echoes all the characters of the command so far, to prompt you for the rest. Once echoing has started, the rest of the command echoes immediately as you type it. This behavior is designed to give confident users fast response, while giving hesitant users maximum feedback. The echo area is also used to display an "error message" when a command cannot do its job. Error messages may be accompanied by beeping or by flashing the screen. Some commands display informative messages in the echo area to tell you what the command has done, or to provide you with some specific information. These "informative" messages, unlike error messages, are not accompanied with a beep or flash. For example, ‘C-x =’ (hold down and type ‘x’, then let go of and type ‘=’) displays a message describing the character at point, its position in the buffer, and its current column in the window. Commands that take a long time often display messages ending in ‘...’ while they are working (sometimes also indicating how much progress has been made, as a percentage), and add ‘done’ when they are finished. Informative echo area messages are saved in a special buffer named ‘*Messages*’. (We have not explained buffers yet; see *note Buffers::, for more information about them.) If you miss a message that appeared briefly on the screen, you can switch to the ‘*Messages*’ buffer to see it again. The ‘*Messages*’ buffer is limited to a certain number of lines, specified by the variable ‘message-log-max’. (We have not explained variables either; see *note Variables::, for more information about them.) Beyond this limit, one line is deleted from the beginning whenever a new message line is added at the end. *Note Display Custom::, for options that control how Emacs uses the echo area. The echo area is also used to display the "minibuffer", a special window where you can input arguments to commands, such as the name of a file to be edited. When the minibuffer is in use, the text displayed in the echo area begins with a "prompt string", and the active cursor appears within the minibuffer, which is temporarily considered the selected window. You can always get out of the minibuffer by typing ‘C-g’. *Note Minibuffer::. ** 1.3 The Mode Line At the bottom of each window is a "mode line", which describes what is going on in the current buffer. When there is only one window, the mode line appears right above the echo area; it is the next-to-last line in the frame. On a graphical display, the mode line is drawn with a 3D box appearance. Emacs also usually draws the mode line of the selected window with a different color than that of unselected windows, in order to make it stand out. The text displayed in the mode line has the following format: CS:CH-FR BUF POS LINE (MAJOR MINOR) On a text terminal, this text is followed by a series of dashes extending to the right edge of the window. These dashes are omitted on a graphical display. The CS string and the colon character after it describe the character set and newline convention used for the current buffer. Normally, Emacs automatically handles these settings for you, but it is sometimes useful to have this information. CS describes the character set of the text in the buffer (*note Coding Systems::). If it is a dash (‘-’), that indicates no special character set handling (with the possible exception of end-of-line conventions, described in the next paragraph). ‘=’ means no conversion whatsoever, and is usually used for files containing non-textual data. Other characters represent various "coding systems"—for example, ‘1’ represents ISO Latin-1. On a text terminal, CS is preceded by two additional characters that describe the coding systems for keyboard input and terminal output. Furthermore, if you are using an input method, CS is preceded by a string that identifies the input method (*note Input Methods::). The character after CS is usually a colon. If a different string is displayed, that indicates a nontrivial end-of-line convention for encoding a file. Usually, lines of text are separated by "newline characters" in a file, but two other conventions are sometimes used. The MS-DOS convention uses a carriage return character followed by a linefeed character; when editing such files, the colon changes to either a backslash (‘\’) or ‘(DOS)’, depending on the operating system. Another convention, employed by older Macintosh systems, uses a carriage return character instead of a newline; when editing such files, the colon changes to either a forward slash (‘/’) or ‘(Mac)’. On some systems, Emacs displays ‘(Unix)’ instead of the colon for files that use newline as the line separator. On frames created for ‘emacsclient’ (*note Invoking emacsclient::), the next character is ‘@’. This indication is typical for frames of an Emacs process running as a daemon (*note Emacs Server::). The next element on the mode line is the string indicated by CH. This shows two dashes (‘--’) if the buffer displayed in the window has the same contents as the corresponding file on the disk; i.e., if the buffer is unmodified. If the buffer is modified, it shows two stars (‘**’). For a read-only buffer, it shows ‘%*’ if the buffer is modified, and ‘%%’ otherwise. The character after CH is normally a dash (‘-’). However, if ‘default-directory’ (*note File Names::) for the current buffer is on a remote machine, ‘@’ is displayed instead. FR gives the selected frame name (*note Frames::). It appears only on text terminals. The initial frame’s name is ‘F1’. BUF is the name of the buffer displayed in the window. Usually, this is the same as the name of a file you are editing. *Note Buffers::. POS tells you whether there is additional text above the top of the window, or below the bottom. If your buffer is small and all of it is visible in the window, POS is ‘All’. Otherwise, it is ‘Top’ if you are looking at the beginning of the buffer, ‘Bot’ if you are looking at the end of the buffer, or ‘NN%’, where NN is the percentage of the buffer above the top of the window. With Size Indication mode, you can display the size of the buffer as well. *Note Optional Mode Line::. LINE is the character ‘L’ followed by the line number at point. (You can display the current column number too, by turning on Column Number mode. *Note Optional Mode Line::.) MAJOR is the name of the "major mode" used in the buffer. A major mode is a principal editing mode for the buffer, such as Text mode, Lisp mode, C mode, and so forth. *Note Major Modes::. Some major modes display additional information after the major mode name. For example, Compilation buffers and Shell buffers display the status of the subprocess. MINOR is a list of some of the enabled "minor modes", which are optional editing modes that provide additional features on top of the major mode. *Note Minor Modes::. Some features are listed together with the minor modes whenever they are turned on, even though they are not really minor modes. ‘Narrow’ means that the buffer being displayed has editing restricted to only a portion of its text (*note Narrowing::). ‘Def’ means that a keyboard macro is currently being defined (*note Keyboard Macros::). In addition, if Emacs is inside a recursive editing level, square brackets (‘[…]’) appear around the parentheses that surround the modes. If Emacs is in one recursive editing level within another, double square brackets appear, and so on. Since recursive editing levels affect Emacs globally, such square brackets appear in the mode line of every window. *Note Recursive Edit::. You can change the appearance of the mode line as well as the format of its contents. *Note Optional Mode Line::. In addition, the mode line is mouse-sensitive; clicking on different parts of the mode line performs various commands. *Note Mode Line Mouse::. Also, hovering the mouse pointer above mouse-sensitive portions of the mode line shows tooltips (*note Tooltips::) with information about commands you can invoke by clicking on the mode line. ** 1.4 The Menu Bar Each Emacs frame normally has a "menu bar" at the top which you can use to perform common operations. There’s no need to list them here, as you can more easily see them yourself. On a display that supports a mouse, you can use the mouse to choose a command from the menu bar. An arrow on the right edge of a menu item means it leads to a subsidiary menu, or "submenu". A ‘...’ at the end of a menu item means that the command will prompt you for further input before it actually does anything. Some of the commands in the menu bar have ordinary key bindings as well; if so, a key binding is shown after the item itself. To view the full command name and documentation for a menu item, type ‘C-h k’, and then select the menu bar with the mouse in the usual way (*note Key Help::). Instead of using the mouse, you can also invoke the first menu bar item by pressing (to run the command ‘menu-bar-open’). You can then navigate the menus with the arrow keys or with ‘C-b’, ‘C-f’ (left/right), ‘C-p’, and ‘C-n’ (up/down). To activate a selected menu item, press ; to cancel menu navigation, press ‘C-g’ or ‘ ’. (However, note that when Emacs was built with a GUI toolkit, the menus are drawn and controlled by the toolkit, and the key sequences to cancel menu navigation might be different from the above description.) On a text terminal, you can optionally access the menu-bar menus in the echo area. To this end, customize the variable ‘tty-menu-open-use-tmm’ to a non-‘nil’ value. Then typing will run the command ‘tmm-menubar’ instead of dropping down the menu. (You can also type ‘M-`’, which always invokes ‘tmm-menubar’.) ‘tmm-menubar’ lets you select a menu item with the keyboard. A provisional choice appears in the echo area. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move through the menu to different items, and then you can type to select the item. Each menu item is also designated by a letter or digit (usually the initial of some word in the item’s name). This letter or digit is separated from the item name by ‘==>’. You can type the item’s letter or digit to select the item. * 2 Kinds of User Input GNU Emacs is primarily designed for use with the keyboard. While it is possible to use the mouse to issue editing commands through the menu bar and tool bar, that is not as efficient as using the keyboard. Therefore, this manual mainly documents how to edit with the keyboard. Keyboard input into Emacs is based on a heavily-extended version of ASCII. Simple characters, like ‘a’, ‘B’, ‘3’, ‘=’, and the space character (denoted as ), are entered by typing the corresponding key. "Control characters", such as , , , , , , and , are also entered this way, as are certain characters found on non-English keyboards (*note International::). Emacs also recognizes control characters that are entered using "modifier keys". Two commonly-used modifier keys are (usually labeled ), and (usually labeled )(1). For example, ‘Control-a’ is entered by holding down the key while pressing ‘a’; we will refer to this as ‘C-a’ for short. Similarly, ‘-a’, or ‘M-a’ for short, is entered by holding down the key and pressing ‘a’. Modifier keys can also be applied to non-alphanumerical characters, e.g., ‘C-’ or ‘M-’. You can also type Meta characters using two-character sequences starting with . Thus, you can enter ‘M-a’ by typing ‘ a’. You can enter ‘C-M-a’ (holding down both and , then pressing ‘a’) by typing ‘ C-a’. Unlike , is entered as a separate character. You don’t hold down while typing the next character; instead, press and release it, then enter the next character. This feature is useful on certain text terminals where the key does not function reliably. On graphical displays, the window manager might block some keyboard inputs, including ‘M-’, ‘M-’, ‘C-M-d’ and ‘C-M-l’. If you have this problem, you can either customize your window manager to not block those keys, or rebind the affected Emacs commands (*note Customization::). Simple characters and control characters, as well as certain non-keyboard inputs such as mouse clicks, are collectively referred to as "input events". For details about how Emacs internally handles input events, see *note (elisp)Input Events::. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) We refer to as for historical reasons. * 3 Keys Some Emacs commands are invoked by just one input event; for example, ‘C-f’ moves forward one character in the buffer. Other commands take two or more input events to invoke, such as ‘C-x C-f’ and ‘C-x 4 C-f’. A "key sequence", or "key" for short, is a sequence of one or more input events that is meaningful as a unit. If a key sequence invokes a command, we call it a "complete key"; for example, ‘C-f’, ‘C-x C-f’ and ‘C-x 4 C-f’ are all complete keys. If a key sequence isn’t long enough to invoke a command, we call it a "prefix key"; from the preceding example, we see that ‘C-x’ and ‘C-x 4’ are prefix keys. Every key sequence is either a complete key or a prefix key. A prefix key combines with the following input event to make a longer key sequence. For example, ‘C-x’ is a prefix key, so typing ‘C-x’ alone does not invoke a command; instead, Emacs waits for further input (if you pause for longer than a second, it echoes the ‘C-x’ key to prompt for that input; *note Echo Area::). ‘C-x’ combines with the next input event to make a two-event key sequence, which could itself be a prefix key (such as ‘C-x 4’), or a complete key (such as ‘C-x C-f’). There is no limit to the length of key sequences, but in practice they are seldom longer than three or four input events. You can’t add input events onto a complete key. For example, because ‘C-f’ is a complete key, the two-event sequence ‘C-f C-k’ is two key sequences, not one. By default, the prefix keys in Emacs are ‘C-c’, ‘C-h’, ‘C-x’, ‘C-x ’, ‘C-x @’, ‘C-x a’, ‘C-x n’, ‘C-x r’, ‘C-x v’, ‘C-x 4’, ‘C-x 5’, ‘C-x 6’, , ‘M-g’, and ‘M-o’. ( and are aliases for ‘C-h’ and ‘C-x 6’.) This list is not cast in stone; if you customize Emacs, you can make new prefix keys. You could even eliminate some of the standard ones, though this is not recommended for most users; for example, if you remove the prefix definition of ‘C-x 4’, then ‘C-x 4 C-f’ becomes an invalid key sequence. *Note Key Bindings::. Typing the help character (‘C-h’ or ) after a prefix key displays a list of the commands starting with that prefix. The sole exception to this rule is : ‘ C-h’ is equivalent to ‘C-M-h’, which does something else entirely. You can, however, use to display a list of commands starting with . * 4 Keys and Commands This manual is full of passages that tell you what particular keys do. But Emacs does not assign meanings to keys directly. Instead, Emacs assigns meanings to named "commands", and then gives keys their meanings by "binding" them to commands. Every command has a name chosen by a programmer. The name is usually made of a few English words separated by dashes; for example, ‘next-line’ or ‘forward-word’. Internally, each command is a special type of Lisp "function", and the actions associated with the command are performed by running the function. *Note What Is a Function: (elisp)What Is a Function. The bindings between keys and commands are recorded in tables called "keymaps". *Note Keymaps::. When we say that “‘C-n’ moves down vertically one line” we are glossing over a subtle distinction that is irrelevant in ordinary use, but vital for Emacs customization. The command ‘next-line’ does a vertical move downward. ‘C-n’ has this effect _because_ it is bound to ‘next-line’. If you rebind ‘C-n’ to the command ‘forward-word’, ‘C-n’ will move forward one word instead. In this manual, we will often speak of keys like ‘C-n’ as commands, even though strictly speaking the key is bound to a command. Usually, we state the name of the command which really does the work in parentheses after mentioning the key that runs it. For example, we will say that “The command ‘C-n’ (‘next-line’) moves point vertically down”, meaning that the command ‘next-line’ moves vertically down, and the key ‘C-n’ is normally bound to it. Since we are discussing customization, we should tell you about "variables". Often the description of a command will say, “To change this, set the variable ‘mumble-foo’.” A variable is a name used to store a value. Most of the variables documented in this manual are meant for customization: some command or other part of Emacs examines the variable and behaves differently according to the value that you set. You can ignore the information about variables until you are interested in customizing them. Then read the basic information on variables (*note Variables::) and the information about specific variables will make sense. * 5 Entering Emacs The usual way to invoke Emacs is with the shell command ‘emacs’. From a terminal window running a Unix shell on a GUI terminal, you can run Emacs in the background with ‘emacs &’; this way, Emacs won’t tie up the terminal window, so you can use it to run other shell commands. (For comparable methods of starting Emacs on MS-Windows, see *note Windows Startup::.) When Emacs starts up, the initial frame displays a special buffer named ‘*GNU Emacs*’. This "startup screen" contains information about Emacs and "links" to common tasks that are useful for beginning users. For instance, activating the ‘Emacs Tutorial’ link opens the Emacs tutorial; this does the same thing as the command ‘C-h t’ (‘help-with-tutorial’). To activate a link, either move point onto it and type ‘’, or click on it with ‘mouse-1’ (the left mouse button). Using a command line argument, you can tell Emacs to visit one or more files as soon as it starts up. For example, ‘emacs foo.txt’ starts Emacs with a buffer displaying the contents of the file ‘foo.txt’. This feature exists mainly for compatibility with other editors, which are designed to be launched from the shell for short editing sessions. If you call Emacs this way, the initial frame is split into two windows—one showing the specified file, and the other showing the startup screen. *Note Windows::. Generally, it is unnecessary and wasteful to start Emacs afresh each time you want to edit a file. The recommended way to use Emacs is to start it just once, just after you log in, and do all your editing in the same Emacs session. *Note Files::, for information on visiting more than one file. If you use Emacs this way, the Emacs session accumulates valuable context, such as the kill ring, registers, undo history, and mark ring data, which together make editing more convenient. These features are described later in the manual. To edit a file from another program while Emacs is running, you can use the ‘emacsclient’ helper program to open a file in the existing Emacs session. *Note Emacs Server::. Emacs accepts other command line arguments that tell it to load certain Lisp files, where to put the initial frame, and so forth. *Note Emacs Invocation::. If the variable ‘inhibit-startup-screen’ is non-‘nil’, Emacs does not display the startup screen. In that case, if one or more files were specified on the command line, Emacs simply displays those files; otherwise, it displays a buffer named ‘*scratch*’, which can be used to evaluate Emacs Lisp expressions interactively. *Note Lisp Interaction::. You can set the variable ‘inhibit-startup-screen’ using the Customize facility (*note Easy Customization::), or by editing your initialization file (*note Init File::).(1) You can also force Emacs to display a file or directory at startup by setting the variable ‘initial-buffer-choice’ to a string naming that file or directory. The value of ‘initial-buffer-choice’ may also be a function (of no arguments) that should return a buffer which is then displayed. If ‘initial-buffer-choice’ is non-‘nil’, then if you specify any files on the command line, Emacs still visits them, but does not display them initially. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) Setting ‘inhibit-startup-screen’ in ‘site-start.el’ doesn’t work, because the startup screen is set up before reading ‘site-start.el’. *Note Init File::, for information about ‘site-start.el’. * 6 Exiting Emacs ‘C-x C-c’ Kill Emacs (‘save-buffers-kill-terminal’). ‘C-z’ On a text terminal, suspend Emacs; on a graphical display, iconify (or “minimize”) the selected frame (‘suspend-frame’). "Killing" Emacs means terminating the Emacs program. To do this, type ‘C-x C-c’ (‘save-buffers-kill-terminal’). A two-character key sequence is used to make it harder to type by accident. If there are any modified file-visiting buffers when you type ‘C-x C-c’, Emacs first offers to save these buffers. If you do not save them all, it asks for confirmation again, since the unsaved changes will be lost. Emacs also asks for confirmation if any subprocesses are still running, since killing Emacs will also kill the subprocesses (*note Shell::). ‘C-x C-c’ behaves specially if you are using Emacs as a server. If you type it from a client frame, it closes the client connection. *Note Emacs Server::. Emacs can, optionally, record certain session information when you kill it, such as the files you were visiting at the time. This information is then available the next time you start Emacs. *Note Saving Emacs Sessions::. If the value of the variable ‘confirm-kill-emacs’ is non-‘nil’, ‘C-x C-c’ assumes that its value is a predicate function, and calls that function. If the result of the function call is non-‘nil’, the session is killed, otherwise Emacs continues to run. One convenient function to use as the value of ‘confirm-kill-emacs’ is the function ‘yes-or-no-p’. The default value of ‘confirm-kill-emacs’ is ‘nil’. If the value of the variable ‘confirm-kill-processes’ is ‘nil’, ‘C-x C-c’ does not ask for confirmation before killing subprocesses started by Emacs. The value is ‘t’ by default. To further customize what happens when Emacs is exiting, see *note (elisp)Killing Emacs::. To kill Emacs without being prompted about saving, type ‘M-x kill-emacs’. ‘C-z’ runs the command ‘suspend-frame’. On a graphical display, this command "minimizes" (or "iconifies") the selected Emacs frame, hiding it in a way that lets you bring it back later (exactly how this hiding occurs depends on the window system). On a text terminal, the ‘C-z’ command "suspends" Emacs, stopping the program temporarily and returning control to the parent process (usually a shell); in most shells, you can resume Emacs after suspending it with the shell command ‘%emacs’. Text terminals usually listen for certain special characters whose meaning is to kill or suspend the program you are running. This terminal feature is turned off while you are in Emacs. The meanings of ‘C-z’ and ‘C-x C-c’ as keys in Emacs were inspired by the use of ‘C-z’ and ‘C-c’ on several operating systems as the characters for stopping or killing a program, but that is their only relationship with the operating system. You can customize these keys to run any commands of your choice (*note Keymaps::). * 7 Basic Editing Commands Here we explain the basics of how to enter text, make corrections, and save the text in a file. If this material is new to you, we suggest you first run the Emacs learn-by-doing tutorial, by typing ‘C-h t’ (‘help-with-tutorial’). + Menu: - Inserting Text:: Inserting text by simply typing it. - Moving Point:: Moving the cursor to the place where you want to change something. - Erasing:: Deleting and killing text. - Basic Undo:: Undoing recent changes in the text. - Files: Basic Files. Visiting, creating, and saving files. - Help: Basic Help. Asking what a character does. - Blank Lines:: Making and deleting blank lines. - Continuation Lines:: How Emacs displays lines too wide for the screen. - Position Info:: What line, row, or column is point on? - Arguments:: Numeric arguments for repeating a command N times. - Repeating:: Repeating the previous command quickly. ** 7.1 Inserting Text You can insert an ordinary "graphic character" (e.g., ‘a’, ‘B’, ‘3’, and ‘=’) by typing the associated key. This adds the character to the buffer at point. Insertion moves point forward, so that point remains just after the inserted text. *Note Point::. To end a line and start a new one, type (‘newline’). (The key may be labeled , or , or with a funny-looking left-pointing arrow on your keyboard, but we refer to it as in this manual.) This command inserts a newline character into the buffer, then indents (*note Indentation::) according to the major mode. If point is at the end of the line, the effect is to create a new blank line after it and indent the new line; if point is in the middle of a line, the line is split at that position. To turn off the auto-indentation, you can either disable Electric Indent mode (*note Indent Convenience::) or type ‘C-j’, which inserts just a newline, without any auto-indentation. As we explain later in this manual, you can change the way Emacs handles text insertion by turning on "minor modes". For instance, the minor mode called Auto Fill mode splits lines automatically when they get too long (*note Filling::). The minor mode called Overwrite mode causes inserted characters to replace (overwrite) existing text, instead of shoving it to the right. *Note Minor Modes::. Only graphic characters can be inserted by typing the associated key; other keys act as editing commands and do not insert themselves. For instance, runs the command ‘delete-backward-char’ by default (some modes bind it to a different command); it does not insert a literal ‘DEL’ character (ASCII character code 127). To insert a non-graphic character, or a character that your keyboard does not support, first "quote" it by typing ‘C-q’ (‘quoted-insert’). There are two ways to use ‘C-q’: • ‘C-q’ followed by any non-graphic character (even ‘C-g’) inserts that character. For instance, ‘C-q ’ inserts a literal ‘DEL’ character. • ‘C-q’ followed by a sequence of octal digits inserts the character with the specified octal character code. You can use any number of octal digits; any non-digit terminates the sequence. If the terminating character is , that serves only to terminate the sequence. Any other non-digit terminates the sequence and then acts as normal input—thus, ‘C-q 1 0 1 B’ inserts ‘AB’. The use of octal sequences is disabled in ordinary non-binary Overwrite mode, to give you a convenient way to insert a digit instead of overwriting with it. To use decimal or hexadecimal instead of octal, set the variable ‘read-quoted-char-radix’ to 10 or 16. If the radix is 16, the letters ‘a’ to ‘f’ serve as part of a character code, just like digits. Case is ignored. A few common Unicode characters can be inserted via a command starting with ‘C-x 8’. For example, ‘C-x 8 [’ inserts ‘ which is Unicode code-point ‘U+2018’ LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK, sometimes called a left single “curved quote” or “curly quote”. Similarly, ‘C-x 8 ]’, ‘C-x 8 {’ and ‘C-x 8 }’ insert the curved quotes ’, “ and ”, respectively. Also, a working Alt key acts like ‘C-x 8’; e.g., ‘A-[’ acts like ‘C-x 8 [’ and inserts ‘. To see which characters have ‘C-x 8’ shorthands, type ‘C-x 8 C-h’. Alternatively, you can use the command ‘C-x 8 ’ (‘insert-char’). This prompts for the Unicode name or code-point of a character, using the minibuffer. If you enter a name, the command provides completion (*note Completion::). If you enter a code-point, it should be as a hexadecimal number (the convention for Unicode), or a number with a specified radix, e.g., ‘#o23072’ (octal); *Note (elisp)Integer Basics::. The command then inserts the corresponding character into the buffer. For example, the following all insert the same character: C-x 8 left single quotation mark C-x 8 left sin C-x 8 2018 C-x 8 [ A-[ (if the Alt key works) ` (in Electric Quote mode) A numeric argument to ‘C-q’ or ‘C-x 8 ...’ specifies how many copies of the character to insert (*note Arguments::). In addition, in some contexts, if you type a quotation using grave accent and apostrophe `like this', it is converted to a form ‘like this’ using single quotation marks, even without ‘C-x 8’ commands. Similarly, typing a quotation ``like this'' using double grave accent and apostrophe converts it to a form “like this” using double quotation marks. *Note Quotation Marks::. ** 7.2 Changing the Location of Point To do more than insert characters, you have to know how to move point (*note Point::). The keyboard commands ‘C-f’, ‘C-b’, ‘C-n’, and ‘C-p’ move point to the right, left, down, and up, respectively. You can also move point using the "arrow keys" present on most keyboards: , , , and ; however, many Emacs users find that it is slower to use the arrow keys than the control keys, because you need to move your hand to the area of the keyboard where those keys are located. You can also click the left mouse button to move point to the position clicked. Emacs also provides a variety of additional keyboard commands that move point in more sophisticated ways. ‘C-f’ Move forward one character (‘forward-char’). ‘’ This command (‘right-char’) behaves like ‘C-f’, except when point is in a right-to-left paragraph (*note Bidirectional Editing::). ‘C-b’ Move backward one character (‘backward-char’). ‘’ This command (‘left-char’) behaves like ‘C-b’, except if the current paragraph is right-to-left (*note Bidirectional Editing::). ‘C-n’ ‘’ Move down one screen line (‘next-line’). This command attempts to keep the horizontal position unchanged, so if you start in the middle of one line, you move to the middle of the next. ‘C-p’ ‘’ Move up one screen line (‘previous-line’). This command preserves position within the line, like ‘C-n’. ‘C-a’ ‘’ Move to the beginning of the line (‘move-beginning-of-line’). ‘C-e’ ‘’ Move to the end of the line (‘move-end-of-line’). ‘M-f’ Move forward one word (‘forward-word’). *Note Words::. ‘C-’ ‘M-’ This command (‘right-word’) behaves like ‘M-f’, except it moves _backward_ by one word if the current paragraph is right-to-left. *Note Bidirectional Editing::. ‘M-b’ Move backward one word (‘backward-word’). *Note Words::. ‘C-’ ‘M-’ This command (‘left-word’) behaves like ‘M-b’, except it moves _forward_ by one word if the current paragraph is right-to-left. *Note Bidirectional Editing::. ‘M-r’ Without moving the text on the screen, reposition point on the left margin of the center-most text line of the window; on subsequent consecutive invocations, move point to the left margin of the top-most line, the bottom-most line, and so forth, in cyclic order (‘move-to-window-line-top-bottom’). A numeric argument says which screen line to place point on, counting downward from the top of the window (zero means the top line). A negative argument counts lines up from the bottom (−1 means the bottom line). *Note Arguments::, for more information on numeric arguments. ‘M-<’ Move to the top of the buffer (‘beginning-of-buffer’). With numeric argument N, move to N/10 of the way from the top. On graphical displays, ‘C-’ does the same. ‘M->’ Move to the end of the buffer (‘end-of-buffer’). On graphical displays, ‘C-’ does the same. ‘C-v’ ‘’ ‘’ Scroll the display one screen forward, and move point onscreen if necessary (‘scroll-up-command’). *Note Scrolling::. ‘M-v’ ‘’ ‘’ Scroll one screen backward, and move point onscreen if necessary (‘scroll-down-command’). *Note Scrolling::. ‘M-g c’ Read a number N and move point to buffer position N. Position 1 is the beginning of the buffer. ‘M-g M-g’ ‘M-g g’ Read a number N and move point to the beginning of line number N (‘goto-line’). Line 1 is the beginning of the buffer. If point is on or just after a number in the buffer, that is the default for N. Just type in the minibuffer to use it. You can also specify N by giving ‘M-g M-g’ a numeric prefix argument. *Note Select Buffer::, for the behavior of ‘M-g M-g’ when you give it a plain prefix argument. ‘M-g ’ Read a number N and move to column N in the current line. Column 0 is the leftmost column. If called with a prefix argument, move to the column number specified by the argument’s numeric value. ‘C-x C-n’ Use the current column of point as the "semipermanent goal column" for ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’ (‘set-goal-column’) in the current buffer. When a semipermanent goal column is in effect, those commands always try to move to this column, or as close as possible to it, after moving vertically. The goal column remains in effect until canceled. ‘C-u C-x C-n’ Cancel the goal column. Henceforth, ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’ try to preserve the horizontal position, as usual. When a line of text in the buffer is longer than the width of the window, Emacs usually displays it on two or more "screen lines". For convenience, ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’ move point by screen lines, as do the equivalent keys ‘’ and ‘’. You can force these commands to move according to "logical lines" (i.e., according to the text lines in the buffer) by setting the variable ‘line-move-visual’ to ‘nil’; if a logical line occupies multiple screen lines, the cursor then skips over the additional screen lines. For details, see *note Continuation Lines::. *Note Variables::, for how to set variables such as ‘line-move-visual’. Unlike ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’, most of the Emacs commands that work on lines work on _logical_ lines. For instance, ‘C-a’ (‘move-beginning-of-line’) and ‘C-e’ (‘move-end-of-line’) respectively move to the beginning and end of the logical line. Whenever we encounter commands that work on screen lines, such as ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’, we will point these out. When ‘line-move-visual’ is ‘nil’, you can also set the variable ‘track-eol’ to a non-‘nil’ value. Then ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’, when starting at the end of the logical line, move to the end of the next logical line. Normally, ‘track-eol’ is ‘nil’. ‘C-n’ normally stops at the end of the buffer when you use it on the last line in the buffer. However, if you set the variable ‘next-line-add-newlines’ to a non-‘nil’ value, ‘C-n’ on the last line of a buffer creates an additional line at the end and moves down into it. ** 7.3 Erasing Text ‘’ ‘’ Delete the character before point, or the region if it is active (‘delete-backward-char’). ‘’ Delete the character after point, or the region if it is active (‘delete-forward-char’). ‘C-d’ Delete the character after point (‘delete-char’). ‘C-k’ Kill to the end of the line (‘kill-line’). ‘M-d’ Kill forward to the end of the next word (‘kill-word’). ‘M-’ ‘M-’ Kill back to the beginning of the previous word (‘backward-kill-word’). The ‘’ (‘delete-backward-char’) command removes the character before point, moving the cursor and the characters after it backwards. If point was at the beginning of a line, this deletes the preceding newline, joining this line to the previous one. If, however, the region is active, ‘’ instead deletes the text in the region. *Note Mark::, for a description of the region. On most keyboards, is labeled , but we refer to it as in this manual. (Do not confuse with the key; we will discuss momentarily.) On some text terminals, Emacs may not recognize the key properly. *Note DEL Does Not Delete::, if you encounter this problem. The (‘delete-forward-char’) command deletes in the opposite direction: it deletes the character after point, i.e., the character under the cursor. If point was at the end of a line, this joins the following line onto this one. Like ‘’, it deletes the text in the region if the region is active (*note Mark::). ‘C-d’ (‘delete-char’) deletes the character after point, similar to , but regardless of whether the region is active. *Note Deletion::, for more detailed information about the above deletion commands. ‘C-k’ (‘kill-line’) erases (kills) a line at a time. If you type ‘C-k’ at the beginning or middle of a line, it kills all the text up to the end of the line. If you type ‘C-k’ at the end of a line, it joins that line with the following line. *Note Killing::, for more information about ‘C-k’ and related commands. ** 7.4 Undoing Changes ‘C-/’ ‘C-x u’ ‘C-_’ Undo one entry of the undo records—usually, one command worth (‘undo’). (The first key might be unavailable on text-mode displays.) Emacs records a list of changes made in the buffer text, so you can undo recent changes. This is done using the ‘undo’ command, which is bound to ‘C-/’ (as well as ‘C-x u’ and ‘C-_’). Normally, this command undoes the last change, moving point back to where it was before the change. The undo command applies only to changes in the buffer; you can’t use it to undo cursor motion. Although each editing command usually makes a separate entry in the undo records, very simple commands may be grouped together. Sometimes, an entry may cover just part of a complex command. If you repeat ‘C-/’ (or its aliases), each repetition undoes another, earlier change, back to the limit of the undo information available. If all recorded changes have already been undone, the undo command displays an error message and does nothing. To learn more about the ‘undo’ command, see *note Undo::. ** 7.5 Files Text that you insert in an Emacs buffer lasts only as long as the Emacs session. To keep any text permanently, you must put it in a "file". Suppose there is a file named ‘test.emacs’ in your home directory. To begin editing this file in Emacs, type C-x C-f test.emacs Here the file name is given as an "argument" to the command ‘C-x C-f’ (‘find-file’). That command uses the "minibuffer" to read the argument, and you type to terminate the argument (*note Minibuffer::). Emacs obeys this command by "visiting" the file: it creates a buffer, copies the contents of the file into the buffer, and then displays the buffer for editing. If you alter the text, you can "save" the new text in the file by typing ‘C-x C-s’ (‘save-buffer’). This copies the altered buffer contents back into the file ‘test.emacs’, making them permanent. Until you save, the changed text exists only inside Emacs, and the file ‘test.emacs’ is unaltered. To create a file, just visit it with ‘C-x C-f’ as if it already existed. This creates an empty buffer, in which you can insert the text you want to put in the file. Emacs actually creates the file the first time you save this buffer with ‘C-x C-s’. To learn more about using files in Emacs, see *note Files::. ** 7.6 Help If you forget what a key does, you can find out by typing ‘C-h k’ (‘describe-key’), followed by the key of interest; for example, ‘C-h k C-n’ tells you what ‘C-n’ does. The prefix key ‘C-h’ stands for “help”. The key serves as an alias for ‘C-h’. Apart from ‘C-h k’, there are many other help commands providing different kinds of help. *Note Help::, for details. ** 7.7 Blank Lines Here are special commands and techniques for inserting and deleting blank lines. ‘C-o’ Insert a blank line after the cursor (‘open-line’). ‘C-x C-o’ Delete all but one of many consecutive blank lines (‘delete-blank-lines’). We have seen how ‘’ (‘newline’) starts a new line of text. However, it may be easier to see what you are doing if you first make a blank line and then insert the desired text into it. This is easy to do using the key ‘C-o’ (‘open-line’), which inserts a newline after point but leaves point in front of the newline. After ‘C-o’, type the text for the new line. You can make several blank lines by typing ‘C-o’ several times, or by giving it a numeric argument specifying how many blank lines to make. *Note Arguments::, for how. If you have a fill prefix, the ‘C-o’ command inserts the fill prefix on the new line, if typed at the beginning of a line. *Note Fill Prefix::. The easy way to get rid of extra blank lines is with the command ‘C-x C-o’ (‘delete-blank-lines’). If point lies within a run of several blank lines, ‘C-x C-o’ deletes all but one of them. If point is on a single blank line, ‘C-x C-o’ deletes it. If point is on a nonblank line, ‘C-x C-o’ deletes all following blank lines, if any exists. ** 7.8 Continuation Lines Sometimes, a line of text in the buffer—a "logical line"—is too long to fit in the window, and Emacs displays it as two or more "screen lines". This is called "line wrapping" or "continuation", and the long logical line is called a "continued line". On a graphical display, Emacs indicates line wrapping with small bent arrows in the left and right window fringes. On a text terminal, Emacs indicates line wrapping by displaying a ‘\’ character at the right margin. Most commands that act on lines act on logical lines, not screen lines. For instance, ‘C-k’ kills a logical line. As described earlier, ‘C-n’ (‘next-line’) and ‘C-p’ (‘previous-line’) are special exceptions: they move point down and up, respectively, by one screen line (*note Moving Point::). Emacs can optionally "truncate" long logical lines instead of continuing them. This means that every logical line occupies a single screen line; if it is longer than the width of the window, the rest of the line is not displayed. On a graphical display, a truncated line is indicated by a small straight arrow in the right fringe; on a text terminal, it is indicated by a ‘$’ character in the right margin. *Note Line Truncation::. By default, continued lines are wrapped at the right window edge. Since the wrapping may occur in the middle of a word, continued lines can be difficult to read. The usual solution is to break your lines before they get too long, by inserting newlines. If you prefer, you can make Emacs insert a newline automatically when a line gets too long, by using Auto Fill mode. *Note Filling::. Sometimes, you may need to edit files containing many long logical lines, and it may not be practical to break them all up by adding newlines. In that case, you can use Visual Line mode, which enables "word wrapping": instead of wrapping long lines exactly at the right window edge, Emacs wraps them at the word boundaries (i.e., space or tab characters) nearest to the right window edge. Visual Line mode also redefines editing commands such as ‘C-a’, ‘C-n’, and ‘C-k’ to operate on screen lines rather than logical lines. *Note Visual Line Mode::. ** 7.9 Cursor Position Information Here are commands to get information about the size and position of parts of the buffer, and to count words and lines. ‘M-x what-line’ Display the line number of point. ‘M-x line-number-mode’ ‘M-x column-number-mode’ Toggle automatic display of the current line number or column number. *Note Optional Mode Line::. If you want to have a line number displayed before each line, see *note Display Custom::. ‘M-=’ Display the number of lines, words, and characters that are present in the region (‘count-words-region’). *Note Mark::, for information about the region. ‘M-x count-words’ Display the number of lines, words, and characters that are present in the buffer. If the region is active (*note Mark::), display the numbers for the region instead. ‘C-x =’ Display the character code of character after point, character position of point, and column of point (‘what-cursor-position’). ‘M-x hl-line-mode’ Enable or disable highlighting of the current line. *Note Cursor Display::. ‘M-x size-indication-mode’ Toggle automatic display of the size of the buffer. *Note Optional Mode Line::. ‘M-x what-line’ displays the current line number in the echo area. This command is usually redundant because the current line number is shown in the mode line (*note Mode Line::). However, if you narrow the buffer, the mode line shows the line number relative to the accessible portion (*note Narrowing::). By contrast, ‘what-line’ displays both the line number relative to the narrowed region and the line number relative to the whole buffer. ‘M-=’ (‘count-words-region’) displays a message reporting the number of lines, words, and characters in the region (*note Mark::, for an explanation of the region). With a prefix argument, ‘C-u M-=’, the command displays a count for the entire buffer. The command ‘M-x count-words’ does the same job, but with a different calling convention. It displays a count for the region if the region is active, and for the buffer otherwise. The command ‘C-x =’ (‘what-cursor-position’) shows information about the current cursor position and the buffer contents at that position. It displays a line in the echo area that looks like this: Char: c (99, #o143, #x63) point=28062 of 36168 (78%) column=53 After ‘Char:’, this shows the character in the buffer at point. The text inside the parenthesis shows the corresponding decimal, octal and hex character codes; for more information about how ‘C-x =’ displays character information, see *note International Chars::. After ‘point=’ is the position of point as a character count (the first character in the buffer is position 1, the second character is position 2, and so on). The number after that is the total number of characters in the buffer, and the number in parenthesis expresses the position as a percentage of the total. After ‘column=’ is the horizontal position of point, in columns counting from the left edge of the window. If the buffer has been narrowed, making some of the text at the beginning and the end temporarily inaccessible, ‘C-x =’ displays additional text describing the currently accessible range. For example, it might display this: Char: C (67, #o103, #x43) point=252 of 889 (28%) <231-599> column=0 where the two extra numbers give the smallest and largest character position that point is allowed to assume. The characters between those two positions are the accessible ones. *Note Narrowing::. Related, but different feature is ‘display-line-numbers-mode’ (*note Display Custom::). ** 7.10 Numeric Arguments In the terminology of mathematics and computing, "argument" means “data provided to a function or operation”. You can give any Emacs command a "numeric argument" (also called a "prefix argument"). Some commands interpret the argument as a repetition count. For example, giving ‘C-f’ an argument of ten causes it to move point forward by ten characters instead of one. With these commands, no argument is equivalent to an argument of one, and negative arguments cause them to move or act in the opposite direction. The easiest way to specify a numeric argument is to type a digit and/or a minus sign while holding down the key. For example, M-5 C-n moves down five lines. The keys ‘M-1’, ‘M-2’, and so on, as well as ‘M--’, are bound to commands (‘digit-argument’ and ‘negative-argument’) that set up an argument for the next command. ‘M--’ without digits normally means −1. If you enter more than one digit, you need not hold down the key for the second and subsequent digits. Thus, to move down fifty lines, type M-5 0 C-n Note that this _does not_ insert five copies of ‘0’ and move down one line, as you might expect—the ‘0’ is treated as part of the prefix argument. (What if you do want to insert five copies of ‘0’? Type ‘M-5 C-u 0’. Here, ‘C-u’ terminates the prefix argument, so that the next keystroke begins the command that you want to execute. Note that this meaning of ‘C-u’ applies only to this case. For the usual role of ‘C-u’, see below.) Instead of typing ‘M-1’, ‘M-2’, and so on, another way to specify a numeric argument is to type ‘C-u’ (‘universal-argument’) followed by some digits, or (for a negative argument) a minus sign followed by digits. A minus sign without digits normally means −1. ‘C-u’ alone has the special meaning of “four times”: it multiplies the argument for the next command by four. ‘C-u C-u’ multiplies it by sixteen. Thus, ‘C-u C-u C-f’ moves forward sixteen characters. Other useful combinations are ‘C-u C-n’, ‘C-u C-u C-n’ (move down a good fraction of a screen), ‘C-u C-u C-o’ (make sixteen blank lines), and ‘C-u C-k’ (kill four lines). You can use a numeric argument before a self-inserting character to insert multiple copies of it. This is straightforward when the character is not a digit; for example, ‘C-u 6 4 a’ inserts 64 copies of the character ‘a’. But this does not work for inserting digits; ‘C-u 6 4 1’ specifies an argument of 641. You can separate the argument from the digit to insert with another ‘C-u’; for example, ‘C-u 6 4 C-u 1’ does insert 64 copies of the character ‘1’. Some commands care whether there is an argument, but ignore its value. For example, the command ‘M-q’ (‘fill-paragraph’) fills text; with an argument, it justifies the text as well. (*Note Filling::, for more information on ‘M-q’.) For these commands, it is enough to specify the argument with a single ‘C-u’. Some commands use the value of the argument as a repeat count but do something special when there is no argument. For example, the command ‘C-k’ (‘kill-line’) with argument N kills N lines, including their terminating newlines. But ‘C-k’ with no argument is special: it kills the text up to the next newline, or, if point is right at the end of the line, it kills the newline itself. Thus, two ‘C-k’ commands with no arguments can kill a nonblank line, just like ‘C-k’ with an argument of one. (*Note Killing::, for more information on ‘C-k’.) A few commands treat a plain ‘C-u’ differently from an ordinary argument. A few others may treat an argument of just a minus sign differently from an argument of −1. These unusual cases are described when they come up; they exist to make an individual command more convenient, and they are documented in that command’s documentation string. We use the term "prefix argument" to emphasize that you type such arguments before the command, and to distinguish them from minibuffer arguments (*note Minibuffer::), which are entered after invoking the command. On graphical displays, ‘C-0’, ‘C-1’, etc. act the same as ‘M-0’, ‘M-1’, etc. ** 7.11 Repeating a Command Many simple commands, such as those invoked with a single key or with ‘M-x COMMAND-NAME ’, can be repeated by invoking them with a numeric argument that serves as a repeat count (*note Arguments::). However, if the command you want to repeat prompts for input, or uses a numeric argument in another way, that method won’t work. The command ‘C-x z’ (‘repeat’) provides another way to repeat an Emacs command many times. This command repeats the previous Emacs command, whatever that was. Repeating a command uses the same arguments that were used before; it does not read new arguments each time. To repeat the command more than once, type additional ‘z’’s: each ‘z’ repeats the command one more time. Repetition ends when you type a character other than ‘z’ or press a mouse button. For example, suppose you type ‘C-u 2 0 C-d’ to delete 20 characters. You can repeat that command (including its argument) three additional times, to delete a total of 80 characters, by typing ‘C-x z z z’. The first ‘C-x z’ repeats the command once, and each subsequent ‘z’ repeats it once again. * 8 The Minibuffer The "minibuffer" is where Emacs commands read complicated arguments, such as file names, buffer names, Emacs command names, or Lisp expressions. We call it the “minibuffer” because it’s a special-purpose buffer with a small amount of screen space. You can use the usual Emacs editing commands in the minibuffer to edit the argument text. + Menu: - Basic Minibuffer:: Basic usage of the minibuffer. - Minibuffer File:: Entering file names with the minibuffer. - Minibuffer Edit:: How to edit in the minibuffer. - Completion:: An abbreviation facility for minibuffer input. - Minibuffer History:: Reusing recent minibuffer arguments. - Repetition:: Re-executing commands that used the minibuffer. - Passwords:: Entering passwords in the echo area. - Yes or No Prompts:: Replying yes or no in the echo area. ** 8.1 Using the Minibuffer When the minibuffer is in use, it appears in the echo area, with a cursor. The minibuffer starts with a "prompt", usually ending with a colon. The prompt states what kind of input is expected, and how it will be used. The prompt is highlighted using the ‘minibuffer-prompt’ face (*note Faces::). The simplest way to enter a minibuffer argument is to type the text, then to submit the argument and exit the minibuffer. Alternatively, you can type ‘C-g’ to exit the minibuffer by canceling the command asking for the argument (*note Quitting::). Sometimes, the prompt shows a "default argument", inside parentheses before the colon. This default will be used as the argument if you just type . For example, commands that read buffer names usually show a buffer name as the default; you can type to operate on that default buffer. If you enable Minibuffer Electric Default mode, a global minor mode, Emacs hides the default argument as soon as you modify the contents of the minibuffer (since typing would no longer submit that default). If you ever bring back the original minibuffer text, the prompt again shows the default. Furthermore, if you change the variable ‘minibuffer-eldef-shorten-default’ to a non-‘nil’ value, the default argument is displayed as ‘[DEFAULT-ARG]’ instead of ‘(default DEFAULT-ARG)’, saving some screen space. To enable this minor mode, type ‘M-x minibuffer-electric-default-mode’. Since the minibuffer appears in the echo area, it can conflict with other uses of the echo area. If an error message or an informative message is emitted while the minibuffer is active, the message hides the minibuffer for a few seconds, or until you type something; then the minibuffer comes back. While the minibuffer is in use, Emacs does not echo keystrokes. ** 8.2 Minibuffers for File Names Commands such as ‘C-x C-f’ (‘find-file’) use the minibuffer to read a file name argument (*note Basic Files::). When the minibuffer is used to read a file name, it typically starts out with some initial text ending in a slash. This is the "default directory". For example, it may start out like this: Find file: /u2/emacs/src/ Here, ‘Find file: ’ is the prompt and ‘/u2/emacs/src/’ is the default directory. If you now type ‘buffer.c’ as input, that specifies the file ‘/u2/emacs/src/buffer.c’. *Note File Names::, for information about the default directory. Alternative defaults for the file name you may want are available by typing ‘M-n’, see *note Minibuffer History::. You can specify a file in the parent directory with ‘..’: ‘/a/b/../foo.el’ is equivalent to ‘/a/foo.el’. Alternatively, you can use ‘M-’ to kill directory names backwards (*note Words::). To specify a file in a completely different directory, you can kill the entire default with ‘C-a C-k’ (*note Minibuffer Edit::). Alternatively, you can ignore the default, and enter an absolute file name starting with a slash or a tilde after the default directory. For example, you can specify ‘/etc/termcap’ as follows: Find file: /u2/emacs/src//etc/termcap A double slash causes Emacs to ignore everything before the second slash in the pair. In the example above, ‘/u2/emacs/src/’ is ignored, so the argument you supplied is ‘/etc/termcap’. The ignored part of the file name is dimmed if the terminal allows it. (To disable this dimming, turn off File Name Shadow mode with the command ‘M-x file-name-shadow-mode’.) When completing remote file names (*note Remote Files::), a double slash behaves slightly differently: it causes Emacs to ignore only the file-name part, leaving the rest (method, host and username, etc.) intact. Typing three slashes in a row ignores everything in remote file names. *Note (tramp)File name completion::. Emacs interprets ‘~/’ as your home directory. Thus, ‘~/foo/bar.txt’ specifies a file named ‘bar.txt’, inside a directory named ‘foo’, which is in turn located in your home directory. In addition, ‘~USER-ID/’ means the home directory of a user whose login name is USER-ID. Any leading directory name in front of the ‘~’ is ignored: thus, ‘/u2/emacs/~/foo/bar.txt’ is equivalent to ‘~/foo/bar.txt’. On MS-Windows and MS-DOS systems, where a user doesn’t always have a home directory, Emacs uses several alternatives. For MS-Windows, see *note Windows HOME::; for MS-DOS, see *note MS-DOS File Names::. On these systems, the ‘~USER-ID/’ construct is supported only for the current user, i.e., only if USER-ID is the current user’s login name. To prevent Emacs from inserting the default directory when reading file names, change the variable ‘insert-default-directory’ to ‘nil’. In that case, the minibuffer starts out empty. Nonetheless, relative file name arguments are still interpreted based on the same default directory. You can also enter remote file names in the minibuffer. *Note Remote Files::. ** 8.3 Editing in the Minibuffer The minibuffer is an Emacs buffer, albeit a peculiar one, and the usual Emacs commands are available for editing the argument text. (The prompt, however, is "read-only", and cannot be changed.) Since in the minibuffer submits the argument, you can’t use it to insert a newline. You can do that with ‘C-q C-j’, which inserts a ‘C-j’ control character, which is formally equivalent to a newline character (*note Inserting Text::). Alternatively, you can use the ‘C-o’ (‘open-line’) command (*note Blank Lines::). Inside a minibuffer, the keys , , and ‘?’ are often bound to "completion commands", which allow you to easily fill in the desired text without typing all of it. *Note Completion::. As with , you can use ‘C-q’ to insert a , , or ‘?’ character. For convenience, ‘C-a’ (‘move-beginning-of-line’) in a minibuffer moves point to the beginning of the argument text, not the beginning of the prompt. For example, this allows you to erase the entire argument with ‘C-a C-k’. When the minibuffer is active, the echo area is treated much like an ordinary Emacs window. For instance, you can switch to another window (with ‘C-x o’), edit text there, then return to the minibuffer window to finish the argument. You can even kill text in another window, return to the minibuffer window, and yank the text into the argument. There are some restrictions on the minibuffer window, however: for instance, you cannot split it. *Note Windows::. Normally, the minibuffer window occupies a single screen line. However, if you add two or more lines’ worth of text into the minibuffer, it expands automatically to accommodate the text. The variable ‘resize-mini-windows’ controls the resizing of the minibuffer. The default value is ‘grow-only’, which means the behavior we have just described. If the value is ‘t’, the minibuffer window will also shrink automatically if you remove some lines of text from the minibuffer, down to a minimum of one screen line. If the value is ‘nil’, the minibuffer window never changes size automatically, but you can use the usual window-resizing commands on it (*note Windows::). The variable ‘max-mini-window-height’ controls the maximum height for resizing the minibuffer window. A floating-point number specifies a fraction of the frame’s height; an integer specifies the maximum number of lines; ‘nil’ means do not resize the minibuffer window automatically. The default value is 0.25. The ‘C-M-v’ command in the minibuffer scrolls the help text from commands that display help text of any sort in another window. You can also scroll the help text with ‘M-’ and ‘M-’ (or, equivalently, ‘M-’ and ‘M-’). This is especially useful with long lists of possible completions. *Note Other Window::. Emacs normally disallows most commands that use the minibuffer while the minibuffer is active. To allow such commands in the minibuffer, set the variable ‘enable-recursive-minibuffers’ to ‘t’. When not active, the minibuffer is in ‘minibuffer-inactive-mode’, and clicking ‘mouse-1’ there shows the ‘*Messages*’ buffer. If you use a dedicated frame for minibuffers, Emacs also recognizes certain keys there, for example, ‘n’ to make a new frame. ** 8.4 Completion You can often use a feature called "completion" to help enter arguments. This means that after you type part of the argument, Emacs can fill in the rest, or some of it, based on what was typed so far. When completion is available, certain keys (usually , , and ) are rebound in the minibuffer to special completion commands (*note Completion Commands::). These commands attempt to complete the text in the minibuffer, based on a set of "completion alternatives" provided by the command that requested the argument. You can usually type ‘?’ to see a list of completion alternatives. Although completion is usually done in the minibuffer, the feature is sometimes available in ordinary buffers too. *Note Symbol Completion::. + Menu: - Completion Example:: Examples of using completion. - Completion Commands:: A list of completion commands. - Completion Exit:: Completion and minibuffer text submission. - Completion Styles:: How completion matches are chosen. - Completion Options:: Options for completion. *** 8.4.1 Completion Example A simple example may help here. ‘M-x’ uses the minibuffer to read the name of a command, so completion works by matching the minibuffer text against the names of existing Emacs commands. Suppose you wish to run the command ‘auto-fill-mode’. You can do that by typing ‘M-x auto-fill-mode ’, but it is easier to use completion. If you type ‘M-x a u ’, the looks for completion alternatives (in this case, command names) that start with ‘au’. There are several, including ‘auto-fill-mode’ and ‘autoconf-mode’, but they all begin with ‘auto’, so the ‘au’ in the minibuffer completes to ‘auto’. (More commands may be defined in your Emacs session. For example, if a command called ‘authorize-me’ was defined, Emacs could only complete as far as ‘aut’.) If you type again immediately, it cannot determine the next character; it could be ‘-’, ‘a’, or ‘c’. So it does not add any characters; instead, displays a list of all possible completions in another window. Next, type ‘-f’. The minibuffer now contains ‘auto-f’, and the only command name that starts with this is ‘auto-fill-mode’. If you now type , completion fills in the rest of the argument ‘auto-fill-mode’ into the minibuffer. Hence, typing just ‘a u - f ’ allows you to enter ‘auto-fill-mode’. *** 8.4.2 Completion Commands Here is a list of the completion commands defined in the minibuffer when completion is allowed. ‘’ Complete the text in the minibuffer as much as possible; if unable to complete, display a list of possible completions (‘minibuffer-complete’). ‘’ Complete up to one word from the minibuffer text before point (‘minibuffer-complete-word’). This command is not available for arguments that often include spaces, such as file names. ‘’ Submit the text in the minibuffer as the argument, possibly completing first (‘minibuffer-complete-and-exit’). *Note Completion Exit::. ‘?’ Display a list of completions (‘minibuffer-completion-help’). (‘minibuffer-complete’) is the most fundamental completion command. It searches for all possible completions that match the existing minibuffer text, and attempts to complete as much as it can. *Note Completion Styles::, for how completion alternatives are chosen. (‘minibuffer-complete-word’) completes like , but only up to the next hyphen or space. If you have ‘auto-f’ in the minibuffer and type , it finds that the completion is ‘auto-fill-mode’, but it only inserts ‘ill-’, giving ‘auto-fill-’. Another at this point completes all the way to ‘auto-fill-mode’. If or is unable to complete, it displays a list of matching completion alternatives (if there are any) in another window. You can display the same list with ‘?’ (‘minibuffer-completion-help’). The following commands can be used with the completion list: ‘M-v’ ‘’ ‘’ Typing ‘M-v’, while in the minibuffer, selects the window showing the completion list (‘switch-to-completions’). This paves the way for using the commands below. or does the same. You can also select the window in other ways (*note Windows::). ‘’ ‘mouse-1’ ‘mouse-2’ While in the completion list buffer, this chooses the completion at point (‘choose-completion’). ‘’ While in the completion list buffer, this moves point to the following completion alternative (‘next-completion’). ‘’ While in the completion list buffer, this moves point to the previous completion alternative (‘previous-completion’). *** 8.4.3 Completion Exit When a command reads an argument using the minibuffer with completion, it also controls what happens when you type (‘minibuffer-complete-and-exit’) to submit the argument. There are four types of behavior: • "Strict completion" accepts only exact completion matches. Typing exits the minibuffer only if the minibuffer text is an exact match, or completes to one. Otherwise, Emacs refuses to exit the minibuffer; instead it tries to complete, and if no completion can be done it momentarily displays ‘[No match]’ after the minibuffer text. (You can still leave the minibuffer by typing ‘C-g’ to cancel the command.) An example of a command that uses this behavior is ‘M-x’, since it is meaningless for it to accept a non-existent command name. • "Cautious completion" is like strict completion, except exits only if the text is already an exact match. If the text completes to an exact match, performs that completion but does not exit yet; you must type a second to exit. Cautious completion is used for reading file names for files that must already exist, for example. • "Permissive completion" allows any input; the completion candidates are just suggestions. Typing does not complete, it just submits the argument as you have entered it. • "Permissive completion with confirmation" is like permissive completion, with an exception: if you typed and this completed the text up to some intermediate state (i.e., one that is not yet an exact completion match), typing right afterward does not submit the argument. Instead, Emacs asks for confirmation by momentarily displaying ‘[Confirm]’ after the text; type again to confirm and submit the text. This catches a common mistake, in which one types before realizing that did not complete as far as desired. You can tweak the confirmation behavior by customizing the variable ‘confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer’. The default value, ‘after-completion’, gives the behavior we have just described. If you change it to ‘nil’, Emacs does not ask for confirmation, falling back on permissive completion. If you change it to any other non-‘nil’ value, Emacs asks for confirmation whether or not the preceding command was . This behavior is used by most commands that read file names, like ‘C-x C-f’, and commands that read buffer names, like ‘C-x b’. *** 8.4.4 How Completion Alternatives Are Chosen Completion commands work by narrowing a large list of possible completion alternatives to a smaller subset that matches what you have typed in the minibuffer. In *note Completion Example::, we gave a simple example of such matching. The procedure of determining what constitutes a match is quite intricate. Emacs attempts to offer plausible completions under most circumstances. Emacs performs completion using one or more "completion styles"—sets of criteria for matching minibuffer text to completion alternatives. During completion, Emacs tries each completion style in turn. If a style yields one or more matches, that is used as the list of completion alternatives. If a style produces no matches, Emacs falls back on the next style. The list variable ‘completion-styles’ specifies the completion styles to use. Each list element is the name of a completion style (a Lisp symbol). The default completion styles are (in order): ‘basic’ A matching completion alternative must have the same beginning as the text in the minibuffer before point. Furthermore, if there is any text in the minibuffer after point, the rest of the completion alternative must contain that text as a substring. ‘partial-completion’ This aggressive completion style divides the minibuffer text into words separated by hyphens or spaces, and completes each word separately. (For example, when completing command names, ‘em-l-m’ completes to ‘emacs-lisp-mode’.) Furthermore, a ‘*’ in the minibuffer text is treated as a "wildcard"—it matches any string of characters at the corresponding position in the completion alternative. ‘emacs22’ This completion style is similar to ‘basic’, except that it ignores the text in the minibuffer after point. It is so-named because it corresponds to the completion behavior in Emacs 22. The following additional completion styles are also defined, and you can add them to ‘completion-styles’ if you wish (*note Customization::): ‘substring’ A matching completion alternative must contain the text in the minibuffer before point, and the text in the minibuffer after point, as substrings (in that same order). Thus, if the text in the minibuffer is ‘foobar’, with point between ‘foo’ and ‘bar’, that matches ‘AfooBbarC’, where A, B, and C can be any string including the empty string. ‘initials’ This very aggressive completion style attempts to complete acronyms and initialisms. For example, when completing command names, it matches ‘lch’ to ‘list-command-history’. There is also a very simple completion style called ‘emacs21’. In this style, if the text in the minibuffer is ‘foobar’, only matches starting with ‘foobar’ are considered. You can use different completion styles in different situations, by setting the variable ‘completion-category-overrides’. For example, the default setting says to use only ‘basic’ and ‘substring’ completion for buffer names. *** 8.4.5 Completion Options Case is significant when completing case-sensitive arguments, such as command names. For example, when completing command names, ‘AU’ does not complete to ‘auto-fill-mode’. Case differences are ignored when completing arguments in which case does not matter. When completing file names, case differences are ignored if the variable ‘read-file-name-completion-ignore-case’ is non-‘nil’. The default value is ‘nil’ on systems that have case-sensitive file-names, such as GNU/Linux; it is non-‘nil’ on systems that have case-insensitive file-names, such as Microsoft Windows. When completing buffer names, case differences are ignored if the variable ‘read-buffer-completion-ignore-case’ is non-‘nil’; the default is ‘nil’. When completing file names, Emacs usually omits certain alternatives that are considered unlikely to be chosen, as determined by the list variable ‘completion-ignored-extensions’. Each element in the list should be a string; any file name ending in such a string is ignored as a completion alternative. Any element ending in a slash (‘/’) represents a subdirectory name. The standard value of ‘completion-ignored-extensions’ has several elements including ‘".o"’, ‘".elc"’, and ‘"~"’. For example, if a directory contains ‘foo.c’ and ‘foo.elc’, ‘foo’ completes to ‘foo.c’. However, if _all_ possible completions end in otherwise-ignored strings, they are not ignored: in the previous example, ‘foo.e’ completes to ‘foo.elc’. Emacs disregards ‘completion-ignored-extensions’ when showing completion alternatives in the completion list. Shell completion is an extended version of filename completion, *note Shell Options::. If ‘completion-auto-help’ is set to ‘nil’, the completion commands never display the completion list buffer; you must type ‘?’ to display the list. If the value is ‘lazy’, Emacs only shows the completion list buffer on the second attempt to complete. In other words, if there is nothing to complete, the first echoes ‘Next char not unique’; the second shows the completion list buffer. If ‘completion-cycle-threshold’ is non-‘nil’, completion commands can cycle through completion alternatives. Normally, if there is more than one completion alternative for the text in the minibuffer, a completion command completes up to the longest common substring. If you change ‘completion-cycle-threshold’ to ‘t’, the completion command instead completes to the first of those completion alternatives; each subsequent invocation of the completion command replaces that with the next completion alternative, in a cyclic manner. If you give ‘completion-cycle-threshold’ a numeric value N, completion commands switch to this cycling behavior only when there are N or fewer alternatives. ** 8.5 Minibuffer History Every argument that you enter with the minibuffer is saved in a "minibuffer history list" so you can easily use it again later. You can use the following arguments to quickly fetch an earlier argument into the minibuffer: ‘M-p’ Move to the previous item in the minibuffer history, an earlier argument (‘previous-history-element’). ‘M-n’ Move to the next item in the minibuffer history (‘next-history-element’). ‘’ ‘’ Like ‘M-p’ and ‘M-n’, but move to the previous or next line of a multi-line item before going to the previous history item (‘previous-line-or-history-element’ and ‘next-line-or-history-element’) . ‘M-r REGEXP ’ Move to an earlier item in the minibuffer history that matches REGEXP (‘previous-matching-history-element’). ‘M-s REGEXP ’ Move to a later item in the minibuffer history that matches REGEXP (‘next-matching-history-element’). While in the minibuffer, ‘M-p’ (‘previous-history-element’) moves through the minibuffer history list, one item at a time. Each ‘M-p’ fetches an earlier item from the history list into the minibuffer, replacing its existing contents. Typing ‘M-n’ (‘next-history-element’) moves through the minibuffer history list in the opposite direction, fetching later entries into the minibuffer. If you type ‘M-n’ in the minibuffer when there are no later entries in the minibuffer history (e.g., if you haven’t previously typed ‘M-p’), Emacs tries fetching from a list of default arguments: values that you are likely to enter. You can think of this as moving through the “future history”. The “future history” for file names includes several possible alternatives you may find useful, such as the file name or the URL at point in the current buffer. The defaults put into the “future history” in this case are controlled by the functions mentioned in the value of the option ‘file-name-at-point-functions’. By default, its value invokes the ‘ffap’ package (*note FFAP::), which tries to guess the default file or URL from the text around point. To disable this guessing, customize the option to a ‘nil’ value, then the “future history” of file names will include only the file, if any, visited by the current buffer, and the default directory. The arrow keys ‘’ and ‘’ work like ‘M-p’ and ‘M-n’, but if the current history item is longer than a single line, they allow you to move to the previous or next line of the current history item before going to the previous or next history item. If you edit the text inserted by the ‘M-p’ or ‘M-n’ minibuffer history commands, this does not change its entry in the history list. However, the edited argument does go at the end of the history list when you submit it. You can use ‘M-r’ (‘previous-matching-history-element’) to search through older elements in the history list, and ‘M-s’ (‘next-matching-history-element’) to search through newer entries. Each of these commands asks for a "regular expression" as an argument, and fetches the first matching entry into the minibuffer. *Note Regexps::, for an explanation of regular expressions. A numeric prefix argument N means to fetch the Nth matching entry. These commands are unusual, in that they use the minibuffer to read the regular expression argument, even though they are invoked from the minibuffer. An upper-case letter in the regular expression makes the search case-sensitive (*note Lax Search::). You can also search through the history using an incremental search. *Note Isearch Minibuffer::. Emacs keeps separate history lists for several different kinds of arguments. For example, there is a list for file names, used by all the commands that read file names. Other history lists include buffer names, command names (used by ‘M-x’), and command arguments (used by commands like ‘query-replace’). The variable ‘history-length’ specifies the maximum length of a minibuffer history list; adding a new element deletes the oldest element if the list gets too long. If the value is ‘t’, there is no maximum length. The variable ‘history-delete-duplicates’ specifies whether to delete duplicates in history. If it is non-‘nil’, adding a new element deletes from the list all other elements that are equal to it. The default is ‘nil’. ** 8.6 Repeating Minibuffer Commands Every command that uses the minibuffer once is recorded on a special history list, the "command history", together with the values of its arguments, so that you can repeat the entire command. In particular, every use of ‘M-x’ is recorded there, since ‘M-x’ uses the minibuffer to read the command name. ‘C-x ’ Re-execute a recent minibuffer command from the command history (‘repeat-complex-command’). ‘M-x list-command-history’ Display the entire command history, showing all the commands ‘C-x ’ can repeat, most recent first. ‘C-x ’ re-executes a recent command that used the minibuffer. With no argument, it repeats the last such command. A numeric argument specifies which command to repeat; 1 means the last one, 2 the previous, and so on. ‘C-x ’ works by turning the previous command into a Lisp expression and then entering a minibuffer initialized with the text for that expression. Even if you don’t know Lisp, it will probably be obvious which command is displayed for repetition. If you type just , that repeats the command unchanged. You can also change the command by editing the Lisp expression before you execute it. The executed command is added to the front of the command history unless it is identical to the most recent item. Once inside the minibuffer for ‘C-x ’, you can use the usual minibuffer history commands (*note Minibuffer History::) to move through the history list. After finding the desired previous command, you can edit its expression as usual and then execute it by typing . Incremental search does not, strictly speaking, use the minibuffer. Therefore, although it behaves like a complex command, it normally does not appear in the history list for ‘C-x ’. You can make incremental search commands appear in the history by setting ‘isearch-resume-in-command-history’ to a non-‘nil’ value. *Note Incremental Search::. The list of previous minibuffer-using commands is stored as a Lisp list in the variable ‘command-history’. Each element is a Lisp expression that describes one command and its arguments. Lisp programs can re-execute a command by calling ‘eval’ with the ‘command-history’ element. ** 8.7 Entering passwords Sometimes, you may need to enter a password into Emacs. For instance, when you tell Emacs to visit a file on another machine via a network protocol such as FTP, you often need to supply a password to gain access to the machine (*note Remote Files::). Entering a password is similar to using a minibuffer. Emacs displays a prompt in the echo area (such as ‘Password: ’); after you type the required password, press to submit it. To prevent others from seeing your password, every character you type is displayed as a dot (‘.’) instead of its usual form. Most of the features and commands associated with the minibuffer _cannot_ be used when entering a password. There is no history or completion, and you cannot change windows or perform any other action with Emacs until you have submitted the password. While you are typing the password, you may press to delete backwards, removing the last character entered. ‘C-u’ deletes everything you have typed so far. ‘C-g’ quits the password prompt (*note Quitting::). ‘C-y’ inserts the current kill into the password (*note Killing::). You may type either or to submit the password. Any other self-inserting character key inserts the associated character into the password, and all other input is ignored. ** 8.8 Yes or No Prompts An Emacs command may require you to answer a yes-or-no question during the course of its execution. Such queries come in two main varieties. For the first type of yes-or-no query, the prompt ends with ‘(y or n)’. Such a query does not actually use the minibuffer; the prompt appears in the echo area, and you answer by typing either ‘y’ or ‘n’, which immediately delivers the response. For example, if you type ‘C-x C-w’ (‘write-file’) to save a buffer, and enter the name of an existing file, Emacs issues a prompt like this: File ‘foo.el’ exists; overwrite? (y or n) Because this query does not actually use the minibuffer, the usual minibuffer editing commands cannot be used. However, you can perform some window scrolling operations while the query is active: ‘C-l’ recenters the selected window; ‘C-v’ (or , or ) scrolls forward; ‘M-v’ (or , or ) scrolls backward; ‘C-M-v’ scrolls forward in the next window; and ‘C-M-S-v’ scrolls backward in the next window. Typing ‘C-g’ dismisses the query, and quits the command that issued it (*note Quitting::). The second type of yes-or-no query is typically employed if giving the wrong answer would have serious consequences; it uses the minibuffer, and features a prompt ending with ‘(yes or no)’. For example, if you invoke ‘C-x k’ (‘kill-buffer’) on a file-visiting buffer with unsaved changes, Emacs activates the minibuffer with a prompt like this: Buffer foo.el modified; kill anyway? (yes or no) To answer, you must type ‘yes’ or ‘no’ into the minibuffer, followed by . The minibuffer behaves as described in the previous sections; you can switch to another window with ‘C-x o’, use the history commands ‘M-p’ and ‘M-n’, etc. Type ‘C-g’ to quit the minibuffer and the querying command. * 9 Running Commands by Name Every Emacs command has a name that you can use to run it. For convenience, many commands also have key bindings. You can run those commands by typing the keys, or run them by name. Most Emacs commands have no key bindings, so the only way to run them is by name. (*Note Key Bindings::, for how to set up key bindings.) By convention, a command name consists of one or more words, separated by hyphens; for example, ‘auto-fill-mode’ or ‘manual-entry’. Command names mostly use complete English words to make them easier to remember. To run a command by name, start with ‘M-x’, type the command name, then terminate it with . ‘M-x’ uses the minibuffer to read the command name. The string ‘M-x’ appears at the beginning of the minibuffer as a "prompt" to remind you to enter a command name to be run. exits the minibuffer and runs the command. *Note Minibuffer::, for more information on the minibuffer. You can use completion to enter the command name. For example, to invoke the command ‘forward-char’, you can type M-x forward-char or M-x forw c Note that ‘forward-char’ is the same command that you invoke with the key ‘C-f’. The existence of a key binding does not stop you from running the command by name. When ‘M-x’ completes on commands, it ignores the commands that are declared "obsolete"; for these, you will have to type their full name. Obsolete commands are those for which newer, better alternatives exist, and which are slated for removal in some future Emacs release. To cancel the ‘M-x’ and not run a command, type ‘C-g’ instead of entering the command name. This takes you back to command level. To pass a numeric argument to the command you are invoking with ‘M-x’, specify the numeric argument before ‘M-x’. The argument value appears in the prompt while the command name is being read, and finally ‘M-x’ passes the argument to that command. For example, to pass the numeric argument of 42 to the command ‘forward-char’ you can type ‘C-u 42 M-x forward-char ’. When the command you run with ‘M-x’ has a key binding, Emacs mentions this in the echo area after running the command. For example, if you type ‘M-x forward-word’, the message says that you can run the same command by typing ‘M-f’. You can turn off these messages by setting the variable ‘suggest-key-bindings’ to ‘nil’. The value of ‘suggest-key-bindings’ can also be a number, in which case Emacs will show the binding for that many seconds before removing it from display. The default behavior is to display the binding for 2 seconds. Commands that don’t have key bindings, can still be invoked after typing less than their full name at the ‘M-x’ prompt. Emacs mentions such shorthands in the echo area if they are significantly shorter than the full command name, and ‘extended-command-suggest-shorter’ is non-‘nil’. The setting of ‘suggest-key-bindings’ affects these hints as well. In this manual, when we speak of running a command by name, we often omit the that terminates the name. Thus we might say ‘M-x auto-fill-mode’ rather than ‘M-x auto-fill-mode ’. We mention the only for emphasis, such as when the command is followed by arguments. ‘M-x’ works by running the command ‘execute-extended-command’, which is responsible for reading the name of another command and invoking it. * 10 Help Emacs provides a wide variety of help commands, all accessible through the prefix key ‘C-h’ (or, equivalently, the function key ). These help commands are described in the following sections. You can also type ‘C-h C-h’ to view a list of help commands (‘help-for-help’). You can scroll the list with and , then type the help command you want. To cancel, type ‘C-g’. Many help commands display their information in a special "help buffer". In this buffer, you can type and to scroll and type to follow hyperlinks. *Note Help Mode::. If you are looking for a certain feature, but don’t know what it is called or where to look, we recommend three methods. First, try an apropos command, then try searching the manual index, then look in the FAQ and the package keywords. ‘C-h a TOPICS ’ This searches for commands whose names match the argument TOPICS. The argument can be a keyword, a list of keywords, or a regular expression (*note Regexps::). *Note Apropos::. ‘C-h i d m emacs i TOPIC ’ This searches for TOPIC in the indices of the Emacs Info manual, displaying the first match found. Press ‘,’ to see subsequent matches. You can use a regular expression as TOPIC. ‘C-h i d m emacs s TOPIC ’ Similar, but searches the _text_ of the manual rather than the indices. ‘C-h C-f’ This displays the Emacs FAQ, using Info. ‘C-h p’ This displays the available Emacs packages based on keywords. *Note Package Keywords::. ‘C-h’ or mean “help” in various other contexts as well. For instance, you can type them after a prefix key to view a list of the keys that can follow the prefix key. (You can also use ‘?’ in this context. A few prefix keys don’t support ‘C-h’ or ‘?’ in this way, because they define other meanings for those inputs, but they all support .) + Menu: - Help Summary:: Brief list of all Help commands. - Key Help:: Asking what a key does in Emacs. - Name Help:: Asking about a command, variable or function name. - Apropos:: Asking what pertains to a given topic. - Help Mode:: Special features of Help mode and Help buffers. - Package Keywords:: Finding Lisp libraries by keywords (topics). - Language Help:: Help relating to international language support. - Misc Help:: Other help commands. - Help Files:: Commands to display auxiliary help files. - Help Echo:: Help on active text and tooltips (“balloon help”). ** 10.1 Help Summary Here is a summary of help commands for accessing the built-in documentation. Most of these are described in more detail in the following sections. ‘C-h a TOPICS ’ Display a list of commands whose names match TOPICS (‘apropos-command’). ‘C-h b’ Display all active key bindings; minor mode bindings first, then those of the major mode, then global bindings (‘describe-bindings’). ‘C-h c KEY’ Show the name of the command that the key sequence KEY is bound to (‘describe-key-briefly’). Here ‘c’ stands for “character”. For more extensive information on KEY, use ‘C-h k’. ‘C-h d TOPICS ’ Display the commands and variables whose documentation matches TOPICS (‘apropos-documentation’). ‘C-h e’ Display the ‘*Messages*’ buffer (‘view-echo-area-messages’). ‘C-h f FUNCTION ’ Display documentation on the Lisp function named FUNCTION (‘describe-function’). Since commands are Lisp functions, this works for commands too. ‘C-h h’ Display the ‘HELLO’ file, which shows examples of various character sets. ‘C-h i’ Run Info, the GNU documentation browser (‘info’). The Emacs manual is available in Info. ‘C-h k KEY’ Display the name and documentation of the command that KEY runs (‘describe-key’). ‘C-h l’ Display a description of your last 300 keystrokes (‘view-lossage’). ‘C-h m’ Display documentation of the current major mode and minor modes (‘describe-mode’). ‘C-h n’ Display news of recent Emacs changes (‘view-emacs-news’). ‘C-h o SYMBOL’ Display documentation of the Lisp symbol named SYMBOL (‘describe-symbol’). This will show the documentation of all kinds of symbols: functions, variables, and faces. ‘C-h p’ Find packages by topic keyword (‘finder-by-keyword’). This lists packages using a package menu buffer. *Note Packages::. ‘C-h P PACKAGE ’ Display documentation about the specified package (‘describe-package’). ‘C-h r’ Display the Emacs manual in Info (‘info-emacs-manual’). ‘C-h s’ Display the contents of the current "syntax table" (‘describe-syntax’). The syntax table says which characters are opening delimiters, which are parts of words, and so on. *Note Syntax Tables: (elisp)Syntax Tables, for details. ‘C-h t’ Enter the Emacs interactive tutorial (‘help-with-tutorial’). ‘C-h v VAR ’ Display the documentation of the Lisp variable VAR (‘describe-variable’). ‘C-h w COMMAND ’ Show which keys run the command named COMMAND (‘where-is’). ‘C-h C CODING ’ Describe the coding system CODING (‘describe-coding-system’). ‘C-h C ’ Describe the coding systems currently in use. ‘C-h F COMMAND ’ Enter Info and go to the node that documents the Emacs command COMMAND (‘Info-goto-emacs-command-node’). ‘C-h I METHOD ’ Describe the input method METHOD (‘describe-input-method’). ‘C-h K KEY’ Enter Info and go to the node that documents the key sequence KEY (‘Info-goto-emacs-key-command-node’). ‘C-h L LANGUAGE-ENV ’ Display information on the character sets, coding systems, and input methods used in language environment LANGUAGE-ENV (‘describe-language-environment’). ‘C-h S SYMBOL ’ Display the Info documentation on symbol SYMBOL according to the programming language you are editing (‘info-lookup-symbol’). ‘C-h .’ Display the help message for a special text area, if point is in one (‘display-local-help’). (These include, for example, links in ‘*Help*’ buffers.) ** 10.2 Documentation for a Key The help commands to get information about a key sequence are ‘C-h c’ (‘describe-key-briefly’) and ‘C-h k’ (‘describe-key’). ‘C-h c KEY’ displays in the echo area the name of the command that KEY is bound to. For example, ‘C-h c C-f’ displays ‘forward-char’. ‘C-h k KEY’ is similar but gives more information: it displays a help buffer containing the command’s "documentation string", which describes exactly what the command does. ‘C-h K KEY’ displays the section of the Emacs manual that describes the command corresponding to KEY. ‘C-h c’, ‘C-h k’ and ‘C-h K’ work for any sort of key sequences, including function keys, menus, and mouse events (except that ‘C-h c’ ignores mouse movement events). For instance, after ‘C-h k’ you can select a menu item from the menu bar, to view the documentation string of the command it runs. ‘C-h w COMMAND ’ lists the keys that are bound to COMMAND. It displays the list in the echo area. If it says the command is not on any key, that means you must use ‘M-x’ to run it. ‘C-h w’ runs the command ‘where-is’. ** 10.3 Help by Command or Variable Name ‘C-h f FUNCTION ’ (‘describe-function’) displays the documentation of Lisp function FUNCTION, in a window. Since commands are Lisp functions, you can use this method to view the documentation of any command whose name you know. For example, C-h f auto-fill-mode displays the documentation of ‘auto-fill-mode’. This is the only way to get the documentation of a command that is not bound to any key (one which you would normally run using ‘M-x’). ‘C-h f’ is also useful for Lisp functions that you use in a Lisp program. For example, if you have just written the expression ‘(make-vector len)’ and want to check that you are using ‘make-vector’ properly, type ‘C-h f make-vector ’. Because ‘C-h f’ allows all function names, not just command names, you may find that some of your favorite completion abbreviations that work in ‘M-x’ don’t work in ‘C-h f’. An abbreviation that is unique among command names may not be unique among all function names. If you type ‘C-h f ’, it describes the function called by the innermost Lisp expression in the buffer around point, _provided_ that function name is a valid, defined Lisp function. (That name appears as the default while you enter the argument.) For example, if point is located following the text ‘(make-vector (car x)’, the innermost list containing point is the one that starts with ‘(make-vector’, so ‘C-h f ’ describes the function ‘make-vector’. ‘C-h f’ is also useful just to verify that you spelled a function name correctly. If the minibuffer prompt for ‘C-h f’ shows the function name from the buffer as the default, it means that name is defined as a Lisp function. Type ‘C-g’ to cancel the ‘C-h f’ command if you don’t really want to view the documentation. ‘C-h v’ (‘describe-variable’) is like ‘C-h f’ but describes Lisp variables instead of Lisp functions. Its default is the Lisp symbol around or before point, if that is the name of a defined Lisp variable. *Note Variables::. Help buffers that describe Emacs variables and functions normally have hyperlinks to the corresponding source code, if you have the source files installed (*note Hyperlinking::). To find a command’s documentation in a manual, use ‘C-h F’ (‘Info-goto-emacs-command-node’). This knows about various manuals, not just the Emacs manual, and finds the right one. ‘C-h o’ (‘describe-symbol’) is like ‘C-h f’ and ‘C-h v’, but it describes any symbol, be it a function, a variable, or a face. If the symbol has more than one definition, like it has both definition as a function and as a variable, this command will show the documentation of all of them, one after the other. ** 10.4 Apropos The "apropos" commands answer questions like, “What are the commands for working with files?” More precisely, you specify an "apropos pattern", which means either a word, a list of words, or a regular expression. Each of the following apropos commands reads an apropos pattern in the minibuffer, searches for items that match the pattern, and displays the results in a different window. ‘C-h a’ Search for commands (‘apropos-command’). With a prefix argument, search for noninteractive functions too. ‘M-x apropos’ Search for functions and variables. Both interactive functions (commands) and noninteractive functions can be found by this. ‘M-x apropos-user-option’ Search for user-customizable variables. With a prefix argument, search for non-customizable variables too. ‘M-x apropos-variable’ Search for variables. With a prefix argument, search for customizable variables only. ‘M-x apropos-local-variable’ Search for buffer-local variables. ‘M-x apropos-value’ Search for variables whose values match the specified pattern. With a prefix argument, search also for functions with definitions matching the pattern, and Lisp symbols with properties matching the pattern. ‘M-x apropos-local-value’ Search for buffer-local variables whose values match the specified pattern. ‘C-h d’ Search for functions and variables whose documentation strings match the specified pattern (‘apropos-documentation’). The simplest kind of apropos pattern is one word. Anything containing that word matches the pattern. Thus, to find commands that work on files, type ‘C-h a file ’. This displays a list of all command names that contain ‘file’, including ‘copy-file’, ‘find-file’, and so on. Each command name comes with a brief description and a list of keys you can currently invoke it with. In our example, it would say that you can invoke ‘find-file’ by typing ‘C-x C-f’. For more information about a function definition, variable or symbol property listed in an apropos buffer, you can click on it with ‘mouse-1’ or ‘mouse-2’, or move there and type . When you specify more than one word in the apropos pattern, a name must contain at least two of the words in order to match. Thus, if you are looking for commands to kill a chunk of text before point, you could try ‘C-h a kill back backward behind before ’. The real command name ‘kill-backward’ will match that; if there were a command ‘kill-text-before’, it would also match, since it contains two of the specified words. For even greater flexibility, you can specify a regular expression (*note Regexps::). An apropos pattern is interpreted as a regular expression if it contains any of the regular expression special characters, ‘^$*+?.\[’. Following the conventions for naming Emacs commands, here are some words that you’ll find useful in apropos patterns. By using them in ‘C-h a’, you will also get a feel for the naming conventions. char, line, word, sentence, paragraph, region, page, sexp, list, defun, rect, buffer, frame, window, face, file, dir, register, mode, beginning, end, forward, backward, next, previous, up, down, search, goto, kill, delete, mark, insert, yank, fill, indent, case, change, set, what, list, find, view, describe, default. If the variable ‘apropos-do-all’ is non-‘nil’, most apropos commands behave as if they had been given a prefix argument. There is one exception: ‘apropos-variable’ without a prefix argument will always search for all variables, no matter what the value of ‘apropos-do-all’ is. By default, all apropos commands except ‘apropos-documentation’ list their results in alphabetical order. If the variable ‘apropos-sort-by-scores’ is non-‘nil’, these commands instead try to guess the relevance of each result, and display the most relevant ones first. The ‘apropos-documentation’ command lists its results in order of relevance by default; to list them in alphabetical order, change the variable ‘apropos-documentation-sort-by-scores’ to ‘nil’. ** 10.5 Help Mode Commands Help buffers provide the same commands as View mode (*note View Mode::); for instance, scrolls forward, and or ‘S-’ scrolls backward. A few special commands are also provided: ‘’ Follow a cross reference at point (‘help-follow’). ‘’ Move point forward to the next hyperlink (‘forward-button’). ‘S-’ Move point back to the previous hyperlink (‘backward-button’). ‘mouse-1’ ‘mouse-2’ Follow a hyperlink that you click on. ‘C-c C-c’ Show all documentation about the symbol at point (‘help-follow-symbol’). ‘C-c C-f’ ‘r’ Go forward to the next help topic (‘help-go-forward’). ‘C-c C-b’ ‘l’ Go back to the previous help topic (‘help-go-back’). When a function name, variable name, or face name (*note Faces::) appears in the documentation in the help buffer, it is normally an underlined "hyperlink". To view the associated documentation, move point there and type (‘help-follow’), or click on the hyperlink with ‘mouse-1’ or ‘mouse-2’. Doing so replaces the contents of the help buffer; to retrace your steps, type ‘C-c C-b’ or ‘l’ (‘help-go-back’). While retracing your steps, you can go forward by using ‘C-c C-f’ or ‘r’ (‘help-go-forward’). A help buffer can also contain hyperlinks to Info manuals, source code definitions, and URLs (web pages). The first two are opened in Emacs, and the third using a web browser via the ‘browse-url’ command (*note Browse-URL::). In a help buffer, (‘forward-button’) moves point forward to the next hyperlink, while ‘S-’ (‘backward-button’) moves point back to the previous hyperlink. These commands act cyclically; for instance, typing at the last hyperlink moves back to the first hyperlink. To view all documentation about any symbol in the text, move point to the symbol and type ‘C-c C-c’ (‘help-follow-symbol’). This shows the documentation for all the meanings of the symbol—as a variable, as a function, and/or as a face. ** 10.6 Keyword Search for Packages Most optional features in Emacs are grouped into "packages". Emacs contains several hundred built-in packages, and more can be installed over the network (*note Packages::). To make it easier to find packages related to a topic, most packages are associated with one or more "keywords" based on what they do. Type ‘C-h p’ (‘finder-by-keyword’) to bring up a list of package keywords, together with a description of what the keywords mean. To view a list of packages for a given keyword, type on that line; this displays the list of packages in a Package Menu buffer (*note Package Menu::). ‘C-h P’ (‘describe-package’) prompts for the name of a package (*note Packages::), and displays a help buffer describing the attributes of the package and the features that it implements. The buffer lists the keywords that relate to the package in the form of buttons. Click on a button with ‘mouse-1’ or ‘mouse-2’ to see the list of other packages related to that keyword. ** 10.7 Help for International Language Support For information on a specific language environment (*note Language Environments::), type ‘C-h L’ (‘describe-language-environment’). This displays a help buffer describing the languages supported by the language environment, and listing the associated character sets, coding systems, and input methods, as well as some sample text for that language environment. The command ‘C-h h’ (‘view-hello-file’) displays the file ‘etc/HELLO’, which demonstrates various character sets by showing how to say “hello” in many languages. The command ‘C-h I’ (‘describe-input-method’) describes an input method—either a specified input method, or by default the input method currently in use. *Note Input Methods::. The command ‘C-h C’ (‘describe-coding-system’) describes coding systems—either a specified coding system, or the ones currently in use. *Note Coding Systems::. ** 10.8 Other Help Commands ‘C-h i’ (‘info’) runs the Info program, which browses structured documentation files. The entire Emacs manual is available within Info, along with many other manuals for the GNU system. Type ‘h’ after entering Info to run a tutorial on using Info. With a numeric argument N, ‘C-h i’ selects the Info buffer ‘*info*’. This is useful if you want to browse multiple Info manuals simultaneously. If you specify just ‘C-u’ as the prefix argument, ‘C-h i’ prompts for the name of a documentation file, so you can browse a file which doesn’t have an entry in the top-level Info menu. The help commands ‘C-h F FUNCTION ’ and ‘C-h K KEY’, described above, enter Info and go straight to the documentation of FUNCTION or KEY. When editing a program, if you have an Info version of the manual for the programming language, you can use ‘C-h S’ (‘info-lookup-symbol’) to find an entry for a symbol (keyword, function or variable) in the proper manual. The details of how this command works depend on the major mode. If something surprising happens, and you are not sure what you typed, use ‘C-h l’ (‘view-lossage’). ‘C-h l’ displays your last 300 input keystrokes and the commands they invoked. If you see commands that you are not familiar with, you can use ‘C-h k’ or ‘C-h f’ to find out what they do. To review recent echo area messages, use ‘C-h e’ (‘view-echo-area-messages’). This displays the buffer ‘*Messages*’, where those messages are kept. Each Emacs major mode typically redefines a few keys and makes other changes in how editing works. ‘C-h m’ (‘describe-mode’) displays documentation on the current major mode, which normally describes the commands and features that are changed in this mode, and also its key bindings. ‘C-h b’ (‘describe-bindings’) and ‘C-h s’ (‘describe-syntax’) show other information about the current environment within Emacs. ‘C-h b’ displays a list of all the key bindings now in effect: first the local bindings of the current minor modes, then the local bindings defined by the current major mode, and finally the global bindings (*note Key Bindings::). ‘C-h s’ displays the contents of the syntax table, with explanations of each character’s syntax (*note Syntax Tables: (elisp)Syntax Tables.). You can get a list of subcommands for a particular prefix key by typing ‘C-h’, ‘?’, or (‘describe-prefix-bindings’) after the prefix key. (There are a few prefix keys for which not all of these keys work—those that provide their own bindings for that key. One of these prefix keys is , because ‘ C-h’ is actually ‘C-M-h’, which marks a defun. However, ‘ ’ and ‘ ?’ work fine.) ** 10.9 Help Files Apart from the built-in documentation and manuals, Emacs contains several other files describing topics like copying conditions, release notes, instructions for debugging and reporting bugs, and so forth. You can use the following commands to view these files. Apart from ‘C-h g’, they all have the form ‘C-h C-CHAR’. ‘C-h C-c’ Display the rules under which you can copy and redistribute Emacs (‘describe-copying’). ‘C-h C-d’ Display help for debugging Emacs (‘view-emacs-debugging’). ‘C-h C-e’ Display information about where to get external packages (‘view-external-packages’). ‘C-h C-f’ Display the Emacs frequently-answered-questions list (‘view-emacs-FAQ’). ‘C-h g’ Visit the page (https://www.gnu.org) with information about the GNU Project (‘describe-gnu-project’). ‘C-h C-m’ Display information about ordering printed copies of Emacs manuals (‘view-order-manuals’). ‘C-h C-n’ Display the news, which lists the new features in this version of Emacs (‘view-emacs-news’). ‘C-h C-o’ Display how to order or download the latest version of Emacs and other GNU software (‘describe-distribution’). ‘C-h C-p’ Display the list of known Emacs problems, sometimes with suggested workarounds (‘view-emacs-problems’). ‘C-h C-t’ Display the Emacs to-do list (‘view-emacs-todo’). ‘C-h C-w’ Display the full details on the complete absence of warranty for GNU Emacs (‘describe-no-warranty’). ** 10.10 Help on Active Text and Tooltips In Emacs, stretches of "active text" (text that does something special in response to mouse clicks or ) often have associated help text. This includes hyperlinks in Emacs buffers, as well as parts of the mode line. On graphical displays, as well as some text terminals which support mouse tracking, moving the mouse over the active text displays the help text as a "tooltip". *Note Tooltips::. On terminals that don’t support mouse-tracking, you can display the help text for active buffer text at point by typing ‘C-h .’ (‘display-local-help’). This shows the help text in the echo area. To display help text automatically whenever it is available at point, set the variable ‘help-at-pt-display-when-idle’ to ‘t’. * 11 The Mark and the Region Many Emacs commands operate on an arbitrary contiguous part of the current buffer. To specify the text for such a command to operate on, you set "the mark" at one end of it, and move point to the other end. The text between point and the mark is called "the region". The region always extends between point and the mark, no matter which one comes earlier in the text; each time you move point, the region changes. Setting the mark at a position in the text also "activates" it. When the mark is active, we say also that the region is active; Emacs indicates its extent by highlighting the text within it, using the ‘region’ face (*note Face Customization::). After certain non-motion commands, including any command that changes the text in the buffer, Emacs automatically "deactivates" the mark; this turns off the highlighting. You can also explicitly deactivate the mark at any time, by typing ‘C-g’ (*note Quitting::). The above default behavior is known as Transient Mark mode. Disabling Transient Mark mode switches Emacs to an alternative behavior, in which the region is usually not highlighted. *Note Disabled Transient Mark::. Setting the mark in one buffer has no effect on the marks in other buffers. When you return to a buffer with an active mark, the mark is at the same place as before. When multiple windows show the same buffer, they can have different values of point, and thus different regions, but they all share one common mark position. *Note Windows::. Ordinarily, only the selected window highlights its region; however, if the variable ‘highlight-nonselected-windows’ is non-‘nil’, each window highlights its own region. There is another kind of region: the rectangular region. *Note Rectangles::. + Menu: - Setting Mark:: Commands to set the mark. - Marking Objects:: Commands to put region around textual units. - Using Region:: Summary of ways to operate on contents of the region. - Mark Ring:: Previous mark positions saved so you can go back there. - Global Mark Ring:: Previous mark positions in various buffers. - Shift Selection:: Using shifted cursor motion keys. - Disabled Transient Mark:: Leaving regions unhighlighted by default. ** 11.1 Setting the Mark Here are some commands for setting the mark: ‘C-’ Set the mark at point, and activate it (‘set-mark-command’). ‘C-@’ The same. ‘C-x C-x’ Set the mark at point, and activate it; then move point where the mark used to be (‘exchange-point-and-mark’). ‘Drag-mouse-1’ Set point and the mark around the text you drag across. ‘mouse-3’ Set the mark at point, then move point to where you click (‘mouse-save-then-kill’). ‘‘Shifted cursor motion keys’’ Set the mark at point if the mark is inactive, then move point. *Note Shift Selection::. The most common way to set the mark is with ‘C-’ (‘set-mark-command’)(1). This sets the mark where point is, and activates it. You can then move point away, leaving the mark behind. For example, suppose you wish to convert part of the buffer to upper case. To accomplish this, go to one end of the desired text, type ‘C-’, and move point until the desired portion of text is highlighted. Now type ‘C-x C-u’ (‘upcase-region’). This converts the text in the region to upper case, and then deactivates the mark. Whenever the mark is active, you can deactivate it by typing ‘C-g’ (*note Quitting::). Most commands that operate on the region also automatically deactivate the mark, like ‘C-x C-u’ in the above example. Instead of setting the mark in order to operate on a region, you can also use it to remember a position in the buffer (by typing ‘C- C-’), and later jump back there (by typing ‘C-u C-’). *Note Mark Ring::, for details. The command ‘C-x C-x’ (‘exchange-point-and-mark’) exchanges the positions of point and the mark. ‘C-x C-x’ is useful when you are satisfied with the position of point but want to move the other end of the region (where the mark is). Using ‘C-x C-x’ a second time, if necessary, puts the mark at the new position with point back at its original position. Normally, if the mark is inactive, this command first reactivates the mark wherever it was last set, to ensure that the region is left highlighted. However, if you call it with a prefix argument, it leaves the mark inactive and the region unhighlighted; you can use this to jump to the mark in a manner similar to ‘C-u C-’. You can also set the mark with the mouse. If you press the left mouse button (‘down-mouse-1’) and drag the mouse across a range of text, this sets the mark where you first pressed the mouse button and puts point where you release it. Alternatively, clicking the right mouse button (‘mouse-3’) sets the mark at point and then moves point to where you clicked. *Note Mouse Commands::, for a more detailed description of these mouse commands. Finally, you can set the mark by holding down the shift key while typing certain cursor motion commands (such as ‘S-’, ‘S-C-f’, ‘S-C-n’, etc.). This is called "shift-selection". It sets the mark at point before moving point, but only if there is no active mark set via a previous shift-selection or mouse commands. The mark set by mouse commands and by shift-selection behaves slightly differently from the usual mark: any subsequent unshifted cursor motion command deactivates it automatically. For details, see *note Shift Selection::. Many commands that insert text, such as ‘C-y’ (‘yank’), set the mark at the other end of the inserted text, without activating it. This lets you easily return to that position (*note Mark Ring::). You can tell that a command does this when it shows ‘Mark set’ in the echo area. Under X, every time the active region changes, Emacs saves the text in the region to the "primary selection". This lets you insert that text into other X applications with ‘mouse-2’ clicks. *Note Primary Selection::. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) There is no ‘C-’ character in ASCII; usually, typing ‘C-’ on a text terminal gives the character ‘C-@’. This key is also bound to ‘set-mark-command’, so unless you are unlucky enough to have a text terminal that behaves differently, you might as well think of ‘C-@’ as ‘C-’. ** 11.2 Commands to Mark Textual Objects Here are commands for placing point and the mark around a textual object such as a word, list, paragraph or page: ‘M-@’ Set mark at the end of the next word (‘mark-word’). This does not move point. ‘C-M-@’ Set mark after end of following balanced expression (‘mark-sexp’). This does not move point. ‘M-h’ Move point to the beginning of the current paragraph, and set mark at the end (‘mark-paragraph’). ‘C-M-h’ Move point to the beginning of the current defun, and set mark at the end (‘mark-defun’). ‘C-x C-p’ Move point to the beginning of the current page, and set mark at the end (‘mark-page’). ‘C-x h’ Move point to the beginning of the buffer, and set mark at the end (‘mark-whole-buffer’). ‘M-@’ (‘mark-word’) sets the mark at the end of the next word (*note Words::, for information about words). Repeated invocations of this command extend the region by advancing the mark one word at a time. As an exception, if the mark is active and located before point, ‘M-@’ moves the mark backwards from its current position one word at a time. This command also accepts a numeric argument N, which tells it to advance the mark by N words. A negative argument moves the mark back by N words. Similarly, ‘C-M-@’ (‘mark-sexp’) puts the mark at the end of the next balanced expression (*note Expressions::). Repeated invocations extend the region to subsequent expressions, while positive or negative numeric arguments move the mark forward or backward by the specified number of expressions. The other commands in the above list set both point and mark, so as to delimit an object in the buffer. ‘M-h’ (‘mark-paragraph’) marks paragraphs (*note Paragraphs::), ‘C-M-h’ (‘mark-defun’) marks top-level definitions (*note Moving by Defuns::), and ‘C-x C-p’ (‘mark-page’) marks pages (*note Pages::). Repeated invocations again play the same role, extending the region to consecutive objects; similarly, numeric arguments specify how many objects to move the mark by. ‘C-x h’ (‘mark-whole-buffer’) sets up the entire buffer as the region, by putting point at the beginning and the mark at the end. ** 11.3 Operating on the Region Once you have a region, here are some of the ways you can operate on it: • Kill it with ‘C-w’ (*note Killing::). • Copy it to the kill ring with ‘M-w’ (*note Yanking::). • Convert case with ‘C-x C-l’ or ‘C-x C-u’ (*note Case::). • Undo changes within it using ‘C-u C-/’ (*note Undo::). • Replace text within it using ‘M-%’ (*note Query Replace::). • Indent it with ‘C-x ’ or ‘C-M-\’ (*note Indentation::). • Fill it as text with ‘M-x fill-region’ (*note Filling::). • Check the spelling of words within it with ‘M-$’ (*note Spelling::). • Evaluate it as Lisp code with ‘M-x eval-region’ (*note Lisp Eval::). • Save it in a register with ‘C-x r s’ (*note Registers::). • Save it in a buffer or a file (*note Accumulating Text::). Some commands have a default behavior when the mark is inactive, but operate on the region if the mark is active. For example, ‘M-$’ (‘ispell-word’) normally checks the spelling of the word at point, but it checks the text in the region if the mark is active (*note Spelling::). Normally, such commands use their default behavior if the region is empty (i.e., if mark and point are at the same position). If you want them to operate on the empty region, change the variable ‘use-empty-active-region’ to ‘t’. As described in *note Erasing::, the (‘backward-delete-char’) and (‘delete-forward-char’) commands also act this way. If the mark is active, they delete the text in the region. (As an exception, if you supply a numeric argument N, where N is not one, these commands delete N characters regardless of whether the mark is active). If you change the variable ‘delete-active-region’ to ‘nil’, then these commands don’t act differently when the mark is active. If you change the value to ‘kill’, these commands "kill" the region instead of deleting it (*note Killing::). Other commands always operate on the region, and have no default behavior. Such commands usually have the word ‘region’ in their names, like ‘C-w’ (‘kill-region’) and ‘C-x C-u’ (‘upcase-region’). If the mark is inactive, they operate on the "inactive region"—that is, on the text between point and the position at which the mark was last set (*note Mark Ring::). To disable this behavior, change the variable ‘mark-even-if-inactive’ to ‘nil’. Then these commands will instead signal an error if the mark is inactive. By default, text insertion occurs normally even if the mark is active—for example, typing ‘a’ inserts the character ‘a’, then deactivates the mark. Delete Selection mode, a minor mode, modifies this behavior: if you enable that mode, then inserting text while the mark is active causes the text in the region to be deleted first. To toggle Delete Selection mode on or off, type ‘M-x delete-selection-mode’. ** 11.4 The Mark Ring Each buffer remembers previous locations of the mark, in the "mark ring". Commands that set the mark also push the old mark onto this ring. One of the uses of the mark ring is to remember spots that you may want to go back to. ‘C- C-’ Set the mark, pushing it onto the mark ring, without activating it. ‘C-u C-’ Move point to where the mark was, and restore the mark from the ring of former marks. The command ‘C- C-’ is handy when you want to use the mark to remember a position to which you may wish to return. It pushes the current point onto the mark ring, without activating the mark (which would cause Emacs to highlight the region). This is actually two consecutive invocations of ‘C-’ (‘set-mark-command’); the first ‘C-’ sets the mark, and the second ‘C-’ deactivates it. (When Transient Mark mode is off, ‘C- C-’ instead activates Transient Mark mode temporarily; *note Disabled Transient Mark::.) To return to a marked position, use ‘set-mark-command’ with a prefix argument: ‘C-u C-’. This moves point to where the mark was, and deactivates the mark if it was active. Each subsequent ‘C-u C-’ jumps to a prior position stored in the mark ring. The positions you move through in this way are not lost; they go to the end of the ring. If you set ‘set-mark-command-repeat-pop’ to non-‘nil’, then immediately after you type ‘C-u C-’, you can type ‘C-’ instead of ‘C-u C-’ to cycle through the mark ring. By default, ‘set-mark-command-repeat-pop’ is ‘nil’. Each buffer has its own mark ring. All editing commands use the current buffer’s mark ring. In particular, ‘C-u C-’ always stays in the same buffer. The variable ‘mark-ring-max’ specifies the maximum number of entries to keep in the mark ring. This defaults to 16 entries. If that many entries exist and another one is pushed, the earliest one in the list is discarded. Repeating ‘C-u C-’ cycles through the positions currently in the ring. If you want to move back to the same place over and over, the mark ring may not be convenient enough. If so, you can record the position in a register for later retrieval (*note Saving Positions in Registers: Position Registers.). ** 11.5 The Global Mark Ring In addition to the ordinary mark ring that belongs to each buffer, Emacs has a single "global mark ring". Each time you set a mark, this is recorded in the global mark ring in addition to the current buffer’s own mark ring, if you have switched buffers since the previous mark setting. Hence, the global mark ring records a sequence of buffers that you have been in, and, for each buffer, a place where you set the mark. The length of the global mark ring is controlled by ‘global-mark-ring-max’, and is 16 by default. The command ‘C-x C-’ (‘pop-global-mark’) jumps to the buffer and position of the latest entry in the global ring. It also rotates the ring, so that successive uses of ‘C-x C-’ take you to earlier buffers and mark positions. ** 11.6 Shift Selection If you hold down the shift key while typing a cursor motion command, this sets the mark before moving point, so that the region extends from the original position of point to its new position. This feature is referred to as "shift-selection". It is similar to the way text is selected in other editors. The mark set via shift-selection behaves a little differently from what we have described above. Firstly, in addition to the usual ways of deactivating the mark (such as changing the buffer text or typing ‘C-g’), the mark is deactivated by any _unshifted_ cursor motion command. Secondly, any subsequent _shifted_ cursor motion command avoids setting the mark anew. Therefore, a series of shifted cursor motion commands will continuously adjust the region. Shift-selection only works if the shifted cursor motion key is not already bound to a separate command (*note Customization::). For example, if you bind ‘S-C-f’ to another command, typing ‘S-C-f’ runs that command instead of performing a shift-selected version of ‘C-f’ (‘forward-char’). A mark set via mouse commands behaves the same as a mark set via shift-selection (*note Setting Mark::). For example, if you specify a region by dragging the mouse, you can continue to extend the region using shifted cursor motion commands. In either case, any unshifted cursor motion command deactivates the mark. To turn off shift-selection, set ‘shift-select-mode’ to ‘nil’. Doing so does not disable setting the mark via mouse commands. ** 11.7 Disabling Transient Mark Mode The default behavior of the mark and region, in which setting the mark activates it and highlights the region, is called Transient Mark mode. This is a minor mode that is enabled by default. It can be toggled with ‘M-x transient-mark-mode’, or with the ‘Active Region Highlighting’ menu item in the ‘Options’ menu. Turning it off switches Emacs to an alternative mode of operation: • Setting the mark, with commands like ‘C-’ or ‘C-x C-x’, does not highlight the region. Therefore, you can’t tell by looking where the mark is located; you have to remember. The usual solution to this problem is to set the mark and then use it soon, before you forget where it is. You can also check where the mark is by using ‘C-x C-x’, which exchanges the positions of the point and the mark (*note Setting Mark::). • Some commands, which ordinarily act on the region when the mark is active, no longer do so. For example, normally ‘M-%’ (‘query-replace’) performs replacements within the region, if the mark is active. When Transient Mark mode is off, it always operates from point to the end of the buffer. Commands that act this way are identified in their own documentation. While Transient Mark mode is off, you can activate it temporarily using ‘C- C-’ or ‘C-u C-x C-x’. ‘C- C-’ Set the mark at point (like plain ‘C-’) and enable Transient Mark mode just once, until the mark is deactivated. (This is not really a separate command; you are using the ‘C-’ command twice.) ‘C-u C-x C-x’ Exchange point and mark, activate the mark and enable Transient Mark mode temporarily, until the mark is next deactivated. (This is the ‘C-x C-x’ command, ‘exchange-point-and-mark’, with a prefix argument.) These commands set or activate the mark, and enable Transient Mark mode only until the mark is deactivated. One reason you may want to use them is that some commands operate on the entire buffer instead of the region when Transient Mark mode is off. Enabling Transient Mark mode momentarily gives you a way to use these commands on the region. When you specify a region with the mouse (*note Setting Mark::), or with shift-selection (*note Shift Selection::), this likewise activates Transient Mark mode temporarily and highlights the region. * 12 Killing and Moving Text In Emacs, "killing" means erasing text and copying it into the "kill ring". "Yanking" means bringing text from the kill ring back into the buffer. (Some applications use the terms “cutting” and “pasting” for similar operations.) The kill ring is so-named because it can be visualized as a set of blocks of text arranged in a ring, which you can access in cyclic order. *Note Kill Ring::. Killing and yanking are the most common way to move or copy text within Emacs. It is very versatile, because there are commands for killing many different types of syntactic units. + Menu: - Deletion and Killing:: Commands that remove text. - Yanking:: Commands that insert text. - Cut and Paste:: Clipboard and selections on graphical displays. - Accumulating Text:: Other methods to add text to the buffer. - Rectangles:: Operating on text in rectangular areas. - CUA Bindings:: Using ‘C-x’/‘C-c’/‘C-v’ to kill and yank. ** 12.1 Deletion and Killing Most commands which erase text from the buffer save it in the kill ring (*note Kill Ring::). These are known as "kill" commands, and their names normally contain the word ‘kill’ (e.g., ‘kill-line’). The kill ring stores several recent kills, not just the last one, so killing is a very safe operation: you don’t have to worry much about losing text that you previously killed. The kill ring is shared by all buffers, so text that is killed in one buffer can be yanked into another buffer. When you use ‘C-/’ (‘undo’) to undo a kill command (*note Undo::), that brings the killed text back into the buffer, but does not remove it from the kill ring. On graphical displays, killing text also copies it to the system clipboard. *Note Cut and Paste::. Commands that erase text but do not save it in the kill ring are known as "delete" commands; their names usually contain the word ‘delete’. These include ‘C-d’ (‘delete-char’) and (‘delete-backward-char’), which delete only one character at a time, and those commands that delete only spaces or newlines. Commands that can erase significant amounts of nontrivial data generally do a kill operation instead. You can also use the mouse to kill and yank. *Note Cut and Paste::. + Menu: - Deletion:: Commands for deleting small amounts of text and blank areas. - Killing by Lines:: How to kill entire lines of text at one time. - Other Kill Commands:: Commands to kill large regions of text and syntactic units such as words and sentences. - Kill Options:: Options that affect killing. *** 12.1.1 Deletion Deletion means erasing text and not saving it in the kill ring. For the most part, the Emacs commands that delete text are those that erase just one character or only whitespace. ‘’ ‘’ Delete the previous character, or the text in the region if it is active (‘delete-backward-char’). ‘’ Delete the next character, or the text in the region if it is active (‘delete-forward-char’). ‘C-d’ Delete the next character (‘delete-char’). ‘M-\’ Delete spaces and tabs around point (‘delete-horizontal-space’). ‘M-’ Delete spaces and tabs around point, leaving one space (‘just-one-space’). ‘C-x C-o’ Delete blank lines around the current line (‘delete-blank-lines’). ‘M-^’ Join two lines by deleting the intervening newline, along with any indentation following it (‘delete-indentation’). We have already described the basic deletion commands (‘delete-backward-char’), (‘delete-forward-char’), and ‘C-d’ (‘delete-char’). *Note Erasing::. With a numeric argument, they delete the specified number of characters. If the numeric argument is omitted or one, and delete all the text in the region if it is active (*note Using Region::). The other delete commands are those that delete only whitespace characters: spaces, tabs and newlines. ‘M-\’ (‘delete-horizontal-space’) deletes all the spaces and tab characters before and after point. With a prefix argument, this only deletes spaces and tab characters before point. ‘M-’ (‘just-one-space’) does likewise but leaves a single space before point, regardless of the number of spaces that existed previously (even if there were none before). With a numeric argument N, it leaves N spaces before point if N is positive; if N is negative, it deletes newlines in addition to spaces and tabs, leaving -N spaces before point. The command ‘cycle-spacing’ acts like a more flexible version of ‘just-one-space’. It does different things if you call it repeatedly in succession. The first call acts like ‘just-one-space’, the next removes all whitespace, and a third call restores the original whitespace. ‘C-x C-o’ (‘delete-blank-lines’) deletes all blank lines after the current line. If the current line is blank, it deletes all blank lines preceding the current line as well (leaving one blank line, the current line). On a solitary blank line, it deletes that line. ‘M-^’ (‘delete-indentation’) joins the current line and the previous line, by deleting a newline and all surrounding spaces, usually leaving a single space. *Note M-^: Indentation. The command ‘delete-duplicate-lines’ searches the region for identical lines, and removes all but one copy of each. Normally it keeps the first instance of each repeated line, but with a ‘C-u’ prefix argument it keeps the last. With a ‘C-u C-u’ prefix argument, it only searches for adjacent identical lines. This is a more efficient mode of operation, useful when the lines have already been sorted. With a ‘C-u C-u C-u’ prefix argument, it retains repeated blank lines. *** 12.1.2 Killing by Lines ‘C-k’ Kill rest of line or one or more lines (‘kill-line’). ‘C-S-backspace’ Kill an entire line at once (‘kill-whole-line’) The simplest kill command is ‘C-k’ (‘kill-line’). If used at the end of a line, it kills the line-ending newline character, merging the next line into the current one (thus, a blank line is entirely removed). Otherwise, ‘C-k’ kills all the text from point up to the end of the line; if point was originally at the beginning of the line, this leaves the line blank. Spaces and tabs at the end of the line are ignored when deciding which case applies. As long as point is after the last non-whitespace character in the line, you can be sure that ‘C-k’ will kill the newline. To kill an entire non-blank line, go to the beginning and type ‘C-k’ twice. In this context, “line” means a logical text line, not a screen line (*note Continuation Lines::). When ‘C-k’ is given a positive argument N, it kills N lines and the newlines that follow them (text on the current line before point is not killed). With a negative argument −N, it kills N lines preceding the current line, together with the text on the current line before point. ‘C-k’ with an argument of zero kills the text before point on the current line. If the variable ‘kill-whole-line’ is non-‘nil’, ‘C-k’ at the very beginning of a line kills the entire line including the following newline. This variable is normally ‘nil’. ‘C-S-backspace’ (‘kill-whole-line’) kills a whole line including its newline, regardless of the position of point within the line. Note that many text terminals will prevent you from typing the key sequence ‘C-S-backspace’. *** 12.1.3 Other Kill Commands ‘C-w’ Kill the region (‘kill-region’). ‘M-w’ Copy the region into the kill ring (‘kill-ring-save’). ‘M-d’ Kill the next word (‘kill-word’). *Note Words::. ‘M-’ Kill one word backwards (‘backward-kill-word’). ‘C-x ’ Kill back to beginning of sentence (‘backward-kill-sentence’). *Note Sentences::. ‘M-k’ Kill to the end of the sentence (‘kill-sentence’). ‘C-M-k’ Kill the following balanced expression (‘kill-sexp’). *Note Expressions::. ‘M-z CHAR’ Kill through the next occurrence of CHAR (‘zap-to-char’). One of the commonly-used kill commands is ‘C-w’ (‘kill-region’), which kills the text in the region (*note Mark::). Similarly, ‘M-w’ (‘kill-ring-save’) copies the text in the region into the kill ring without removing it from the buffer. If the mark is inactive when you type ‘C-w’ or ‘M-w’, the command acts on the text between point and where you last set the mark (*note Using Region::). Emacs also provides commands to kill specific syntactic units: words, with ‘M-’ and ‘M-d’ (*note Words::); balanced expressions, with ‘C-M-k’ (*note Expressions::); and sentences, with ‘C-x ’ and ‘M-k’ (*note Sentences::). The command ‘M-z’ (‘zap-to-char’) combines killing with searching: it reads a character and kills from point up to (and including) the next occurrence of that character in the buffer. A numeric argument acts as a repeat count; a negative argument means to search backward and kill text before point. *** 12.1.4 Options for Killing Some specialized buffers contain "read-only text", which cannot be modified and therefore cannot be killed. The kill commands work specially in a read-only buffer: they move over text and copy it to the kill ring, without actually deleting it from the buffer. Normally, they also beep and display an error message when this happens. But if you set the variable ‘kill-read-only-ok’ to a non-‘nil’ value, they just print a message in the echo area to explain why the text has not been erased. If you change the variable ‘kill-do-not-save-duplicates’ to a non-‘nil’ value, identical subsequent kills yield a single kill-ring entry, without duplication. ** 12.2 Yanking "Yanking" means reinserting text previously killed. The usual way to move or copy text is to kill it and then yank it elsewhere. ‘C-y’ Yank the last kill into the buffer, at point (‘yank’). ‘M-y’ Replace the text just yanked with an earlier batch of killed text (‘yank-pop’). *Note Earlier Kills::. ‘C-M-w’ Cause the following command, if it is a kill command, to append to the previous kill (‘append-next-kill’). *Note Appending Kills::. The basic yanking command is ‘C-y’ (‘yank’). It inserts the most recent kill, leaving the cursor at the end of the inserted text. It also sets the mark at the beginning of the inserted text, without activating the mark; this lets you jump easily to that position, if you wish, with ‘C-u C-’ (*note Mark Ring::). With a plain prefix argument (‘C-u C-y’), the command instead leaves the cursor in front of the inserted text, and sets the mark at the end. Using any other prefix argument specifies an earlier kill; e.g., ‘C-u 4 C-y’ reinserts the fourth most recent kill. *Note Earlier Kills::. On graphical displays, ‘C-y’ first checks if another application has placed any text in the system clipboard more recently than the last Emacs kill. If so, it inserts the clipboard’s text instead. Thus, Emacs effectively treats “cut” or “copy” clipboard operations performed in other applications like Emacs kills, except that they are not recorded in the kill ring. *Note Cut and Paste::, for details. + Menu: - Kill Ring:: Where killed text is stored. - Earlier Kills:: Yanking something killed some time ago. - Appending Kills:: Several kills in a row all yank together. *** 12.2.1 The Kill Ring The "kill ring" is a list of blocks of text that were previously killed. There is only one kill ring, shared by all buffers, so you can kill text in one buffer and yank it in another buffer. This is the usual way to move text from one buffer to another. (There are several other methods: for instance, you could store the text in a register; see *note Registers::. *Note Accumulating Text::, for some other ways to move text around.) The maximum number of entries in the kill ring is controlled by the variable ‘kill-ring-max’. The default is 60. If you make a new kill when this limit has been reached, Emacs makes room by deleting the oldest entry in the kill ring. The actual contents of the kill ring are stored in a variable named ‘kill-ring’; you can view the entire contents of the kill ring with ‘C-h v kill-ring’. *** 12.2.2 Yanking Earlier Kills As explained in *note Yanking::, you can use a numeric argument to ‘C-y’ to yank text that is no longer the most recent kill. This is useful if you remember which kill ring entry you want. If you don’t, you can use the ‘M-y’ (‘yank-pop’) command to cycle through the possibilities. If the previous command was a yank command, ‘M-y’ takes the text that was yanked and replaces it with the text from an earlier kill. So, to recover the text of the next-to-the-last kill, first use ‘C-y’ to yank the last kill, and then use ‘M-y’ to replace it with the previous kill. ‘M-y’ is allowed only after a ‘C-y’ or another ‘M-y’. You can understand ‘M-y’ in terms of a last-yank pointer which points at an entry in the kill ring. Each time you kill, the last-yank pointer moves to the newly made entry at the front of the ring. ‘C-y’ yanks the entry which the last-yank pointer points to. ‘M-y’ moves the last-yank pointer to a different entry, and the text in the buffer changes to match. Enough ‘M-y’ commands can move the pointer to any entry in the ring, so you can get any entry into the buffer. Eventually the pointer reaches the end of the ring; the next ‘M-y’ loops back around to the first entry again. ‘M-y’ moves the last-yank pointer around the ring, but it does not change the order of the entries in the ring, which always runs from the most recent kill at the front to the oldest one still remembered. ‘M-y’ can take a numeric argument, which tells it how many entries to advance the last-yank pointer by. A negative argument moves the pointer toward the front of the ring; from the front of the ring, it moves around to the last entry and continues forward from there. Once the text you are looking for is brought into the buffer, you can stop doing ‘M-y’ commands and it will stay there. It’s just a copy of the kill ring entry, so editing it in the buffer does not change what’s in the ring. As long as no new killing is done, the last-yank pointer remains at the same place in the kill ring, so repeating ‘C-y’ will yank another copy of the same previous kill. When you call ‘C-y’ with a numeric argument, that also sets the last-yank pointer to the entry that it yanks. *** 12.2.3 Appending Kills Normally, each kill command pushes a new entry onto the kill ring. However, two or more kill commands in a row combine their text into a single entry, so that a single ‘C-y’ yanks all the text as a unit, just as it was before it was killed. Thus, if you want to yank text as a unit, you need not kill all of it with one command; you can keep killing line after line, or word after word, until you have killed it all, and you can still get it all back at once. Commands that kill forward from point add onto the end of the previous killed text. Commands that kill backward from point add text onto the beginning. This way, any sequence of mixed forward and backward kill commands puts all the killed text into one entry without rearrangement. Numeric arguments do not break the sequence of appending kills. For example, suppose the buffer contains this text: This is a line ★of sample text. with point shown by ★. If you type ‘M-d M- M-d M-’, killing alternately forward and backward, you end up with ‘a line of sample’ as one entry in the kill ring, and ‘This is text.’ in the buffer. (Note the double space between ‘is’ and ‘text’, which you can clean up with ‘M-’ or ‘M-q’.) Another way to kill the same text is to move back two words with ‘M-b M-b’, then kill all four words forward with ‘C-u M-d’. This produces exactly the same results in the buffer and in the kill ring. ‘M-f M-f C-u M-’ kills the same text, all going backward; once again, the result is the same. The text in the kill ring entry always has the same order that it had in the buffer before you killed it. If a kill command is separated from the last kill command by other commands (not just numeric arguments), it starts a new entry on the kill ring. But you can force it to combine with the last killed text, by typing ‘C-M-w’ (‘append-next-kill’) right beforehand. The ‘C-M-w’ tells its following command, if it is a kill command, to treat the kill as part of the sequence of previous kills. As usual, the kill is appended to the previous killed text if the command kills forward, and prepended if the command kills backward. In this way, you can kill several separated pieces of text and accumulate them to be yanked back in one place. A kill command following ‘M-w’ (‘kill-ring-save’) does not append to the text that ‘M-w’ copied into the kill ring. 12.3 “Cut and Paste” Operations on Graphical Displays In most graphical desktop environments, you can transfer data (usually text) between different applications using a system facility called the "clipboard". On X, two other similar facilities are available: the primary selection and the secondary selection. When Emacs is run on a graphical display, its kill and yank commands integrate with these facilities, so that you can easily transfer text between Emacs and other graphical applications. By default, Emacs uses UTF-8 as the coding system for inter-program text transfers. If you find that the pasted text is not what you expected, you can specify another coding system by typing ‘C-x x’ or ‘C-x X’. You can also request a different data type by customizing ‘x-select-request-type’. *Note Communication Coding::. + Menu: - Clipboard:: How Emacs uses the system clipboard. - Primary Selection:: The temporarily selected text selection. - Secondary Selection:: Cutting without altering point and mark. *** 12.3.1 Using the Clipboard The "clipboard" is the facility that most graphical applications use for “cutting and pasting”. When the clipboard exists, the kill and yank commands in Emacs make use of it. When you kill some text with a command such as ‘C-w’ (‘kill-region’), or copy it to the kill ring with a command such as ‘M-w’ (‘kill-ring-save’), that text is also put in the clipboard. When an Emacs kill command puts text in the clipboard, the existing clipboard contents are normally lost. Optionally, you can change ‘save-interprogram-paste-before-kill’ to ‘t’. Then Emacs will first save the clipboard to its kill ring, preventing you from losing the old clipboard data—at the risk of high memory consumption if that data turns out to be large. Yank commands, such as ‘C-y’ (‘yank’), also use the clipboard. If another application “owns” the clipboard—i.e., if you cut or copied text there more recently than your last kill command in Emacs—then Emacs yanks from the clipboard instead of the kill ring. Normally, rotating the kill ring with ‘M-y’ (‘yank-pop’) does not alter the clipboard. However, if you change ‘yank-pop-change-selection’ to ‘t’, then ‘M-y’ saves the new yank to the clipboard. To prevent kill and yank commands from accessing the clipboard, change the variable ‘select-enable-clipboard’ to ‘nil’. Many X desktop environments support a feature called the "clipboard manager". If you exit Emacs while it is the current “owner” of the clipboard data, and there is a clipboard manager running, Emacs transfers the clipboard data to the clipboard manager so that it is not lost. In some circumstances, this may cause a delay when exiting Emacs; if you wish to prevent Emacs from transferring data to the clipboard manager, change the variable ‘x-select-enable-clipboard-manager’ to ‘nil’. Since strings containing NUL bytes are usually truncated when passed through the clipboard, Emacs replaces such characters with “\0” before transferring them to the system’s clipboard. Prior to Emacs 24, the kill and yank commands used the primary selection (*note Primary Selection::), not the clipboard. If you prefer this behavior, change ‘select-enable-clipboard’ to ‘nil’, ‘select-enable-primary’ to ‘t’, and ‘mouse-drag-copy-region’ to ‘t’. In this case, you can use the following commands to act explicitly on the clipboard: ‘clipboard-kill-region’ kills the region and saves it to the clipboard; ‘clipboard-kill-ring-save’ copies the region to the kill ring and saves it to the clipboard; and ‘clipboard-yank’ yanks the contents of the clipboard at point. *** 12.3.2 Cut and Paste with Other Window Applications Under the X Window System, there exists a "primary selection" containing the last stretch of text selected in an X application (usually by dragging the mouse). Typically, this text can be inserted into other X applications by ‘mouse-2’ clicks. The primary selection is separate from the clipboard. Its contents are more fragile; they are overwritten each time you select text with the mouse, whereas the clipboard is only overwritten by explicit cut or copy commands. Under X, whenever the region is active (*note Mark::), the text in the region is saved in the primary selection. This applies regardless of whether the region was made by dragging or clicking the mouse (*note Mouse Commands::), or by keyboard commands (e.g., by typing ‘C-’ and moving point; *note Setting Mark::). If you change the variable ‘select-active-regions’ to ‘only’, Emacs saves only temporarily active regions to the primary selection, i.e., those made with the mouse or with shift selection (*note Shift Selection::). If you change ‘select-active-regions’ to ‘nil’, Emacs avoids saving active regions to the primary selection entirely. To insert the primary selection into an Emacs buffer, click ‘mouse-2’ (‘mouse-yank-primary’) where you want to insert it. *Note Mouse Commands::. MS-Windows provides no primary selection, but Emacs emulates it within a single Emacs session by storing the selected text internally. Therefore, all the features and commands related to the primary selection work on Windows as they do on X, for cutting and pasting within the same session, but not across Emacs sessions or with other applications. *** 12.3.3 Secondary Selection In addition to the primary selection, the X Window System provides a second similar facility known as the "secondary selection". Nowadays, few X applications make use of the secondary selection, but you can access it using the following Emacs commands: ‘M-Drag-mouse-1’ Set the secondary selection, with one end at the place where you press down the button, and the other end at the place where you release it (‘mouse-set-secondary’). The selected text is highlighted, using the ‘secondary-selection’ face, as you drag. The window scrolls automatically if you drag the mouse off the top or bottom of the window, just like ‘mouse-set-region’ (*note Mouse Commands::). This command does not alter the kill ring. ‘M-mouse-1’ Set one endpoint for the "secondary selection" (‘mouse-start-secondary’). ‘M-mouse-3’ Set the secondary selection, with one end at the position clicked and the other at the position specified with ‘M-mouse-1’ (‘mouse-secondary-save-then-kill’). This also puts the selected text in the kill ring. A second ‘M-mouse-3’ at the same place kills the secondary selection just made. ‘M-mouse-2’ Insert the secondary selection where you click, placing point at the end of the yanked text (‘mouse-yank-secondary’). Double or triple clicking of ‘M-mouse-1’ operates on words and lines, much like ‘mouse-1’. If ‘mouse-yank-at-point’ is non-‘nil’, ‘M-mouse-2’ yanks at point. Then it does not matter precisely where you click, or even which of the frame’s windows you click on. *Note Mouse Commands::. ** 12.4 Accumulating Text Usually we copy or move text by killing it and yanking it, but there are other convenient methods for copying one block of text in many places, or for copying many scattered blocks of text into one place. Here we describe the commands to accumulate scattered pieces of text into a buffer or into a file. ‘M-x append-to-buffer’ Append region to the contents of a specified buffer. ‘M-x prepend-to-buffer’ Prepend region to the contents of a specified buffer. ‘M-x copy-to-buffer’ Copy region into a specified buffer, deleting that buffer’s old contents. ‘M-x insert-buffer’ Insert the contents of a specified buffer into current buffer at point. ‘M-x append-to-file’ Append region to the contents of a specified file, at the end. To accumulate text into a buffer, use ‘M-x append-to-buffer’. This reads a buffer name, then inserts a copy of the region into the buffer specified. If you specify a nonexistent buffer, ‘append-to-buffer’ creates the buffer. The text is inserted wherever point is in that buffer. If you have been using the buffer for editing, the copied text goes into the middle of the text of the buffer, starting from wherever point happens to be at that moment. Point in that buffer is left at the end of the copied text, so successive uses of ‘append-to-buffer’ accumulate the text in the specified buffer in the same order as they were copied. Strictly speaking, ‘append-to-buffer’ does not always append to the text already in the buffer—it appends only if point in that buffer is at the end. However, if ‘append-to-buffer’ is the only command you use to alter a buffer, then point is always at the end. ‘M-x prepend-to-buffer’ is just like ‘append-to-buffer’ except that point in the other buffer is left before the copied text, so successive uses of this command add text in reverse order. ‘M-x copy-to-buffer’ is similar, except that any existing text in the other buffer is deleted, so the buffer is left containing just the text newly copied into it. The command ‘M-x insert-buffer’ can be used to retrieve the accumulated text from another buffer. This prompts for the name of a buffer, and inserts a copy of all the text in that buffer into the current buffer at point, leaving point at the beginning of the inserted text. It also adds the position of the end of the inserted text to the mark ring, without activating the mark. *Note Buffers::, for background information on buffers. Instead of accumulating text in a buffer, you can append text directly into a file with ‘M-x append-to-file’. This prompts for a filename, and adds the text of the region to the end of the specified file. The file is changed immediately on disk. You should use ‘append-to-file’ only with files that are _not_ being visited in Emacs. Using it on a file that you are editing in Emacs would change the file behind Emacs’s back, which can lead to losing some of your editing. Another way to move text around is to store it in a register. *Note Registers::. ** 12.5 Rectangles "Rectangle" commands operate on rectangular areas of the text: all the characters between a certain pair of columns, in a certain range of lines. Emacs has commands to kill rectangles, yank killed rectangles, clear them out, fill them with blanks or text, or delete them. Rectangle commands are useful with text in multicolumn formats, and for changing text into or out of such formats. To specify a rectangle for a command to work on, set the mark at one corner and point at the opposite corner. The rectangle thus specified is called the "region-rectangle". If point and the mark are in the same column, the region-rectangle is empty. If they are in the same line, the region-rectangle is one line high. The region-rectangle is controlled in much the same way as the region is controlled. But remember that a given combination of point and mark values can be interpreted either as a region or as a rectangle, depending on the command that uses them. ‘C-x r k’ Kill the text of the region-rectangle, saving its contents as the last killed rectangle (‘kill-rectangle’). ‘C-x r M-w’ Save the text of the region-rectangle as the last killed rectangle (‘copy-rectangle-as-kill’). ‘C-x r d’ Delete the text of the region-rectangle (‘delete-rectangle’). ‘C-x r y’ Yank the last killed rectangle with its upper left corner at point (‘yank-rectangle’). ‘C-x r o’ Insert blank space to fill the space of the region-rectangle (‘open-rectangle’). This pushes the previous contents of the region-rectangle to the right. ‘C-x r N’ Insert line numbers along the left edge of the region-rectangle (‘rectangle-number-lines’). This pushes the previous contents of the region-rectangle to the right. ‘C-x r c’ Clear the region-rectangle by replacing all of its contents with spaces (‘clear-rectangle’). ‘M-x delete-whitespace-rectangle’ Delete whitespace in each of the lines on the specified rectangle, starting from the left edge column of the rectangle. ‘C-x r t STRING ’ Replace rectangle contents with STRING on each line (‘string-rectangle’). ‘M-x string-insert-rectangle STRING ’ Insert STRING on each line of the rectangle. ‘C-x ’ Toggle Rectangle Mark mode (‘rectangle-mark-mode’). When this mode is active, the region-rectangle is highlighted and can be shrunk/grown, and the standard kill and yank commands operate on it. The rectangle operations fall into two classes: commands to erase or insert rectangles, and commands to make blank rectangles. There are two ways to erase the text in a rectangle: ‘C-x r d’ (‘delete-rectangle’) to delete the text outright, or ‘C-x r k’ (‘kill-rectangle’) to remove the text and save it as the "last killed rectangle". In both cases, erasing the region-rectangle is like erasing the specified text on each line of the rectangle; if there is any following text on the line, it moves backwards to fill the gap. Killing a rectangle is not killing in the usual sense; the rectangle is not stored in the kill ring, but in a special place that only records the most recent rectangle killed. This is because yanking a rectangle is so different from yanking linear text that different yank commands have to be used. Yank-popping is not defined for rectangles. ‘C-x r M-w’ (‘copy-rectangle-as-kill’) is the equivalent of ‘M-w’ for rectangles: it records the rectangle as the last killed rectangle, without deleting the text from the buffer. To yank the last killed rectangle, type ‘C-x r y’ (‘yank-rectangle’). The rectangle’s first line is inserted at point, the rectangle’s second line is inserted at the same horizontal position one line vertically below, and so on. The number of lines affected is determined by the height of the saved rectangle. For example, you can convert two single-column lists into a double-column list by killing one of the single-column lists as a rectangle, and then yanking it beside the other list. You can also copy rectangles into and out of registers with ‘C-x r r R’ and ‘C-x r i R’. *Note Rectangle Registers::. There are two commands you can use for making blank rectangles: ‘C-x r c’ (‘clear-rectangle’) blanks out existing text in the region-rectangle, and ‘C-x r o’ (‘open-rectangle’) inserts a blank rectangle. ‘M-x delete-whitespace-rectangle’ deletes horizontal whitespace starting from a particular column. This applies to each of the lines in the rectangle, and the column is specified by the left edge of the rectangle. The right edge of the rectangle does not make any difference to this command. The command ‘C-x r N’ (‘rectangle-number-lines’) inserts line numbers along the left edge of the region-rectangle. Normally, the numbering begins from 1 (for the first line of the rectangle). With a prefix argument, the command prompts for a number to begin from, and for a format string with which to print the numbers (*note (elisp)Formatting Strings::). The command ‘C-x r t’ (‘string-rectangle’) replaces the contents of a region-rectangle with a string on each line. The string’s width need not be the same as the width of the rectangle. If the string’s width is less, the text after the rectangle shifts left; if the string is wider than the rectangle, the text after the rectangle shifts right. The command ‘M-x string-insert-rectangle’ is similar to ‘string-rectangle’, but inserts the string on each line, shifting the original text to the right. The command ‘C-x ’ (‘rectangle-mark-mode’) toggles whether the region-rectangle or the standard region is highlighted (first activating the region if necessary). When this mode is enabled, commands that resize the region (‘C-f’, ‘C-n’ etc.) do so in a rectangular fashion, and killing and yanking operate on the rectangle. *Note Killing::. The mode persists only as long as the region is active. Unlike the standard region, the region-rectangle can have its corners extended past the end of buffer, or inside stretches of white space that point normally cannot enter, like in the middle of a TAB character. When the region is in rectangle-mark-mode, ‘C-x C-x’ runs the command ‘rectangle-exchange-point-and-mark’, which cycles between the four corners of the region-rectangle. This comes in handy if you want to modify the dimensions of the region-rectangle before invoking an operation on the marked text. ** 12.6 CUA Bindings The command ‘M-x cua-mode’ sets up key bindings that are compatible with the Common User Access (CUA) system used in many other applications. When CUA mode is enabled, the keys ‘C-x’, ‘C-c’, ‘C-v’, and ‘C-z’ invoke commands that cut (kill), copy, paste (yank), and undo respectively. The ‘C-x’ and ‘C-c’ keys perform cut and copy only if the region is active. Otherwise, they still act as prefix keys, so that standard Emacs commands like ‘C-x C-c’ still work. Note that this means the variable ‘mark-even-if-inactive’ has no effect for ‘C-x’ and ‘C-c’ (*note Using Region::). To enter an Emacs command like ‘C-x C-f’ while the mark is active, use one of the following methods: either hold ‘Shift’ together with the prefix key, e.g., ‘S-C-x C-f’, or quickly type the prefix key twice, e.g., ‘C-x C-x C-f’. To disable the overriding of standard Emacs binding by CUA mode, while retaining the other features of CUA mode described below, set the variable ‘cua-enable-cua-keys’ to ‘nil’. CUA mode by default activates Delete-Selection mode (*note Mouse Commands::) so that typed text replaces the active region. To use CUA without this behavior, set the variable ‘cua-delete-selection’ to ‘nil’. CUA mode provides enhanced rectangle support with visible rectangle highlighting. Use ‘C-’ to start a rectangle, extend it using the movement commands, and cut or copy it using ‘C-x’ or ‘C-c’. moves the cursor to the next (clockwise) corner of the rectangle, so you can easily expand it in any direction. Normal text you type is inserted to the left or right of each line in the rectangle (on the same side as the cursor). You can use this rectangle support without activating CUA by calling the ‘cua-rectangle-mark-mode’ command. There’s also the standard command ‘rectangle-mark-mode’, see *note Rectangles::. With CUA you can easily copy text and rectangles into and out of registers by providing a one-digit numeric prefix to the kill, copy, and yank commands, e.g., ‘C-1 C-c’ copies the region into register ‘1’, and ‘C-2 C-v’ yanks the contents of register ‘2’. CUA mode also has a global mark feature which allows easy moving and copying of text between buffers. Use ‘C-S-’ to toggle the global mark on and off. When the global mark is on, all text that you kill or copy is automatically inserted at the global mark, and text you type is inserted at the global mark rather than at the current position. For example, to copy words from various buffers into a word list in a given buffer, set the global mark in the target buffer, then navigate to each of the words you want in the list, mark it (e.g., with ‘S-M-f’), copy it to the list with ‘C-c’ or ‘M-w’, and insert a newline after the word in the target list by pressing . * 13 Registers Emacs "registers" are compartments where you can save text, rectangles, positions, and other things for later use. Once you save text or a rectangle in a register, you can copy it into the buffer once or many times; once you save a position in a register, you can jump back to that position once or many times. Each register has a name that consists of a single character, which we will denote by R; R can be a letter (such as ‘a’) or a number (such as ‘1’); case matters, so register ‘a’ is not the same as register ‘A’. You can also set a register in non-alphanumeric characters, for instance ‘*’ or ‘C-d’. Note, it’s not possible to set a register in ‘C-g’ or ‘ESC’, because these keys are reserved for quitting (*note Quitting::). A register can store a position, a piece of text, a rectangle, a number, a window configuration, or a file name, but only one thing at any given time. Whatever you store in a register remains there until you store something else in that register. To see what register R contains, use ‘M-x view-register’: ‘M-x view-register R’ Display a description of what register R contains. All of the commands that prompt for a register will display a preview window that lists the existing registers (if there are any) after a short delay. To change the length of the delay, customize ‘register-preview-delay’. To prevent this display, set that option to ‘nil’. You can explicitly request a preview window by pressing ‘C-h’ or . "Bookmarks" record files and positions in them, so you can return to those positions when you look at the file again. Bookmarks are similar in spirit to registers, so they are also documented in this chapter. + Menu: - Position Registers:: Saving positions in registers. - Text Registers:: Saving text in registers. - Rectangle Registers:: Saving rectangles in registers. - Configuration Registers:: Saving window configurations in registers. - Number Registers:: Numbers in registers. - File Registers:: File names in registers. - Keyboard Macro Registers:: Keyboard macros in registers. - Bookmarks:: Bookmarks are like registers, but persistent. ** 13.1 Saving Positions in Registers ‘C-x r R’ Record the position of point and the current buffer in register R (‘point-to-register’). ‘C-x r j R’ Jump to the position and buffer saved in register R (‘jump-to-register’). Typing ‘C-x r ’ (‘point-to-register’), followed by a character ‘R’, saves both the position of point and the current buffer in register R. The register retains this information until you store something else in it. The command ‘C-x r j R’ switches to the buffer recorded in register R, and moves point to the recorded position. The contents of the register are not changed, so you can jump to the saved position any number of times. If you use ‘C-x r j’ to go to a saved position, but the buffer it was saved from has been killed, ‘C-x r j’ tries to create the buffer again by visiting the same file. Of course, this works only for buffers that were visiting files. ** 13.2 Saving Text in Registers When you want to insert a copy of the same piece of text several times, it may be inconvenient to yank it from the kill ring, since each subsequent kill moves that entry further down the ring. An alternative is to store the text in a register and later retrieve it. ‘C-x r s R’ Copy region into register R (‘copy-to-register’). ‘C-x r i R’ Insert text from register R (‘insert-register’). ‘M-x append-to-register R’ Append region to text in register R. When register R contains text, you can use ‘C-x r +’ (‘increment-register’) to append to that register. Note that command ‘C-x r +’ behaves differently if R contains a number. *Note Number Registers::. ‘M-x prepend-to-register R’ Prepend region to text in register R. ‘C-x r s R’ stores a copy of the text of the region into the register named R. If the mark is inactive, Emacs first reactivates the mark where it was last set. The mark is deactivated at the end of this command. *Note Mark::. ‘C-u C-x r s R’, the same command with a prefix argument, copies the text into register R and deletes the text from the buffer as well; you can think of this as moving the region text into the register. ‘M-x append-to-register R’ appends the copy of the text in the region to the text already stored in the register named R. If invoked with a prefix argument, it deletes the region after appending it to the register. The command ‘prepend-to-register’ is similar, except that it _prepends_ the region text to the text in the register instead of _appending_ it. When you are collecting text using ‘append-to-register’ and ‘prepend-to-register’, you may want to separate individual collected pieces using a separator. In that case, configure a ‘register-separator’ and store the separator text in to that register. For example, to get double newlines as text separator during the collection process, you can use the following setting. (setq register-separator ?+) (set-register register-separator "\n\n") ‘C-x r i R’ inserts in the buffer the text from register R. Normally it leaves point after the text and sets the mark before, without activating it. With a numeric argument, it instead puts point before the text and the mark after. ** 13.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers A register can contain a rectangle instead of linear text. *Note Rectangles::, for basic information on how to specify a rectangle in the buffer. ‘C-x r r R’ Copy the region-rectangle into register R (‘copy-rectangle-to-register’). With numeric argument, delete it as well. ‘C-x r i R’ Insert the rectangle stored in register R (if it contains a rectangle) (‘insert-register’). The ‘C-x r i R’ (‘insert-register’) command, previously documented in *note Text Registers::, inserts a rectangle rather than a text string, if the register contains a rectangle. ** 13.4 Saving Window Configurations in Registers You can save the window configuration of the selected frame in a register, or even the configuration of all windows in all frames, and restore the configuration later. *Note Windows::, for information about window configurations. ‘C-x r w R’ Save the state of the selected frame’s windows in register R (‘window-configuration-to-register’). ‘C-x r f R’ Save the state of all frames, including all their windows, in register R (‘frameset-to-register’). Use ‘C-x r j R’ to restore a window or frame configuration. This is the same command used to restore a cursor position. When you restore a frame configuration, any existing frames not included in the configuration become invisible. If you wish to delete these frames instead, use ‘C-u C-x r j R’. ** 13.5 Keeping Numbers in Registers There are commands to store a number in a register, to insert the number in the buffer in decimal, and to increment it. These commands can be useful in keyboard macros (*note Keyboard Macros::). ‘C-u NUMBER C-x r n R’ Store NUMBER into register R (‘number-to-register’). ‘C-u NUMBER C-x r + R’ If R contains a number, increment the number in that register by NUMBER. Note that command ‘C-x r +’ (‘increment-register’) behaves differently if R contains text. *Note Text Registers::. ‘C-x r i R’ Insert the number from register R into the buffer. ‘C-x r i’ is the same command used to insert any other sort of register contents into the buffer. ‘C-x r +’ with no numeric argument increments the register value by 1; ‘C-x r n’ with no numeric argument stores zero in the register. ** 13.6 Keeping File Names in Registers If you visit certain file names frequently, you can visit them more conveniently if you put their names in registers. Here’s the Lisp code used to put a file NAME into register R: (set-register R '(file . NAME)) For example, (set-register ?z '(file . "/gd/gnu/emacs/19.0/src/ChangeLog")) puts the file name shown in register ‘z’. To visit the file whose name is in register R, type ‘C-x r j R’. (This is the same command used to jump to a position or restore a frame configuration.) ** 13.7 Keyboard Macro Registers If you need to execute a keyboard macro (*note Keyboard Macros::) frequently, it is more convenient to put it in a register or save it (*note Save Keyboard Macro::). ‘C-x C-k x R’ (‘kmacro-to-register’) stores the last keyboard macro in register R. To execute the keyboard macro in register R, type ‘C-x r j R’. (This is the same command used to jump to a position or restore a frameset.) ** 13.8 Bookmarks "Bookmarks" are somewhat like registers in that they record positions you can jump to. Unlike registers, they have long names, and they persist automatically from one Emacs session to the next. The prototypical use of bookmarks is to record where you were reading in various files. ‘C-x r m ’ Set the bookmark for the visited file, at point. ‘C-x r m BOOKMARK ’ Set the bookmark named BOOKMARK at point (‘bookmark-set’). ‘C-x r M BOOKMARK ’ Like ‘C-x r m’, but don’t overwrite an existing bookmark. ‘C-x r b BOOKMARK ’ Jump to the bookmark named BOOKMARK (‘bookmark-jump’). ‘C-x r l’ List all bookmarks (‘list-bookmarks’). ‘M-x bookmark-save’ Save all the current bookmark values in the default bookmark file. To record the current position in the visited file, use the command ‘C-x r m’, which sets a bookmark using the visited file name as the default for the bookmark name. If you name each bookmark after the file it points to, then you can conveniently revisit any of those files with ‘C-x r b’, and move to the position of the bookmark at the same time. The command ‘C-x r M’ (‘bookmark-set-no-overwrite’) works like ‘C-x r m’, but it signals an error if the specified bookmark already exists, instead of overwriting it. To display a list of all your bookmarks in a separate buffer, type ‘C-x r l’ (‘list-bookmarks’). If you switch to that buffer, you can use it to edit your bookmark definitions or annotate the bookmarks. Type ‘C-h m’ in the bookmark buffer for more information about its special editing commands. When you kill Emacs, Emacs saves your bookmarks, if you have changed any bookmark values. You can also save the bookmarks at any time with the ‘M-x bookmark-save’ command. Bookmarks are saved to the file ‘~/.emacs.d/bookmarks’ (for compatibility with older versions of Emacs, if you have a file named ‘~/.emacs.bmk’, that is used instead). The bookmark commands load your default bookmark file automatically. This saving and loading is how bookmarks persist from one Emacs session to the next. If you set the variable ‘bookmark-save-flag’ to 1, each command that sets a bookmark will also save your bookmarks; this way, you don’t lose any bookmark values even if Emacs crashes. The value, if a number, says how many bookmark modifications should go by between saving. If you set this variable to ‘nil’, Emacs only saves bookmarks if you explicitly use ‘M-x bookmark-save’. The variable ‘bookmark-default-file’ specifies the file in which to save bookmarks by default. Bookmark position values are saved with surrounding context, so that ‘bookmark-jump’ can find the proper position even if the file is modified slightly. The variable ‘bookmark-search-size’ says how many characters of context to record on each side of the bookmark’s position. Here are some additional commands for working with bookmarks: ‘M-x bookmark-load FILENAME ’ Load a file named FILENAME that contains a list of bookmark values. You can use this command, as well as ‘bookmark-write’, to work with other files of bookmark values in addition to your default bookmark file. ‘M-x bookmark-write FILENAME ’ Save all the current bookmark values in the file FILENAME. ‘M-x bookmark-delete BOOKMARK ’ Delete the bookmark named BOOKMARK. ‘M-x bookmark-insert-location BOOKMARK ’ Insert in the buffer the name of the file that bookmark BOOKMARK points to. ‘M-x bookmark-insert BOOKMARK ’ Insert in the buffer the _contents_ of the file that bookmark BOOKMARK points to. * 14 Controlling the Display Since only part of a large buffer fits in the window, Emacs has to show only a part of it. This chapter describes commands and variables that let you specify which part of the text you want to see, and how the text is displayed. + Menu: - Scrolling:: Commands to move text up and down in a window. - Recentering:: A scroll command that centers the current line. - Auto Scrolling:: Redisplay scrolls text automatically when needed. - Horizontal Scrolling:: Moving text left and right in a window. - Narrowing:: Restricting display and editing to a portion of the buffer. - View Mode:: Viewing read-only buffers. - Follow Mode:: Follow mode lets two windows scroll as one. - Faces:: How to change the display style using faces. - Colors:: Specifying colors for faces. - Standard Faces:: The main predefined faces. - Text Scale:: Increasing or decreasing text size in a buffer. - Font Lock:: Minor mode for syntactic highlighting using faces. - Highlight Interactively:: Tell Emacs what text to highlight. - Fringes:: Enabling or disabling window fringes. - Displaying Boundaries:: Displaying top and bottom of the buffer. - Useless Whitespace:: Showing possibly spurious trailing whitespace. - Selective Display:: Hiding lines with lots of indentation. - Optional Mode Line:: Optional mode line display features. - Text Display:: How text characters are normally displayed. - Cursor Display:: Features for displaying the cursor. - Line Truncation:: Truncating lines to fit the screen width instead of continuing them to multiple screen lines. - Visual Line Mode:: Word wrap and screen line-based editing. - Display Custom:: Information on variables for customizing display. ** 14.1 Scrolling If a window is too small to display all the text in its buffer, it displays only a portion of it. "Scrolling" commands change which portion of the buffer is displayed. Scrolling forward or up advances the portion of the buffer displayed in the window; equivalently, it moves the buffer text upwards relative to the window. Scrolling backward or down displays an earlier portion of the buffer, and moves the text downwards relative to the window. In Emacs, scrolling up or down refers to the direction that the text moves in the window, _not_ the direction that the window moves relative to the text. This terminology was adopted by Emacs before the modern meaning of “scrolling up” and “scrolling down” became widespread. Hence, the strange result that scrolls up in the Emacs sense. The portion of a buffer displayed in a window always contains point. If you move point past the bottom or top of the window, scrolling occurs automatically to bring it back onscreen (*note Auto Scrolling::). You can also scroll explicitly with these commands: ‘C-v’ ‘’ ‘’ Scroll forward by nearly a full window (‘scroll-up-command’). ‘M-v’ ‘’ ‘’ Scroll backward (‘scroll-down-command’). ‘C-v’ (‘scroll-up-command’) scrolls forward by nearly the whole window height. The effect is to take the two lines at the bottom of the window and put them at the top, followed by lines that were not previously visible. If point was in the text that scrolled off the top, it ends up on the window’s new topmost line. The (or ) key is equivalent to ‘C-v’. ‘M-v’ (‘scroll-down-command’) scrolls backward in a similar way. The (or ) key is equivalent to ‘M-v’. The number of lines of overlap left by these scroll commands is controlled by the variable ‘next-screen-context-lines’, whose default value is 2. You can supply the commands with a numeric prefix argument, N, to scroll by N lines; Emacs attempts to leave point unchanged, so that the text and point move up or down together. ‘C-v’ with a negative argument is like ‘M-v’ and vice versa. By default, these commands signal an error (by beeping or flashing the screen) if no more scrolling is possible, because the window has reached the beginning or end of the buffer. If you change the variable ‘scroll-error-top-bottom’ to ‘t’, these commands move point to the farthest possible position. If point is already there, the commands signal an error. Some users like scroll commands to keep point at the same screen position, so that scrolling back to the same screen conveniently returns point to its original position. You can enable this behavior via the variable ‘scroll-preserve-screen-position’. If the value is ‘t’, Emacs adjusts point to keep the cursor at the same screen position whenever a scroll command moves it off-window, rather than moving it to the topmost or bottommost line. With any other non-‘nil’ value, Emacs adjusts point this way even if the scroll command leaves point in the window. This variable affects all the scroll commands documented in this section, as well as scrolling with the mouse wheel (*note Mouse Commands::); in general, it affects any command that has a non-‘nil’ ‘scroll-command’ property. *Note (elisp)Property Lists::. Sometimes, particularly when you hold down keys such as ‘C-v’ and ‘M-v’, activating keyboard auto-repeat, Emacs fails to keep up with the rapid rate of scrolling requested; the display doesn’t update and Emacs can become unresponsive to input for quite a long time. You can counter this sluggishness by setting the variable ‘fast-but-imprecise-scrolling’ to a non-‘nil’ value. This instructs the scrolling commands not to fontify (*note Font Lock::) any unfontified text they scroll over, instead to assume it has the default face. This can cause Emacs to scroll to somewhat wrong buffer positions when the faces in use are not all the same size, even with single (i.e., without auto-repeat) scrolling operations. The commands ‘M-x scroll-up’ and ‘M-x scroll-down’ behave similarly to ‘scroll-up-command’ and ‘scroll-down-command’, except they do not obey ‘scroll-error-top-bottom’. Prior to Emacs 24, these were the default commands for scrolling up and down. The commands ‘M-x scroll-up-line’ and ‘M-x scroll-down-line’ scroll the current window by one line at a time. If you intend to use any of these commands, you might want to give them key bindings (*note Init Rebinding::). ** 14.2 Recentering ‘C-l’ Scroll the selected window so the current line is the center-most text line; on subsequent consecutive invocations, make the current line the top line, the bottom line, and so on in cyclic order. Possibly redisplay the screen too (‘recenter-top-bottom’). ‘M-x recenter’ Scroll the selected window so the current line is the center-most text line. Possibly redisplay the screen too. ‘C-M-l’ Scroll heuristically to bring useful information onto the screen (‘reposition-window’). The ‘C-l’ (‘recenter-top-bottom’) command "recenters" the selected window, scrolling it so that the current screen line is exactly in the center of the window, or as close to the center as possible. Typing ‘C-l’ twice in a row (‘C-l C-l’) scrolls the window so that point is on the topmost screen line. Typing a third ‘C-l’ scrolls the window so that point is on the bottom-most screen line. Each successive ‘C-l’ cycles through these three positions. You can change the cycling order by customizing the list variable ‘recenter-positions’. Each list element should be the symbol ‘top’, ‘middle’, or ‘bottom’, or a number; an integer means to move the line to the specified screen line, while a floating-point number between 0.0 and 1.0 specifies a percentage of the screen space from the top of the window. The default, ‘(middle top bottom)’, is the cycling order described above. Furthermore, if you change the variable ‘scroll-margin’ to a non-zero value N, ‘C-l’ always leaves at least N screen lines between point and the top or bottom of the window (*note Auto Scrolling::). You can also give ‘C-l’ a prefix argument. A plain prefix argument, ‘C-u C-l’, simply recenters point. A positive argument N puts point N lines down from the top of the window. An argument of zero puts point on the topmost line. A negative argument -N puts point N lines from the bottom of the window. When given an argument, ‘C-l’ does not clear the screen or cycle through different screen positions. If the variable ‘recenter-redisplay’ has a non-‘nil’ value, each invocation of ‘C-l’ also clears and redisplays the screen; the special value ‘tty’ (the default) says to do this on text-terminal frames only. Redisplaying is useful in case the screen becomes garbled for any reason (*note Screen Garbled::). The more primitive command ‘M-x recenter’ behaves like ‘recenter-top-bottom’, but does not cycle among screen positions. ‘C-M-l’ (‘reposition-window’) scrolls the current window heuristically in a way designed to get useful information onto the screen. For example, in a Lisp file, this command tries to get the entire current defun onto the screen if possible. ** 14.3 Automatic Scrolling Emacs performs "automatic scrolling" when point moves out of the visible portion of the text. Normally, automatic scrolling centers point vertically in the window, but there are several ways to alter this behavior. If you set ‘scroll-conservatively’ to a small number N, then moving point just a little off the screen (no more than N lines) causes Emacs to scroll just enough to bring point back on screen; if doing so fails to make point visible, Emacs scrolls just far enough to center point in the window. If you set ‘scroll-conservatively’ to a large number (larger than 100), automatic scrolling never centers point, no matter how far point moves; Emacs always scrolls text just enough to bring point into view, either at the top or bottom of the window depending on the scroll direction. By default, ‘scroll-conservatively’ is 0, which means to always center point in the window. Another way to control automatic scrolling is to customize the variable ‘scroll-step’. Its value determines the number of lines by which to automatically scroll, when point moves off the screen. If scrolling by that number of lines fails to bring point back into view, point is centered instead. The default value is zero, which (by default) causes point to always be centered after scrolling. A third way to control automatic scrolling is to customize the variables ‘scroll-up-aggressively’ and ‘scroll-down-aggressively’, which directly specify the vertical position of point after scrolling. The value of ‘scroll-up-aggressively’ should be either ‘nil’ (the default), or a floating point number F between 0 and 1. The latter means that when point goes below the bottom window edge (i.e., scrolling forward), Emacs scrolls the window so that point is F parts of the window height from the bottom window edge. Thus, larger F means more aggressive scrolling: more new text is brought into view. The default value, ‘nil’, is equivalent to 0.5. Likewise, ‘scroll-down-aggressively’ is used when point goes above the top window edge (i.e., scrolling backward). The value specifies how far point should be from the top margin of the window after scrolling. Thus, as with ‘scroll-up-aggressively’, a larger value is more aggressive. Note that the variables ‘scroll-conservatively’, ‘scroll-step’, and ‘scroll-up-aggressively’ / ‘scroll-down-aggressively’ control automatic scrolling in contradictory ways. Therefore, you should pick no more than one of these methods to customize automatic scrolling. In case you customize multiple variables, the order of priority is: ‘scroll-conservatively’, then ‘scroll-step’, and finally ‘scroll-up-aggressively’ / ‘scroll-down-aggressively’. The variable ‘scroll-margin’ restricts how close point can come to the top or bottom of a window (even if aggressive scrolling specifies a fraction F that is larger than the window portion between the top and the bottom margins). Its value is a number of screen lines; if point comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs performs automatic scrolling. By default, ‘scroll-margin’ is 0. The effective margin size is limited to a quarter of the window height by default, but this limit can be increased up to half (or decreased down to zero) by customizing ‘maximum-scroll-margin’. ** 14.4 Horizontal Scrolling "Horizontal scrolling" means shifting all the lines sideways within a window, so that some of the text near the left margin is not displayed. When the text in a window is scrolled horizontally, text lines are truncated rather than continued (*note Line Truncation::). If a window shows truncated lines, Emacs performs automatic horizontal scrolling whenever point moves off the left or right edge of the screen. By default, all the lines in the window are scrolled horizontally together, but if you set the variable ‘auto-hscroll-mode’ to the special value of ‘current-line’, only the line showing the cursor will be scrolled. To disable automatic horizontal scrolling entirely, set the variable ‘auto-hscroll-mode’ to ‘nil’. Note that when the automatic horizontal scrolling is turned off, if point moves off the edge of the screen, the cursor disappears to indicate that. (On text terminals, the cursor is left at the edge instead.) The variable ‘hscroll-margin’ controls how close point can get to the window’s left and right edges before automatic scrolling occurs. It is measured in columns. For example, if the value is 5, then moving point within 5 columns of an edge causes horizontal scrolling away from that edge. The variable ‘hscroll-step’ determines how many columns to scroll the window when point gets too close to the edge. Zero, the default value, means to center point horizontally within the window. A positive integer value specifies the number of columns to scroll by. A floating-point number (whose value should be between 0 and 1) specifies the fraction of the window’s width to scroll by. You can also perform explicit horizontal scrolling with the following commands: ‘C-x <’ Scroll text in current window to the left (‘scroll-left’). ‘C-x >’ Scroll to the right (‘scroll-right’). ‘C-x <’ (‘scroll-left’) scrolls text in the selected window to the left by the full width of the window, less two columns. (In other words, the text in the window moves left relative to the window.) With a numeric argument N, it scrolls by N columns. If the text is scrolled to the left, and point moves off the left edge of the window, the cursor will freeze at the left edge of the window, until point moves back to the displayed portion of the text. This is independent of the current setting of ‘auto-hscroll-mode’, which, for text scrolled to the left, only affects the behavior at the right edge of the window. ‘C-x >’ (‘scroll-right’) scrolls similarly to the right. The window cannot be scrolled any farther to the right once it is displayed normally, with each line starting at the window’s left margin; attempting to do so has no effect. This means that you don’t have to calculate the argument precisely for ‘C-x >’; any sufficiently large argument will restore the normal display. If you use those commands to scroll a window horizontally, that sets a lower bound for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will continue to scroll the window, but never farther to the right than the amount you previously set by ‘scroll-left’. When ‘auto-hscroll-mode’ is set to ‘current-line’, all the lines other than the one showing the cursor will be scrolled by that minimal amount. ** 14.5 Narrowing "Narrowing" means focusing in on some portion of the buffer, making the rest temporarily inaccessible. The portion which you can still get to is called the "accessible portion". Canceling the narrowing, which makes the entire buffer once again accessible, is called "widening". The bounds of narrowing in effect in a buffer are called the buffer’s "restriction". Narrowing can make it easier to concentrate on a single subroutine or paragraph by eliminating clutter. It can also be used to limit the range of operation of a replace command or repeating keyboard macro. ‘C-x n n’ Narrow down to between point and mark (‘narrow-to-region’). ‘C-x n w’ Widen to make the entire buffer accessible again (‘widen’). ‘C-x n p’ Narrow down to the current page (‘narrow-to-page’). ‘C-x n d’ Narrow down to the current defun (‘narrow-to-defun’). When you have narrowed down to a part of the buffer, that part appears to be all there is. You can’t see the rest, you can’t move into it (motion commands won’t go outside the accessible part), you can’t change it in any way. However, it is not gone, and if you save the file all the inaccessible text will be saved. The word ‘Narrow’ appears in the mode line whenever narrowing is in effect. The primary narrowing command is ‘C-x n n’ (‘narrow-to-region’). It sets the current buffer’s restrictions so that the text in the current region remains accessible, but all text before the region or after the region is inaccessible. Point and mark do not change. Alternatively, use ‘C-x n p’ (‘narrow-to-page’) to narrow down to the current page. *Note Pages::, for the definition of a page. ‘C-x n d’ (‘narrow-to-defun’) narrows down to the defun containing point (*note Defuns::). The way to cancel narrowing is to widen with ‘C-x n w’ (‘widen’). This makes all text in the buffer accessible again. You can get information on what part of the buffer you are narrowed down to using the ‘C-x =’ command. *Note Position Info::. Because narrowing can easily confuse users who do not understand it, ‘narrow-to-region’ is normally a disabled command. Attempting to use this command asks for confirmation and gives you the option of enabling it; if you enable the command, confirmation will no longer be required for it. *Note Disabling::. ** 14.6 View Mode View mode is a minor mode that lets you scan a buffer by sequential screenfuls. It provides commands for scrolling through the buffer conveniently but not for changing it. Apart from the usual Emacs cursor motion commands, you can type to scroll forward one windowful, ‘S-’ or to scroll backward, and ‘s’ to start an incremental search. Typing ‘q’ (‘View-quit’) disables View mode, and switches back to the buffer and position before View mode was enabled. Typing ‘e’ (‘View-exit’) disables View mode, keeping the current buffer and position. ‘M-x view-buffer’ prompts for an existing Emacs buffer, switches to it, and enables View mode. ‘M-x view-file’ prompts for a file and visits it with View mode enabled. ** 14.7 Follow Mode "Follow mode" is a minor mode that makes two windows, both showing the same buffer, scroll as a single tall virtual window. To use Follow mode, go to a frame with just one window, split it into two side-by-side windows using ‘C-x 3’, and then type ‘M-x follow-mode’. From then on, you can edit the buffer in either of the two windows, or scroll either one; the other window follows it. In Follow mode, if you move point outside the portion visible in one window and into the portion visible in the other window, that selects the other window—again, treating the two as if they were parts of one large window. To turn off Follow mode, type ‘M-x follow-mode’ a second time. ** 14.8 Text Faces Emacs can display text in several different styles, called "faces". Each face can specify various "face attributes", such as the font, height, weight, slant, foreground and background color, and underlining or overlining. Most major modes assign faces to the text automatically, via Font Lock mode. *Note Font Lock::, for more information about how these faces are assigned. To see what faces are currently defined, and what they look like, type ‘M-x list-faces-display’. With a prefix argument, this prompts for a regular expression, and displays only faces with names matching that regular expression (*note Regexps::). It’s possible for a given face to look different in different frames. For instance, some text terminals do not support all face attributes, particularly font, height, and width, and some support a limited range of colors. In addition, most Emacs faces are defined so that their attributes are different on light and dark frame backgrounds, for reasons of legibility. By default, Emacs automatically chooses which set of face attributes to display on each frame, based on the frame’s current background color. However, you can override this by giving the variable ‘frame-background-mode’ a non-‘nil’ value. A value of ‘dark’ makes Emacs treat all frames as if they have a dark background, whereas a value of ‘light’ makes it treat all frames as if they have a light background. You can customize a face to alter its attributes, and save those customizations for future Emacs sessions. *Note Face Customization::, for details. The ‘default’ face is the default for displaying text, and all of its attributes are specified. Its background color is also used as the frame’s background color. *Note Colors::. Another special face is the ‘cursor’ face. On graphical displays, the background color of this face is used to draw the text cursor. None of the other attributes of this face have any effect; the foreground color for text under the cursor is taken from the background color of the underlying text. On text terminals, the appearance of the text cursor is determined by the terminal, not by the ‘cursor’ face. You can also use X resources to specify attributes of any particular face. *Note Resources::. Emacs can display variable-width fonts, but some Emacs commands, particularly indentation commands, do not account for variable character display widths. Therefore, we recommend not using variable-width fonts for most faces, particularly those assigned by Font Lock mode. ** 14.9 Colors for Faces Faces can have various foreground and background colors. When you specify a color for a face—for instance, when customizing the face (*note Face Customization::)—you can use either a "color name" or an "RGB triplet". A color name is a pre-defined name, such as ‘dark orange’ or ‘medium sea green’. To view a list of color names, type ‘M-x list-colors-display’. To control the order in which colors are shown, customize ‘list-colors-sort’. If you run this command on a graphical display, it shows the full range of color names known to Emacs (these are the standard X11 color names, defined in X’s ‘rgb.txt’ file). If you run the command on a text terminal, it shows only a small subset of colors that can be safely displayed on such terminals. However, Emacs understands X11 color names even on text terminals; if a face is given a color specified by an X11 color name, it is displayed using the closest-matching terminal color. An RGB triplet is a string of the form ‘#RRGGBB’. Each of the R, G, and B components is a hexadecimal number specifying the component’s relative intensity, one to four digits long (usually two digits are used). The components must have the same number of digits. For hexadecimal values A to F, either upper or lower case are acceptable. The ‘M-x list-colors-display’ command also shows the equivalent RGB triplet for each named color. For instance, ‘medium sea green’ is equivalent to ‘#3CB371’. You can change the foreground and background colors of a face with ‘M-x set-face-foreground’ and ‘M-x set-face-background’. These commands prompt in the minibuffer for a face name and a color, with completion, and then set that face to use the specified color. They affect the face colors on all frames, but their effects do not persist for future Emacs sessions, unlike using the customization buffer or X resources. You can also use frame parameters to set foreground and background colors for a specific frame; *Note Frame Parameters::. ** 14.10 Standard Faces Here are the standard faces for specifying text appearance. You can apply them to specific text when you want the effects they produce. ‘default’ This face is used for ordinary text that doesn’t specify any face. Its background color is used as the frame’s background color. ‘bold’ This face uses a bold variant of the default font. ‘italic’ This face uses an italic variant of the default font. ‘bold-italic’ This face uses a bold italic variant of the default font. ‘underline’ This face underlines text. ‘fixed-pitch’ This face forces use of a fixed-width font. It’s reasonable to customize this face to use a different fixed-width font, if you like, but you should not make it a variable-width font. ‘fixed-pitch-serif’ This face is like ‘fixed-pitch’, except the font has serifs and looks more like traditional typewriting. ‘variable-pitch’ This face forces use of a variable-width font. ‘shadow’ This face is used for making the text less noticeable than the surrounding ordinary text. Usually this can be achieved by using shades of gray in contrast with either black or white default foreground color. Here’s an incomplete list of faces used to highlight parts of the text temporarily for specific purposes. (Many other modes define their own faces for this purpose.) ‘highlight’ This face is used for text highlighting in various contexts, such as when the mouse cursor is moved over a hyperlink. ‘isearch’ This face is used to highlight the current Isearch match (*note Incremental Search::). ‘query-replace’ This face is used to highlight the current Query Replace match (*note Replace::). ‘lazy-highlight’ This face is used to highlight lazy matches for Isearch and Query Replace (matches other than the current one). ‘region’ This face is used for displaying an active region (*note Mark::). When Emacs is built with GTK+ support, its colors are taken from the current GTK+ theme. ‘secondary-selection’ This face is used for displaying a secondary X selection (*note Secondary Selection::). ‘trailing-whitespace’ The face for highlighting excess spaces and tabs at the end of a line when ‘show-trailing-whitespace’ is non-‘nil’ (*note Useless Whitespace::). ‘escape-glyph’ The face for displaying control characters and escape sequences (*note Text Display::). ‘homoglyph’ The face for displaying lookalike characters, i.e., characters that look like but are not the characters being represented (*note Text Display::). ‘nobreak-space’ The face for displaying no-break space characters (*note Text Display::). ‘nobreak-hyphen’ The face for displaying no-break hyphen characters (*note Text Display::). The following faces control the appearance of parts of the Emacs frame: ‘mode-line’ This face is used for the mode line of the currently selected window, and for menu bars when toolkit menus are not used. By default, it’s drawn with shadows for a raised effect on graphical displays, and drawn as the inverse of the default face on non-windowed terminals. ‘mode-line-inactive’ Like ‘mode-line’, but used for mode lines of the windows other than the selected one (if ‘mode-line-in-non-selected-windows’ is non-‘nil’). This face inherits from ‘mode-line’, so changes in that face affect mode lines in all windows. ‘mode-line-highlight’ Like ‘highlight’, but used for mouse-sensitive portions of text on mode lines. Such portions of text typically pop up tooltips (*note Tooltips::) when the mouse pointer hovers above them. ‘mode-line-buffer-id’ This face is used for buffer identification parts in the mode line. ‘header-line’ Similar to ‘mode-line’ for a window’s header line, which appears at the top of a window just as the mode line appears at the bottom. Most windows do not have a header line—only some special modes, such Info mode, create one. ‘header-line-highlight’ Similar to ‘highlight’ and ‘mode-line-highlight’, but used for mouse-sensitive portions of text on header lines. This is a separate face because the ‘header-line’ face might be customized in a way that does not interact well with ‘highlight’. ‘vertical-border’ This face is used for the vertical divider between windows on text terminals. ‘minibuffer-prompt’ This face is used for the prompt strings displayed in the minibuffer. By default, Emacs automatically adds this face to the value of ‘minibuffer-prompt-properties’, which is a list of text properties (*note (elisp)Text Properties::) used to display the prompt text. (This variable takes effect when you enter the minibuffer.) ‘fringe’ The face for the fringes to the left and right of windows on graphic displays. (The fringes are the narrow portions of the Emacs frame between the text area and the window’s right and left borders.) *Note Fringes::. ‘cursor’ The ‘:background’ attribute of this face specifies the color of the text cursor. *Note Cursor Display::. ‘tooltip’ This face is used for tooltip text. By default, if Emacs is built with GTK+ support, tooltips are drawn via GTK+ and this face has no effect. *Note Tooltips::. ‘mouse’ This face determines the color of the mouse pointer. The following faces likewise control the appearance of parts of the Emacs frame, but only on text terminals, or when Emacs is built on X with no toolkit support. (For all other cases, the appearance of the respective frame elements is determined by system-wide settings.) ‘scroll-bar’ This face determines the visual appearance of the scroll bar. *Note Scroll Bars::. ‘tool-bar’ This face determines the color of tool bar icons. *Note Tool Bars::. ‘menu’ This face determines the colors and font of Emacs’s menus. *Note Menu Bars::. ‘tty-menu-enabled-face’ This face is used to display enabled menu items on text-mode terminals. ‘tty-menu-disabled-face’ This face is used to display disabled menu items on text-mode terminals. ‘tty-menu-selected-face’ This face is used to display on text-mode terminals the menu item that would be selected if you click a mouse or press . ** 14.11 Text Scale To increase the height of the default face in the current buffer, type ‘C-x C-+’ or ‘C-x C-=’. To decrease it, type ‘C-x C--’. To restore the default (global) face height, type ‘C-x C-0’. These keys are all bound to the same command, ‘text-scale-adjust’, which looks at the last key typed to determine which action to take. The final key of these commands may be repeated without the leading ‘C-x’. For instance, ‘C-x C-= C-= C-=’ increases the face height by three steps. Each step scales the text height by a factor of 1.2; to change this factor, customize the variable ‘text-scale-mode-step’. A numeric argument of 0 to the ‘text-scale-adjust’ command restores the default height, the same as typing ‘C-x C-0’. The commands ‘text-scale-increase’ and ‘text-scale-decrease’ increase or decrease the height of the default face, just like ‘C-x C-+’ and ‘C-x C--’ respectively. You may find it convenient to bind to these commands, rather than ‘text-scale-adjust’. The command ‘text-scale-set’ scales the height of the default face in the current buffer to an absolute level specified by its prefix argument. The above commands automatically enable the minor mode ‘text-scale-mode’ if the current font scaling is other than 1, and disable it otherwise. ** 14.12 Font Lock mode Font Lock mode is a minor mode, always local to a particular buffer, which assigns faces to (or "fontifies") the text in the buffer. Each buffer’s major mode tells Font Lock mode which text to fontify; for instance, programming language modes fontify syntactically relevant constructs like comments, strings, and function names. Font Lock mode is enabled by default. To toggle it in the current buffer, type ‘M-x font-lock-mode’. A positive numeric argument unconditionally enables Font Lock mode, and a negative or zero argument disables it. Type ‘M-x global-font-lock-mode’ to toggle Font Lock mode in all buffers. To impose this setting for future Emacs sessions, customize the variable ‘global-font-lock-mode’ (*note Easy Customization::), or add the following line to your init file: (global-font-lock-mode 0) If you have disabled Global Font Lock mode, you can still enable Font Lock for specific major modes by adding the function ‘font-lock-mode’ to the mode hooks (*note Hooks::). For example, to enable Font Lock mode for editing C files, you can do this: (add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'font-lock-mode) Font Lock mode uses several specifically named faces to do its job, including ‘font-lock-string-face’, ‘font-lock-comment-face’, and others. The easiest way to find them all is to use ‘M-x customize-group font-lock-faces ’. You can then use that customization buffer to customize the appearance of these faces. *Note Face Customization::. You can customize the variable ‘font-lock-maximum-decoration’ to alter the amount of fontification applied by Font Lock mode, for major modes that support this feature. The value should be a number (with 1 representing a minimal amount of fontification; some modes support levels as high as 3); or ‘t’, meaning “as high as possible” (the default). To be effective for a given file buffer, the customization of ‘font-lock-maximum-decoration’ should be done _before_ the file is visited; if you already have the file visited in a buffer when you customize this variable, kill the buffer and visit the file again after the customization. You can also specify different numbers for particular major modes; for example, to use level 1 for C/C++ modes, and the default level otherwise, use the value '((c-mode . 1) (c++-mode . 1))) Comment and string fontification (or “syntactic” fontification) relies on analysis of the syntactic structure of the buffer text. For the sake of speed, some modes, including Lisp mode, rely on a special convention: an open-parenthesis or open-brace in the leftmost column always defines the beginning of a defun, and is thus always outside any string or comment. Therefore, you should avoid placing an open-parenthesis or open-brace in the leftmost column, if it is inside a string or comment. *Note Left Margin Paren::, for details. Font Lock highlighting patterns already exist for most modes, but you may want to fontify additional patterns. You can use the function ‘font-lock-add-keywords’, to add your own highlighting patterns for a particular mode. For example, to highlight ‘FIXME:’ words in C comments, use this: (add-hook 'c-mode-hook (lambda () (font-lock-add-keywords nil '(("\\<\\(FIXME\\):" 1 font-lock-warning-face t))))) To remove keywords from the font-lock highlighting patterns, use the function ‘font-lock-remove-keywords’. *Note (elisp)Search-based Fontification::. Fontifying large buffers can take a long time. To avoid large delays when a file is visited, Emacs initially fontifies only the visible portion of a buffer. As you scroll through the buffer, each portion that becomes visible is fontified as soon as it is displayed; this type of Font Lock is called "Just-In-Time" (or "JIT") Lock. You can control how JIT Lock behaves, including telling it to perform fontification while idle, by customizing variables in the customization group ‘jit-lock’. *Note Specific Customization::. ** 14.13 Interactive Highlighting Highlight Changes mode is a minor mode that "highlights" the parts of the buffer that were changed most recently, by giving that text a different face. To enable or disable Highlight Changes mode, use ‘M-x highlight-changes-mode’. Hi Lock mode is a minor mode that highlights text that matches regular expressions you specify. For example, you can use it to highlight all the references to a certain variable in a program source file, highlight certain parts in a voluminous output of some program, or highlight certain names in an article. To enable or disable Hi Lock mode, use the command ‘M-x hi-lock-mode’. To enable Hi Lock mode for all buffers, use ‘M-x global-hi-lock-mode’ or place ‘(global-hi-lock-mode 1)’ in your ‘.emacs’ file. Hi Lock mode works like Font Lock mode (*note Font Lock::), except that you specify explicitly the regular expressions to highlight. You can control them with the following commands. (The key bindings below that begin with ‘C-x w’ are deprecated in favor of the global ‘M-s h’ bindings, and will be removed in some future Emacs version.) ‘M-s h r REGEXP FACE ’ ‘C-x w h REGEXP FACE ’ Highlight text that matches REGEXP using face FACE (‘highlight-regexp’). The highlighting will remain as long as the buffer is loaded. For example, to highlight all occurrences of the word “whim” using the default face (a yellow background), type ‘M-s h r whim ’. Any face can be used for highlighting, Hi Lock provides several of its own and these are pre-loaded into a list of default values. While being prompted for a face use ‘M-n’ and ‘M-p’ to cycle through them. Setting the option ‘hi-lock-auto-select-face’ to a non-‘nil’ value causes this command (and other Hi Lock commands that read faces) to automatically choose the next face from the default list without prompting. You can use this command multiple times, specifying various regular expressions to highlight in different ways. ‘M-s h u REGEXP ’ ‘C-x w r REGEXP ’ Unhighlight REGEXP (‘unhighlight-regexp’). If you invoke this from the menu, you select the expression to unhighlight from a list. If you invoke this from the keyboard, you use the minibuffer. It will show the most recently added regular expression; use ‘M-n’ to show the next older expression and ‘M-p’ to select the next newer expression. (You can also type the expression by hand, with completion.) When the expression you want to unhighlight appears in the minibuffer, press ‘’ to exit the minibuffer and unhighlight it. ‘M-s h l REGEXP FACE ’ ‘C-x w l REGEXP FACE ’ Highlight entire lines containing a match for REGEXP, using face FACE (‘highlight-lines-matching-regexp’). ‘M-s h p PHRASE FACE ’ ‘C-x w p PHRASE FACE ’ Highlight matches of PHRASE, using face FACE (‘highlight-phrase’). PHRASE can be any regexp, but spaces will be replaced by matches to whitespace and initial lower-case letters will become case insensitive. ‘M-s h .’ ‘C-x w .’ Highlight the symbol found near point, using the next available face (‘highlight-symbol-at-point’). ‘M-s h w’ ‘C-x w b’ Insert all the current highlighting regexp/face pairs into the buffer at point, with comment delimiters to prevent them from changing your program. (This key binding runs the ‘hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns’ command.) These patterns are extracted from the comments, if appropriate, if you invoke ‘M-x hi-lock-find-patterns’, or if you visit the file while Hi Lock mode is enabled (since that runs ‘hi-lock-find-patterns’). ‘M-s h f’ ‘C-x w i’ Extract regexp/face pairs from comments in the current buffer (‘hi-lock-find-patterns’). Thus, you can enter patterns interactively with ‘highlight-regexp’, store them into the file with ‘hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns’, edit them (perhaps including different faces for different parenthesized parts of the match), and finally use this command (‘hi-lock-find-patterns’) to have Hi Lock highlight the edited patterns. The variable ‘hi-lock-file-patterns-policy’ controls whether Hi Lock mode should automatically extract and highlight patterns found in a file when it is visited. Its value can be ‘nil’ (never highlight), ‘ask’ (query the user), or a function. If it is a function, ‘hi-lock-find-patterns’ calls it with the patterns as argument; if the function returns non-‘nil’, the patterns are used. The default is ‘ask’. Note that patterns are always highlighted if you call ‘hi-lock-find-patterns’ directly, regardless of the value of this variable. Also, ‘hi-lock-find-patterns’ does nothing if the current major mode’s symbol is a member of the list ‘hi-lock-exclude-modes’. ** 14.14 Window Fringes On graphical displays, each Emacs window normally has narrow "fringes" on the left and right edges. The fringes are used to display symbols that provide information about the text in the window. You can type ‘M-x fringe-mode’ to toggle display of the fringes or to modify their width. This command affects fringes in all frames; to modify fringes on the selected frame only, use ‘M-x set-fringe-style’. You can make your changes to the fringes permanent by customizing the variable ‘fringe-mode’. The most common use of the fringes is to indicate a continuation line (*note Continuation Lines::). When one line of text is split into multiple screen lines, the left fringe shows a curving arrow for each screen line except the first, indicating that this is not the real beginning. The right fringe shows a curving arrow for each screen line except the last, indicating that this is not the real end. If the line’s direction is right-to-left (*note Bidirectional Editing::), the meanings of the curving arrows in the fringes are swapped. The fringes indicate line truncation (*note Line Truncation::) with short horizontal arrows meaning there’s more text on this line which is scrolled horizontally out of view. Clicking the mouse on one of the arrows scrolls the display horizontally in the direction of the arrow. The fringes can also indicate other things, such as buffer boundaries (*note Displaying Boundaries::), and where a program you are debugging is executing (*note Debuggers::). The fringe is also used for drawing the cursor, if the current line is exactly as wide as the window and point is at the end of the line. To disable this, change the variable ‘overflow-newline-into-fringe’ to ‘nil’; this causes Emacs to continue or truncate lines that are exactly as wide as the window. If you customize ‘fringe-mode’ to remove the fringes on one or both sides of the window display, the features that display on the fringe are not available. Indicators of line continuation and truncation are an exception: when fringes are not available, Emacs uses the leftmost and rightmost character cells to indicate continuation and truncation with special ASCII characters, see *note Continuation Lines::, and *note Line Truncation::. This reduces the width available for displaying text on each line, because the character cells used for truncation and continuation indicators are reserved for that purpose. Since buffer text can include bidirectional text, and thus both left-to-right and right-to-left paragraphs (*note Bidirectional Editing::), removing only one of the fringes still reserves two character cells, one on each side of the window, for truncation and continuation indicators, because these indicators are displayed on opposite sides of the window in right-to-left paragraphs. ** 14.15 Displaying Boundaries On graphical displays, Emacs can indicate the buffer boundaries in the fringes. If you enable this feature, the first line and the last line are marked with angle images in the fringes. This can be combined with up and down arrow images which say whether it is possible to scroll the window. The buffer-local variable ‘indicate-buffer-boundaries’ controls how the buffer boundaries and window scrolling is indicated in the fringes. If the value is ‘left’ or ‘right’, both angle and arrow bitmaps are displayed in the left or right fringe, respectively. If value is an alist (*note (elisp)Association Lists::), each element ‘(INDICATOR . POSITION)’ specifies the position of one of the indicators. The INDICATOR must be one of ‘top’, ‘bottom’, ‘up’, ‘down’, or ‘t’ which specifies the default position for the indicators not present in the alist. The POSITION is one of ‘left’, ‘right’, or ‘nil’ which specifies not to show this indicator. For example, ‘((top . left) (t . right))’ places the top angle bitmap in left fringe, the bottom angle bitmap in right fringe, and both arrow bitmaps in right fringe. To show just the angle bitmaps in the left fringe, but no arrow bitmaps, use ‘((top . left) (bottom . left))’. ** 14.16 Useless Whitespace It is easy to leave unnecessary spaces at the end of a line, or empty lines at the end of a buffer, without realizing it. In most cases, this "trailing whitespace" has no effect, but sometimes it can be a nuisance. You can make trailing whitespace at the end of a line visible by setting the buffer-local variable ‘show-trailing-whitespace’ to ‘t’. Then Emacs displays trailing whitespace, using the face ‘trailing-whitespace’. This feature does not apply when point is at the end of the line containing the whitespace. Strictly speaking, that is trailing whitespace nonetheless, but displaying it specially in that case looks ugly while you are typing in new text. In this special case, the location of point is enough to show you that the spaces are present. Type ‘M-x delete-trailing-whitespace’ to delete all trailing whitespace. This command deletes all extra spaces at the end of each line in the buffer, and all empty lines at the end of the buffer; to ignore the latter, change the variable ‘delete-trailing-lines’ to ‘nil’. If the region is active, the command instead deletes extra spaces at the end of each line in the region. On graphical displays, Emacs can indicate unused lines at the end of the window with a small image in the left fringe (*note Fringes::). The image appears for screen lines that do not correspond to any buffer text, so blank lines at the end of the buffer stand out because they lack this image. To enable this feature, set the buffer-local variable ‘indicate-empty-lines’ to a non-‘nil’ value. You can enable or disable this feature for all new buffers by setting the default value of this variable, e.g., ‘(setq-default indicate-empty-lines t)’. Whitespace mode is a buffer-local minor mode that lets you visualize many kinds of whitespace in the buffer, by either drawing the whitespace characters with a special face or displaying them as special glyphs. To toggle this mode, type ‘M-x whitespace-mode’. The kinds of whitespace visualized are determined by the list variable ‘whitespace-style’. Individual elements in that list can be toggled on or off in the current buffer by typing ‘M-x whitespace-toggle-options’. Here is a partial list of possible elements (see the variable’s documentation for the full list): ‘face’ Enable all visualizations which use special faces. This element has a special meaning: if it is absent from the list, none of the other visualizations take effect except ‘space-mark’, ‘tab-mark’, and ‘newline-mark’. ‘trailing’ Highlight trailing whitespace. ‘tabs’ Highlight tab characters. ‘spaces’ Highlight space and non-breaking space characters. ‘lines’ Highlight lines longer than 80 columns. To change the column limit, customize the variable ‘whitespace-line-column’. ‘newline’ Highlight newlines. ‘empty’ Highlight empty lines at the beginning and/or end of the buffer. ‘big-indent’ Highlight too-deep indentation. By default any sequence of at least 4 consecutive tab characters or 32 consecutive space characters is highlighted. To change that, customize the regular expression ‘whitespace-big-indent-regexp’. ‘space-mark’ Draw space and non-breaking characters with a special glyph. ‘tab-mark’ Draw tab characters with a special glyph. ‘newline-mark’ Draw newline characters with a special glyph. Global Whitespace mode is a global minor mode that lets you visualize whitespace in all buffers. To toggle individual features, use ‘M-x global-whitespace-toggle-options’. ** 14.17 Selective Display Emacs has the ability to hide lines indented more than a given number of columns. You can use this to get an overview of a part of a program. To hide lines in the current buffer, type ‘C-x $’ (‘set-selective-display’) with a numeric argument N. Then lines with at least N columns of indentation disappear from the screen. The only indication of their presence is that three dots (‘…’) appear at the end of each visible line that is followed by one or more hidden ones. The commands ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’ move across the hidden lines as if they were not there. The hidden lines are still present in the buffer, and most editing commands see them as usual, so you may find point in the middle of the hidden text. When this happens, the cursor appears at the end of the previous line, after the three dots. If point is at the end of the visible line, before the newline that ends it, the cursor appears before the three dots. To make all lines visible again, type ‘C-x $’ with no argument. If you set the variable ‘selective-display-ellipses’ to ‘nil’, the three dots do not appear at the end of a line that precedes hidden lines. Then there is no visible indication of the hidden lines. This variable becomes local automatically when set. See also *note Outline Mode:: for another way to hide part of the text in a buffer. ** 14.18 Optional Mode Line Features The buffer percentage POS indicates the percentage of the buffer above the top of the window. You can additionally display the size of the buffer by typing ‘M-x size-indication-mode’ to turn on Size Indication mode. The size will be displayed immediately following the buffer percentage like this: POS of SIZE Here SIZE is the human readable representation of the number of characters in the buffer, which means that ‘k’ for 10^3, ‘M’ for 10^6, ‘G’ for 10^9, etc., are used to abbreviate. The current line number of point appears in the mode line when Line Number mode is enabled. Use the command ‘M-x line-number-mode’ to turn this mode on and off; normally it is on. The line number appears after the buffer percentage POS, with the letter ‘L’ to indicate what it is. Similarly, you can display the current column number by turning on Column Number mode with ‘M-x column-number-mode’. The column number is indicated by the letter ‘C’. However, when both of these modes are enabled, the line and column numbers are displayed in parentheses, the line number first, rather than with ‘L’ and ‘C’. For example: ‘(561,2)’. *Note Minor Modes::, for more information about minor modes and about how to use these commands. In Column Number mode, the displayed column number counts from zero starting at the left margin of the window. If you would prefer for the displayed column number to count from one, you may set ‘column-number-indicator-zero-based’ to ‘nil’. If you have narrowed the buffer (*note Narrowing::), the displayed line number is relative to the accessible portion of the buffer. Thus, it isn’t suitable as an argument to ‘goto-line’. (Use ‘what-line’ command to see the line number relative to the whole file.) If the buffer is very large (larger than the value of ‘line-number-display-limit’), Emacs won’t compute the line number, because that would be too slow; therefore, the line number won’t appear on the mode-line. To remove this limit, set ‘line-number-display-limit’ to ‘nil’. Line-number computation can also be slow if the lines in the buffer are too long. For this reason, Emacs doesn’t display line numbers if the average width, in characters, of lines near point is larger than the value of ‘line-number-display-limit-width’. The default value is 200 characters. Emacs can optionally display the time and system load in all mode lines. To enable this feature, type ‘M-x display-time’ or customize the option ‘display-time-mode’. The information added to the mode line looks like this: HH:MMPM L.LL Here HH and MM are the hour and minute, followed always by ‘AM’ or ‘PM’. L.LL is the average number, collected for the last few minutes, of processes in the whole system that were either running or ready to run (i.e., were waiting for an available processor). (Some fields may be missing if your operating system cannot support them.) If you prefer time display in 24-hour format, set the variable ‘display-time-24hr-format’ to ‘t’. The word ‘Mail’ appears after the load level if there is mail for you that you have not read yet. On graphical displays, you can use an icon instead of ‘Mail’ by customizing ‘display-time-use-mail-icon’; this may save some space on the mode line. You can customize ‘display-time-mail-face’ to make the mail indicator prominent. Use ‘display-time-mail-file’ to specify the mail file to check, or set ‘display-time-mail-directory’ to specify the directory to check for incoming mail (any nonempty regular file in the directory is considered to be newly arrived mail). When running Emacs on a laptop computer, you can display the battery charge on the mode-line, by using the command ‘display-battery-mode’ or customizing the variable ‘display-battery-mode’. The variable ‘battery-mode-line-format’ determines the way the battery charge is displayed; the exact mode-line message depends on the operating system, and it usually shows the current battery charge as a percentage of the total charge. On graphical displays, the mode line is drawn as a 3D box. If you don’t like this effect, you can disable it by customizing the ‘mode-line’ face and setting its ‘box’ attribute to ‘nil’. *Note Face Customization::. By default, the mode line of nonselected windows is displayed in a different face, called ‘mode-line-inactive’. Only the selected window is displayed in the ‘mode-line’ face. This helps show which window is selected. When the minibuffer is selected, since it has no mode line, the window from which you activated the minibuffer has its mode line displayed using ‘mode-line’; as a result, ordinary entry to the minibuffer does not change any mode lines. You can disable use of ‘mode-line-inactive’ by setting variable ‘mode-line-in-non-selected-windows’ to ‘nil’; then all mode lines are displayed in the ‘mode-line’ face. You can customize the mode line display for each of the end-of-line formats by setting each of the variables ‘eol-mnemonic-unix’, ‘eol-mnemonic-dos’, ‘eol-mnemonic-mac’, and ‘eol-mnemonic-undecided’ to the strings you prefer. ** 14.19 How Text Is Displayed Most characters are "printing characters": when they appear in a buffer, they are displayed literally on the screen. Printing characters include ASCII numbers, letters, and punctuation characters, as well as many non-ASCII characters. The ASCII character set contains non-printing "control characters". Two of these are displayed specially: the newline character (Unicode code point ‘U+000A’) is displayed by starting a new line, while the tab character (‘U+0009’) is displayed as a space that extends to the next tab stop column (normally every 8 columns). The number of spaces per tab is controlled by the buffer-local variable ‘tab-width’, which must have an integer value between 1 and 1000, inclusive. Note that how the tab character in the buffer is displayed has nothing to do with the definition of as a command. Other ASCII control characters, whose codes are below ‘U+0020’ (octal 40, decimal 32), are displayed as a caret (‘^’) followed by the non-control version of the character, with the ‘escape-glyph’ face. For instance, the ‘control-A’ character, ‘U+0001’, is displayed as ‘^A’. The raw bytes with codes ‘U+0080’ (octal 200) through ‘U+009F’ (octal 237) are displayed as "octal escape sequences", with the ‘escape-glyph’ face. For instance, character code ‘U+0098’ (octal 230) is displayed as ‘\230’. If you change the buffer-local variable ‘ctl-arrow’ to ‘nil’, the ASCII control characters are also displayed as octal escape sequences instead of caret escape sequences. Some non-ASCII characters have the same appearance as an ASCII space or hyphen (minus) character. Such characters can cause problems if they are entered into a buffer without your realization, e.g., by yanking; for instance, source code compilers typically do not treat non-ASCII spaces as whitespace characters. To deal with this problem, Emacs displays such characters specially: it displays ‘U+00A0’ (no-break space) with the ‘nobreak-space’ face, and it displays ‘U+00AD’ (soft hyphen), ‘U+2010’ (hyphen), and ‘U+2011’ (non-breaking hyphen) with the ‘nobreak-hyphen’ face. To disable this, change the variable ‘nobreak-char-display’ to ‘nil’. If you give this variable a non-‘nil’ and non-‘t’ value, Emacs instead displays such characters as a highlighted backslash followed by a space or hyphen. You can customize the way any particular character code is displayed by means of a display table. *Note Display Tables: (elisp)Display Tables. On graphical displays, some characters may have no glyphs in any of the fonts available to Emacs. These "glyphless characters" are normally displayed as boxes containing the hexadecimal character code. Similarly, on text terminals, characters that cannot be displayed using the terminal encoding (*note Terminal Coding::) are normally displayed as question signs. You can control the display method by customizing the variable ‘glyphless-char-display-control’. You can also customize the ‘glyphless-char’ face to make these characters more prominent on display. *Note Glyphless Character Display: (elisp)Glyphless Chars, for details. Emacs tries to determine if the curved quotes ‘‘’ and ‘’’ can be displayed on the current display. By default, if this seems to be so, then Emacs will translate the ASCII quotes (‘`’ and ‘'’), when they appear in messages and help texts, to these curved quotes. You can influence or inhibit this translation by customizing the user option ‘text-quoting-style’ (*note (elisp)Keys in Documentation::). If the curved quotes ‘‘’, ‘’’, ‘“’, and ‘”’ are known to look just like ASCII characters, they are shown with the ‘homoglyph’ face. Curved quotes that are known not to be displayable are shown as their ASCII approximations ‘`’, ‘'’, and ‘"’ with the ‘homoglyph’ face. ** 14.20 Displaying the Cursor On a text terminal, the cursor’s appearance is controlled by the terminal, largely out of the control of Emacs. Some terminals offer two different cursors: a visible static cursor, and a very visible blinking cursor. By default, Emacs uses the very visible cursor, and switches to it when you start or resume Emacs. If the variable ‘visible-cursor’ is ‘nil’ when Emacs starts or resumes, it uses the normal cursor. On a graphical display, many more properties of the text cursor can be altered. To customize its color, change the ‘:background’ attribute of the face named ‘cursor’ (*note Face Customization::). (The other attributes of this face have no effect; the text shown under the cursor is drawn using the frame’s background color.) To change its shape, customize the buffer-local variable ‘cursor-type’; possible values are ‘box’ (the default), ‘hollow’ (a hollow box), ‘bar’ (a vertical bar), ‘(bar . N)’ (a vertical bar N pixels wide), ‘hbar’ (a horizontal bar), ‘(hbar . N)’ (a horizontal bar N pixels tall), or ‘nil’ (no cursor at all). By default, the cursor stops blinking after 10 blinks, if Emacs does not get any input during that time; any input event restarts the count. You can customize the variable ‘blink-cursor-blinks’ to control that: its value says how many times to blink without input before stopping. Setting that variable to a zero or negative value will make the cursor blink forever. To disable cursor blinking altogether, change the variable ‘blink-cursor-mode’ to ‘nil’ (*note Easy Customization::), or add the line (blink-cursor-mode 0) to your init file. Alternatively, you can change how the cursor looks when it blinks off by customizing the list variable ‘blink-cursor-alist’. Each element in the list should have the form ‘(ON-TYPE . OFF-TYPE)’; this means that if the cursor is displayed as ON-TYPE when it blinks on (where ON-TYPE is one of the cursor types described above), then it is displayed as OFF-TYPE when it blinks off. Some characters, such as tab characters, are extra wide. When the cursor is positioned over such a character, it is normally drawn with the default character width. You can make the cursor stretch to cover wide characters, by changing the variable ‘x-stretch-cursor’ to a non-‘nil’ value. The cursor normally appears in non-selected windows as a non-blinking hollow box. (For a bar cursor, it instead appears as a thinner bar.) To turn off cursors in non-selected windows, change the variable ‘cursor-in-non-selected-windows’ to ‘nil’. To make the cursor even more visible, you can use HL Line mode, a minor mode that highlights the line containing point. Use ‘M-x hl-line-mode’ to enable or disable it in the current buffer. ‘M-x global-hl-line-mode’ enables or disables the same mode globally. ** 14.21 Line Truncation As an alternative to continuation (*note Continuation Lines::), Emacs can display long lines by "truncation". This means that all the characters that do not fit in the width of the screen or window do not appear at all. On graphical displays, a small straight arrow in the fringe indicates truncation at either end of the line. On text terminals, this is indicated with ‘$’ signs in the rightmost and/or leftmost columns. Horizontal scrolling automatically causes line truncation (*note Horizontal Scrolling::). You can explicitly enable line truncation for a particular buffer with the command ‘M-x toggle-truncate-lines’. This works by locally changing the variable ‘truncate-lines’. If that variable is non-‘nil’, long lines are truncated; if it is ‘nil’, they are continued onto multiple screen lines. Setting the variable ‘truncate-lines’ in any way makes it local to the current buffer; until that time, the default value, which is normally ‘nil’, is in effect. If a split window becomes too narrow, Emacs may automatically enable line truncation. *Note Split Window::, for the variable ‘truncate-partial-width-windows’ which controls this. ** 14.22 Visual Line Mode Another alternative to ordinary line continuation is to use "word wrap". Here, each long logical line is divided into two or more screen lines, like in ordinary line continuation. However, Emacs attempts to wrap the line at word boundaries near the right window edge. (If the line’s direction is right-to-left, it is wrapped at the left window edge instead.) This makes the text easier to read, as wrapping does not occur in the middle of words. Word wrap is enabled by Visual Line mode, an optional minor mode. To turn on Visual Line mode in the current buffer, type ‘M-x visual-line-mode’; repeating this command turns it off. You can also turn on Visual Line mode using the menu bar: in the Options menu, select the ‘Line Wrapping in this Buffer’ submenu, followed by the ‘Word Wrap (Visual Line mode)’ menu item. While Visual Line mode is enabled, the mode line shows the string ‘wrap’ in the mode display. The command ‘M-x global-visual-line-mode’ toggles Visual Line mode in all buffers. In Visual Line mode, some editing commands work on screen lines instead of logical lines: ‘C-a’ (‘beginning-of-visual-line’) moves to the beginning of the screen line, ‘C-e’ (‘end-of-visual-line’) moves to the end of the screen line, and ‘C-k’ (‘kill-visual-line’) kills text to the end of the screen line. To move by logical lines, use the commands ‘M-x next-logical-line’ and ‘M-x previous-logical-line’. These move point to the next logical line and the previous logical line respectively, regardless of whether Visual Line mode is enabled. If you use these commands frequently, it may be convenient to assign key bindings to them. *Note Init Rebinding::. By default, word-wrapped lines do not display fringe indicators. Visual Line mode is often used to edit files that contain many long logical lines, so having a fringe indicator for each wrapped line would be visually distracting. You can change this by customizing the variable ‘visual-line-fringe-indicators’. ** 14.23 Customization of Display This section describes variables that control miscellaneous aspects of the appearance of the Emacs screen. Beginning users can skip it. If you want to have Emacs display line numbers for every line in the buffer, customize the buffer-local variable ‘display-line-numbers’; it is ‘nil’ by default. This variable can have several different values to support various modes of line-number display: ‘t’ Display (an absolute) line number before each non-continuation screen line that displays buffer text. If the line is a continuation line, or if the entire screen line displays a display or an overlay string, that line will not be numbered. ‘relative’ Display relative line numbers before non-continuation lines which show buffer text. The line numbers are relative to the line showing point, so the numbers grow both up and down as lines become farther from the current line. ‘visual’ This value causes Emacs to count lines visually: only lines actually shown on the display will be counted (disregarding any lines in invisible parts of text), and lines which wrap to consume more than one screen line will be numbered that many times. The displayed numbers are relative, as with ‘relative’ value above. This is handy in modes that fold text, such as Outline mode (*note Outline Mode::), and when you need to move by exact number of screen lines. anything else Any other non-‘nil’ value is treated as ‘t’. The command ‘M-x display-line-numbers-mode’ provides a convenient way to turn on display of line numbers. This mode has a globalized variant, ‘global-display-line-numbers-mode’. The user option ‘display-line-numbers-type’ controls which sub-mode of line-number display, described above, will these modes activate. Note that line numbers are not displayed in the minibuffer and in the tooltips, even if you turn on ‘display-line-numbers-mode’ globally. When Emacs displays relative line numbers, you can control the number displayed before the current line, the line showing point. By default, Emacs displays the absolute number of the current line there, even though all the other line numbers are relative. If you customize the variable ‘display-line-numbers-current-absolute’ to a ‘nil’ value, the number displayed for the current line will be zero. This is handy if you don’t care about the number of the current line, and want to leave more horizontal space for text in large buffers. In a narrowed buffer (*note Narrowing::) lines are normally numbered starting at the beginning of the narrowing. However, if you customize the variable ‘display-line-numbers-widen’ to a non-‘nil’ value, line numbers will disregard any narrowing and will start at the first character of the buffer. In selective display mode (*note Selective Display::), and other modes that hide many lines from display (such as Outline and Org modes), you may wish to customize the variables ‘display-line-numbers-width-start’ and ‘display-line-numbers-grow-only’, or set ‘display-line-numbers-width’ to a large enough value, to avoid occasional miscalculations of space reserved for the line numbers. The line numbers are displayed in a special face ‘line-number’. The current line number is displayed in a different face, ‘line-number-current-line’, so you can make the current line’s number have a distinct appearance, which will help locating the line showing point. If the variable ‘visible-bell’ is non-‘nil’, Emacs attempts to make the whole screen blink when it would normally make an audible bell sound. This variable has no effect if your terminal does not have a way to make the screen blink. The variable ‘echo-keystrokes’ controls the echoing of multi-character keys; its value is the number of seconds of pause required to cause echoing to start, or zero, meaning don’t echo at all. The value takes effect when there is something to echo. *Note Echo Area::. On graphical displays, Emacs displays the mouse pointer as an hourglass if Emacs is busy. To disable this feature, set the variable ‘display-hourglass’ to ‘nil’. The variable ‘hourglass-delay’ determines the number of seconds of busy time before the hourglass is shown; the default is 1. If the mouse pointer lies inside an Emacs frame, Emacs makes it invisible each time you type a character to insert text, to prevent it from obscuring the text. (To be precise, the hiding occurs when you type a self-inserting character. *Note Inserting Text::.) Moving the mouse pointer makes it visible again. To disable this feature, set the variable ‘make-pointer-invisible’ to ‘nil’. On graphical displays, the variable ‘underline-minimum-offset’ determines the minimum distance between the baseline and underline, in pixels, for underlined text. By default, the value is 1; increasing it may improve the legibility of underlined text for certain fonts. (However, Emacs will never draw the underline below the current line area.) The variable ‘x-underline-at-descent-line’ determines how to draw underlined text. The default is ‘nil’, which means to draw it at the baseline level of the font; if you change it to ‘t’, Emacs draws the underline at the same height as the font’s descent line. (If non-default line spacing was specified for the underlined text, see *note (elisp)Line Height::, Emacs draws the underline below the additional spacing.) The variable ‘overline-margin’ specifies the vertical position of an overline above the text, including the height of the overline itself, in pixels; the default is 2. On some text terminals, bold face and inverse video together result in text that is hard to read. Call the function ‘tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors’ with a non-‘nil’ argument to suppress the effect of bold-face in this case. Raw bytes are displayed in octal format by default, for example a byte with a decimal value of 128 is displayed as ‘\200’. To change display to the hexadecimal format of ‘\x80’, set the variable ‘display-raw-bytes-as-hex’ to ‘t’. * 15 Searching and Replacement Like other editors, Emacs has commands to search for occurrences of a string. Emacs also has commands to replace occurrences of a string with a different string. There are also commands that do the same thing, but search for patterns instead of fixed strings. You can also search multiple files under the control of ‘xref’ (*note Identifier Search::) or through the Dired ‘A’ command (*note Operating on Files::), or ask the ‘grep’ program to do it (*note Grep Searching::). + Menu: - Incremental Search:: Search happens as you type the string. - Nonincremental Search:: Specify entire string and then search. - Word Search:: Search for sequence of words. - Symbol Search:: Search for a source code symbol. - Regexp Search:: Search for match for a regexp. - Regexps:: Syntax of regular expressions. - Regexp Backslash:: Regular expression constructs starting with ‘\’. - Regexp Example:: A complex regular expression explained. - Lax Search:: Search ignores some distinctions among similar characters, like letter-case. - Replace:: Search, and replace some or all matches. - Other Repeating Search:: Operating on all matches for some regexp. - Search Customizations:: Various search customizations. ** 15.1 Incremental Search The principal search command in Emacs is "incremental": it begins searching as soon as you type the first character of the search string. As you type in the search string, Emacs shows you where the string (as you have typed it so far) would be found. When you have typed enough characters to identify the place you want, you can stop. Depending on what you plan to do next, you may or may not need to terminate the search explicitly with . ‘C-s’ Incremental search forward (‘isearch-forward’). ‘C-r’ Incremental search backward (‘isearch-backward’). You can also invoke incremental search from the menu bar’s ‘Edit->Search’ menu. + Menu: - Basic Isearch:: Basic incremental search commands. - Repeat Isearch:: Searching for the same string again. - Isearch Yank:: Commands that grab text into the search string or else edit the search string. - Error in Isearch:: When your string is not found. - Special Isearch:: Special input in incremental search. - Not Exiting Isearch:: Prefix argument and scrolling commands. - Isearch Minibuffer:: Incremental search of the minibuffer history. *** 15.1.1 Basics of Incremental Search ‘C-s’ Begin incremental search (‘isearch-forward’). ‘C-r’ Begin reverse incremental search (‘isearch-backward’). ‘C-s’ (‘isearch-forward’) starts a forward incremental search. It reads characters from the keyboard, and moves point just past the end of the next occurrence of those characters in the buffer. For instance, if you type ‘C-s’ and then ‘F’, that puts the cursor after the first ‘F’ that occurs in the buffer after the starting point. If you then type ‘O’, the cursor moves to just after the first ‘FO’; the ‘F’ in that ‘FO’ might not be the first ‘F’ previously found. After another ‘O’, the cursor moves to just after the first ‘FOO’. At each step, Emacs highlights the "current match"—the buffer text that matches the search string—using the ‘isearch’ face (*note Faces::). *Note Search Customizations::, for various options that customize this highlighting. The current search string is also displayed in the echo area. If you make a mistake typing the search string, type . Each cancels the last character of the search string. *Note Error in Isearch::, for more about dealing with unsuccessful search. When you are satisfied with the place you have reached, type . This stops searching, leaving the cursor where the search brought it. Also, any command not specially meaningful in searches stops the searching and is then executed. Thus, typing ‘C-a’ exits the search and then moves to the beginning of the line; typing one of the arrow keys exits the search and performs the respective movement command; etc. is necessary only if the next command you want to type is a printing character, , , or another character that is special within searches (‘C-q’, ‘C-w’, ‘C-r’, ‘C-s’, ‘C-y’, ‘M-y’, ‘M-r’, ‘M-c’, ‘M-e’, and some others described below). You can fine-tune the commands that exit the search; see *note Not Exiting Isearch::. As a special exception, entering when the search string is empty launches nonincremental search (*note Nonincremental Search::). (This can be customized; see *note Search Customizations::.) To abandon the search and return to the place where you started, type ‘ ’ (‘isearch-cancel’) or ‘C-g C-g’ (‘isearch-abort’). When you exit the incremental search, it adds the original value of point to the mark ring, without activating the mark; you can thus use ‘C-u C-’ or ‘C-x C-x’ to return to where you were before beginning the search. *Note Mark Ring::. (Emacs only does this if the mark was not already active; if the mark was active when you started the search, both ‘C-u C-’ and ‘C-x C-x’ will go to the mark.) To search backwards, use ‘C-r’ (‘isearch-backward’) instead of ‘C-s’ to start the search. A backward search finds matches that end before the starting point, just as a forward search finds matches that begin after it. *** 15.1.2 Repeating Incremental Search Suppose you search forward for ‘FOO’ and find a match, but not the one you expected to find: the ‘FOO’ you were aiming for occurs later in the buffer. In this event, type another ‘C-s’ to move to the next occurrence of the search string. You can repeat this any number of times. If you overshoot, you can cancel some ‘C-s’ characters with . Similarly, each ‘C-r’ in a backward incremental search repeats the backward search. If you pause for a little while during incremental search, Emacs highlights all the other possible matches for the search string that are present on the screen. This helps you anticipate where you can get to by typing ‘C-s’ or ‘C-r’ to repeat the search. The other matches are highlighted differently from the current match, using the customizable face ‘lazy-highlight’ (*note Faces::). If you don’t like this feature, you can disable it by setting ‘isearch-lazy-highlight’ to ‘nil’. For other customizations related to highlighting matches, see *note Search Customizations::. After exiting a search, you can search for the same string again by typing just ‘C-s C-s’. The first ‘C-s’ is the key that invokes incremental search, and the second ‘C-s’ means to search again for the last search string. Similarly, ‘C-r C-r’ searches backward for the last search string. In determining the last search string, it doesn’t matter whether that string was searched for with ‘C-s’ or ‘C-r’. If you are searching forward but you realize you were looking for something before the starting point, type ‘C-r’ to switch to a backward search, leaving the search string unchanged. Similarly, ‘C-s’ in a backward search switches to a forward search. If a search is failing and you ask to repeat it by typing another ‘C-s’, it starts again from the beginning of the buffer. Repeating a failing reverse search with ‘C-r’ starts again from the end. This is called "wrapping around", and ‘Wrapped’ appears in the search prompt once this has happened. If you keep on going past the original starting point of the search, it changes to ‘Overwrapped’, which means that you are revisiting matches that you have already seen. To reuse earlier search strings, use the "search ring". The commands ‘M-p’ and ‘M-n’ move through the ring to pick a search string to reuse. These commands leave the selected search ring element in the minibuffer, where you can edit it. Type ‘C-s’/‘C-r’ or to accept the string and start searching for it. The number of most recently used search strings saved in the search ring is specified by the variable ‘search-ring-max’, 16 by default. To edit the current search string in the minibuffer without replacing it with items from the search ring, type ‘M-e’ or click ‘mouse-1’ in the minibuffer. Type , ‘C-s’ or ‘C-r’ to finish editing the string and search for it. Type ‘C-f’ or ‘’ to add to the search string characters following point from the buffer from which you started the search. *** 15.1.3 Isearch Yanking In many cases, you will want to use text at or near point as your search string. The commands described in this subsection let you do that conveniently. ‘C-w’ (‘isearch-yank-word-or-char’) appends the next character or word at point to the search string. This is an easy way to search for another occurrence of the text at point. (The decision of whether to copy a character or a word is heuristic.) Similarly, ‘M-s C-e’ (‘isearch-yank-line’) appends the rest of the current line to the search string. If point is already at the end of a line, it appends the next line. With a prefix argument N, it appends the next N lines. Within incremental search, ‘C-y’ (‘isearch-yank-kill’) appends the current kill to the search string. ‘M-y’ (‘isearch-yank-pop’), if called after ‘C-y’, replaces that appended text with an earlier kill, similar to the usual ‘M-y’ (‘yank-pop’) command (*note Yanking::). Clicking ‘mouse-2’ in the echo area appends the current X selection (*note Primary Selection::) to the search string (‘isearch-yank-x-selection’). ‘C-M-w’ (‘isearch-del-char’) deletes the last character from the search string, and ‘C-M-y’ (‘isearch-yank-char’) appends the character after point to the search string. An alternative method to add the character after point is to enter the minibuffer with ‘M-e’ (*note Repeat Isearch::) and type ‘C-f’ or ‘’ at the end of the search string in the minibuffer. Each ‘C-f’ or ‘’ you type adds another character following point to the search string. Normally, when the search is case-insensitive, text yanked into the search string is converted to lower case, so that the search remains case-insensitive (*note case folding: Lax Search.). However, if the value of the variable ‘search-upper-case’ (*note search-upper-case: Lax Search.) is other than ‘not-yanks’, that disables this down-casing. *** 15.1.4 Errors in Incremental Search If your string is not found at all, the echo area says ‘Failing I-Search’, and the cursor moves past the place where Emacs found as much of your string as it could. Thus, if you search for ‘FOOT’, and there is no ‘FOOT’, you might see the cursor after the ‘FOO’ in ‘FOOL’. In the echo area, the part of the search string that failed to match is highlighted using the face ‘isearch-fail’. At this point, there are several things you can do. If your string was mistyped, you can use to erase some of it and correct it, or you can type ‘M-e’ and edit it. If you like the place you have found, you can type to remain there. Or you can type ‘C-g’, which removes from the search string the characters that could not be found (the ‘T’ in ‘FOOT’), leaving those that were found (the ‘FOO’ in ‘FOOT’). A second ‘C-g’ at that point cancels the search entirely, returning point to where it was when the search started. The quit command, ‘C-g’, does special things during searches; just what it does depends on the status of the search. If the search has found what you specified and is waiting for input, ‘C-g’ cancels the entire search, moving the cursor back to where you started the search. If ‘C-g’ is typed when there are characters in the search string that have not been found—because Emacs is still searching for them, or because it has failed to find them—then the search string characters which have not been found are discarded from the search string. With them gone, the search is now successful and waiting for more input, so a second ‘C-g’ will cancel the entire search. *** 15.1.5 Special Input for Incremental Search In addition to characters described in the previous subsections, some of the other characters you type during incremental search have special effects. They are described here. To toggle lax space matching (*note lax space matching: Lax Search.), type ‘M-s ’. To toggle case sensitivity of the search, type ‘M-c’ or ‘M-s c’. *Note case folding: Lax Search. If the search string includes upper-case letters, the search is case-sensitive by default. To toggle whether or not the search will consider similar and equivalent characters as a match, type ‘M-s '’. *Note character folding: Lax Search. If the search string includes accented characters, that disables character folding during that search. To toggle whether or not invisible text is searched, type ‘M-s i’ (‘isearch-toggle-invisible’). *Note Outline Search::. To toggle between non-regexp and regexp incremental search, type ‘M-r’ or ‘M-s r’ (‘isearch-toggle-regexp’). *Note Regexp Search::. To toggle symbol mode, type ‘M-s _’. *Note Symbol Search::. To search for a newline character, type ‘C-j’ as part of the search string. To search for non-ASCII characters, use one of the following methods: • Type ‘C-q’, followed by a non-graphic character or a sequence of octal digits. This adds a character to the search string, similar to inserting into a buffer using ‘C-q’ (*note Inserting Text::). For example, ‘C-q C-s’ during incremental search adds the ‘control-S’ character to the search string. • Type ‘C-x 8 ’, followed by a Unicode name or code-point in hex. This adds the specified character into the search string, similar to the usual ‘insert-char’ command (*note Inserting Text::). • Use an input method (*note Input Methods::). If an input method is enabled in the current buffer when you start the search, the same method will be active in the minibuffer when you type the search string. While typing the search string, you can toggle the input method with ‘C-\’ (‘isearch-toggle-input-method’). You can also turn on a non-default input method with ‘C-^’ (‘isearch-toggle-specified-input-method’), which prompts for the name of the input method. When an input method is active during incremental search, the search prompt includes the input method mnemonic, like this: I-search [IM]: where IM is the mnemonic of the active input method. Any input method you enable during incremental search remains enabled in the current buffer afterwards. Typing ‘M-s o’ in incremental search invokes ‘isearch-occur’, which runs ‘occur’ with the current search string. *Note occur: Other Repeating Search. Typing ‘M-%’ in incremental search invokes ‘query-replace’ or ‘query-replace-regexp’ (depending on search mode) with the current search string used as the string to replace. A negative prefix argument means to replace backward. *Note Query Replace::. Typing ‘M-’ in incremental search invokes ‘isearch-complete’, which attempts to complete the search string using the search ring (the previous search strings you used) as a list of completion alternatives. *Note Completion::. In many operating systems, the ‘M-’ key sequence is captured by the window manager; you then need to rebind ‘isearch-complete’ to another key sequence if you want to use it (*note Rebinding::). You can exit the search while leaving the matches for the last search string highlighted on display. To this end, type ‘M-s h r’ (‘isearch-highlight-regexp’), which will run ‘highlight-regexp’ (*note Highlight Interactively::) passing it the regexp derived from the last search string and prompting you for the face to use for highlighting. To remove the highlighting, type ‘M-s h u’ (‘unhighlight-regexp’). When incremental search is active, you can type ‘C-h C-h’ (‘isearch-help-map’) to access interactive help options, including a list of special key bindings. These key bindings are part of the keymap ‘isearch-mode-map’ (*note Keymaps::). *** 15.1.6 Not Exiting Incremental Search This subsection describes how to control whether typing a command not specifically meaningful in searches exits the search before executing the command. It also describes two categories of commands which you can type without exiting the current incremental search, even though they are not themselves part of incremental search. Normally, typing a command that is not bound by the incremental search exits the search before executing the command. Thus, the command operates on the buffer from which you invoked the search. However, if you customize the variable ‘search-exit-option’ to ‘nil’, the characters which you type that are not interpreted by the incremental search are simply appended to the search string. This is so you could include in the search string control characters, such as ‘C-a’, that would normally exit the search and invoke the command bound to them on the buffer. Prefix Arguments In incremental search, when you type a command that specifies a prefix argument (*note Arguments::), by default it will apply either to the next action in the search or to the command that exits the search. In other words, entering a prefix argument will not by itself terminate the search. In previous versions of Emacs, entering a prefix argument always terminated the search. You can revert to this behavior by setting the variable ‘isearch-allow-prefix’ to ‘nil’. When ‘isearch-allow-scroll’ is non-‘nil’ (see below), prefix arguments always have the default behavior described above, i.e., they don’t terminate the search, even if ‘isearch-allow-prefix’ is ‘nil’. Scrolling Commands Normally, scrolling commands exit incremental search. If you change the variable ‘isearch-allow-scroll’ to a non-‘nil’ value, that enables the use of the scroll-bar, as well as keyboard scrolling commands like ‘C-v’, ‘M-v’, and ‘C-l’ (*note Scrolling::). This applies only to calling these commands via their bound key sequences—typing ‘M-x’ will still exit the search. You can give prefix arguments to these commands in the usual way. This feature won’t let you scroll the current match out of visibility, however. The ‘isearch-allow-scroll’ feature also affects some other commands, such as ‘C-x 2’ (‘split-window-below’) and ‘C-x ^’ (‘enlarge-window’), which don’t exactly scroll but do affect where the text appears on the screen. It applies to any command whose name has a non-‘nil’ ‘isearch-scroll’ property. So you can control which commands are affected by changing these properties. For example, to make ‘C-h l’ usable within an incremental search in all future Emacs sessions, use ‘C-h c’ to find what command it runs (*note Key Help::), which is ‘view-lossage’. Then you can put the following line in your init file (*note Init File::): (put 'view-lossage 'isearch-scroll t) This feature can be applied to any command that doesn’t permanently change point, the buffer contents, the match data, the current buffer, or the selected window and frame. The command must not itself attempt an incremental search. This feature is disabled if ‘isearch-allow-scroll’ is ‘nil’ (which it is by default). *** 15.1.7 Searching the Minibuffer If you start an incremental search while the minibuffer is active, Emacs searches the contents of the minibuffer. Unlike searching an ordinary buffer, the search string is not shown in the echo area, because that is used to display the minibuffer. If an incremental search fails in the minibuffer, it tries searching the minibuffer history. *Note Minibuffer History::. You can visualize the minibuffer and its history as a series of pages, with the earliest history element on the first page and the current minibuffer on the last page. A forward search, ‘C-s’, searches forward to later pages; a reverse search, ‘C-r’, searches backwards to earlier pages. Like in ordinary buffer search, a failing search can wrap around, going from the last page to the first page or vice versa. When the current match is on a history element, that history element is pulled into the minibuffer. If you exit the incremental search normally (e.g., by typing ), it remains in the minibuffer afterwards. Canceling the search, with ‘C-g’, restores the contents of the minibuffer when you began the search. ** 15.2 Nonincremental Search Emacs also has conventional nonincremental search commands, which require you to type the entire search string before searching begins. ‘C-s STRING ’ Search for STRING. ‘C-r STRING ’ Search backward for STRING. To start a nonincremental search, first type ‘C-s ’. This enters the minibuffer to read the search string; terminate the string with , and then the search takes place. If the string is not found, the search command signals an error. When you type ‘C-s ’, the ‘C-s’ invokes incremental search as usual. That command is specially programmed to invoke the command for nonincremental search, if the string you specify is empty. (Such an empty argument would otherwise be useless.) ‘C-r ’ does likewise, invoking the nonincremental backward-searching command. Nonincremental search can also be invoked from the menu bar’s ‘Edit->Search’ menu. You can also use two simpler commands, ‘M-x search-forward’ and ‘M-x search-backward’. These commands look for the literal strings you specify, and don’t support any of the lax-search features (*note Lax Search::) except case folding. ** 15.3 Word Search A "word search" finds a sequence of words without regard to the type of punctuation between them. For instance, if you enter a search string that consists of two words separated by a single space, the search matches any sequence of those two words separated by one or more spaces, newlines, or other punctuation characters. This is particularly useful for searching text documents, because you don’t have to worry whether the words you are looking for are separated by newlines or spaces. Note that major modes for programming languages or other specialized modes can modify the definition of a word to suit their syntactic needs. ‘M-s w’ If incremental search is active, toggle word search mode (‘isearch-toggle-word’); otherwise, begin an incremental forward word search (‘isearch-forward-word’). ‘M-s w WORDS ’ Search for WORDS, using a forward nonincremental word search. ‘M-s w C-r WORDS ’ Search backward for WORDS, using a nonincremental word search. ‘M-s M-w’ Search the Web for the text in region. To begin a forward incremental word search, type ‘M-s w’. If incremental search is not already active, this runs the command ‘isearch-forward-word’. If incremental search is already active (whether a forward or backward search), ‘M-s w’ switches to a word search while keeping the direction of the search and the current search string unchanged. You can toggle word search back off by typing ‘M-s w’ again. To begin a nonincremental word search, type ‘M-s w ’ for a forward search, or ‘M-s w C-r ’ for a backward search. These run the commands ‘word-search-forward’ and ‘word-search-backward’ respectively. Incremental and nonincremental word searches differ slightly in the way they find a match. In a nonincremental word search, each word in the search string must exactly match a whole word. In an incremental word search, the matching is more lax: while you are typing the search string, its first and last words need not match whole words. This is so that the matching can proceed incrementally as you type. This additional laxity does not apply to the lazy highlight (*note Incremental Search::), which always matches whole words. While you are typing the search string, ‘Pending’ appears in the search prompt until you use a search repeating key like ‘C-s’. The word search commands don’t perform character folding, and toggling lax whitespace matching (*note lax space matching: Lax Search.) has no effect on them. To search the Web for the text in region, type ‘M-s M-w’. This command performs an Internet search for the words in region using the search engine whose URL is specified by the variable ‘eww-search-prefix’ (*note EWW: (eww)Basics.). If the region is not active, or doesn’t contain any words, this command prompts the user for a URL or keywords to search. ** 15.4 Symbol Search A "symbol search" is much like an ordinary search, except that the boundaries of the search must match the boundaries of a symbol. The meaning of "symbol" in this context depends on the major mode, and usually refers to a source code token, such as a Lisp symbol in Emacs Lisp mode. For instance, if you perform an incremental symbol search for the Lisp symbol ‘forward-word’, it would not match ‘isearch-forward-word’. This feature is thus mainly useful for searching source code. ‘M-s _’ If incremental search is active, toggle symbol search mode (‘isearch-toggle-symbol’); otherwise, begin an incremental forward symbol search (‘isearch-forward-symbol’). ‘M-s .’ Start a symbol incremental search forward with the symbol found near point added to the search string initially. ‘M-s _ SYMBOL ’ Search forward for SYMBOL, nonincrementally. ‘M-s _ C-r SYMBOL ’ Search backward for SYMBOL, nonincrementally. To begin a forward incremental symbol search, type ‘M-s _’ (or ‘M-s .’ if the symbol to search is near point). If incremental search is not already active, this runs the command ‘isearch-forward-symbol’. If incremental search is already active, ‘M-s _’ switches to a symbol search, preserving the direction of the search and the current search string; you can disable symbol search by typing ‘M-s _’ again. In incremental symbol search, while you are typing the search string, only the beginning of the search string is required to match the beginning of a symbol, and ‘Pending’ appears in the search prompt until you use a search repeating key like ‘C-s’. To begin a nonincremental symbol search, type ‘M-s _ ’ for a forward search, or ‘M-s _ C-r ’ or a backward search. In nonincremental symbol searches, the beginning and end of the search string are required to match the beginning and end of a symbol, respectively. The symbol search commands don’t perform character folding, and toggling lax whitespace matching (*note lax space matching: Lax Search.) has no effect on them. ** 15.5 Regular Expression Search A "regular expression" (or "regexp" for short) is a pattern that denotes a class of alternative strings to match. Emacs provides both incremental and nonincremental ways to search for a match for a regexp. The syntax of regular expressions is explained in the next section. ‘C-M-s’ Begin incremental regexp search (‘isearch-forward-regexp’). ‘C-M-r’ Begin reverse incremental regexp search (‘isearch-backward-regexp’). Incremental search for a regexp is done by typing ‘C-M-s’ (‘isearch-forward-regexp’), by invoking ‘C-s’ with a prefix argument (whose value does not matter), or by typing ‘M-r’ within a forward incremental search. This command reads a search string incrementally just like ‘C-s’, but it treats the search string as a regexp rather than looking for an exact match against the text in the buffer. Each time you add text to the search string, you make the regexp longer, and the new regexp is searched for. To search backward for a regexp, use ‘C-M-r’ (‘isearch-backward-regexp’), ‘C-r’ with a prefix argument, or ‘M-r’ within a backward incremental search. All of the special key sequences in an ordinary incremental search (*note Special Isearch::) do similar things in an incremental regexp search. For instance, typing ‘C-s’ immediately after starting the search retrieves the last incremental search regexp used and searches forward for it. Incremental regexp and non-regexp searches have independent defaults. They also have separate search rings, which you can access with ‘M-p’ and ‘M-n’. The maximum number of search regexps saved in the search ring is determined by the value of ‘regexp-search-ring-max’, 16 by default. Unlike ordinary incremental search, incremental regexp search does not use lax space matching by default. To toggle this feature use ‘M-s ’ (‘isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace’). Then any typed in incremental regexp search will match any sequence of one or more whitespace characters. The variable ‘search-whitespace-regexp’ specifies the regexp for the lax space matching. *Note Special Isearch::. Also unlike ordinary incremental search, incremental regexp search cannot use character folding (*note Lax Search::). (If you toggle character folding during incremental regexp search with ‘M-s '’, the search becomes a non-regexp search and the search pattern you typed is interpreted as a literal string.) In some cases, adding characters to the regexp in an incremental regexp search can make the cursor move back and start again. For example, if you have searched for ‘foo’ and you add ‘\|bar’, the cursor backs up in case the first ‘bar’ precedes the first ‘foo’. *Note Regexps::. Forward and backward regexp search are not symmetrical, because regexp matching in Emacs always operates forward, starting with the beginning of the regexp. Thus, forward regexp search scans forward, trying a forward match at each possible starting position. Backward regexp search scans backward, trying a forward match at each possible starting position. These search methods are not mirror images. Nonincremental search for a regexp is done with the commands ‘re-search-forward’ and ‘re-search-backward’. You can invoke these with ‘M-x’, or by way of incremental regexp search with ‘C-M-s ’ and ‘C-M-r ’. When you invoke these commands with ‘M-x’, they search for the exact regexp you specify, and thus don’t support any lax-search features (*note Lax Search::) except case folding. If you use the incremental regexp search commands with a prefix argument, they perform ordinary string search, like ‘isearch-forward’ and ‘isearch-backward’. *Note Incremental Search::. ** 15.6 Syntax of Regular Expressions This section (and this manual in general) describes regular expression features that users typically use. *Note (elisp)Regular Expressions::, for additional features used mainly in Lisp programs. Regular expressions have a syntax in which a few characters are special constructs and the rest are "ordinary". An ordinary character matches that same character and nothing else. The special characters are ‘$^.*+?[\’. The character ‘]’ is special if it ends a character alternative (see below). The character ‘-’ is special inside a character alternative. Any other character appearing in a regular expression is ordinary, unless a ‘\’ precedes it. (When you use regular expressions in a Lisp program, each ‘\’ must be doubled, see the example near the end of this section.) For example, ‘f’ is not a special character, so it is ordinary, and therefore ‘f’ is a regular expression that matches the string ‘f’ and no other string. (It does _not_ match the string ‘ff’.) Likewise, ‘o’ is a regular expression that matches only ‘o’. (When case distinctions are being ignored, these regexps also match ‘F’ and ‘O’, but we consider this a generalization of “the same string”, rather than an exception.) Any two regular expressions A and B can be concatenated. The result is a regular expression which matches a string if A matches some amount of the beginning of that string and B matches the rest of the string. As a trivial example, concatenating the regular expressions ‘f’ and ‘o’ gives the regular expression ‘fo’, which matches only the string ‘fo’. To do something less trivial, you need to use one of the special characters. Here is a list of them. ‘.’ (Period) is a special character that matches any single character except a newline. For example, the regular expressions ‘a.b’ matches any three-character string that begins with ‘a’ and ends with ‘b’. ‘*’ is not a construct by itself; it is a postfix operator that means to match the preceding regular expression repetitively any number of times, as many times as possible. Thus, ‘o*’ matches any number of ‘o’s, including no ‘o’s. ‘*’ always applies to the _smallest_ possible preceding expression. Thus, ‘fo*’ has a repeating ‘o’, not a repeating ‘fo’. It matches ‘f’, ‘fo’, ‘foo’, and so on. The matcher processes a ‘*’ construct by matching, immediately, as many repetitions as can be found. Then it continues with the rest of the pattern. If that fails, backtracking occurs, discarding some of the matches of the ‘*’-modified construct in case that makes it possible to match the rest of the pattern. For example, in matching ‘ca*ar’ against the string ‘caaar’, the ‘a*’ first tries to match all three ‘a’s; but the rest of the pattern is ‘ar’ and there is only ‘r’ left to match, so this try fails. The next alternative is for ‘a*’ to match only two ‘a’s. With this choice, the rest of the regexp matches successfully. ‘+’ is a postfix operator, similar to ‘*’ except that it must match the preceding expression at least once. Thus, ‘ca+r’ matches the strings ‘car’ and ‘caaaar’ but not the string ‘cr’, whereas ‘ca*r’ matches all three strings. ‘?’ is a postfix operator, similar to ‘*’ except that it can match the preceding expression either once or not at all. Thus, ‘ca?r’ matches ‘car’ or ‘cr’, and nothing else. ‘*?’, ‘+?’, ‘??’ are non-"greedy" variants of the operators above. The normal operators ‘*’, ‘+’, ‘?’ match as much as they can, as long as the overall regexp can still match. With a following ‘?’, they will match as little as possible. Thus, both ‘ab*’ and ‘ab*?’ can match the string ‘a’ and the string ‘abbbb’; but if you try to match them both against the text ‘abbb’, ‘ab*’ will match it all (the longest valid match), while ‘ab*?’ will match just ‘a’ (the shortest valid match). Non-greedy operators match the shortest possible string starting at a given starting point; in a forward search, though, the earliest possible starting point for match is always the one chosen. Thus, if you search for ‘a.*?$’ against the text ‘abbab’ followed by a newline, it matches the whole string. Since it _can_ match starting at the first ‘a’, it does. ‘\{N\}’ is a postfix operator specifying N repetitions—that is, the preceding regular expression must match exactly N times in a row. For example, ‘x\{4\}’ matches the string ‘xxxx’ and nothing else. ‘\{N,M\}’ is a postfix operator specifying between N and M repetitions—that is, the preceding regular expression must match at least N times, but no more than M times. If M is omitted, then there is no upper limit, but the preceding regular expression must match at least N times. ‘\{0,1\}’ is equivalent to ‘?’. ‘\{0,\}’ is equivalent to ‘*’. ‘\{1,\}’ is equivalent to ‘+’. ‘[ … ]’ is a "character set", beginning with ‘[’ and terminated by ‘]’. In the simplest case, the characters between the two brackets are what this set can match. Thus, ‘[ad]’ matches either one ‘a’ or one ‘d’, and ‘[ad]*’ matches any string composed of just ‘a’s and ‘d’s (including the empty string). It follows that ‘c[ad]*r’ matches ‘cr’, ‘car’, ‘cdr’, ‘caddaar’, etc. You can also include character ranges in a character set, by writing the starting and ending characters with a ‘-’ between them. Thus, ‘[a-z]’ matches any lower-case ASCII letter. Ranges may be intermixed freely with individual characters, as in ‘[a-z$%.]’, which matches any lower-case ASCII letter or ‘$’, ‘%’ or period. As another example, ‘[α-ωί]’ matches all lower-case Greek letters. You can also include certain special "character classes" in a character set. A ‘[:’ and balancing ‘:]’ enclose a character class inside a character alternative. For instance, ‘[[:alnum:]]’ matches any letter or digit. *Note (elisp)Char Classes::, for a list of character classes. To include a ‘]’ in a character set, you must make it the first character. For example, ‘[]a]’ matches ‘]’ or ‘a’. To include a ‘-’, write ‘-’ as the first or last character of the set, or put it after a range. Thus, ‘[]-]’ matches both ‘]’ and ‘-’. To include ‘^’ in a set, put it anywhere but at the beginning of the set. (At the beginning, it complements the set—see below.) When you use a range in case-insensitive search, you should write both ends of the range in upper case, or both in lower case, or both should be non-letters. The behavior of a mixed-case range such as ‘A-z’ is somewhat ill-defined, and it may change in future Emacs versions. ‘[^ … ]’ ‘[^’ begins a "complemented character set", which matches any character except the ones specified. Thus, ‘[^a-z0-9A-Z]’ matches all characters _except_ ASCII letters and digits. ‘^’ is not special in a character set unless it is the first character. The character following the ‘^’ is treated as if it were first (in other words, ‘-’ and ‘]’ are not special there). A complemented character set can match a newline, unless newline is mentioned as one of the characters not to match. This is in contrast to the handling of regexps in programs such as ‘grep’. ‘^’ is a special character that matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a line in the text being matched. Otherwise it fails to match anything. Thus, ‘^foo’ matches a ‘foo’ that occurs at the beginning of a line. For historical compatibility reasons, ‘^’ can be used with this meaning only at the beginning of the regular expression, or after ‘\(’ or ‘\|’. ‘$’ is similar to ‘^’ but matches only at the end of a line. Thus, ‘x+$’ matches a string of one ‘x’ or more at the end of a line. For historical compatibility reasons, ‘$’ can be used with this meaning only at the end of the regular expression, or before ‘\)’ or ‘\|’. ‘\’ has two functions: it quotes the special characters (including ‘\’), and it introduces additional special constructs. Because ‘\’ quotes special characters, ‘\$’ is a regular expression that matches only ‘$’, and ‘\[’ is a regular expression that matches only ‘[’, and so on. See the following section for the special constructs that begin with ‘\’. Note: for historical compatibility, special characters are treated as ordinary ones if they are in contexts where their special meanings make no sense. For example, ‘*foo’ treats ‘*’ as ordinary since there is no preceding expression on which the ‘*’ can act. It is poor practice to depend on this behavior; it is better to quote the special character anyway, regardless of where it appears. As a ‘\’ is not special inside a character alternative, it can never remove the special meaning of ‘-’ or ‘]’. So you should not quote these characters when they have no special meaning either. This would not clarify anything, since backslashes can legitimately precede these characters where they _have_ special meaning, as in ‘[^\]’ (‘"[^\\]"’ for Lisp string syntax), which matches any single character except a backslash. ** 15.7 Backslash in Regular Expressions For the most part, ‘\’ followed by any character matches only that character. However, there are several exceptions: two-character sequences starting with ‘\’ that have special meanings. The second character in the sequence is always an ordinary character when used on its own. Here is a table of ‘\’ constructs. ‘\|’ specifies an alternative. Two regular expressions A and B with ‘\|’ in between form an expression that matches some text if either A matches it or B matches it. It works by trying to match A, and if that fails, by trying to match B. Thus, ‘foo\|bar’ matches either ‘foo’ or ‘bar’ but no other string. ‘\|’ applies to the largest possible surrounding expressions. Only a surrounding ‘\( … \)’ grouping can limit the grouping power of ‘\|’. Full backtracking capability exists to handle multiple uses of ‘\|’. ‘\( … \)’ is a grouping construct that serves three purposes: 1. To enclose a set of ‘\|’ alternatives for other operations. Thus, ‘\(foo\|bar\)x’ matches either ‘foox’ or ‘barx’. 2. To enclose a complicated expression for the postfix operators ‘*’, ‘+’ and ‘?’ to operate on. Thus, ‘ba\(na\)*’ matches ‘bananana’, etc., with any (zero or more) number of ‘na’ strings. 3. To record a matched substring for future reference. This last application is not a consequence of the idea of a parenthetical grouping; it is a separate feature that is assigned as a second meaning to the same ‘\( … \)’ construct. In practice there is usually no conflict between the two meanings; when there is a conflict, you can use a shy group, described below. ‘\(?: … \)’ specifies a "shy group" that does not record the matched substring; you can’t refer back to it with ‘\D’ (see below). This is useful in mechanically combining regular expressions, so that you can add groups for syntactic purposes without interfering with the numbering of the groups that are meant to be referred to. ‘\D’ matches the same text that matched the Dth occurrence of a ‘\( … \)’ construct. This is called a "back reference". After the end of a ‘\( … \)’ construct, the matcher remembers the beginning and end of the text matched by that construct. Then, later on in the regular expression, you can use ‘\’ followed by the digit D to mean “match the same text matched the Dth time by the ‘\( … \)’ construct”. The strings matching the first nine ‘\( … \)’ constructs appearing in a regular expression are assigned numbers 1 through 9 in the order that the open-parentheses appear in the regular expression. So you can use ‘\1’ through ‘\9’ to refer to the text matched by the corresponding ‘\( … \)’ constructs. For example, ‘\(.*\)\1’ matches any newline-free string that is composed of two identical halves. The ‘\(.*\)’ matches the first half, which may be anything, but the ‘\1’ that follows must match the same exact text. If a particular ‘\( … \)’ construct matches more than once (which can easily happen if it is followed by ‘*’), only the last match is recorded. ‘\`’ matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the string or buffer (or its accessible portion) being matched against. ‘\'’ matches the empty string, but only at the end of the string or buffer (or its accessible portion) being matched against. ‘\=’ matches the empty string, but only at point. ‘\b’ matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a word. Thus, ‘\bfoo\b’ matches any occurrence of ‘foo’ as a separate word. ‘\bballs?\b’ matches ‘ball’ or ‘balls’ as a separate word. ‘\b’ matches at the beginning or end of the buffer regardless of what text appears next to it. ‘\B’ matches the empty string, but _not_ at the beginning or end of a word. ‘\<’ matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a word. ‘\<’ matches at the beginning of the buffer only if a word-constituent character follows. ‘\>’ matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word. ‘\>’ matches at the end of the buffer only if the contents end with a word-constituent character. ‘\w’ matches any word-constituent character. The syntax table determines which characters these are. *Note Syntax Tables: (elisp)Syntax Tables. ‘\W’ matches any character that is not a word-constituent. ‘\_<’ matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a symbol. A symbol is a sequence of one or more symbol-constituent characters. A symbol-constituent character is a character whose syntax is either ‘w’ or ‘_’. ‘\_<’ matches at the beginning of the buffer only if a symbol-constituent character follows. As with words, the syntax table determines which characters are symbol-constituent. ‘\_>’ matches the empty string, but only at the end of a symbol. ‘\_>’ matches at the end of the buffer only if the contents end with a symbol-constituent character. ‘\sC’ matches any character whose syntax is C. Here C is a character that designates a particular syntax class: thus, ‘w’ for word constituent, ‘-’ or ‘ ’ for whitespace, ‘.’ for ordinary punctuation, etc. *Note Syntax Tables: (elisp)Syntax Tables. ‘\SC’ matches any character whose syntax is not C. ‘\cC’ matches any character that belongs to the category C. For example, ‘\cc’ matches Chinese characters, ‘\cg’ matches Greek characters, etc. For the description of the known categories, type ‘M-x describe-categories ’. ‘\CC’ matches any character that does _not_ belong to category C. The constructs that pertain to words and syntax are controlled by the setting of the syntax table. *Note Syntax Tables: (elisp)Syntax Tables. ** 15.8 Regular Expression Example Here is an example of a regexp—similar to the regexp that Emacs uses, by default, to recognize the end of a sentence, not including the following space (i.e., the variable ‘sentence-end-base’): [.?!][]\"')}]* This contains two parts in succession: a character set matching period, ‘?’, or ‘!’, and a character set matching close-brackets, quotes, or parentheses, repeated zero or more times. ** 15.9 Lax Matching During Searching Normally, you’d want search commands to disregard certain minor differences between the search string you type and the text being searched. For example, sequences of whitespace characters of different length are usually perceived as equivalent; letter-case differences usually don’t matter; etc. This is known as "character equivalence". This section describes the Emacs lax search features, and how to tailor them to your needs. By default, search commands perform "lax space matching": each space, or sequence of spaces, matches any sequence of one or more whitespace characters in the text. (Incremental regexp search has a separate default; see *note Regexp Search::.) Hence, ‘foo bar’ matches ‘foo bar’, ‘foo bar’, ‘foo bar’, and so on (but not ‘foobar’). More precisely, Emacs matches each sequence of space characters in the search string to a regular expression specified by the variable ‘search-whitespace-regexp’. For example, to make spaces match sequences of newlines as well as spaces, set it to ‘"[[:space:]\n]+"’. The default value of this variable depends on the buffer’s major mode; most major modes classify spaces, tabs, and formfeed characters as whitespace. If you want whitespace characters to match exactly, you can turn lax space matching off by typing ‘M-s ’ (‘isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace’) within an incremental search. Another ‘M-s ’ turns lax space matching back on. To disable lax whitespace matching for all searches, change ‘search-whitespace-regexp’ to ‘nil’; then each space in the search string matches exactly one space. Searches in Emacs by default ignore the case of the text they are searching through, if you specify the search string in lower case. Thus, if you specify searching for ‘foo’, then ‘Foo’ and ‘fOO’ also match. Regexps, and in particular character sets, behave likewise: ‘[ab]’ matches ‘a’ or ‘A’ or ‘b’ or ‘B’. This feature is known as "case folding", and it is supported in both incremental and non-incremental search modes. An upper-case letter anywhere in the search string makes the search case-sensitive. Thus, searching for ‘Foo’ does not find ‘foo’ or ‘FOO’. This applies to regular expression search as well as to literal string search. The effect ceases if you delete the upper-case letter from the search string. The variable ‘search-upper-case’ controls this: if it is non-‘nil’ (the default), an upper-case character in the search string makes the search case-sensitive; setting it to ‘nil’ disables this effect of upper-case characters. If you set the variable ‘case-fold-search’ to ‘nil’, then all letters must match exactly, including case. This is a per-buffer variable; altering the variable normally affects only the current buffer, unless you change its default value. *Note Locals::. This variable applies to nonincremental searches also, including those performed by the replace commands (*note Replace::) and the minibuffer history matching commands (*note Minibuffer History::). Typing ‘M-c’ or ‘M-s c’ (‘isearch-toggle-case-fold’) within an incremental search toggles the case sensitivity of that search. The effect does not extend beyond the current incremental search, but it does override the effect of adding or removing an upper-case letter in the current search. Several related variables control case-sensitivity of searching and matching for specific commands or activities. For instance, ‘tags-case-fold-search’ controls case sensitivity for ‘find-tag’. To find these variables, do ‘M-x apropos-variable case-fold-search ’. Case folding disregards case distinctions among characters, making upper-case characters match lower-case variants, and vice versa. A generalization of case folding is "character folding", which disregards wider classes of distinctions among similar characters. For instance, under character folding the letter ‘a’ matches all of its accented cousins like ‘ä’ and ‘á’, i.e., the match disregards the diacritics that distinguish these variants. In addition, ‘a’ matches other characters that resemble it, or have it as part of their graphical representation, such as U+249C PARENTHESIZED LATIN SMALL LETTER A and U+2100 ACCOUNT OF (which looks like a small ‘a’ over ‘c’). Similarly, the ASCII double-quote character ‘"’ matches all the other variants of double quotes defined by the Unicode standard. Finally, character folding can make a sequence of one or more characters match another sequence of a different length: for example, the sequence of two characters ‘ff’ matches U+FB00 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FF. Character sequences that are not identical, but match under character folding are known as "equivalent character sequences". Generally, search commands in Emacs do not by default perform character folding in order to match equivalent character sequences. You can enable this behavior by customizing the variable ‘search-default-mode’ to ‘char-fold-to-regexp’. *Note Search Customizations::. Within an incremental search, typing ‘M-s '’ (‘isearch-toggle-char-fold’) toggles character folding, but only for that search. (Replace commands have a different default, controlled by a separate option; see *note Replacement and Lax Matches::.) Like with case folding, typing an explicit variant of a character, such as ‘ä’, as part of the search string disables character folding for that search. If you delete such a character from the search string, this effect ceases. ** 15.10 Replacement Commands Emacs provides several commands for performing search-and-replace operations. In addition to the simple ‘M-x replace-string’ command, there is ‘M-%’ (‘query-replace’), which presents each occurrence of the search pattern and asks you whether to replace it. The replace commands normally operate on the text from point to the end of the buffer. When the region is active, they operate on it instead (*note Mark::). The basic replace commands replace one "search string" (or regexp) with one "replacement string". It is possible to perform several replacements in parallel, using the command ‘expand-region-abbrevs’ (*note Expanding Abbrevs::). + Menu: - Unconditional Replace:: Replacing all matches for a string. - Regexp Replace:: Replacing all matches for a regexp. - Replacement and Lax Matches:: Lax searching for text to replace. - Query Replace:: How to use querying. *** 15.10.1 Unconditional Replacement ‘M-x replace-string STRING NEWSTRING ’ Replace every occurrence of STRING with NEWSTRING. To replace every instance of ‘foo’ after point with ‘bar’, use the command ‘M-x replace-string’ with the two arguments ‘foo’ and ‘bar’. Replacement happens only in the text after point, so if you want to cover the whole buffer you must go to the beginning first. All occurrences up to the end of the buffer are replaced; to limit replacement to part of the buffer, activate the region around that part. When the region is active, replacement is limited to the region (*note Mark::). When ‘replace-string’ exits, it leaves point at the last occurrence replaced. It adds the prior position of point (where the ‘replace-string’ command was issued) to the mark ring, without activating the mark; use ‘C-u C-’ to move back there. *Note Mark Ring::. A prefix argument restricts replacement to matches that are surrounded by word boundaries. *Note Replacement and Lax Matches::, for details about case-sensitivity and character folding in replace commands. *** 15.10.2 Regexp Replacement The ‘M-x replace-string’ command replaces exact matches for a single string. The similar command ‘M-x replace-regexp’ replaces any match for a specified regular expression pattern (*note Regexps::). ‘M-x replace-regexp REGEXP NEWSTRING ’ Replace every match for REGEXP with NEWSTRING. In ‘replace-regexp’, the NEWSTRING need not be constant: it can refer to all or part of what is matched by the REGEXP. ‘\&’ in NEWSTRING stands for the entire match being replaced. ‘\D’ in NEWSTRING, where D is a digit starting from 1, stands for whatever matched the Dth parenthesized grouping in REGEXP. (This is called a “back reference”.) ‘\#’ refers to the count of replacements already made in this command, as a decimal number. In the first replacement, ‘\#’ stands for ‘0’; in the second, for ‘1’; and so on. For example, M-x replace-regexp c[ad]+r \&-safe replaces (for example) ‘cadr’ with ‘cadr-safe’ and ‘cddr’ with ‘cddr-safe’. M-x replace-regexp \(c[ad]+r\)-safe \1 performs the inverse transformation. To include a ‘\’ in the text to replace with, you must enter ‘\\’. If you want to enter part of the replacement string by hand each time, use ‘\?’ in the replacement string. Each replacement will ask you to edit the replacement string in the minibuffer, putting point where the ‘\?’ was. The remainder of this subsection is intended for specialized tasks and requires knowledge of Lisp. Most readers can skip it. You can use Lisp expressions to calculate parts of the replacement string. To do this, write ‘\,’ followed by the expression in the replacement string. Each replacement calculates the value of the expression and converts it to text without quoting (if it’s a string, this means using the string’s contents), and uses it in the replacement string in place of the expression itself. If the expression is a symbol, one space in the replacement string after the symbol name goes with the symbol name, so the value replaces them both. Inside such an expression, you can use some special sequences. ‘\&’ and ‘\D’ refer here, as usual, to the entire match as a string, and to a submatch as a string. D may be multiple digits, and the value of ‘\D’ is ‘nil’ if the D’th parenthesized grouping did not match. You can also use ‘\#&’ and ‘\#D’ to refer to those matches as numbers (this is valid when the match or submatch has the form of a numeral). ‘\#’ here too stands for the number of already-completed replacements. Repeating our example to exchange ‘x’ and ‘y’, we can thus do it also this way: M-x replace-regexp \(x\)\|y \,(if \1 "y" "x") For computing replacement strings for ‘\,’, the ‘format’ function is often useful (*note (elisp)Formatting Strings::). For example, to add consecutively numbered strings like ‘ABC00042’ to columns 73 to 80 (unless they are already occupied), you can use M-x replace-regexp ^.\{0,72\}$ \,(format "%-72sABC%05d" \& \#) *** 15.10.3 Replace Commands and Lax Matches This subsection describes the behavior of replace commands with respect to lax matches (*note Lax Search::) and how to customize it. In general, replace commands mostly default to stricter matching than their search counterparts. Unlike incremental search, the replacement commands do not use lax space matching (*note lax space matching: Lax Search.) by default. To enable lax space matching for replacement, change the variable ‘replace-lax-whitespace’ to non-‘nil’. (This only affects how Emacs finds the text to replace, not the replacement text.) A companion variable ‘replace-regexp-lax-whitespace’ controls whether ‘query-replace-regexp’ uses lax whitespace matching when searching for patterns. If the first argument of a replace command is all lower case, the command ignores case while searching for occurrences to replace—provided ‘case-fold-search’ is non-‘nil’. If ‘case-fold-search’ is set to ‘nil’, case is always significant in all searches. In addition, when the NEWSTRING argument is all or partly lower case, replacement commands try to preserve the case pattern of each occurrence. Thus, the command M-x replace-string foo bar replaces a lower case ‘foo’ with a lower case ‘bar’, an all-caps ‘FOO’ with ‘BAR’, and a capitalized ‘Foo’ with ‘Bar’. (These three alternatives—lower case, all caps, and capitalized, are the only ones that ‘replace-string’ can distinguish.) If upper-case letters are used in the replacement string, they remain upper case every time that text is inserted. If upper-case letters are used in the first argument, the second argument is always substituted exactly as given, with no case conversion. Likewise, if either ‘case-replace’ or ‘case-fold-search’ is set to ‘nil’, replacement is done without case conversion. The replacement commands by default do not use character folding (*note character folding: Lax Search.) when looking for the text to replace. To enable character folding for matching in ‘query-replace’ and ‘replace-string’, set the variable ‘replace-char-fold’ to a non-‘nil’ value. (This setting does not affect the replacement text, only how Emacs finds the text to replace. It also doesn’t affect ‘replace-regexp’.) *** 15.10.4 Query Replace ‘M-% STRING NEWSTRING ’ Replace some occurrences of STRING with NEWSTRING. ‘C-M-% REGEXP NEWSTRING ’ Replace some matches for REGEXP with NEWSTRING. If you want to change only some of the occurrences of ‘foo’ to ‘bar’, not all of them, use ‘M-%’ (‘query-replace’). This command finds occurrences of ‘foo’ one by one, displays each occurrence and asks you whether to replace it. Aside from querying, ‘query-replace’ works just like ‘replace-string’ (*note Unconditional Replace::). In particular, it preserves case provided ‘case-replace’ is non-‘nil’, as it normally is (*note Replacement and Lax Matches::). A numeric argument means to consider only occurrences that are bounded by word-delimiter characters. A negative prefix argument replaces backward. ‘C-M-%’ performs regexp search and replace (‘query-replace-regexp’). It works like ‘replace-regexp’ except that it queries like ‘query-replace’. You can reuse earlier replacements with these commands. When ‘query-replace’ or ‘query-replace-regexp’ prompts for the search string, use ‘M-p’ and ‘M-n’ to show previous replacements in the form ‘FROM -> TO’, where FROM is the search pattern, TO is its replacement, and the separator between them is determined by the value of the variable ‘query-replace-from-to-separator’. Type to select the desired replacement. If the value of this variable is ‘nil’, replacements are not added to the command history, and cannot be reused. These commands highlight the current match using the face ‘query-replace’. You can disable this highlight by setting the variable ‘query-replace-highlight’ to ‘nil’. They highlight other matches using ‘lazy-highlight’ just like incremental search (*note Incremental Search::); this can be disabled by setting ‘query-replace-lazy-highlight’ to ‘nil’. By default, ‘query-replace-regexp’ will show the substituted replacement string for the current match in the minibuffer. If you want to keep special sequences ‘\&’ and ‘\N’ unexpanded, customize ‘query-replace-show-replacement’ variable. The variable ‘query-replace-skip-read-only’, if set non-‘nil’, will cause replacement commands to ignore matches in read-only text. The default is not to ignore them. The characters you can type when you are shown a match for the string or regexp are: ‘’ ‘y’ to replace the occurrence with NEWSTRING. ‘’ ‘’ ‘’ ‘n’ to skip to the next occurrence without replacing this one. ‘, (Comma)’ to replace this occurrence and display the result. You are then asked for another input character to say what to do next. Since the replacement has already been made, and are equivalent in this situation; both move to the next occurrence. You can type ‘C-r’ at this point (see below) to alter the replaced text. You can also type ‘C-x u’ to undo the replacement; this exits the ‘query-replace’, so if you want to do further replacement you must use ‘C-x ’ to restart (*note Repetition::). ‘’ ‘q’ to exit without doing any more replacements. ‘. (Period)’ to replace this occurrence and then exit without searching for more occurrences. ‘!’ to replace all remaining occurrences without asking again. ‘^’ to go back to the position of the previous occurrence (or what used to be an occurrence), in case you changed it by mistake or want to reexamine it. ‘u’ to undo the last replacement and go back to where that replacement was made. ‘U’ to undo all the replacements and go back to where the first replacement was made. ‘C-r’ to enter a recursive editing level, in case the occurrence needs to be edited rather than just replaced with NEWSTRING. When you are done, exit the recursive editing level with ‘C-M-c’ to proceed to the next occurrence. *Note Recursive Edit::. ‘C-w’ to delete the occurrence, and then enter a recursive editing level as in ‘C-r’. Use the recursive edit to insert text to replace the deleted occurrence of STRING. When done, exit the recursive editing level with ‘C-M-c’ to proceed to the next occurrence. ‘e’ to edit the replacement string in the minibuffer. When you exit the minibuffer by typing , the minibuffer contents replace the current occurrence of the pattern. They also become the new replacement string for any further occurrences. ‘C-l’ to redisplay the screen. Then you must type another character to specify what to do with this occurrence. ‘Y (Upper-case)’ to replace all remaining occurrences in all remaining buffers in multi-buffer replacements (like the Dired ‘Q’ command that performs query replace on selected files). It answers this question and all subsequent questions in the series with “yes”, without further user interaction. ‘N (Upper-case)’ to skip to the next buffer in multi-buffer replacements without replacing remaining occurrences in the current buffer. It answers this question “no”, gives up on the questions for the current buffer, and continues to the next buffer in the sequence. ‘C-h’ ‘?’ ‘’ to display a message summarizing these options. Then you must type another character to specify what to do with this occurrence. Aside from this, any other character exits the ‘query-replace’, and is then reread as part of a key sequence. Thus, if you type ‘C-k’, it exits the ‘query-replace’ and then kills to end of line. In particular, ‘C-g’ simply exits the ‘query-replace’. To restart a ‘query-replace’ once it is exited, use ‘C-x ’, which repeats the ‘query-replace’ because it used the minibuffer to read its arguments. *Note C-x : Repetition. The option ‘search-invisible’ determines how ‘query-replace’ treats invisible text. *Note Outline Search::. *Note Operating on Files::, for the Dired ‘Q’ command which performs query replace on selected files. See also *note Transforming File Names::, for Dired commands to rename, copy, or link files by replacing regexp matches in file names. ** 15.11 Other Search-and-Loop Commands Here are some other commands that find matches for a regular expression. They all ignore case in matching, if the pattern contains no upper-case letters and ‘case-fold-search’ is non-‘nil’. Aside from ‘multi-occur’ and ‘multi-occur-in-matching-buffers’, which always search the whole buffer, all operate on the text from point to the end of the buffer, or on the region if it is active. ‘M-x multi-isearch-buffers’ Prompt for one or more buffer names, ending with ; then, begin a multi-buffer incremental search in those buffers. (If the search fails in one buffer, the next ‘C-s’ tries searching the next specified buffer, and so forth.) With a prefix argument, prompt for a regexp and begin a multi-buffer incremental search in buffers matching that regexp. ‘M-x multi-isearch-buffers-regexp’ This command is just like ‘multi-isearch-buffers’, except it performs an incremental regexp search. ‘M-x multi-isearch-files’ Prompt for one or more file names, ending with ; then, begin a multi-file incremental search in those files. (If the search fails in one file, the next ‘C-s’ tries searching the next specified file, and so forth.) With a prefix argument, prompt for a regexp and begin a multi-file incremental search in files matching that regexp. ‘M-x multi-isearch-files-regexp’ This command is just like ‘multi-isearch-files’, except it performs an incremental regexp search. In some modes that set the buffer-local variable ‘multi-isearch-next-buffer-function’ (e.g., in Change Log mode) a multi-file incremental search is activated automatically. ‘M-x occur’ ‘M-s o’ Prompt for a regexp, and display a list showing each line in the buffer that contains a match for it. If you type ‘M-n’ at the prompt, you can reuse search strings from previous incremental searches. The text that matched is highlighted using the ‘match’ face. A numeric argument N specifies that N lines of context are to be displayed before and after each matching line. The default number of context lines is specified by the variable ‘list-matching-lines-default-context-lines’. When ‘list-matching-lines-jump-to-current-line’ is non-‘nil’ the current line is shown highlighted with face ‘list-matching-lines-current-line-face’ and the point is set at the first match after such line. You can also run ‘M-s o’ when an incremental search is active; this uses the current search string. Note that matches for the regexp you type are extended to include complete lines, and a match that starts before the previous match ends is not considered a match. In the ‘*Occur*’ buffer, you can click on each entry, or move point there and type , to visit the corresponding position in the buffer that was searched. ‘o’ and ‘C-o’ display the match in another window; ‘C-o’ does not select it. Alternatively, you can use the ‘C-x `’ (‘next-error’) command to visit the occurrences one by one (*note Compilation Mode::). Typing ‘e’ in the ‘*Occur*’ buffer switches to Occur Edit mode, in which edits made to the entries are also applied to the text in the originating buffer. Type ‘C-c C-c’ to return to Occur mode. The command ‘M-x list-matching-lines’ is a synonym for ‘M-x occur’. ‘M-x multi-occur’ This command is just like ‘occur’, except it is able to search through multiple buffers. It asks you to specify the buffer names one by one. ‘M-x multi-occur-in-matching-buffers’ This command is similar to ‘multi-occur’, except the buffers to search are specified by a regular expression that matches visited file names. With a prefix argument, it uses the regular expression to match buffer names instead. ‘M-x how-many’ Prompt for a regexp, and print the number of matches for it in the buffer after point. If the region is active, this operates on the region instead. ‘M-x flush-lines’ Prompt for a regexp, and delete each line that contains a match for it, operating on the text after point. This command deletes the current line if it contains a match starting after point. If the region is active, it operates on the region instead; if a line partially contained in the region contains a match entirely contained in the region, it is deleted. If a match is split across lines, ‘flush-lines’ deletes all those lines. It deletes the lines before starting to look for the next match; hence, it ignores a match starting on the same line at which another match ended. ‘M-x keep-lines’ Prompt for a regexp, and delete each line that _does not_ contain a match for it, operating on the text after point. If point is not at the beginning of a line, this command always keeps the current line. If the region is active, the command operates on the region instead; it never deletes lines that are only partially contained in the region (a newline that ends a line counts as part of that line). If a match is split across lines, this command keeps all those lines. ** 15.12 Tailoring Search to Your Needs This section describes miscellaneous search-related customizations not described elsewhere. The default search mode for the incremental search is specified by the variable ‘search-default-mode’. It can be ‘nil’, ‘t’, or a function. If it is ‘nil’, the default mode is to do literal searches without character folding, but with case folding and lax-whitespace matches as determined by ‘case-fold-search’ and ‘search-whitespace-regexp’, respectively (*note Lax Search::). If the value is ‘t’, incremental search defaults to regexp searches. The default value specifies a function that only performs case folding and lax-whitespace matching. The current match of an on-going incremental search is highlighted using the ‘isearch’ face. This highlighting can be disabled by setting the variable ‘search-highlight’ to ‘nil’. The other matches for the search string that are visible on display are highlighted using the ‘lazy-highlight’ face. Setting the variable ‘isearch-lazy-highlight’ to ‘nil’ disables this highlighting. Here are some other variables that customize the lazy highlighting: ‘lazy-highlight-initial-delay’ Time in seconds to wait before highlighting visible matches. ‘lazy-highlight-interval’ Time in seconds between highlighting successive matches. ‘lazy-highlight-max-at-a-time’ The maximum number of matches to highlight before checking for input. A large number can take some time to highlight, so if you want to continue searching and type ‘C-s’ or ‘C-r’ during that time, Emacs will not respond until it finishes highlighting all those matches. Thus, smaller values make Emacs more responsive. Normally, entering within incremental search when the search string is empty launches a nonincremental search. (Actually, it lets you edit the search string, and the next does the search.) However, if you customize the variable ‘search-nonincremental-instead’ to ‘nil’, typing will always exit the incremental search, even if the search string is empty. By default, incremental search and query-replace commands match invisible text, but hide any such matches as soon as the current match moves off the invisible text. If you customize the variable ‘isearch-hide-immediately’ to ‘nil’, any invisible text where matches were found stays on display until the search or the replace command exits. Searching incrementally on slow terminals, such as displays connected to remote machines over slow connection, could be annoying due to the need to redraw large portions of the display as the search proceeds. Emacs provides a special display mode for slow terminals, whereby search pops up a separate small window and displays the text surrounding the match in that window. Small windows display faster, so the annoying effect of slow speed is alleviated. The variable ‘search-slow-speed’ determines the baud rate threshold below which Emacs will use this display mode. The variable ‘search-slow-window-lines’ controls the number of lines in the window Emacs pops up for displaying the search results; the default is 1 line. Normally, this window will pop up at the bottom of the window that displays the buffer where you start searching, but if the value of ‘search-slow-window-lines’ is negative, that means to put the window at the top and give it the number of lines that is the absolute value of ‘search-slow-window-lines’. * 16 Commands for Fixing Typos In this chapter we describe commands that are useful when you catch a mistake while editing. The most fundamental of these commands is the undo command ‘C-/’ (also bound to ‘C-x u’ and ‘C-_’). This undoes a single command, or a part of a command (as in the case of ‘query-replace’), or several consecutive character insertions. Consecutive repetitions of ‘C-/’ undo earlier and earlier changes, back to the limit of the undo information available. Aside from the commands described here, you can erase text using deletion commands such as (‘delete-backward-char’). These were described earlier in this manual. *Note Erasing::. + Menu: - Undo:: The Undo commands. - Transpose:: Exchanging two characters, words, lines, lists... - Fixing Case:: Correcting case of last word entered. - Spelling:: Apply spelling checker to a word, or a whole file. ** 16.1 Undo The "undo" command reverses recent changes in the buffer’s text. Each buffer records changes individually, and the undo command always applies to the current buffer. You can undo all the changes in a buffer for as far back as the buffer’s records go. Usually, each editing command makes a separate entry in the undo records, but some commands such as ‘query-replace’ divide their changes into multiple entries for flexibility in undoing. Consecutive character insertion commands are usually grouped together into a single undo record, to make undoing less tedious. ‘C-/’ ‘C-x u’ ‘C-_’ Undo one entry in the current buffer’s undo records (‘undo’). To begin to undo, type ‘C-/’ (or its aliases, ‘C-_’ or ‘C-x u’)(1). This undoes the most recent change in the buffer, and moves point back to where it was before that change. Consecutive repetitions of ‘C-/’ (or its aliases) undo earlier and earlier changes in the current buffer. If all the recorded changes have already been undone, the undo command signals an error. Any command other than an undo command breaks the sequence of undo commands. Starting from that moment, the entire sequence of undo commands that you have just performed are themselves placed into the undo record. Therefore, to re-apply changes you have undone, type ‘C-f’ or any other command that harmlessly breaks the sequence of undoing; then type ‘C-/’ one or more times to undo some of the undo commands. Alternatively, if you want to resume undoing, without redoing previous undo commands, use ‘M-x undo-only’. This is like ‘undo’, but will not redo changes you have just undone. If you notice that a buffer has been modified accidentally, the easiest way to recover is to type ‘C-/’ repeatedly until the stars disappear from the front of the mode line (*note Mode Line::). Whenever an undo command makes the stars disappear from the mode line, it means that the buffer contents are the same as they were when the file was last read in or saved. If you do not remember whether you changed the buffer deliberately, type ‘C-/’ once. When you see the last change you made undone, you will see whether it was an intentional change. If it was an accident, leave it undone. If it was deliberate, redo the change as described above. Alternatively, you can discard all the changes since the buffer was last visited or saved with ‘M-x revert-buffer’ (*note Reverting::). When there is an active region, any use of ‘undo’ performs "selective undo": it undoes the most recent change within the region, instead of the entire buffer. However, when Transient Mark mode is off (*note Disabled Transient Mark::), ‘C-/’ always operates on the entire buffer, ignoring the region. In this case, you can perform selective undo by supplying a prefix argument to the ‘undo’ command: ‘C-u C-/’. To undo further changes in the same region, repeat the ‘undo’ command (no prefix argument is needed). Some specialized buffers do not make undo records. Buffers whose names start with spaces never do; these buffers are used internally by Emacs to hold text that users don’t normally look at or edit. When the undo information for a buffer becomes too large, Emacs discards the oldest records from time to time (during "garbage collection"). You can specify how much undo information to keep by setting the variables ‘undo-limit’, ‘undo-strong-limit’, and ‘undo-outer-limit’. Their values are expressed in bytes. The variable ‘undo-limit’ sets a soft limit: Emacs keeps undo data for enough commands to reach this size, and perhaps exceed it, but does not keep data for any earlier commands beyond that. Its default value is 80000. The variable ‘undo-strong-limit’ sets a stricter limit: any previous command (though not the most recent one) that pushes the size past this amount is forgotten. The default value of ‘undo-strong-limit’ is 120000. Regardless of the values of those variables, the most recent change is never discarded unless it gets bigger than ‘undo-outer-limit’ (normally 12,000,000). At that point, Emacs discards the undo data and warns you about it. This is the only situation in which you cannot undo the last command. If this happens, you can increase the value of ‘undo-outer-limit’ to make it even less likely to happen in the future. But if you didn’t expect the command to create such large undo data, then it is probably a bug and you should report it. *Note Reporting Bugs: Bugs. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) Aside from ‘C-/’, the ‘undo’ command is also bound to ‘C-x u’ because that is more straightforward for beginners to remember: ‘u’ stands for “undo”. It is also bound to ‘C-_’ because typing ‘C-/’ on some text terminals actually enters ‘C-_’. ** 16.2 Transposing Text ‘C-t’ Transpose two characters (‘transpose-chars’). ‘M-t’ Transpose two words (‘transpose-words’). ‘C-M-t’ Transpose two balanced expressions (‘transpose-sexps’). ‘C-x C-t’ Transpose two lines (‘transpose-lines’). The common error of transposing two characters can be fixed, when they are adjacent, with the ‘C-t’ command (‘transpose-chars’). Normally, ‘C-t’ transposes the two characters on either side of point. When given at the end of a line, rather than transposing the last character of the line with the newline, which would be useless, ‘C-t’ transposes the last two characters on the line. So, if you catch your transposition error right away, you can fix it with just a ‘C-t’. If you don’t catch it so fast, you must move the cursor back between the two transposed characters before you type ‘C-t’. If you transposed a space with the last character of the word before it, the word motion commands (‘M-f’, ‘M-b’, etc.) are a good way of getting there. Otherwise, a reverse search (‘C-r’) is often the best way. *Note Search::. ‘M-t’ transposes the word before point with the word after point (‘transpose-words’). It moves point forward over a word, dragging the word preceding or containing point forward as well. The punctuation characters between the words do not move. For example, ‘FOO, BAR’ transposes into ‘BAR, FOO’ rather than ‘BAR FOO,’. When point is at the end of the line, it will transpose the word before point with the first word on the next line. ‘C-M-t’ (‘transpose-sexps’) is a similar command for transposing two expressions (*note Expressions::), and ‘C-x C-t’ (‘transpose-lines’) exchanges lines. They work like ‘M-t’ except as regards the units of text they transpose. A numeric argument to a transpose command serves as a repeat count: it tells the transpose command to move the character (or word or expression or line) before or containing point across several other characters (or words or expressions or lines). For example, ‘C-u 3 C-t’ moves the character before point forward across three other characters. It would change ‘f★oobar’ into ‘oobf★ar’. This is equivalent to repeating ‘C-t’ three times. ‘C-u - 4 M-t’ moves the word before point backward across four words. ‘C-u - C-M-t’ would cancel the effect of plain ‘C-M-t’. A numeric argument of zero is assigned a special meaning (because otherwise a command with a repeat count of zero would do nothing): to transpose the character (or word or expression or line) ending after point with the one ending after the mark. ** 16.3 Case Conversion ‘M-- M-l’ Convert last word to lower case. Note ‘Meta--’ is Meta-minus. ‘M-- M-u’ Convert last word to all upper case. ‘M-- M-c’ Convert last word to lower case with capital initial. A very common error is to type words in the wrong case. Because of this, the word case-conversion commands ‘M-l’, ‘M-u’, and ‘M-c’ have a special feature when used with a negative argument: they do not move the cursor. As soon as you see you have mistyped the last word, you can simply case-convert it and go on typing. *Note Case::. ** 16.4 Checking and Correcting Spelling This section describes the commands to check the spelling of a single word or of a portion of a buffer. These commands only work if a spelling checker program, one of Hunspell, Aspell, Ispell or Enchant, is installed. These programs are not part of Emacs, but one of them is usually installed on GNU/Linux and other free operating systems. *Note Aspell: (aspell)Top. ‘M-$’ Check and correct spelling of the word at point (‘ispell-word’). If the region is active, do it for all words in the region instead. ‘M-x ispell’ Check and correct spelling of all words in the buffer. If the region is active, do it for all words in the region instead. ‘M-x ispell-buffer’ Check and correct spelling in the buffer. ‘M-x ispell-region’ Check and correct spelling in the region. ‘M-x ispell-message’ Check and correct spelling in a draft mail message, excluding cited material. ‘M-x ispell-change-dictionary DICT ’ Restart the spell-checker process, using DICT as the dictionary. ‘M-x ispell-kill-ispell’ Kill the spell-checker subprocess. ‘M-’ ‘ ’ ‘C-M-i’ Complete the word before point based on the spelling dictionary (‘ispell-complete-word’). ‘M-x flyspell-mode’ Enable Flyspell mode, which highlights all misspelled words. ‘M-x flyspell-prog-mode’ Enable Flyspell mode for comments and strings only. To check the spelling of the word around or before point, and optionally correct it as well, type ‘M-$’ (‘ispell-word’). If a region is active, ‘M-$’ checks the spelling of all words within the region. *Note Mark::. (When Transient Mark mode is off, ‘M-$’ always acts on the word around or before point, ignoring the region; *note Disabled Transient Mark::.) Similarly, the command ‘M-x ispell’ performs spell-checking in the region if one is active, or in the entire buffer otherwise. The commands ‘M-x ispell-buffer’ and ‘M-x ispell-region’ explicitly perform spell-checking on the entire buffer or the region respectively. To check spelling in an email message you are writing, use ‘M-x ispell-message’; that command checks the whole buffer, except for material that is indented or appears to be cited from other messages. *Note Sending Mail::. When one of these commands encounters what appears to be an incorrect word, it asks you what to do. It usually displays a list of numbered "near-misses"—words that are close to the incorrect word. Then you must type a single-character response. Here are the valid responses: ‘DIGIT’ Replace the word, just this time, with one of the displayed near-misses. Each near-miss is listed with a digit; type that digit to select it. ‘’ Skip this word—continue to consider it incorrect, but don’t change it here. ‘r NEW ’ Replace the word, just this time, with NEW. (The replacement string will be rescanned for more spelling errors.) ‘R NEW ’ Replace the word with NEW, and do a ‘query-replace’ so you can replace it elsewhere in the buffer if you wish. (The replacements will be rescanned for more spelling errors.) ‘a’ Accept the incorrect word—treat it as correct, but only in this editing session. ‘A’ Accept the incorrect word—treat it as correct, but only in this editing session and for this buffer. ‘i’ Insert this word in your private dictionary file so that it will be considered correct from now on, even in future sessions. ‘m’ Like ‘i’, but you can also specify dictionary completion information. ‘u’ Insert the lower-case version of this word in your private dictionary file. ‘l WORD ’ Look in the dictionary for words that match WORD. These words become the new list of near-misses; you can select one of them as the replacement by typing a digit. You can use ‘*’ in WORD as a wildcard. ‘C-g’ ‘X’ Quit interactive spell-checking, leaving point at the word that was being checked. You can restart checking again afterward with ‘C-u M-$’. ‘x’ Quit interactive spell-checking and move point back to where it was when you started spell-checking. ‘q’ Quit interactive spell-checking and kill the spell-checker subprocess. ‘?’ Show the list of options. In Text mode and related modes, ‘M-’ (‘ispell-complete-word’) performs in-buffer completion based on spelling correction. Insert the beginning of a word, and then type ‘M-’; this shows a list of completions. (If your window manager intercepts ‘M-’, type ‘ ’ or ‘C-M-i’.) Each completion is listed with a digit or character; type that digit or character to choose it. Once started, the spell-checker subprocess continues to run, waiting for something to do, so that subsequent spell-checking commands complete more quickly. If you want to get rid of the process, use ‘M-x ispell-kill-ispell’. This is not usually necessary, since the process uses no processor time except when you do spelling correction. Spell-checkers look up spelling in two dictionaries: the standard dictionary and your personal dictionary. The standard dictionary is specified by the variable ‘ispell-local-dictionary’ or, if that is ‘nil’, by the variable ‘ispell-dictionary’. If both are ‘nil’, the spelling program’s default dictionary is used. The command ‘M-x ispell-change-dictionary’ sets the standard dictionary for the buffer and then restarts the subprocess, so that it will use a different standard dictionary. Your personal dictionary is specified by the variable ‘ispell-personal-dictionary’. If that is ‘nil’, the spelling program looks for a personal dictionary in a default location, which is specific to each spell-checker. A separate dictionary is used for word completion. The variable ‘ispell-complete-word-dict’ specifies the file name of this dictionary. The completion dictionary must be different because it cannot use the information about roots and affixes of the words, which spell-checking uses to detect variations of words. For some languages, there is a spell-checking dictionary but no word completion dictionary. Flyspell mode is a minor mode that performs automatic spell-checking of the text you type as you type it. When it finds a word that it does not recognize, it highlights that word. Type ‘M-x flyspell-mode’ to toggle Flyspell mode in the current buffer. To enable Flyspell mode in all text mode buffers, add ‘flyspell-mode’ to ‘text-mode-hook’. *Note Hooks::. Note that, as Flyspell mode needs to check each word across which you move, it will slow down cursor motion and scrolling commands. It also doesn’t automatically check the text you didn’t type or move across; use ‘flyspell-region’ or ‘flyspell-buffer’ for that. When Flyspell mode highlights a word as misspelled, you can click on it with ‘mouse-2’ (‘flyspell-correct-word’) to display a menu of possible corrections and actions. In addition, ‘C-.’ or ‘-’ (‘flyspell-auto-correct-word’) will propose various successive corrections for the word at point, and ‘C-c $’ (‘flyspell-correct-word-before-point’) will pop up a menu of possible corrections. Of course, you can always correct the misspelled word by editing it manually in any way you like. Flyspell Prog mode works just like ordinary Flyspell mode, except that it only checks words in comments and string constants. This feature is useful for editing programs. Type ‘M-x flyspell-prog-mode’ to enable or disable this mode in the current buffer. To enable this mode in all programming mode buffers, add ‘flyspell-prog-mode’ to ‘prog-mode-hook’ (*note Hooks::). * 17 Keyboard Macros In this chapter we describe how to record a sequence of editing commands so you can repeat it conveniently later. A "keyboard macro" is a command defined by an Emacs user to stand for another sequence of keys. For example, if you discover that you are about to type ‘C-n M-d C-d’ forty times, you can speed your work by defining a keyboard macro to do ‘C-n M-d C-d’, and then executing it 39 more times. You define a keyboard macro by executing and recording the commands which are its definition. Put differently, as you define a keyboard macro, the definition is being executed for the first time. This way, you can see the effects of your commands, so that you don’t have to figure them out in your head. When you close the definition, the keyboard macro is defined and also has been, in effect, executed once. You can then do the whole thing over again by invoking the macro. Keyboard macros differ from ordinary Emacs commands in that they are written in the Emacs command language rather than in Lisp. This makes it easier for the novice to write them, and makes them more convenient as temporary hacks. However, the Emacs command language is not powerful enough as a programming language to be useful for writing anything intelligent or general. For such things, Lisp must be used. + Menu: - Basic Keyboard Macro:: Defining and running keyboard macros. - Keyboard Macro Ring:: Where previous keyboard macros are saved. - Keyboard Macro Counter:: Inserting incrementing numbers in macros. - Keyboard Macro Query:: Making keyboard macros do different things each time. - Save Keyboard Macro:: Giving keyboard macros names; saving them in files. - Edit Keyboard Macro:: Editing keyboard macros. - Keyboard Macro Step-Edit:: Interactively executing and editing a keyboard macro. ** 17.1 Basic Use ‘’ ‘C-x (’ Start defining a keyboard macro (‘kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter’). ‘’ ‘C-x e’ If a keyboard macro is being defined, end the definition; otherwise, execute the most recent keyboard macro (‘kmacro-end-or-call-macro’). ‘C-u ’ ‘C-u C-x (’ Re-execute last keyboard macro, then append keys to its definition. ‘C-u C-u ’ ‘C-u C-u C-x (’ Append keys to the last keyboard macro without re-executing it. ‘C-x C-k r’ Run the last keyboard macro on each line that begins in the region (‘apply-macro-to-region-lines’). To start defining a keyboard macro, type . From then on, your keys continue to be executed, but also become part of the definition of the macro. ‘Def’ appears in the mode line to remind you of what is going on. When you are finished, type (‘kmacro-end-or-call-macro’) to terminate the definition. For example, M-f foo defines a macro to move forward a word and then insert ‘foo’. Note that and do not become part of the macro. After defining the macro, you can call it with . For the above example, this has the same effect as typing ‘M-f foo’ again. (Note the two roles of the command: it ends the macro if you are in the process of defining one, or calls the last macro otherwise.) You can also supply with a numeric prefix argument ‘n’, which means to invoke the macro ‘n’ times. An argument of zero repeats the macro indefinitely, until it gets an error or you type ‘C-g’ (or, on MS-DOS, ‘C-’). The above example demonstrates a handy trick that you can employ with keyboard macros: if you wish to repeat an operation at regularly spaced places in the text, include a motion command as part of the macro. In this case, repeating the macro inserts the string ‘foo’ after each successive word. After terminating the definition of a keyboard macro, you can append more keystrokes to its definition by typing ‘C-u ’. This is equivalent to plain followed by retyping the whole definition so far. As a consequence, it re-executes the macro as previously defined. If you change the variable ‘kmacro-execute-before-append’ to ‘nil’, the existing macro will not be re-executed before appending to it (the default is ‘t’). You can also add to the end of the definition of the last keyboard macro without re-executing it by typing ‘C-u C-u ’. When a command reads an argument with the minibuffer, your minibuffer input becomes part of the macro along with the command. So when you replay the macro, the command gets the same argument as when you entered the macro. For example, C-a C-k C-x b foo C-y C-x b defines a macro that kills the current line, yanks it into the buffer ‘foo’, then returns to the original buffer. Most keyboard commands work as usual in a keyboard macro definition, with some exceptions. Typing ‘C-g’ (‘keyboard-quit’) quits the keyboard macro definition. Typing ‘C-M-c’ (‘exit-recursive-edit’) can be unreliable: it works as you’d expect if exiting a recursive edit that started within the macro, but if it exits a recursive edit that started before you invoked the keyboard macro, it also necessarily exits the keyboard macro too. Mouse events are also unreliable, even though you can use them in a keyboard macro: when the macro replays the mouse event, it uses the original mouse position of that event, the position that the mouse had while you were defining the macro. The effect of this may be hard to predict. The command ‘C-x C-k r’ (‘apply-macro-to-region-lines’) repeats the last defined keyboard macro on each line that begins in the region. It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of the line and then executing the macro. In addition to the and commands described above, Emacs also supports an older set of key bindings for defining and executing keyboard macros. To begin a macro definition, type ‘C-x (’ (‘kmacro-start-macro’); as with , a prefix argument appends this definition to the last keyboard macro. To end a macro definition, type ‘C-x )’ (‘kmacro-end-macro’). To execute the most recent macro, type ‘C-x e’ (‘kmacro-end-and-call-macro’). If you enter ‘C-x e’ while defining a macro, the macro is terminated and executed immediately. Immediately after typing ‘C-x e’, you can type ‘e’ repeatedly to immediately repeat the macro one or more times. You can also give ‘C-x e’ a repeat argument, just like (when it is used to execute a macro). ‘C-x )’ can be given a repeat count as an argument. This means to repeat the macro right after defining it. The macro definition itself counts as the first repetition, since it is executed as you define it, so ‘C-u 4 C-x )’ executes the macro immediately 3 additional times. ** 17.2 The Keyboard Macro Ring All defined keyboard macros are recorded in the "keyboard macro ring". There is only one keyboard macro ring, shared by all buffers. ‘C-x C-k C-k’ Execute the keyboard macro at the head of the ring (‘kmacro-end-or-call-macro-repeat’). ‘C-x C-k C-n’ Rotate the keyboard macro ring to the next macro (defined earlier) (‘kmacro-cycle-ring-next’). ‘C-x C-k C-p’ Rotate the keyboard macro ring to the previous macro (defined later) (‘kmacro-cycle-ring-previous’). All commands which operate on the keyboard macro ring use the same ‘C-x C-k’ prefix. Most of these commands can be executed and repeated immediately after each other without repeating the ‘C-x C-k’ prefix. For example, C-x C-k C-p C-p C-k C-k C-k C-n C-n C-k C-p C-k C-d will rotate the keyboard macro ring to the second-previous macro, execute the resulting head macro three times, rotate back to the original head macro, execute that once, rotate to the previous macro, execute that, and finally delete it from the macro ring. The command ‘C-x C-k C-k’ (‘kmacro-end-or-call-macro-repeat’) executes the keyboard macro at the head of the macro ring. You can repeat the macro immediately by typing another ‘C-k’, or you can rotate the macro ring immediately by typing ‘C-n’ or ‘C-p’. When a keyboard macro is being defined, ‘C-x C-k C-k’ behaves like except that, immediately afterward, you can use most key bindings of this section without the ‘C-x C-k’ prefix. For instance, another ‘C-k’ will re-execute the macro. The commands ‘C-x C-k C-n’ (‘kmacro-cycle-ring-next’) and ‘C-x C-k C-p’ (‘kmacro-cycle-ring-previous’) rotate the macro ring, bringing the next or previous keyboard macro to the head of the macro ring. The definition of the new head macro is displayed in the echo area. You can continue to rotate the macro ring immediately by repeating just ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’ until the desired macro is at the head of the ring. To execute the new macro ring head immediately, just type ‘C-k’. Note that Emacs treats the head of the macro ring as the last defined keyboard macro. For instance, will execute that macro, and ‘C-x C-k n’ will give it a name. The maximum number of macros stored in the keyboard macro ring is determined by the customizable variable ‘kmacro-ring-max’. ** 17.3 The Keyboard Macro Counter Each keyboard macro has an associated counter, which is initialized to 0 when you start defining the macro. This counter allows you to insert a number into the buffer that depends on the number of times the macro has been called. The counter is incremented each time its value is inserted into the buffer. ‘’ In a keyboard macro definition, insert the keyboard macro counter value in the buffer (‘kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter’). ‘C-x C-k C-i’ Insert the keyboard macro counter value in the buffer (‘kmacro-insert-counter’). ‘C-x C-k C-c’ Set the keyboard macro counter (‘kmacro-set-counter’). ‘C-x C-k C-a’ Add the prefix arg to the keyboard macro counter (‘kmacro-add-counter’). ‘C-x C-k C-f’ Specify the format for inserting the keyboard macro counter (‘kmacro-set-format’). When you are defining a keyboard macro, the command (‘kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter’) inserts the current value of the keyboard macro’s counter into the buffer, and increments the counter by 1. (If you are not defining a macro, begins a macro definition instead. *Note Basic Keyboard Macro::.) You can use a numeric prefix argument to specify a different increment. If you just specify a ‘C-u’ prefix, that is the same as an increment of zero: it inserts the current counter value without changing it. As an example, let us show how the keyboard macro counter can be used to build a numbered list. Consider the following key sequence: C-a . As part of this keyboard macro definition, the string ‘0. ’ was inserted into the beginning of the current line. If you now move somewhere else in the buffer and type to invoke the macro, the string ‘1. ’ is inserted at the beginning of that line. Subsequent invocations insert ‘2. ’, ‘3. ’, and so forth. The command ‘C-x C-k C-i’ (‘kmacro-insert-counter’) does the same thing as , but it can be used outside a keyboard macro definition. When no keyboard macro is being defined or executed, it inserts and increments the counter of the macro at the head of the keyboard macro ring. The command ‘C-x C-k C-c’ (‘kmacro-set-counter’) sets the current macro counter to the value of the numeric argument. If you use it inside the macro, it operates on each repetition of the macro. If you specify just ‘C-u’ as the prefix, while executing the macro, that resets the counter to the value it had at the beginning of the current repetition of the macro (undoing any increments so far in this repetition). The command ‘C-x C-k C-a’ (‘kmacro-add-counter’) adds the prefix argument to the current macro counter. With just ‘C-u’ as argument, it resets the counter to the last value inserted by any keyboard macro. (Normally, when you use this, the last insertion will be in the same macro and it will be the same counter.) The command ‘C-x C-k C-f’ (‘kmacro-set-format’) prompts for the format to use when inserting the macro counter. The default format is ‘%d’, which means to insert the number in decimal without any padding. You can exit with empty minibuffer to reset the format to this default. You can specify any format string that the ‘format’ function accepts and that makes sense with a single integer extra argument (*note (elisp)Formatting Strings::). Do not put the format string inside double quotes when you insert it in the minibuffer. If you use this command while no keyboard macro is being defined or executed, the new format affects all subsequent macro definitions. Existing macros continue to use the format in effect when they were defined. If you set the format while defining a keyboard macro, this affects the macro being defined from that point on, but it does not affect subsequent macros. Execution of the macro will, at each step, use the format in effect at that step during its definition. Changes to the macro format during execution of a macro, like the corresponding changes during its definition, have no effect on subsequent macros. The format set by ‘C-x C-k C-f’ does not affect insertion of numbers stored in registers. If you use a register as a counter, incrementing it on each repetition of the macro, that accomplishes the same thing as a keyboard macro counter. *Note Number Registers::. For most purposes, it is simpler to use a keyboard macro counter. ** 17.4 Executing Macros with Variations In a keyboard macro, you can create an effect similar to that of ‘query-replace’, in that the macro asks you each time around whether to make a change. ‘C-x q’ When this point is reached during macro execution, ask for confirmation (‘kbd-macro-query’). While defining the macro, type ‘C-x q’ at the point where you want the query to occur. During macro definition, the ‘C-x q’ does nothing, but when you run the macro later, ‘C-x q’ asks you interactively whether to continue. The valid responses when ‘C-x q’ asks are: (or ‘y’) Continue executing the keyboard macro. (or ‘n’) Skip the remainder of this repetition of the macro, and start right away with the next repetition. (or ‘q’) Skip the remainder of this repetition and cancel further repetitions. ‘C-r’ Enter a recursive editing level, in which you can perform editing which is not part of the macro. When you exit the recursive edit using ‘C-M-c’, you are asked again how to continue with the keyboard macro. If you type a at this time, the rest of the macro definition is executed. It is up to you to leave point and the text in a state such that the rest of the macro will do what you want. ‘C-u C-x q’, which is ‘C-x q’ with a numeric argument, performs a completely different function. It enters a recursive edit reading input from the keyboard, both when you type it during the definition of the macro, and when it is executed from the macro. During definition, the editing you do inside the recursive edit does not become part of the macro. During macro execution, the recursive edit gives you a chance to do some particularized editing on each repetition. *Note Recursive Edit::. ** 17.5 Naming and Saving Keyboard Macros ‘C-x C-k n’ Give a command name (for the duration of the Emacs session) to the most recently defined keyboard macro (‘kmacro-name-last-macro’). ‘C-x C-k b’ Bind the most recently defined keyboard macro to a key sequence (for the duration of the session) (‘kmacro-bind-to-key’). ‘M-x insert-kbd-macro’ Insert in the buffer a keyboard macro’s definition, as Lisp code. If you wish to save a keyboard macro for later use, you can give it a name using ‘C-x C-k n’ (‘kmacro-name-last-macro’). This reads a name as an argument using the minibuffer and defines that name to execute the last keyboard macro, in its current form. (If you later add to the definition of this macro, that does not alter the name’s definition as a macro.) The macro name is a Lisp symbol, and defining it in this way makes it a valid command name for calling with ‘M-x’ or for binding a key to with ‘global-set-key’ (*note Keymaps::). If you specify a name that has a prior definition other than a keyboard macro, an error message is shown and nothing is changed. You can also bind the last keyboard macro (in its current form) to a key, using ‘C-x C-k b’ (‘kmacro-bind-to-key’) followed by the key sequence you want to bind. You can bind to any key sequence in the global keymap, but since most key sequences already have other bindings, you should select the key sequence carefully. If you try to bind to a key sequence with an existing binding (in any keymap), this command asks you for confirmation before replacing the existing binding. To avoid problems caused by overriding existing bindings, the key sequences ‘C-x C-k 0’ through ‘C-x C-k 9’ and ‘C-x C-k A’ through ‘C-x C-k Z’ are reserved for your own keyboard macro bindings. In fact, to bind to one of these key sequences, you only need to type the digit or letter rather than the whole key sequences. For example, C-x C-k b 4 will bind the last keyboard macro to the key sequence ‘C-x C-k 4’. Once a macro has a command name, you can save its definition in a file. Then it can be used in another editing session. First, visit the file you want to save the definition in. Then use this command: M-x insert-kbd-macro MACRONAME This inserts some Lisp code that, when executed later, will define the same macro with the same definition it has now. (You don’t need to understand Lisp code to do this, because ‘insert-kbd-macro’ writes the Lisp code for you.) Then save the file. You can load the file later with ‘load-file’ (*note Lisp Libraries::). If the file you save in is your init file ‘~/.emacs’ (*note Init File::) then the macro will be defined each time you run Emacs. If you give ‘insert-kbd-macro’ a numeric argument, it makes additional Lisp code to record the keys (if any) that you have bound to MACRONAME, so that the macro will be reassigned the same keys when you load the file. ** 17.6 Editing a Keyboard Macro ‘C-x C-k C-e’ Edit the last defined keyboard macro (‘kmacro-edit-macro’). ‘C-x C-k e NAME ’ Edit a previously defined keyboard macro NAME (‘edit-kbd-macro’). ‘C-x C-k l’ Edit the last 300 keystrokes as a keyboard macro (‘kmacro-edit-lossage’). You can edit the last keyboard macro by typing ‘C-x C-k C-e’ or ‘C-x C-k ’ (‘kmacro-edit-macro’). This formats the macro definition in a buffer and enters a specialized major mode for editing it. Type ‘C-h m’ once in that buffer to display details of how to edit the macro. When you are finished editing, type ‘C-c C-c’. You can edit a named keyboard macro or a macro bound to a key by typing ‘C-x C-k e’ (‘edit-kbd-macro’). Follow that with the keyboard input that you would use to invoke the macro—‘C-x e’ or ‘M-x NAME’ or some other key sequence. You can edit the last 300 keystrokes as a macro by typing ‘C-x C-k l’ (‘kmacro-edit-lossage’). ** 17.7 Stepwise Editing a Keyboard Macro You can interactively replay and edit the last keyboard macro, one command at a time, by typing ‘C-x C-k ’ (‘kmacro-step-edit-macro’). Unless you quit the macro using ‘q’ or ‘C-g’, the edited macro replaces the last macro on the macro ring. This macro editing feature shows the last macro in the minibuffer together with the first (or next) command to be executed, and prompts you for an action. You can enter ‘?’ to get a summary of your options. These actions are available: • and ‘y’ execute the current command, and advance to the next command in the keyboard macro. • ‘n’, ‘d’, and skip and delete the current command. • ‘f’ skips the current command in this execution of the keyboard macro, but doesn’t delete it from the macro. • executes the current command, as well as all similar commands immediately following the current command; for example, may be used to insert a sequence of characters (corresponding to a sequence of ‘self-insert-command’ commands). • ‘c’ continues execution (without further editing) until the end of the keyboard macro. If execution terminates normally, the edited macro replaces the original keyboard macro. • ‘C-k’ skips and deletes the rest of the keyboard macro, terminates step-editing, and replaces the original keyboard macro with the edited macro. • ‘q’ and ‘C-g’ cancels the step-editing of the keyboard macro; discarding any changes made to the keyboard macro. • ‘i KEY… C-j’ reads and executes a series of key sequences (not including the final ‘C-j’), and inserts them before the current command in the keyboard macro, without advancing over the current command. • ‘I KEY…’ reads one key sequence, executes it, and inserts it before the current command in the keyboard macro, without advancing over the current command. • ‘r KEY… C-j’ reads and executes a series of key sequences (not including the final ‘C-j’), and replaces the current command in the keyboard macro with them, advancing over the inserted key sequences. • ‘R KEY…’ reads one key sequence, executes it, and replaces the current command in the keyboard macro with that key sequence, advancing over the inserted key sequence. • ‘a KEY… C-j’ executes the current command, then reads and executes a series of key sequences (not including the final ‘C-j’), and inserts them after the current command in the keyboard macro; it then advances over the current command and the inserted key sequences. • ‘A KEY… C-j’ executes the rest of the commands in the keyboard macro, then reads and executes a series of key sequences (not including the final ‘C-j’), and appends them at the end of the keyboard macro; it then terminates the step-editing and replaces the original keyboard macro with the edited macro. * 18 File Handling The operating system stores data permanently in named "files", so most of the text you edit with Emacs comes from a file and is ultimately stored in a file. To edit a file, you must tell Emacs to read the file and prepare a buffer containing a copy of the file’s text. This is called "visiting" the file. Editing commands apply directly to text in the buffer; that is, to the copy inside Emacs. Your changes appear in the file itself only when you "save" the buffer back into the file. In addition to visiting and saving files, Emacs can delete, copy, rename, and append to files, keep multiple versions of them, and operate on file directories. + Menu: - File Names:: How to type and edit file-name arguments. - Visiting:: Visiting a file prepares Emacs to edit the file. - Saving:: Saving makes your changes permanent. - Reverting:: Reverting cancels all the changes not saved. - Autorevert:: Auto Reverting non-file buffers. - Auto Save:: Auto Save periodically protects against loss of data. - File Aliases:: Handling multiple names for one file. - Directories:: Creating, deleting, and listing file directories. - Comparing Files:: Finding where two files differ. - Diff Mode:: Mode for editing file differences. - Copying and Naming:: Copying, naming and renaming files. - Misc File Ops:: Other things you can do on files. - Compressed Files:: Accessing compressed files. - File Archives:: Operating on tar, zip, jar etc. archive files. - Remote Files:: Accessing files on other machines. - Quoted File Names:: Quoting special characters in file names. - File Name Cache:: Completion against a list of files you often use. - File Conveniences:: Convenience Features for Finding Files. - Filesets:: Handling sets of files. ** 18.1 File Names Many Emacs commands that operate on a file require you to specify the file name, using the minibuffer (*note Minibuffer File::). While in the minibuffer, you can use the usual completion and history commands (*note Minibuffer::). Note that file name completion ignores file names whose extensions appear in the variable ‘completion-ignored-extensions’ (*note Completion Options::). Note also that most commands use permissive completion with confirmation for reading file names: you are allowed to submit a nonexistent file name, but if you type immediately after completing up to a nonexistent file name, Emacs prints ‘[Confirm]’ and you must type a second to confirm. *Note Completion Exit::, for details. Minibuffer history commands offer some special features for reading file names, see *note Minibuffer History::. Each buffer has a "default directory", stored in the buffer-local variable ‘default-directory’. Whenever Emacs reads a file name using the minibuffer, it usually inserts the default directory into the minibuffer as the initial contents. You can inhibit this insertion by changing the variable ‘insert-default-directory’ to ‘nil’ (*note Minibuffer File::). Regardless, Emacs always assumes that any relative file name is relative to the default directory, e.g., entering a file name without a directory specifies a file in the default directory. When you visit a file, Emacs sets ‘default-directory’ in the visiting buffer to the directory of its file. When you create a new buffer that is not visiting a file, via a command like ‘C-x b’, its default directory is usually copied from the buffer that was current at the time (*note Select Buffer::). You can use the command ‘M-x pwd’ to see the value of ‘default-directory’ in the current buffer. The command ‘M-x cd’ prompts for a directory’s name, and sets the buffer’s ‘default-directory’ to that directory (doing this does not change the buffer’s file name, if any). As an example, when you visit the file ‘/u/rms/gnu/gnu.tasks’, the default directory is set to ‘/u/rms/gnu/’. If you invoke a command that reads a file name, entering just ‘foo’ in the minibuffer, with a directory omitted, specifies the file ‘/u/rms/gnu/foo’; entering ‘../.login’ specifies ‘/u/rms/.login’; and entering ‘new/foo’ specifies ‘/u/rms/gnu/new/foo’. When typing a file name into the minibuffer, you can make use of a couple of shortcuts: a double slash ignores everything before the second slash in the pair, and ‘~/’ is your home directory. *Note Minibuffer File::. The character ‘$’ is used to substitute an environment variable into a file name. The name of the environment variable consists of all the alphanumeric characters after the ‘$’; alternatively, it can be enclosed in braces after the ‘$’. For example, if you have used the shell command ‘export FOO=rms/hacks’ to set up an environment variable named ‘FOO’, then both ‘/u/$FOO/test.c’ and ‘/u/${FOO}/test.c’ are abbreviations for ‘/u/rms/hacks/test.c’. If the environment variable is not defined, no substitution occurs, so that the character ‘$’ stands for itself. Note that environment variables set outside Emacs affect Emacs only if they are applied before Emacs is started. To access a file with ‘$’ in its name, if the ‘$’ causes expansion, type ‘$$’. This pair is converted to a single ‘$’ at the same time that variable substitution is performed for a single ‘$’. Alternatively, quote the whole file name with ‘/:’ (*note Quoted File Names::). File names which begin with a literal ‘~’ should also be quoted with ‘/:’. You can include non-ASCII characters in file names. *Note File Name Coding::. ** 18.2 Visiting Files ‘C-x C-f’ Visit a file (‘find-file’). ‘C-x C-r’ Visit a file for viewing, without allowing changes to it (‘find-file-read-only’). ‘C-x C-v’ Visit a different file instead of the one visited last (‘find-alternate-file’). ‘C-x 4 f’ Visit a file, in another window (‘find-file-other-window’). Don’t alter what is displayed in the selected window. ‘C-x 5 f’ Visit a file, in a new frame (‘find-file-other-frame’). Don’t alter what is displayed in the selected frame. ‘M-x find-file-literally’ Visit a file with no conversion of the contents. "Visiting" a file means reading its contents into an Emacs buffer so you can edit them. Emacs makes a new buffer for each file that you visit. To visit a file, type ‘C-x C-f’ (‘find-file’) and use the minibuffer to enter the name of the desired file. While in the minibuffer, you can abort the command by typing ‘C-g’. *Note File Names::, for details about entering file names into minibuffers. If the specified file exists but the system does not allow you to read it, an error message is displayed in the echo area (on GNU and Unix systems you might be able to visit such a file using the ‘su’ or ‘sudo’ methods; *note Remote Files::). Otherwise, you can tell that ‘C-x C-f’ has completed successfully by the appearance of new text on the screen, and by the buffer name shown in the mode line (*note Mode Line::). Emacs normally constructs the buffer name from the file name, omitting the directory name. For example, a file named ‘/usr/rms/emacs.tex’ is visited in a buffer named ‘emacs.tex’. If there is already a buffer with that name, Emacs constructs a unique name; the normal method is to add a suffix based on the directory name (e.g., ‘’, ‘’, and so on), but you can select other methods. *Note Uniquify::. To create a new file, just visit it using the same command, ‘C-x C-f’. Emacs displays ‘(New file)’ in the echo area, but in other respects behaves as if you had visited an existing empty file. After visiting a file, the changes you make with editing commands are made in the Emacs buffer. They do not take effect in the visited file, until you "save" the buffer (*note Saving::). If a buffer contains changes that have not been saved, we say the buffer is "modified". This implies that some changes will be lost if the buffer is not saved. The mode line displays two stars near the left margin to indicate that the buffer is modified. If you visit a file that is already in Emacs, ‘C-x C-f’ switches to the existing buffer instead of making another copy. Before doing so, it checks whether the file has changed since you last visited or saved it. If the file has changed, Emacs offers to reread it. If you try to visit a file larger than ‘large-file-warning-threshold’ (the default is 10000000, which is about 10 megabytes), Emacs asks you for confirmation first. You can answer ‘y’ to proceed with visiting the file. Note, however, that Emacs cannot visit files that are larger than the maximum Emacs buffer size, which is limited by the amount of memory Emacs can allocate and by the integers that Emacs can represent (*note Buffers::). If you try, Emacs displays an error message saying that the maximum buffer size has been exceeded. If the file name you specify contains shell-style wildcard characters, Emacs visits all the files that match it. (On case-insensitive filesystems, Emacs matches the wildcards disregarding the letter case.) Wildcards include ‘?’, ‘*’, and ‘[…]’ sequences. To enter the wild card ‘?’ in a file name in the minibuffer, you need to type ‘C-q ?’. *Note Quoted File Names::, for information on how to visit a file whose name actually contains wildcard characters. You can disable the wildcard feature by customizing ‘find-file-wildcards’. If you visit the wrong file unintentionally by typing its name incorrectly, type ‘C-x C-v’ (‘find-alternate-file’) to visit the file you really wanted. ‘C-x C-v’ is similar to ‘C-x C-f’, but it kills the current buffer (after first offering to save it if it is modified). When ‘C-x C-v’ reads the file name to visit, it inserts the entire default file name in the buffer, with point just after the directory part; this is convenient if you made a slight error in typing the name. If you visit a file that is actually a directory, Emacs invokes Dired, the Emacs directory browser. *Note Dired::. You can disable this behavior by setting the variable ‘find-file-run-dired’ to ‘nil’; in that case, it is an error to try to visit a directory. Files which are actually collections of other files, or "file archives", are visited in special modes which invoke a Dired-like environment to allow operations on archive members. *Note File Archives::, for more about these features. If you visit a file that the operating system won’t let you modify, or that is marked read-only, Emacs makes the buffer read-only too, so that you won’t go ahead and make changes that you’ll have trouble saving afterward. You can make the buffer writable with ‘C-x C-q’ (‘read-only-mode’). *Note Misc Buffer::. If you want to visit a file as read-only in order to protect yourself from entering changes accidentally, visit it with the command ‘C-x C-r’ (‘find-file-read-only’) instead of ‘C-x C-f’. ‘C-x 4 f’ (‘find-file-other-window’) is like ‘C-x C-f’ except that the buffer containing the specified file is selected in another window. The window that was selected before ‘C-x 4 f’ continues to show the same buffer it was already showing. If this command is used when only one window is being displayed, that window is split in two, with one window showing the same buffer as before, and the other one showing the newly requested file. *Note Windows::. ‘C-x 5 f’ (‘find-file-other-frame’) is similar, but opens a new frame, or selects any existing frame showing the specified file. *Note Frames::. On graphical displays, there are two additional methods for visiting files. Firstly, when Emacs is built with a suitable GUI toolkit, commands invoked with the mouse (by clicking on the menu bar or tool bar) use the toolkit’s standard file selection dialog instead of prompting for the file name in the minibuffer. On GNU/Linux and Unix platforms, Emacs does this when built with GTK+, LessTif, and Motif toolkits; on MS-Windows and Mac, the GUI version does that by default. For information on how to customize this, see *note Dialog Boxes::. Secondly, Emacs supports drag and drop: dropping a file into an ordinary Emacs window visits the file using that window. As an exception, dropping a file into a window displaying a Dired buffer moves or copies the file into the displayed directory. For details, see *note Drag and Drop::, and *note Misc Dired Features::. On text-mode terminals and on graphical displays when Emacs was built without a GUI toolkit, you can visit files via the menu-bar ‘File’ menu, which has the ‘Visit New File’ and the ‘Open File’ items. Each time you visit a file, Emacs automatically scans its contents to detect what character encoding and end-of-line convention it uses, and converts these to Emacs’s internal encoding and end-of-line convention within the buffer. When you save the buffer, Emacs performs the inverse conversion, writing the file to disk with its original encoding and end-of-line convention. *Note Coding Systems::. If you wish to edit a file as a sequence of ASCII characters with no special encoding or conversion, use the ‘M-x find-file-literally’ command. This visits a file, like ‘C-x C-f’, but does not do format conversion (*note Format Conversion: (elisp)Format Conversion.), character code conversion (*note Coding Systems::), or automatic uncompression (*note Compressed Files::), and does not add a final newline because of ‘require-final-newline’ (*note Customize Save::). If you have already visited the same file in the usual (non-literal) manner, this command asks you whether to visit it literally instead. Two special hook variables allow extensions to modify the operation of visiting files. Visiting a file that does not exist runs the functions in ‘find-file-not-found-functions’; this variable holds a list of functions, which are called one by one (with no arguments) until one of them returns non-‘nil’. This is not a normal hook, and the name ends in ‘-functions’ rather than ‘-hook’ to indicate that fact. Successful visiting of any file, whether existing or not, calls the functions in ‘find-file-hook’, with no arguments. This variable is a normal hook. In the case of a nonexistent file, the ‘find-file-not-found-functions’ are run first. *Note Hooks::. There are several ways to specify automatically the major mode for editing the file (*note Choosing Modes::), and to specify local variables defined for that file (*note File Variables::). ** 18.3 Saving Files "Saving" a buffer in Emacs means writing its contents back into the file that was visited in the buffer. + Menu: - Save Commands:: Commands for saving files. - Backup:: How Emacs saves the old version of your file. - Customize Save:: Customizing the saving of files. - Interlocking:: How Emacs protects against simultaneous editing of one file by two users. - Shadowing: File Shadowing. Copying files to “shadows” automatically. - Time Stamps:: Emacs can update time stamps on saved files. *** 18.3.1 Commands for Saving Files These are the commands that relate to saving and writing files. ‘C-x C-s’ Save the current buffer to its file (‘save-buffer’). ‘C-x s’ Save any or all buffers to their files (‘save-some-buffers’). ‘M-~’ Forget that the current buffer has been changed (‘not-modified’). With prefix argument (‘C-u’), mark the current buffer as changed. ‘C-x C-w’ Save the current buffer with a specified file name (‘write-file’). ‘M-x set-visited-file-name’ Change the file name under which the current buffer will be saved. When you wish to save the file and make your changes permanent, type ‘C-x C-s’ (‘save-buffer’). After saving is finished, ‘C-x C-s’ displays a message like this: Wrote /u/rms/gnu/gnu.tasks If the current buffer is not modified (no changes have been made in it since the buffer was created or last saved), saving is not really done, because it would have no effect. Instead, ‘C-x C-s’ displays a message like this in the echo area: (No changes need to be saved) With a prefix argument, ‘C-u C-x C-s’, Emacs also marks the buffer to be backed up when the next save is done. *Note Backup::. The command ‘C-x s’ (‘save-some-buffers’) offers to save any or all modified buffers. It asks you what to do with each buffer. The possible responses are analogous to those of ‘query-replace’: ‘y’ Save this buffer and ask about the rest of the buffers. ‘n’ Don’t save this buffer, but ask about the rest of the buffers. ‘!’ Save this buffer and all the rest with no more questions. ‘’ Terminate ‘save-some-buffers’ without any more saving. ‘.’ Save this buffer, then exit ‘save-some-buffers’ without even asking about other buffers. ‘C-r’ View the buffer that you are currently being asked about. When you exit View mode, you get back to ‘save-some-buffers’, which asks the question again. ‘d’ Diff the buffer against its corresponding file, so you can see what changes you would be saving. This calls the command ‘diff-buffer-with-file’ (*note Comparing Files::). ‘C-h’ Display a help message about these options. You can customize the value of ‘save-some-buffers-default-predicate’ to control which buffers Emacs will ask about. ‘C-x C-c’, the key sequence to exit Emacs, invokes ‘save-some-buffers’ and therefore asks the same questions. If you have changed a buffer but do not wish to save the changes, you should take some action to prevent it. Otherwise, each time you use ‘C-x s’ or ‘C-x C-c’, you are liable to save this buffer by mistake. One thing you can do is type ‘M-~’ (‘not-modified’), which clears out the indication that the buffer is modified. If you do this, none of the save commands will believe that the buffer needs to be saved. (‘~’ is often used as a mathematical symbol for “not”; thus ‘M-~’ is “not”, metafied.) Alternatively, you can cancel all the changes made since the file was visited or saved, by reading the text from the file again. This is called "reverting". *Note Reverting::. (You could also undo all the changes by repeating the undo command ‘C-x u’ until you have undone all the changes; but reverting is easier.) ‘M-x set-visited-file-name’ alters the name of the file that the current buffer is visiting. It reads the new file name using the minibuffer. Then it marks the buffer as visiting that file name, and changes the buffer name correspondingly. ‘set-visited-file-name’ does not save the buffer in the newly visited file; it just alters the records inside Emacs in case you do save later. It also marks the buffer as modified so that ‘C-x C-s’ in that buffer _will_ save. If you wish to mark the buffer as visiting a different file and save it right away, use ‘C-x C-w’ (‘write-file’). This is equivalent to ‘set-visited-file-name’ followed by ‘C-x C-s’, except that ‘C-x C-w’ asks for confirmation if the file exists. ‘C-x C-s’ used on a buffer that is not visiting a file has the same effect as ‘C-x C-w’; that is, it reads a file name, marks the buffer as visiting that file, and saves it there. The default file name in a buffer that is not visiting a file is made by combining the buffer name with the buffer’s default directory (*note File Names::). If the new file name implies a major mode, then ‘C-x C-w’ switches to that major mode, in most cases. The command ‘set-visited-file-name’ also does this. *Note Choosing Modes::. If Emacs is about to save a file and sees that the date of the latest version on disk does not match what Emacs last read or wrote, Emacs notifies you of this fact, because it probably indicates a problem caused by simultaneous editing and requires your immediate attention. *Note Simultaneous Editing: Interlocking. *** 18.3.2 Backup Files On most operating systems, rewriting a file automatically destroys all record of what the file used to contain. Thus, saving a file from Emacs throws away the old contents of the file—or it would, except that Emacs carefully copies the old contents to another file, called the "backup" file, before actually saving. Emacs makes a backup for a file only the first time the file is saved from a buffer. No matter how many times you subsequently save the file, its backup remains unchanged. However, if you kill the buffer and then visit the file again, a new backup file will be made. For most files, the variable ‘make-backup-files’ determines whether to make backup files. On most operating systems, its default value is ‘t’, so that Emacs does write backup files. For files managed by a version control system (*note Version Control::), the variable ‘vc-make-backup-files’ determines whether to make backup files. By default it is ‘nil’, since backup files are redundant when you store all the previous versions in a version control system. *Note General VC Options::. At your option, Emacs can keep either a single backup for each file, or make a series of numbered backup files for each file that you edit. *Note Backup Names::. The default value of the ‘backup-enable-predicate’ variable prevents backup files being written for files in the directories used for temporary files, specified by ‘temporary-file-directory’ or ‘small-temporary-file-directory’. You can explicitly tell Emacs to make another backup file from a buffer, even though that buffer has been saved before. If you save the buffer with ‘C-u C-x C-s’, the version thus saved will be made into a backup file if you save the buffer again. ‘C-u C-u C-x C-s’ saves the buffer, but first makes the previous file contents into a new backup file. ‘C-u C-u C-u C-x C-s’ does both things: it makes a backup from the previous contents, and arranges to make another from the newly saved contents if you save again. You can customize the variable ‘backup-directory-alist’ to specify that files matching certain patterns should be backed up in specific directories. A typical use is to add an element ‘("." . DIR)’ to make all backups in the directory with absolute name DIR. Emacs modifies the backup file names to avoid clashes between files with the same names originating in different directories. Alternatively, adding, ‘("." . ".~")’ would make backups in the invisible subdirectory ‘.~’ of the original file’s directory. Emacs creates the directory, if necessary, to make the backup. + Menu: - Names: Backup Names. How backup files are named. - Deletion: Backup Deletion. Emacs deletes excess numbered backups. - Copying: Backup Copying. Backups can be made by copying or renaming. **** 18.3.2.1 Single or Numbered Backups When Emacs makes a backup file, its name is normally constructed by appending ‘~’ to the file name being edited; thus, the backup file for ‘eval.c’ would be ‘eval.c~’. If access control stops Emacs from writing backup files under the usual names, it writes the backup file as ‘~/.emacs.d/%backup%~’. Only one such file can exist, so only the most recently made such backup is available. Emacs can also make "numbered backup files". Numbered backup file names contain ‘.~’, the number, and another ‘~’ after the original file name. Thus, the backup files of ‘eval.c’ would be called ‘eval.c.~1~’, ‘eval.c.~2~’, and so on, all the way through names like ‘eval.c.~259~’ and beyond. The variable ‘version-control’ determines whether to make single backup files or multiple numbered backup files. Its possible values are: ‘nil’ Make numbered backups for files that have numbered backups already. Otherwise, make single backups. This is the default. ‘t’ Make numbered backups. ‘never’ Never make numbered backups; always make single backups. The usual way to set this variable is globally, through your init file or the customization buffer. However, you can set ‘version-control’ locally in an individual buffer to control the making of backups for that buffer’s file (*note Locals::). You can have Emacs set ‘version-control’ locally whenever you visit a given file (*note File Variables::). Some modes, such as Rmail mode, set this variable. If you set the environment variable ‘VERSION_CONTROL’, to tell various GNU utilities what to do with backup files, Emacs also obeys the environment variable by setting the Lisp variable ‘version-control’ accordingly at startup. If the environment variable’s value is ‘t’ or ‘numbered’, then ‘version-control’ becomes ‘t’; if the value is ‘nil’ or ‘existing’, then ‘version-control’ becomes ‘nil’; if it is ‘never’ or ‘simple’, then ‘version-control’ becomes ‘never’. If you set the variable ‘make-backup-file-name-function’ to a suitable Lisp function, you can override the usual way Emacs constructs backup file names. **** 18.3.2.2 Automatic Deletion of Backups To prevent excessive consumption of disk space, Emacs can delete numbered backup versions automatically. Generally Emacs keeps the first few backups and the latest few backups, deleting any in between. This happens every time a new backup is made. The two variables ‘kept-old-versions’ and ‘kept-new-versions’ control this deletion. Their values are, respectively, the number of oldest (lowest-numbered) backups to keep and the number of newest (highest-numbered) ones to keep, each time a new backup is made. The backups in the middle (excluding those oldest and newest) are the excess middle versions—those backups are deleted. These variables’ values are used when it is time to delete excess versions, just after a new backup version is made; the newly made backup is included in the count in ‘kept-new-versions’. By default, both variables are 2. If ‘delete-old-versions’ is ‘t’, Emacs deletes the excess backup files silently. If it is ‘nil’, the default, Emacs asks you whether it should delete the excess backup versions. If it has any other value, then Emacs never automatically deletes backups. Dired’s ‘.’ (Period) command can also be used to delete old versions. *Note Flagging Many Files::. **** 18.3.2.3 Copying vs. Renaming Backup files can be made by copying the old file or by renaming it. This makes a difference when the old file has multiple names (hard links). If the old file is renamed into the backup file, then the alternate names become names for the backup file. If the old file is copied instead, then the alternate names remain names for the file that you are editing, and the contents accessed by those names will be the new contents. The method of making a backup file may also affect the file’s owner and group. If copying is used, these do not change. If renaming is used, you become the file’s owner, and the file’s group becomes the default (different operating systems have different defaults for the group). The choice of renaming or copying is made as follows: • If the variable ‘backup-by-copying’ is non-‘nil’ (the default is ‘nil’), use copying. • Otherwise, if the variable ‘backup-by-copying-when-linked’ is non-‘nil’ (the default is ‘nil’), and the file has multiple names, use copying. • Otherwise, if the variable ‘backup-by-copying-when-mismatch’ is non-‘nil’ (the default is ‘t’), and renaming would change the file’s owner or group, use copying. If you change ‘backup-by-copying-when-mismatch’ to ‘nil’, Emacs checks the numeric user-id of the file’s owner. If this is higher than ‘backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch’, then it behaves as though ‘backup-by-copying-when-mismatch’ is non-‘nil’ anyway. • Otherwise, renaming is the default choice. When a file is managed with a version control system (*note Version Control::), Emacs does not normally make backups in the usual way for that file. But "committing" (a.k.a. "checking in", *note VCS Concepts::) new versions of files is similar in some ways to making backups. One unfortunate similarity is that these operations typically break hard links, disconnecting the file name you visited from any alternate names for the same file. This has nothing to do with Emacs—the version control system does it. *** 18.3.3 Customizing Saving of Files If the value of the variable ‘require-final-newline’ is ‘t’, saving or writing a file silently puts a newline at the end if there isn’t already one there. If the value is ‘visit’, Emacs adds a newline at the end of any file that doesn’t have one, just after it visits the file. (This marks the buffer as modified, and you can undo it.) If the value is ‘visit-save’, Emacs adds such newlines both on visiting and on saving. If the value is ‘nil’, Emacs leaves the end of the file unchanged; any other non-‘nil’ value means Emacs asks you whether to add a newline. The default is ‘nil’. Some major modes are designed for specific kinds of files that are always supposed to end in newlines. Such major modes set the variable ‘require-final-newline’ to the value of ‘mode-require-final-newline’, which defaults to ‘t’. By setting the latter variable, you can control how these modes handle final newlines. Normally, when a program writes a file, the operating system briefly caches the file’s data in main memory before committing the data to disk. This can greatly improve performance; for example, when running on laptops, it can avoid a disk spin-up each time a file is written. However, it risks data loss if the operating system crashes before committing the cache to disk. To lessen this risk, Emacs can invoke the ‘fsync’ system call after saving a file. Using ‘fsync’ does not eliminate the risk of data loss, partly because many systems do not implement ‘fsync’ properly, and partly because Emacs’s file-saving procedure typically relies also on directory updates that might not survive a crash even if ‘fsync’ works properly. The ‘write-region-inhibit-fsync’ variable controls whether Emacs invokes ‘fsync’ after saving a file. The variable’s default value is ‘nil’ when Emacs is interactive, and ‘t’ when Emacs runs in batch mode (*note Batch Mode: Initial Options.). Emacs never uses ‘fsync’ when writing auto-save files, as these files might lose data anyway. *** 18.3.4 Protection against Simultaneous Editing Simultaneous editing occurs when two users visit the same file, both make changes, and then both save them. If nobody is informed that this is happening, whichever user saves first would later find that their changes were lost. On some systems, Emacs notices immediately when the second user starts to change the file, and issues an immediate warning. On all systems, Emacs checks when you save the file, and warns if you are about to overwrite another user’s changes. You can prevent loss of the other user’s work by taking the proper corrective action instead of saving the file. When you make the first modification in an Emacs buffer that is visiting a file, Emacs records that the file is "locked" by you. (It does this by creating a specially-named symbolic link(1) with special contents in the same directory. *Note (elisp)File Locks::, for more details.) Emacs removes the lock when you save the changes. The idea is that the file is locked whenever an Emacs buffer visiting it has unsaved changes. You can prevent the creation of lock files by setting the variable ‘create-lockfiles’ to ‘nil’. *Caution:* by doing so you will lose the benefits that this feature provides. If you begin to modify the buffer while the visited file is locked by someone else, this constitutes a "collision". When Emacs detects a collision, it asks you what to do, by calling the Lisp function ‘ask-user-about-lock’. You can redefine this function for the sake of customization. The standard definition of this function asks you a question and accepts three possible answers: ‘s’ Steal the lock. Whoever was already changing the file loses the lock, and you gain the lock. ‘p’ Proceed. Go ahead and edit the file despite its being locked by someone else. ‘q’ Quit. This causes an error (‘file-locked’), and the buffer contents remain unchanged—the modification you were trying to make does not actually take place. If Emacs or the operating system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which are stale, so you may occasionally get warnings about spurious collisions. When you determine that the collision is spurious, just use ‘p’ to tell Emacs to go ahead anyway. Note that locking works on the basis of a file name; if a file has multiple names, Emacs does not prevent two users from editing it simultaneously under different names. A lock file cannot be written in some circumstances, e.g., if Emacs lacks the system permissions or cannot create lock files for some other reason. In these cases, Emacs can still detect the collision when you try to save a file, by checking the file’s last-modification date. If the file has changed since the last time Emacs visited or saved it, that implies that changes have been made in some other way, and will be lost if Emacs proceeds with saving. Emacs then displays a warning message and asks for confirmation before saving; answer ‘yes’ to save, and ‘no’ or ‘C-g’ cancel the save. If you are notified that simultaneous editing has already taken place, one way to compare the buffer to its file is the ‘M-x diff-buffer-with-file’ command. *Note Comparing Files::. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) If your file system does not support symbolic links, a regular file is used. *** 18.3.5 Shadowing Files You can arrange to keep identical "shadow" copies of certain files in more than one place—possibly on different machines. To do this, first you must set up a "shadow file group", which is a set of identically-named files shared between a list of sites. The file group is permanent and applies to further Emacs sessions as well as the current one. Once the group is set up, every time you exit Emacs, it will copy the file you edited to the other files in its group. You can also do the copying without exiting Emacs, by typing ‘M-x shadow-copy-files’. A "shadow cluster" is a group of hosts that share directories, so that copying to or from one of them is sufficient to update the file on all of them. Each shadow cluster has a name, and specifies the network address of a primary host (the one we copy files to), and a regular expression that matches the host names of all the other hosts in the cluster. You can define a shadow cluster with ‘M-x shadow-define-cluster’. ‘M-x shadow-initialize’ Set up file shadowing. ‘M-x shadow-define-literal-group’ Declare a single file to be shared between sites. ‘M-x shadow-define-regexp-group’ Make all files that match each of a group of files be shared between hosts. ‘M-x shadow-define-cluster NAME ’ Define a shadow file cluster NAME. ‘M-x shadow-copy-files’ Copy all pending shadow files. ‘M-x shadow-cancel’ Cancel the instruction to shadow some files. To set up a shadow file group, use ‘M-x shadow-define-literal-group’ or ‘M-x shadow-define-regexp-group’. See their documentation strings for further information. Before copying a file to its shadows, Emacs asks for confirmation. You can answer “no” to bypass copying of this file, this time. If you want to cancel the shadowing permanently for a certain file, use ‘M-x shadow-cancel’ to eliminate or change the shadow file group. File Shadowing is not available on MS Windows. *** 18.3.6 Updating Time Stamps Automatically You can arrange to put a time stamp in a file, so that it is updated automatically each time you edit and save the file. The time stamp must be in the first eight lines of the file, and you should insert it like this: Time-stamp: <> or like this: Time-stamp: " " Then add the function ‘time-stamp’ to the hook ‘before-save-hook’ (*note Hooks::). When you save the file, this function then automatically updates the time stamp with the current date and time. You can also use the command ‘M-x time-stamp’ to update the time stamp manually. By default the time stamp is formatted according to your locale setting (*note Environment::) and time zone (*note (elisp)Time of Day::). For customizations, see the Custom group ‘time-stamp’. ** 18.4 Reverting a Buffer If you have made extensive changes to a file-visiting buffer and then change your mind, you can "revert" the changes and go back to the saved version of the file. To do this, type ‘M-x revert-buffer’. Since reverting unintentionally could lose a lot of work, Emacs asks for confirmation first. The ‘revert-buffer’ command tries to position point in such a way that, if the file was edited only slightly, you will be at approximately the same part of the text as before. But if you have made major changes, point may end up in a totally different location. Reverting marks the buffer as not modified. It also clears the buffer’s undo history (*note Undo::). Thus, the reversion cannot be undone—if you change your mind yet again, you can’t use the undo commands to bring the reverted changes back. Some kinds of buffers that are not associated with files, such as Dired buffers, can also be reverted. For them, reverting means recalculating their contents. Buffers created explicitly with ‘C-x b’ cannot be reverted; ‘revert-buffer’ reports an error if you try. When you edit a file that changes automatically and frequently—for example, a log of output from a process that continues to run—it may be useful for Emacs to revert the file without querying you. To request this behavior, set the variable ‘revert-without-query’ to a list of regular expressions. When a file name matches one of these regular expressions, ‘find-file’ and ‘revert-buffer’ will revert it automatically if it has changed—provided the buffer itself is not modified. (If you have edited the text, it would be wrong to discard your changes.) You can also tell Emacs to revert buffers periodically. To do this for a specific buffer, enable the minor mode Auto-Revert mode by typing ‘M-x auto-revert-mode’. This automatically reverts the current buffer when its visited file changes on disk. To do the same for all file buffers, type ‘M-x global-auto-revert-mode’ to enable Global Auto-Revert mode. These minor modes do not check or revert remote files, because that is usually too slow. This behavior can be changed by setting the variable ‘auto-revert-remote-files’ to non-‘nil’. By default, Auto-Revert mode works using "file notifications", whereby changes in the filesystem are reported to Emacs by the OS. You can disable use of file notifications by customizing the variable ‘auto-revert-use-notify’ to a ‘nil’ value, then Emacs will check for file changes by polling every five seconds. You can change the polling interval through the variable ‘auto-revert-interval’. Not all systems support file notifications; where they are not supported, ‘auto-revert-use-notify’ will be ‘nil’ by default. One use of Auto-Revert mode is to “tail” a file such as a system log, so that changes made to that file by other programs are continuously displayed. To do this, just move the point to the end of the buffer, and it will stay there as the file contents change. However, if you are sure that the file will only change by growing at the end, use Auto-Revert Tail mode instead (‘auto-revert-tail-mode’). It is more efficient for this. Auto-Revert Tail mode works also for remote files. When a buffer is auto-reverted, a message is generated. This can be suppressed by setting ‘auto-revert-verbose’ to ‘nil’. In Dired buffers (*note Dired::), Auto-Revert mode refreshes the buffer when a file is created or deleted in the buffer’s directory. *Note VC Undo::, for commands to revert to earlier versions of files under version control. *Note VC Mode Line::, for Auto Revert peculiarities when visiting files under version control. ** 18.5 Auto Reverting Non-File Buffers Global Auto Revert Mode normally only reverts file buffers. There are two ways to auto-revert certain non-file buffers: by enabling Auto Revert Mode in those buffers (using ‘M-x auto-revert-mode’); and by setting ‘global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers’ to a non-‘nil’ value. The latter enables Auto Reverting for all types of buffers for which it is implemented (listed in the menu below). Like file buffers, non-file buffers should normally not revert while you are working on them, or while they contain information that might get lost after reverting. Therefore, they do not revert if they are modified. This can get tricky, because deciding when a non-file buffer should be marked modified is usually more difficult than for file buffers. Another tricky detail is that, for efficiency reasons, Auto Revert often does not try to detect all possible changes in the buffer, only changes that are major or easy to detect. Hence, enabling auto-reverting for a non-file buffer does not always guarantee that all information in the buffer is up-to-date, and does not necessarily make manual reverts useless. At the other extreme, certain buffers automatically revert every ‘auto-revert-interval’ seconds. (This currently only applies to the Buffer Menu.) In this case, Auto Revert does not print any messages while reverting, even when ‘auto-revert-verbose’ is non-‘nil’. The details depend on the particular types of buffers and are explained in the corresponding sections. + Menu: - Auto Reverting the Buffer Menu:: Auto Revert of the Buffer Menu. - Auto Reverting Dired:: Auto Revert of Dired buffers. *** 18.5.1 Auto Reverting the Buffer Menu If auto-reverting of non-file buffers is enabled, the Buffer Menu (*note Several Buffers::) automatically reverts every ‘auto-revert-interval’ seconds, whether there is a need for it or not. (It would probably take longer to check whether there is a need than to actually revert.) If the Buffer Menu inappropriately gets marked modified, just revert it manually using ‘g’ and auto-reverting will resume. However, if you marked certain buffers to get deleted or to be displayed, you have to be careful, because reverting erases all marks. The fact that adding marks sets the buffer’s modified flag prevents Auto Revert from automatically erasing the marks. *** 18.5.2 Auto Reverting Dired buffers Dired buffers only auto-revert when the file list of the buffer’s main directory changes (e.g., when a new file is added or deleted). They do not auto-revert when information about a particular file changes (e.g., when the size changes) or when inserted subdirectories change. To be sure that _all_ listed information is up to date, you have to manually revert using ‘g’, _even_ if auto-reverting is enabled in the Dired buffer. Sometimes, you might get the impression that modifying or saving files listed in the main directory actually does cause auto-reverting. This is because making changes to a file, or saving it, very often causes changes in the directory itself; for instance, through backup files or auto-save files. However, this is not guaranteed. If the Dired buffer is marked modified and there are no changes you want to protect, then most of the time you can make auto-reverting resume by manually reverting the buffer using ‘g’. There is one exception. If you flag or mark files, you can safely revert the buffer. This will not erase the flags or marks (unless the marked file has been deleted, of course). However, the buffer will stay modified, even after reverting, and auto-reverting will not resume. This is because, if you flag or mark files, you may be working on the buffer and you might not want the buffer to change without warning. If you want auto-reverting to resume in the presence of marks and flags, mark the buffer non-modified using ‘M-~’. However, adding, deleting or changing marks or flags will mark it modified again. Remote Dired buffers are currently not auto-reverted. Neither are Dired buffers for which you used shell wildcards or file arguments to list only some of the files. ‘*Find*’ and ‘*Locate*’ buffers do not auto-revert either. Note that auto-reverting Dired buffers may not work satisfactorily on some systems. ** 18.6 Auto-Saving: Protection Against Disasters From time to time, Emacs automatically saves each visited file in a separate file, without altering the file you actually use. This is called "auto-saving". It prevents you from losing more than a limited amount of work if the system crashes. When Emacs determines that it is time for auto-saving, it considers each buffer, and each is auto-saved if auto-saving is enabled for it and it has been changed since the last time it was auto-saved. The message ‘Auto-saving...’ is displayed in the echo area during auto-saving, if any files are actually auto-saved. Errors occurring during auto-saving are caught so that they do not interfere with the execution of commands you have been typing. + Menu: - Files: Auto Save Files. The file where auto-saved changes are actually made until you save the file. - Control: Auto Save Control. Controlling when and how often to auto-save. - Recover:: Recovering text from auto-save files. *** 18.6.1 Auto-Save Files Auto-saving does not normally save in the files that you visited, because it can be very undesirable to save a change that you did not want to make permanent. Instead, auto-saving is done in a different file called the "auto-save file", and the visited file is changed only when you request saving explicitly (such as with ‘C-x C-s’). Normally, the auto-save file name is made by appending ‘#’ to the front and rear of the visited file name. Thus, a buffer visiting file ‘foo.c’ is auto-saved in a file ‘#foo.c#’. Most buffers that are not visiting files are auto-saved only if you request it explicitly; when they are auto-saved, the auto-save file name is made by appending ‘#’ to the front and rear of buffer name, then adding digits and letters at the end for uniqueness. For example, the ‘*mail*’ buffer in which you compose messages to be sent might be auto-saved in a file named ‘#*mail*#704juu’. Auto-save file names are made this way unless you reprogram parts of Emacs to do something different (the functions ‘make-auto-save-file-name’ and ‘auto-save-file-name-p’). The file name to be used for auto-saving in a buffer is calculated when auto-saving is turned on in that buffer. The variable ‘auto-save-file-name-transforms’ allows a degree of control over the auto-save file name. It lets you specify a series of regular expressions and replacements to transform the auto save file name. The default value puts the auto-save files for remote files (*note Remote Files::) into the temporary file directory on the local machine. When you delete a substantial part of the text in a large buffer, auto save turns off temporarily in that buffer. This is because if you deleted the text unintentionally, you might find the auto-save file more useful if it contains the deleted text. To reenable auto-saving after this happens, save the buffer with ‘C-x C-s’, or use ‘C-u 1 M-x auto-save-mode’. If you want auto-saving to be done in the visited file rather than in a separate auto-save file, enable the global minor mode ‘auto-save-visited-mode’. In this mode, auto-saving is identical to explicit saving. Note that this mode is orthogonal to the ‘auto-save’ mode described above; you can enable both at the same time. However, if ‘auto-save’ mode is active in some buffer and the obsolete ‘auto-save-visited-file-name’ variable is set to a non-‘nil’ value, that buffer won’t be affected by ‘auto-save-visited-mode’. You can use the variable ‘auto-save-visited-interval’ to customize the interval between auto-save operations in ‘auto-save-visited-mode’; by default it’s five seconds. ‘auto-save-interval’ and ‘auto-save-timeout’ have no effect on ‘auto-save-visited-mode’. *Note Auto Save Control::, for details on these variables. A buffer’s auto-save file is deleted when you save the buffer in its visited file. (You can inhibit this by setting the variable ‘delete-auto-save-files’ to ‘nil’.) Changing the visited file name with ‘C-x C-w’ or ‘set-visited-file-name’ renames any auto-save file to go with the new visited name. *** 18.6.2 Controlling Auto-Saving Each time you visit a file, auto-saving is turned on for that file’s buffer if the variable ‘auto-save-default’ is non-‘nil’ (but not in batch mode; *note Initial Options::). The default for this variable is ‘t’, so auto-saving is the usual practice for file-visiting buffers. To toggle auto-saving in the current buffer, type ‘M-x auto-save-mode’. Auto Save mode acts as a buffer-local minor mode (*note Minor Modes::). Emacs auto-saves periodically based on how many characters you have typed since the last auto-save. The variable ‘auto-save-interval’ specifies how many characters there are between auto-saves. By default, it is 300. Emacs doesn’t accept values that are too small: if you customize ‘auto-save-interval’ to a value less than 20, Emacs will behave as if the value is 20. Auto-saving also takes place when you stop typing for a while. By default, it does this after 30 seconds of idleness (at this time, Emacs may also perform garbage collection; *note (elisp)Garbage Collection::). To change this interval, customize the variable ‘auto-save-timeout’. The actual time period is longer if the current buffer is long; this is a heuristic which aims to keep out of your way when you are editing long buffers, in which auto-save takes an appreciable amount of time. Auto-saving during idle periods accomplishes two things: first, it makes sure all your work is saved if you go away from the terminal for a while; second, it may avoid some auto-saving while you are actually typing. When ‘auto-save-visited-mode’ is enabled, Emacs will auto-save file-visiting buffers after five seconds of idle time. You can customize the variable ‘auto-save-visited-interval’ to change the idle time interval. Emacs also does auto-saving whenever it gets a fatal error. This includes killing the Emacs job with a shell command such as ‘kill %emacs’, or disconnecting a phone line or network connection. You can perform an auto-save explicitly with the command ‘M-x do-auto-save’. *** 18.6.3 Recovering Data from Auto-Saves You can use the contents of an auto-save file to recover from a loss of data with the command ‘M-x recover-file FILE ’. This visits FILE and then (after your confirmation) restores the contents from its auto-save file ‘#FILE#’. You can then save with ‘C-x C-s’ to put the recovered text into FILE itself. For example, to recover file ‘foo.c’ from its auto-save file ‘#foo.c#’, do: M-x recover-file foo.c yes C-x C-s Before asking for confirmation, ‘M-x recover-file’ displays a directory listing describing the specified file and the auto-save file, so you can compare their sizes and dates. If the auto-save file is older, ‘M-x recover-file’ does not offer to read it. If Emacs or the computer crashes, you can recover all the files you were editing from their auto save files with the command ‘M-x recover-session’. This first shows you a list of recorded interrupted sessions. Move point to the one you choose, and type ‘C-c C-c’. Then ‘recover-session’ asks about each of the files that were being edited during that session, asking whether to recover that file. If you answer ‘y’, it calls ‘recover-file’, which works in its normal fashion. It shows the dates of the original file and its auto-save file, and asks once again whether to recover that file. When ‘recover-session’ is done, the files you’ve chosen to recover are present in Emacs buffers. You should then save them. Only this—saving them—updates the files themselves. Emacs records information about interrupted sessions in files named ‘.saves-PID-HOSTNAME~’ in the directory ‘~/.emacs.d/auto-save-list/’. This directory is determined by the variable ‘auto-save-list-file-prefix’. If you set ‘auto-save-list-file-prefix’ to ‘nil’, sessions are not recorded for recovery. ** 18.7 File Name Aliases Symbolic links and hard links both make it possible for several file names to refer to the same file. Hard links are alternate names that refer directly to the file; all the names are equally valid, and no one of them is preferred. By contrast, a symbolic link is a kind of defined alias: when ‘foo’ is a symbolic link to ‘bar’, you can use either name to refer to the file, but ‘bar’ is the real name, while ‘foo’ is just an alias. More complex cases occur when symbolic links point to directories. Normally, if you visit a file which Emacs is already visiting under a different name, Emacs displays a message in the echo area and uses the existing buffer visiting that file. This can happen on systems that support hard or symbolic links, or if you use a long file name on a system that truncates long file names, or on a case-insensitive file system. You can suppress the message by setting the variable ‘find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings’ to a non-‘nil’ value. You can disable this feature entirely by setting the variable ‘find-file-existing-other-name’ to ‘nil’: then if you visit the same file under two different names, you get a separate buffer for each file name. If the variable ‘find-file-visit-truename’ is non-‘nil’, then the file name recorded for a buffer is the file’s "truename" (made by replacing all symbolic links with their target names), rather than the name you specify. Setting ‘find-file-visit-truename’ also implies the effect of ‘find-file-existing-other-name’. Sometimes, a directory is ordinarily accessed through a symbolic link, and you may want Emacs to preferentially show its linked name. To do this, customize ‘directory-abbrev-alist’. Each element in this list should have the form ‘(FROM . TO)’, which means to replace FROM with TO whenever FROM appears in a directory name. The FROM string is a regular expression (*note Regexps::). It is matched against directory names anchored at the first character, and should start with ‘\`’ (to support directory names with embedded newlines, which would defeat ‘^’). The TO string should be an ordinary absolute directory name pointing to the same directory. Do not use ‘~’ to stand for a home directory in the TO string; Emacs performs these substitutions separately. Here’s an example, from a system on which ‘/home/fsf’ is normally accessed through a symbolic link named ‘/fsf’: (("\\`/home/fsf" . "/fsf")) ** 18.8 File Directories The file system groups files into "directories". A "directory listing" is a list of all the files in a directory. Emacs provides commands to create and delete directories, and to make directory listings in brief format (file names only) and verbose format (sizes, dates, and other attributes included). Emacs also includes a directory browser feature called Dired, which you can invoke with ‘C-x d’; see *note Dired::. ‘C-x C-d DIR-OR-PATTERN ’ Display a brief directory listing (‘list-directory’). ‘C-u C-x C-d DIR-OR-PATTERN ’ Display a verbose directory listing. ‘M-x make-directory DIRNAME ’ Create a new directory named DIRNAME. ‘M-x delete-directory DIRNAME ’ Delete the directory named DIRNAME. If it isn’t empty, you will be asked whether you want to delete it recursively. The command to display a directory listing is ‘C-x C-d’ (‘list-directory’). It reads using the minibuffer a file name which is either a directory to be listed or a wildcard-containing pattern for the files to be listed. For example, C-x C-d /u2/emacs/etc lists all the files in directory ‘/u2/emacs/etc’. Here is an example of specifying a file name pattern: C-x C-d /u2/emacs/src/*.c Normally, ‘C-x C-d’ displays a brief directory listing containing just file names. A numeric argument (regardless of value) tells it to make a verbose listing including sizes, dates, and owners (like ‘ls -l’). The text of a directory listing is mostly obtained by running ‘ls’ in an inferior process. Two Emacs variables control the switches passed to ‘ls’: ‘list-directory-brief-switches’ is a string giving the switches to use in brief listings (‘"-CF"’ by default), and ‘list-directory-verbose-switches’ is a string giving the switches to use in a verbose listing (‘"-l"’ by default). In verbose directory listings, Emacs adds information about the amount of free space on the disk that contains the directory. You can customize how this is done for local filesystems via the variables ‘directory-free-space-program’ and ‘directory-free-space-args’: the former specifies what program to run (default: ‘df’), the latter which arguments to pass to that program (default is system-dependent). (On MS-Windows and MS-DOS, these two variables are ignored, and an internal Emacs implementation of the same functionality is used instead.) The command ‘M-x delete-directory’ prompts for a directory’s name using the minibuffer, and deletes the directory if it is empty. If the directory is not empty, you will be asked whether you want to delete it recursively. On systems that have a “Trash” (or “Recycle Bin”) feature, you can make this command move the specified directory to the Trash instead of deleting it outright, by changing the variable ‘delete-by-moving-to-trash’ to ‘t’. *Note Misc File Ops::, for more information about using the Trash. ** 18.9 Comparing Files The command ‘M-x diff’ prompts for two file names, using the minibuffer, and displays the differences between the two files in a buffer named ‘*diff*’. This works by running the ‘diff’ program, using options taken from the variable ‘diff-switches’. The value of ‘diff-switches’ should be a string; the default is ‘"-u"’ to specify a unified context diff. *Note Diff: (diffutils)Top, for more information about the ‘diff’ program. The output of the ‘diff’ command is shown using a major mode called Diff mode. *Note Diff Mode::. A (much more sophisticated) alternative is ‘M-x ediff’ (*note Ediff: (ediff)Top.). The command ‘M-x diff-backup’ compares a specified file with its most recent backup. If you specify the name of a backup file, ‘diff-backup’ compares it with the source file that it is a backup of. In all other respects, this behaves like ‘M-x diff’. The command ‘M-x diff-buffer-with-file’ compares a specified buffer with its corresponding file. This shows you what changes you would make to the file if you save the buffer. The command ‘M-x compare-windows’ compares the text in the current window with that in the window that was the selected window before you selected the current one. (For more information about windows in Emacs, *note Windows::.) Comparison starts at point in each window, after pushing each initial point value on the mark ring (*note Mark Ring::) in its respective buffer. Then it moves point forward in each window, one character at a time, until it reaches characters that don’t match. Then the command exits. If point in the two windows is followed by non-matching text when the command starts, ‘M-x compare-windows’ tries heuristically to advance up to matching text in the two windows, and then exits. So if you use ‘M-x compare-windows’ repeatedly, each time it either skips one matching range or finds the start of another. With a numeric argument, ‘compare-windows’ ignores changes in whitespace. If the variable ‘compare-ignore-case’ is non-‘nil’, the comparison ignores differences in case as well. If the variable ‘compare-ignore-whitespace’ is non-‘nil’, ‘compare-windows’ by default ignores changes in whitespace, but a prefix argument turns that off for that single invocation of the command. You can use ‘M-x smerge-mode’ to turn on Smerge mode, a minor mode for editing output from the ‘diff3’ program. This is typically the result of a failed merge from a version control system update outside VC, due to conflicting changes to a file. Smerge mode provides commands to resolve conflicts by selecting specific changes. *Note Emerge::, for the Emerge facility, which provides a powerful interface for merging files. ** 18.10 Diff Mode Diff mode is a major mode used for the output of ‘M-x diff’ and other similar commands. This kind of output is called a "patch", because it can be passed to the ‘patch’ command to automatically apply the specified changes. To select Diff mode manually, type ‘M-x diff-mode’. The changes specified in a patch are grouped into "hunks", which are contiguous chunks of text that contain one or more changed lines. Hunks can also include unchanged lines to provide context for the changes. Each hunk is preceded by a "hunk header", which specifies the old and new line numbers at which the hunk occurs. Diff mode highlights each hunk header, to distinguish it from the actual contents of the hunk. You can edit a Diff mode buffer like any other buffer. (If it is read-only, you need to make it writable first. *Note Misc Buffer::.) Whenever you change a hunk, Diff mode attempts to automatically correct the line numbers in the hunk headers, to ensure that the patch remains correct. To disable automatic line number correction, change the variable ‘diff-update-on-the-fly’ to ‘nil’. Diff mode treats each hunk as an error message, similar to Compilation mode. Thus, you can use commands such as ‘C-x `’ to visit the corresponding source locations. *Note Compilation Mode::. In addition, Diff mode provides the following commands to navigate, manipulate and apply parts of patches: ‘M-n’ Move to the next hunk-start (‘diff-hunk-next’). This command has a side effect: it "refines" the hunk you move to, highlighting its changes with better granularity. To disable this feature, type ‘M-x diff-auto-refine-mode’ to toggle off the minor mode Diff Auto-Refine mode. To disable Diff Auto-Refine mode by default, add this to your init file (*note Hooks::): (add-hook 'diff-mode-hook (lambda () (diff-auto-refine-mode -1))) ‘M-p’ Move to the previous hunk-start (‘diff-hunk-prev’). Like ‘M-n’, this has the side-effect of refining the hunk you move to, unless you disable Diff Auto-Refine mode. ‘M-}’ Move to the next file-start, in a multi-file patch (‘diff-file-next’). ‘M-{’ Move to the previous file-start, in a multi-file patch (‘diff-file-prev’). ‘M-k’ Kill the hunk at point (‘diff-hunk-kill’). ‘M-K’ In a multi-file patch, kill the current file part. (‘diff-file-kill’). ‘C-c C-a’ Apply this hunk to its target file (‘diff-apply-hunk’). With a prefix argument of ‘C-u’, revert this hunk. ‘C-c C-b’ Highlight the changes of the hunk at point with a finer granularity (‘diff-refine-hunk’). This allows you to see exactly which parts of each changed line were actually changed. ‘C-c C-c’ Go to the source file and line corresponding to this hunk (‘diff-goto-source’). ‘C-c C-e’ Start an Ediff session with the patch (‘diff-ediff-patch’). *Note Ediff: (ediff)Top. ‘C-c C-n’ Restrict the view to the current hunk (‘diff-restrict-view’). *Note Narrowing::. With a prefix argument of ‘C-u’, restrict the view to the current file of a multiple-file patch. To widen again, use ‘C-x n w’ (‘widen’). ‘C-c C-r’ Reverse the direction of comparison for the entire buffer (‘diff-reverse-direction’). ‘C-c C-s’ Split the hunk at point (‘diff-split-hunk’). This is for manually editing patches, and only works with the "unified diff format" produced by the ‘-u’ or ‘--unified’ options to the ‘diff’ program. If you need to split a hunk in the "context diff format" produced by the ‘-c’ or ‘--context’ options to ‘diff’, first convert the buffer to the unified diff format with ‘C-c C-u’. ‘C-c C-d’ Convert the entire buffer to the "context diff format" (‘diff-unified->context’). With a prefix argument, convert only the text within the region. ‘C-c C-u’ Convert the entire buffer to unified diff format (‘diff-context->unified’). With a prefix argument, convert unified format to context format. When the mark is active, convert only the text within the region. ‘C-c C-w’ Re-diff the current hunk, disregarding changes in whitespace (‘diff-ignore-whitespace-hunk’). ‘C-x 4 A’ Generate a ChangeLog entry, like ‘C-x 4 a’ does (*note Change Log::), for each one of the hunks (‘diff-add-change-log-entries-other-window’). This creates a skeleton of the log of changes that you can later fill with the actual descriptions of the changes. ‘C-x 4 a’ itself in Diff mode operates on behalf of the current hunk’s file, but gets the function name from the patch itself. This is useful for making log entries for functions that are deleted by the patch. Patches sometimes include trailing whitespace on modified lines, as an unintentional and undesired change. There are two ways to deal with this problem. Firstly, if you enable Whitespace mode in a Diff buffer (*note Useless Whitespace::), it automatically highlights trailing whitespace in modified lines. Secondly, you can use the command ‘M-x diff-delete-trailing-whitespace’, which searches for trailing whitespace in the lines modified by the patch, and removes that whitespace in both the patch and the patched source file(s). This command does not save the modifications that it makes, so you can decide whether to save the changes (the list of modified files is displayed in the echo area). With a prefix argument, it tries to modify the original source files rather than the patched source files. ** 18.11 Copying, Naming and Renaming Files Emacs has several commands for copying, naming, and renaming files. All of them read two file names, OLD (or TARGET) and NEW, using the minibuffer, and then copy or adjust a file’s name accordingly; they do not accept wildcard file names. In all these commands, if the argument NEW is just a directory name (*note (elisp)Directory Names::), the real new name is in that directory, with the same non-directory component as OLD. For example, the command ‘M-x rename-file ~/foo /tmp/ ’ renames ‘~/foo’ to ‘/tmp/foo’. On GNU and other POSIX-like systems, directory names end in ‘/’. All these commands ask for confirmation when the new file name already exists. ‘M-x copy-file’ copies the contents of the file OLD to the file NEW. ‘M-x copy-directory’ copies directories, similar to the ‘cp -r’ shell command. If NEW is a directory name, it creates a copy of the OLD directory and puts it in NEW. Otherwise it copies all the contents of OLD into a new directory named NEW. ‘M-x rename-file’ renames file OLD as NEW. If the file name NEW already exists, you must confirm with ‘yes’ or renaming is not done; this is because renaming causes the old meaning of the name NEW to be lost. If OLD and NEW are on different file systems, the file OLD is copied and deleted. If a file is under version control (*note Version Control::), you should rename it using ‘M-x vc-rename-file’ instead of ‘M-x rename-file’. *Note VC Delete/Rename::. ‘M-x add-name-to-file’ adds an additional name to an existing file without removing the old name. The new name is created as a hard link to the existing file. The new name must belong on the same file system that the file is on. On MS-Windows, this command works only if the file resides in an NTFS file system. On MS-DOS, and some remote system types, it works by copying the file. ‘M-x make-symbolic-link’ creates a symbolic link named NEW, which points at TARGET. The effect is that future attempts to open file NEW will refer to whatever file is named TARGET at the time the opening is done, or will get an error if the name TARGET is nonexistent at that time. This command does not expand the argument TARGET, so that it allows you to specify a relative name as the target of the link. However, this command does expand leading ‘~’ in TARGET so that you can easily specify home directories, and strips leading ‘/:’ so that you can specify relative names beginning with literal ‘~’ or ‘/:’. *Note Quoted File Names::. On MS-Windows, this command works only on MS Windows Vista and later. When NEW is remote, it works depending on the system type. ** 18.12 Miscellaneous File Operations Emacs has commands for performing many other operations on files. All operate on one file; they do not accept wildcard file names. ‘M-x delete-file’ prompts for a file and deletes it. If you are deleting many files in one directory, it may be more convenient to use Dired rather than ‘delete-file’. *Note Dired Deletion::. ‘M-x move-file-to-trash’ moves a file into the system "Trash" (or "Recycle Bin"). This is a facility available on most operating systems; files that are moved into the Trash can be brought back later if you change your mind. By default, Emacs deletion commands do _not_ use the Trash. To use the Trash (when it is available) for common deletion commands, change the variable ‘delete-by-moving-to-trash’ to ‘t’. This affects the commands ‘M-x delete-file’ and ‘M-x delete-directory’ (*note Directories::), as well as the deletion commands in Dired (*note Dired Deletion::). Supplying a prefix argument to ‘M-x delete-file’ or ‘M-x delete-directory’ makes them delete outright, instead of using the Trash, regardless of ‘delete-by-moving-to-trash’. If a file is under version control (*note Version Control::), you should delete it using ‘M-x vc-delete-file’ instead of ‘M-x delete-file’. *Note VC Delete/Rename::. ‘M-x insert-file’ (also ‘C-x i’) inserts a copy of the contents of the specified file into the current buffer at point, leaving point unchanged before the contents. The position after the inserted contents is added to the mark ring, without activating the mark (*note Mark Ring::). ‘M-x insert-file-literally’ is like ‘M-x insert-file’, except the file is inserted literally: it is treated as a sequence of ASCII characters with no special encoding or conversion, similar to the ‘M-x find-file-literally’ command (*note Visiting::). ‘M-x write-region’ is the inverse of ‘M-x insert-file’; it copies the contents of the region into the specified file. ‘M-x append-to-file’ adds the text of the region to the end of the specified file. *Note Accumulating Text::. The variable ‘write-region-inhibit-fsync’ applies to these commands, as well as saving files; see *note Customize Save::. ‘M-x set-file-modes’ reads a file name followed by a "file mode", and applies that file mode to the specified file. File modes, also called "file permissions", determine whether a file can be read, written to, or executed, and by whom. This command reads file modes using the same symbolic or octal format accepted by the ‘chmod’ command; for instance, ‘u+x’ means to add execution permission for the user who owns the file. It has no effect on operating systems that do not support file modes. ‘chmod’ is a convenience alias for this function. ** 18.13 Accessing Compressed Files Emacs automatically uncompresses compressed files when you visit them, and automatically recompresses them if you alter them and save them. Emacs recognizes compressed files by their file names. File names ending in ‘.gz’ indicate a file compressed with ‘gzip’. Other endings indicate other compression programs. Automatic uncompression and compression apply to all the operations in which Emacs uses the contents of a file. This includes visiting it, saving it, inserting its contents into a buffer, loading it, and byte compiling it. To disable this feature, type the command ‘M-x auto-compression-mode’. You can disable it permanently by customizing the variable ‘auto-compression-mode’. ** 18.14 File Archives A file whose name ends in ‘.tar’ is normally an "archive" made by the ‘tar’ program. Emacs views these files in a special mode called Tar mode which provides a Dired-like list of the contents (*note Dired::). You can move around through the list just as you would in Dired, and visit the subfiles contained in the archive. However, not all Dired commands are available in Tar mode. If Auto Compression mode is enabled (*note Compressed Files::), then Tar mode is used also for compressed archives—files with extensions ‘.tgz’, ‘.tar.Z’ and ‘.tar.gz’. The keys ‘e’, ‘f’ and all extract a component file into its own buffer. You can edit it there, and if you save the buffer, the edited version will replace the version in the Tar buffer. Clicking with the mouse on the file name in the Tar buffer does likewise. ‘v’ extracts a file into a buffer in View mode (*note View Mode::). ‘o’ extracts the file and displays it in another window, so you could edit the file and operate on the archive simultaneously. The ‘I’ key adds a new (regular) file to the archive. The file is initially empty, but can readily be edited using the commands above. The command inserts the new file before the current one, so that using it on the topmost line of the Tar buffer makes the new file the first one in the archive, and using it at the end of the buffer makes it the last one. ‘d’ marks a file for deletion when you later use ‘x’, and ‘u’ unmarks a file, as in Dired. ‘C’ copies a file from the archive to disk and ‘R’ renames a file within the archive. ‘g’ reverts the buffer from the archive on disk. The keys ‘M’, ‘G’, and ‘O’ change the file’s permission bits, group, and owner, respectively. Saving the Tar buffer writes a new version of the archive to disk with the changes you made to the components. You don’t need the ‘tar’ program to use Tar mode—Emacs reads the archives directly. However, accessing compressed archives requires the appropriate uncompression program. A separate but similar Archive mode is used for ‘arc’, ‘jar’, ‘lzh’, ‘zip’, ‘rar’, ‘7z’, and ‘zoo’ archives, as well as ‘exe’ files that are self-extracting executables. The key bindings of Archive mode are similar to those in Tar mode, with the addition of the ‘m’ key which marks a file for subsequent operations, and ‘M-’ which unmarks all the marked files. Also, the ‘a’ key toggles the display of detailed file information, for those archive types where it won’t fit in a single line. Operations such as renaming a subfile, or changing its mode or owner, are supported only for some of the archive formats. Unlike Tar mode, Archive mode runs the archiving programs to unpack and repack archives. However, you don’t need these programs to look at the archive table of contents, only to extract or manipulate the subfiles in the archive. Details of the program names and their options can be set in the ‘Archive’ Customize group (*note Customization Groups::). ** 18.15 Remote Files You can refer to files on other machines using a special file name syntax: /METHOD:HOST:FILENAME /METHOD:USER@HOST:FILENAME /METHOD:USER@HOST#PORT:FILENAME To carry out this request, Emacs uses a remote-login program such as ‘ssh’. You must always specify in the file name which method to use—for example, ‘/ssh:USER@HOST:FILENAME’ uses ‘ssh’. When you specify the pseudo method ‘-’ in the file name, Emacs chooses the method as follows: 1. If the host name starts with ‘ftp.’ (with dot), Emacs uses FTP. 2. If the user name is ‘ftp’ or ‘anonymous’, Emacs uses FTP. 3. If the variable ‘tramp-default-method’ is set to ‘ftp’, Emacs uses FTP. 4. If ‘ssh-agent’ is running, Emacs uses ‘scp’. 5. Otherwise, Emacs uses ‘ssh’. You can entirely turn off the remote file name feature by setting the variable ‘tramp-mode’ to ‘nil’. You can turn off the feature in individual cases by quoting the file name with ‘/:’ (*note Quoted File Names::). Remote file access through FTP is handled by the Ange-FTP package, which is documented in the following. Remote file access through the other methods is handled by the Tramp package, which has its own manual. *Note The Tramp Manual: (tramp)Top. When the Ange-FTP package is used, Emacs logs in through FTP using the name USER, if that is specified in the remote file name. If USER is unspecified, Emacs logs in using your user name on the local system; but if you set the variable ‘ange-ftp-default-user’ to a string, that string is used instead. When logging in, Emacs may also ask for a password. For performance reasons, Emacs does not make backup files for files accessed via FTP by default. To make it do so, change the variable ‘ange-ftp-make-backup-files’ to a non-‘nil’ value. By default, auto-save files for remote files are made in the temporary file directory on the local machine, as specified by the variable ‘auto-save-file-name-transforms’. *Note Auto Save Files::. To visit files accessible by anonymous FTP, you use special user names ‘anonymous’ or ‘ftp’. Passwords for these user names are handled specially. The variable ‘ange-ftp-generate-anonymous-password’ controls what happens: if the value of this variable is a string, then that string is used as the password; if non-‘nil’ (the default), then the value of ‘user-mail-address’ is used; if ‘nil’, then Emacs prompts you for a password as usual (*note Passwords::). Sometimes you may be unable to access files on a remote machine because a "firewall" in between blocks the connection for security reasons. If you can log in on a "gateway" machine from which the target files _are_ accessible, and whose FTP server supports gatewaying features, you can still use remote file names; all you have to do is specify the name of the gateway machine by setting the variable ‘ange-ftp-gateway-host’, and set ‘ange-ftp-smart-gateway’ to ‘t’. Otherwise you may be able to make remote file names work, but the procedure is complex. You can read the instructions by typing ‘M-x finder-commentary ange-ftp ’. ** 18.16 Quoted File Names You can "quote" an absolute file name to prevent special characters and syntax in it from having their special effects. The way to do this is to add ‘/:’ at the beginning. For example, you can quote a local file name which appears remote, to prevent it from being treated as a remote file name. Thus, if you have a directory named ‘/foo:’ and a file named ‘bar’ in it, you can refer to that file in Emacs as ‘/:/foo:/bar’. If you want to quote only special characters in the local part of a remote file name, you can quote just the local part. ‘/ssh:baz:/:/foo:/bar’ refers to the file ‘bar’ of directory ‘/foo:’ on the host ‘baz’. ‘/:’ can also prevent ‘~’ from being treated as a special character for a user’s home directory. For example, ‘/:/tmp/~hack’ refers to a file whose name is ‘~hack’ in directory ‘/tmp’. Quoting with ‘/:’ is also a way to enter in the minibuffer a file name that contains ‘$’. In order for this to work, the ‘/:’ must be at the beginning of the minibuffer contents. (You can also double each ‘$’; see *note File Names with $::.) You can also quote wildcard characters with ‘/:’, for visiting. For example, ‘/:/tmp/foo*bar’ visits the file ‘/tmp/foo*bar’. Another method of getting the same result is to enter ‘/tmp/foo[*]bar’, which is a wildcard specification that matches only ‘/tmp/foo*bar’. However, in many cases there is no need to quote the wildcard characters because even unquoted they give the right result. For example, if the only file name in ‘/tmp’ that starts with ‘foo’ and ends with ‘bar’ is ‘foo*bar’, then specifying ‘/tmp/foo*bar’ will visit only ‘/tmp/foo*bar’. ** 18.17 File Name Cache You can use the "file name cache" to make it easy to locate a file by name, without having to remember exactly where it is located. When typing a file name in the minibuffer, ‘C-’ (‘file-cache-minibuffer-complete’) completes it using the file name cache. If you repeat ‘C-’, that cycles through the possible completions of what you had originally typed. (However, note that the ‘C-’ character cannot be typed on most text terminals.) The file name cache does not fill up automatically. Instead, you load file names into the cache using these commands: ‘M-x file-cache-add-directory DIRECTORY ’ Add each file name in DIRECTORY to the file name cache. ‘M-x file-cache-add-directory-using-find DIRECTORY ’ Add each file name in DIRECTORY and all of its nested subdirectories to the file name cache. ‘M-x file-cache-add-directory-using-locate DIRECTORY ’ Add each file name in DIRECTORY and all of its nested subdirectories to the file name cache, using ‘locate’ to find them all. ‘M-x file-cache-add-directory-list VARIABLE ’ Add each file name in each directory listed in VARIABLE to the file name cache. VARIABLE should be a Lisp variable whose value is a list of directories, like ‘load-path’. ‘M-x file-cache-clear-cache ’ Clear the cache; that is, remove all file names from it. The file name cache is not persistent: it is kept and maintained only for the duration of the Emacs session. You can view the contents of the cache with the ‘file-cache-display’ command. ** 18.18 Convenience Features for Finding Files In this section, we introduce some convenient facilities for finding recently-opened files, reading file names from a buffer, and viewing image files. If you enable Recentf mode, with ‘M-x recentf-mode’, the ‘File’ menu includes a submenu containing a list of recently opened files. ‘M-x recentf-save-list’ saves the current ‘recent-file-list’ to a file, and ‘M-x recentf-edit-list’ edits it. The ‘M-x ffap’ command generalizes ‘find-file’ with more powerful heuristic defaults (*note FFAP::), often based on the text at point. Partial Completion mode offers other features extending ‘find-file’, which can be used with ‘ffap’. *Note Completion Options::. Visiting image files automatically selects Image mode. In this major mode, you can type ‘C-c C-c’ (‘image-toggle-display’) to toggle between displaying the file as an image in the Emacs buffer, and displaying its underlying text (or raw byte) representation. Additionally you can type ‘C-c C-x’ (‘image-toggle-hex-display’) to toggle between displaying the file as an image in the Emacs buffer, and displaying it in hex representation. Displaying the file as an image works only if Emacs is compiled with support for displaying such images. If the displayed image is wider or taller than the frame, the usual point motion keys (‘C-f’, ‘C-p’, and so forth) cause different parts of the image to be displayed. You can press ‘n’ (‘image-next-file’) and ‘p’ (‘image-previous-file’) to visit the next image file and the previous image file in the same directory, respectively. If the image can be animated, the command (‘image-toggle-animation’) starts or stops the animation. Animation plays once, unless the option ‘image-animate-loop’ is non-‘nil’. With ‘f’ (‘image-next-frame’) and ‘b’ (‘image-previous-frame’) you can step through the individual frames. Both commands accept a numeric prefix to step through several frames at once. You can go to a specific frame with ‘F’ (‘image-goto-frame’). Frames are indexed from 1. Typing ‘a +’ (‘image-increase-speed’) increases the speed of the animation, ‘a -’ (‘image-decrease-speed’) decreases it, and ‘a r’ (‘image-reverse-speed’) reverses it. The command ‘a 0’ (‘image-reset-speed’) resets the speed to the original value. If Emacs was compiled with support for the ImageMagick library, it can use ImageMagick to render a wide variety of images. The variable ‘imagemagick-enabled-types’ lists the image types that Emacs may render using ImageMagick; each element in the list should be an internal ImageMagick name for an image type, as a symbol or an equivalent string (e.g., ‘BMP’ for ‘.bmp’ images). To enable ImageMagick for all possible image types, change ‘imagemagick-enabled-types’ to ‘t’. The variable ‘imagemagick-types-inhibit’ lists the image types which should never be rendered using ImageMagick, regardless of the value of ‘imagemagick-enabled-types’ (the default list includes types like ‘C’ and ‘HTML’, which ImageMagick can render as an image but Emacs should not). To disable ImageMagick entirely, change ‘imagemagick-types-inhibit’ to ‘t’. The Image-Dired package can also be used to view images as thumbnails. *Note Image-Dired::. ** 18.19 Filesets If you regularly edit a certain group of files, you can define them as a "fileset". This lets you perform certain operations, such as visiting, ‘query-replace’, and shell commands on all the files at once. To make use of filesets, you must first add the expression ‘(filesets-init)’ to your init file (*note Init File::). This adds a ‘Filesets’ sub-menu to the menu bar’s ‘File’ menu. The simplest way to define a fileset is by adding files to it one at a time. To add a file to fileset NAME, visit the file and type ‘M-x filesets-add-buffer NAME ’. If there is no fileset NAME, this creates a new one, which initially contains only the current file. The command ‘M-x filesets-remove-buffer’ removes the current file from a fileset. You can also edit the list of filesets directly, with ‘M-x filesets-edit’ (or by choosing ‘Edit Filesets’ from the ‘Filesets’ menu). The editing is performed in a Customize buffer (*note Easy Customization::). Normally, a fileset is a simple list of files, but you can also define a fileset as a regular expression matching file names. Some examples of these more complicated filesets are shown in the Customize buffer. Remember to select ‘Save for future sessions’ if you want to use the same filesets in future Emacs sessions. You can use the command ‘M-x filesets-open’ to visit all the files in a fileset, and ‘M-x filesets-close’ to close them. Use ‘M-x filesets-run-cmd’ to run a shell command on all the files in a fileset. These commands are also available from the ‘Filesets’ menu, where each existing fileset is represented by a submenu. *Note Version Control::, for a different concept of filesets: groups of files bundled together for version control operations. Filesets of that type are unnamed, and do not persist across Emacs sessions. * 19 Using Multiple Buffers The text you are editing in Emacs resides in an object called a "buffer". Each time you visit a file, a buffer is used to hold the file’s text. Each time you invoke Dired, a buffer is used to hold the directory listing. If you send a message with ‘C-x m’, a buffer is used to hold the text of the message. When you ask for a command’s documentation, that appears in a buffer named ‘*Help*’. Each buffer has a unique name, which can be of any length. When a buffer is displayed in a window, its name is shown in the mode line (*note Mode Line::). The distinction between upper and lower case matters in buffer names. Most buffers are made by visiting files, and their names are derived from the files’ names; however, you can also create an empty buffer with any name you want. A newly started Emacs has several buffers, including one named ‘*scratch*’, which can be used for evaluating Lisp expressions and is not associated with any file (*note Lisp Interaction::). At any time, one and only one buffer is "selected"; we call it the "current buffer". We sometimes say that a command operates on “the buffer”; this really means that it operates on the current buffer. When there is only one Emacs window, the buffer displayed in that window is current. When there are multiple windows, the buffer displayed in the "selected window" is current. *Note Windows::. A buffer’s "contents" consist of a series of characters, each of which optionally carries a set of text properties (*note Text properties: International Chars.) that can specify more information about that character. Aside from its textual contents, each buffer records several pieces of information, such as what file it is visiting (if any), whether it is modified, and what major mode and minor modes are in effect (*note Modes::). These are stored in "buffer-local variables"—variables that can have a different value in each buffer. *Note Locals::. A buffer’s size cannot be larger than some maximum, which is defined by the largest buffer position representable by "Emacs integers". This is because Emacs tracks buffer positions using that data type. For typical 64-bit machines, this maximum buffer size is 2^{61} - 2 bytes, or about 2 EiB. For typical 32-bit machines, the maximum is usually 2^{29} - 2 bytes, or about 512 MiB. Buffer sizes are also limited by the amount of memory in the system. + Menu: - Select Buffer:: Creating a new buffer or reselecting an old one. - List Buffers:: Getting a list of buffers that exist. - Misc Buffer:: Renaming; changing read-only status; copying text. - Kill Buffer:: Killing buffers you no longer need. - Several Buffers:: How to go through the list of all buffers and operate variously on several of them. - Indirect Buffers:: An indirect buffer shares the text of another buffer. - Buffer Convenience:: Convenience and customization features for buffer handling. ** 19.1 Creating and Selecting Buffers ‘C-x b BUFFER ’ Select or create a buffer named BUFFER (‘switch-to-buffer’). ‘C-x 4 b BUFFER ’ Similar, but select BUFFER in another window (‘switch-to-buffer-other-window’). ‘C-x 5 b BUFFER ’ Similar, but select BUFFER in a separate frame (‘switch-to-buffer-other-frame’). ‘C-x ’ Select the previous buffer in the buffer list (‘previous-buffer’). ‘C-x ’ Select the next buffer in the buffer list (‘next-buffer’). ‘C-u M-g M-g’ ‘C-u M-g g’ Read a number N and move to line N in the most recently selected buffer other than the current buffer, in another window. The ‘C-x b’ (‘switch-to-buffer’) command reads a buffer name using the minibuffer. Then it makes that buffer current, and displays it in the currently-selected window. An empty input specifies the buffer that was current most recently among those not now displayed in any window. While entering the buffer name, you can use the usual completion and history commands (*note Minibuffer::). Note that ‘C-x b’, and related commands, use "permissive completion with confirmation" for minibuffer completion: if you type when the minibuffer text names a nonexistent buffer, Emacs prints ‘[Confirm]’ and you must type a second to submit that buffer name. *Note Completion Exit::, for details. For other completion options and features, see *note Completion Options::. If you specify a buffer that does not exist, ‘C-x b’ creates a new, empty buffer that is not visiting any file, and selects it for editing. The default value of the variable ‘major-mode’ determines the new buffer’s major mode; the default value is Fundamental mode. *Note Major Modes::. One reason to create a new buffer is to use it for making temporary notes. If you try to save it, Emacs asks for the file name to use, and the buffer’s major mode is re-established taking that file name into account (*note Choosing Modes::). For conveniently switching between a few buffers, use the commands ‘C-x ’ and ‘C-x ’. ‘C-x ’ (‘previous-buffer’) selects the previous buffer (following the order of most recent selection in the current frame), while ‘C-x ’ (‘next-buffer’) moves through buffers in the reverse direction. To select a buffer in a window other than the current one (*note Windows::), type ‘C-x 4 b’ (‘switch-to-buffer-other-window’). This prompts for a buffer name using the minibuffer, displays that buffer in another window, and selects that window. Similarly, ‘C-x 5 b’ (‘switch-to-buffer-other-frame’) prompts for a buffer name, displays that buffer in another frame (*note Frames::), and selects that frame. If the buffer is already being shown in a window on another frame, Emacs selects that window and frame instead of creating a new frame. *Note Displaying Buffers::, for how the ‘C-x 4 b’ and ‘C-x 5 b’ commands get the window and/or frame to display in. In addition, ‘C-x C-f’, and any other command for visiting a file, can also be used to switch to an existing file-visiting buffer. *Note Visiting::. ‘C-u M-g M-g’, that is ‘goto-line’ with a plain prefix argument, reads a number N using the minibuffer, selects the most recently selected buffer other than the current buffer in another window, and then moves point to the beginning of line number N in that buffer. This is mainly useful in a buffer that refers to line numbers in another buffer: if point is on or just after a number, ‘goto-line’ uses that number as the default for N. Note that prefix arguments other than just ‘C-u’ behave differently. ‘C-u 4 M-g M-g’ goes to line 4 in the _current_ buffer, without reading a number from the minibuffer. (Remember that ‘M-g M-g’ without prefix argument reads a number N and then moves to line number N in the current buffer. *Note Moving Point::.) Emacs uses buffer names that start with a space for internal purposes. It treats these buffers specially in minor ways—for example, by default they do not record undo information. It is best to avoid using such buffer names yourself. ** 19.2 Listing Existing Buffers ‘C-x C-b’ List the existing buffers (‘list-buffers’). To display a list of existing buffers, type ‘C-x C-b’. This pops up a buffer menu in a buffer named ‘*Buffer List*’. Each line in the list shows one buffer’s name, size, major mode and visited file. The buffers are listed in the order that they were current; the buffers that were current most recently come first. This section describes how the list of buffers is displayed and how to interpret the various indications in the list; see *note Several Buffers::, for description of the special mode in the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer and the commands available there. ‘.’ in the first field of a line indicates that the buffer is current. ‘%’ indicates a read-only buffer. ‘*’ indicates that the buffer is modified. If several buffers are modified, it may be time to save some with ‘C-x s’ (*note Save Commands::). Here is an example of a buffer list: CRM Buffer Size Mode File . * .emacs 3294 Emacs-Lisp ~/.emacs % *Help* 101 Help search.c 86055 C ~/cvs/emacs/src/search.c % src 20959 Dired by name ~/cvs/emacs/src/ * *mail* 42 Mail % HELLO 1607 Fundamental ~/cvs/emacs/etc/HELLO % NEWS 481184 Outline ~/cvs/emacs/etc/NEWS *scratch* 191 Lisp Interaction * *Messages* 1554 Messages The buffer ‘*Help*’ was made by a help request (*note Help::); it is not visiting any file. The buffer ‘src’ was made by Dired on the directory ‘~/cvs/emacs/src/’. You can list only buffers that are visiting files by giving the command a prefix argument, as in ‘C-u C-x C-b’. ‘list-buffers’ omits buffers whose names begin with a space, unless they visit files: such buffers are used internally by Emacs. ** 19.3 Miscellaneous Buffer Operations ‘C-x C-q’ Toggle read-only status of buffer (‘read-only-mode’). ‘M-x rename-buffer BUFFER ’ Change the name of the current buffer. ‘M-x rename-uniquely’ Rename the current buffer by adding ‘’ to the end. ‘M-x view-buffer BUFFER ’ Scroll through buffer BUFFER. *Note View Mode::. A buffer can be "read-only", which means that commands to insert or delete its text are not allowed. (However, other commands, like ‘C-x f’, can still mark it as modified, *note Text Coding::). The mode line indicates read-only buffers with ‘%%’ or ‘%*’ near the left margin. *Note Mode Line::. Read-only buffers are usually made by subsystems such as Dired and Rmail that have special commands to operate on the text. Visiting a file whose access control says you cannot write it also makes the buffer read-only. The command ‘C-x C-q’ (‘read-only-mode’) makes a read-only buffer writable, and makes a writable buffer read-only. This works by setting the variable ‘buffer-read-only’, which has a local value in each buffer and makes the buffer read-only if its value is non-‘nil’. If you change the option ‘view-read-only’ to a non-‘nil’ value, making the buffer read-only with ‘C-x C-q’ also enables View mode in the buffer (*note View Mode::). ‘M-x rename-buffer’ changes the name of the current buffer. You specify the new name as a minibuffer argument; there is no default. If you specify a name that is in use for some other buffer, an error happens and no renaming is done. ‘M-x rename-uniquely’ renames the current buffer to a similar name with a numeric suffix added to make it both different and unique. This command does not need an argument. It is useful for creating multiple shell buffers: if you rename the ‘*shell*’ buffer, then do ‘M-x shell’ again, it makes a new shell buffer named ‘*shell*’; meanwhile, the old shell buffer continues to exist under its new name. This method is also good for mail buffers, compilation buffers, and most Emacs features that create special buffers with particular names. (With some of these features, such as ‘M-x compile’, ‘M-x grep’, you need to switch to some other buffer before using the command again, otherwise it will reuse the current buffer despite the name change.) The commands ‘M-x append-to-buffer’ and ‘M-x insert-buffer’ can also be used to copy text from one buffer to another. *Note Accumulating Text::. ** 19.4 Killing Buffers If you continue an Emacs session for a while, you may accumulate a large number of buffers. You may then find it convenient to "kill" the buffers you no longer need. (Some other editors call this operation "close", and talk about “closing the buffer” or “closing the file” visited in the buffer.) On most operating systems, killing a buffer releases the memory Emacs used for the buffer back to the operating system so that other programs can use it. Here are some commands for killing buffers: ‘C-x k BUFFER ’ Kill buffer BUFFER (‘kill-buffer’). ‘M-x kill-some-buffers’ Offer to kill each buffer, one by one. ‘M-x kill-matching-buffers’ Offer to kill all buffers matching a regular expression. ‘C-x k’ (‘kill-buffer’) kills one buffer, whose name you specify in the minibuffer. The default, used if you type just in the minibuffer, is to kill the current buffer. If you kill the current buffer, another buffer becomes current: one that was current in the recent past but is not displayed in any window now. If you ask to kill a file-visiting buffer that is modified, then you must confirm with ‘yes’ before the buffer is killed. The command ‘M-x kill-some-buffers’ asks about each buffer, one by one. An answer of ‘yes’ means to kill the buffer, just like ‘kill-buffer’. This command ignores buffers whose names begin with a space, which are used internally by Emacs. The command ‘M-x kill-matching-buffers’ prompts for a regular expression and kills all buffers whose names match that expression. *Note Regexps::. Like ‘kill-some-buffers’, it asks for confirmation before each kill. This command normally ignores buffers whose names begin with a space, which are used internally by Emacs. To kill internal buffers as well, call ‘kill-matching-buffers’ with a prefix argument. The Buffer Menu feature is also convenient for killing various buffers. *Note Several Buffers::. If you want to do something special every time a buffer is killed, you can add hook functions to the hook ‘kill-buffer-hook’ (*note Hooks::). If you run one Emacs session for a period of days, as many people do, it can fill up with buffers that you used several days ago. The command ‘M-x clean-buffer-list’ is a convenient way to purge them; it kills all the unmodified buffers that you have not used for a long time. An ordinary buffer is killed if it has not been displayed for three days; however, you can specify certain buffers that should never be killed automatically, and others that should be killed if they have been unused for a mere hour. These defaults, and other aspects of this command’s behavior, can be controlled by customizing several options described in the doc string of ‘clean-buffer-list’. You can also have this buffer purging done for you, once a day, by enabling Midnight mode. Midnight mode operates each day at midnight; at that time, it runs ‘clean-buffer-list’, or whichever functions you have placed in the normal hook ‘midnight-hook’ (*note Hooks::). To enable Midnight mode, use the Customization buffer to set the variable ‘midnight-mode’ to ‘t’. *Note Easy Customization::. ** 19.5 Operating on Several Buffers ‘M-x buffer-menu’ Begin editing a buffer listing all Emacs buffers. ‘M-x buffer-menu-other-window’ Similar, but do it in another window. The "Buffer Menu" opened by ‘C-x C-b’ (*note List Buffers::) does not merely list buffers. It also allows you to perform various operations on buffers, through an interface similar to Dired (*note Dired::). You can save buffers, kill them (here called "deleting" them, for consistency with Dired), or display them. To use the Buffer Menu, type ‘C-x C-b’ and switch to the window displaying the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer. You can also type ‘M-x buffer-menu’ to open the Buffer Menu in the selected window. Alternatively, the command ‘M-x buffer-menu-other-window’ opens the Buffer Menu in another window, and selects that window. The Buffer Menu is a read-only buffer, and can be changed only through the special commands described in this section. The usual cursor motion commands can be used in this buffer. The following commands apply to the buffer described on the current line: ‘d’ Flag the buffer for deletion (killing), then move point to the next line (‘Buffer-menu-delete’). The deletion flag is indicated by the character ‘D’ on the line, before the buffer name. The deletion occurs only when you type the ‘x’ command (see below). ‘C-d’ Like ‘d’, but move point up instead of down (‘Buffer-menu-delete-backwards’). ‘s’ Flag the buffer for saving (‘Buffer-menu-save’). The save flag is indicated by the character ‘S’ on the line, before the buffer name. The saving occurs only when you type ‘x’. You may request both saving and deletion for the same buffer. ‘x’ Perform all flagged deletions and saves (‘Buffer-menu-execute’). ‘u’ Remove all flags from the current line, and move down (‘Buffer-menu-unmark’). With a prefix argument, moves up after removing the flags. ‘’ Move to the previous line and remove all flags on that line (‘Buffer-menu-backup-unmark’). ‘M-’ Remove a particular flag from all lines (‘Buffer-menu-unmark-all-buffers’). This asks for a single character, and unmarks buffers marked with that character; typing removes all marks. ‘U’ Remove all flags from all the lines (‘Buffer-menu-unmark-all’). The commands for removing flags, ‘d’ and ‘C-d’, accept a numeric argument as a repeat count. The following commands operate immediately on the buffer listed on the current line. They also accept a numeric argument as a repeat count. ‘~’ Mark the buffer as unmodified (‘Buffer-menu-not-modified’). *Note Save Commands::. ‘%’ Toggle the buffer’s read-only status (‘Buffer-menu-toggle-read-only’). *Note Misc Buffer::. ‘t’ Visit the buffer as a tags table (‘Buffer-menu-visit-tags-table’). *Note Select Tags Table::. The following commands are used to select another buffer or buffers: ‘q’ Quit the Buffer Menu (‘quit-window’). The most recent formerly visible buffer is displayed in its place. ‘’ ‘f’ Select this line’s buffer, replacing the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer in its window (‘Buffer-menu-this-window’). ‘o’ Select this line’s buffer in another window, as if by ‘C-x 4 b’, leaving ‘*Buffer List*’ visible (‘Buffer-menu-other-window’). ‘C-o’ Display this line’s buffer in another window, without selecting it (‘Buffer-menu-switch-other-window’). ‘1’ Select this line’s buffer in a full-frame window (‘Buffer-menu-1-window’). ‘2’ Set up two windows on the current frame, with this line’s buffer selected in one, and a previously current buffer (aside from ‘*Buffer List*’) in the other (‘Buffer-menu-2-window’). ‘b’ Bury this line’s buffer (‘Buffer-menu-bury’) (i.e., move it to the end of the buffer list). ‘m’ Mark this line’s buffer to be displayed in another window if you exit with the ‘v’ command (‘Buffer-menu-mark’). The display flag is indicated by the character ‘>’ at the beginning of the line. (A single buffer may not have both deletion and display flags.) ‘v’ Select this line’s buffer, and also display in other windows any buffers flagged with the ‘m’ command (‘Buffer-menu-select’). If you have not flagged any buffers, this command is equivalent to ‘1’. The following commands affect the entire buffer list: ‘S’ Sort the Buffer Menu entries according to their values in the column at point. With a numeric prefix argument N, sort according to the N-th column (‘tabulated-list-sort’). ‘T’ Delete, or reinsert, lines for non-file buffers (‘Buffer-menu-toggle-files-only’). This command toggles the inclusion of such buffers in the buffer list. Normally, the buffer ‘*Buffer List*’ is not updated automatically when buffers are created and killed; its contents are just text. If you have created, deleted or renamed buffers, the way to update ‘*Buffer List*’ to show what you have done is to type ‘g’ (‘revert-buffer’). You can make this happen regularly every ‘auto-revert-interval’ seconds if you enable Auto Revert mode in this buffer, as long as it is not marked modified. Global Auto Revert mode applies to the ‘*Buffer List*’ buffer only if ‘global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers’ is non-‘nil’. *Note global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers: Autorevert, for details. ** 19.6 Indirect Buffers An "indirect buffer" shares the text of some other buffer, which is called the "base buffer" of the indirect buffer. In some ways it is a buffer analogue of a symbolic link between files. ‘M-x make-indirect-buffer BASE-BUFFER INDIRECT-NAME ’ Create an indirect buffer named INDIRECT-NAME with base buffer BASE-BUFFER. ‘M-x clone-indirect-buffer ’ Create an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer. ‘C-x 4 c’ Create an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer, and select it in another window (‘clone-indirect-buffer-other-window’). The text of the indirect buffer is always identical to the text of its base buffer; changes made by editing either one are visible immediately in the other. But in all other respects, the indirect buffer and its base buffer are completely separate. They can have different names, different values of point, different narrowing, different markers, different major modes, and different local variables. An indirect buffer cannot visit a file, but its base buffer can. If you try to save the indirect buffer, that actually works by saving the base buffer. Killing the base buffer effectively kills the indirect buffer, but killing an indirect buffer has no effect on its base buffer. One way to use indirect buffers is to display multiple views of an outline. *Note Outline Views::. A quick and handy way to make an indirect buffer is with the command ‘M-x clone-indirect-buffer’. It creates and selects an indirect buffer whose base buffer is the current buffer. With a numeric argument, it prompts for the name of the indirect buffer; otherwise it uses the name of the current buffer, with a ‘’ suffix added. ‘C-x 4 c’ (‘clone-indirect-buffer-other-window’) works like ‘M-x clone-indirect-buffer’, but it selects the new buffer in another window. These functions run the hook ‘clone-indirect-buffer-hook’ after creating the indirect buffer. The more general way to make an indirect buffer is with the command ‘M-x make-indirect-buffer’. It creates an indirect buffer named INDIRECT-NAME from a buffer BASE-BUFFER, prompting for both using the minibuffer. ** 19.7 Convenience Features and Customization of Buffer Handling This section describes several modes and features that make it more convenient to switch between buffers. + Menu: - Uniquify:: Making buffer names unique with directory parts. - Icomplete:: Fast minibuffer selection. - Buffer Menus:: Configurable buffer menu. *** 19.7.1 Making Buffer Names Unique When several buffers visit identically-named files, Emacs must give the buffers distinct names. The default method adds a suffix based on the names of the directories that contain the files. For example, if you visit files ‘/foo/bar/mumble/name’ and ‘/baz/quux/mumble/name’ at the same time, their buffers will be named ‘name’ and ‘name’, respectively. Emacs adds as many directory parts as are needed to make a unique name. You can choose from several different styles for constructing unique buffer names, by customizing the option ‘uniquify-buffer-name-style’. The ‘forward’ naming method includes part of the file’s directory name at the beginning of the buffer name; using this method, buffers visiting the files ‘/u/rms/tmp/Makefile’ and ‘/usr/projects/zaphod/Makefile’ would be named ‘tmp/Makefile’ and ‘zaphod/Makefile’. In contrast, the ‘post-forward’ naming method would call the buffers ‘Makefile|tmp’ and ‘Makefile|zaphod’. The default method ‘post-forward-angle-brackets’ is like ‘post-forward’, except that it encloses the unique path in angle brackets. The ‘reverse’ naming method would call them ‘Makefile\tmp’ and ‘Makefile\zaphod’. The nontrivial difference between ‘post-forward’ and ‘reverse’ occurs when just one directory name is not enough to distinguish two files; then ‘reverse’ puts the directory names in reverse order, so that ‘/top/middle/file’ becomes ‘file\middle\top’, while ‘post-forward’ puts them in forward order after the file name, as in ‘file|top/middle’. If ‘uniquify-buffer-name-style’ is set to ‘nil’, the buffer names simply get ‘<2>’, ‘<3>’, etc. appended. Which rule to follow for putting the directory names in the buffer name is not very important if you are going to _look_ at the buffer names before you type one. But as an experienced user, if you know the rule, you won’t have to look. And then you may find that one rule or another is easier for you to remember and apply quickly. *** 19.7.2 Fast minibuffer selection Icomplete global minor mode provides a convenient way to quickly select an element among the possible completions in a minibuffer. When enabled, typing in the minibuffer continuously displays a list of possible completions that match the string you have typed. At any time, you can type ‘C-j’ to select the first completion in the list. So the way to select a particular completion is to make it the first in the list. There are two ways to do this. You can type more of the completion name and thus narrow down the list, excluding unwanted completions above the desired one. Alternatively, you can use ‘C-.’ and ‘C-,’ to rotate the list until the desired buffer is first. ‘M-’ will select the first completion in the list, like ‘C-j’ but without exiting the minibuffer, so you can edit it further. This is typically used when entering a file name, where ‘M-’ can be used a few times to descend in the hierarchy of directories. To enable Icomplete mode, type ‘M-x icomplete-mode’, or customize the variable ‘icomplete-mode’ to ‘t’ (*note Easy Customization::). *** 19.7.3 Customizing Buffer Menus ‘M-x bs-show’ Make a list of buffers similarly to ‘M-x list-buffers’ but customizable. ‘M-x ibuffer’ Make a list of buffers and operate on them in Dired-like fashion. ‘M-x bs-show’ pops up a buffer list similar to the one normally displayed by ‘C-x C-b’, but whose display you can customize in a more flexible fashion. For example, you can specify the list of buffer attributes to show, the minimum and maximum width of buffer name column, a regexp for names of buffers that will never be shown and those which will always be shown, etc. If you prefer this to the usual buffer list, you can bind this command to ‘C-x C-b’. To customize this buffer list, use the ‘bs’ Custom group (*note Easy Customization::), or invoke ‘bs-customize’. MSB global minor mode (“MSB” stands for “mouse select buffer”) provides a different and customizable mouse buffer menu which you may prefer. It replaces the ‘mouse-buffer-menu’ commands, normally bound to ‘C-Down-mouse-1’ and ‘C-’, with its own commands, and also modifies the menu-bar buffer menu. You can customize the menu in the ‘msb’ Custom group. IBuffer is a major mode for viewing a list of buffers and operating on them in a way analogous to that of Dired (*note Dired::), including filtering, marking, sorting in various ways, and acting on buffers. * 20 Multiple Windows Emacs can split a frame into two or many windows. Multiple windows can display parts of different buffers, or different parts of one buffer. Multiple frames always imply multiple windows, because each frame has its own set of windows. Each window belongs to one and only one frame. + Menu: - Basic Window:: Introduction to Emacs windows. - Split Window:: New windows are made by splitting existing windows. - Other Window:: Moving to another window or doing something to it. - Pop Up Window:: Finding a file or buffer in another window. - Change Window:: Deleting windows and changing their sizes. - Displaying Buffers:: How Emacs picks a window for displaying a buffer. - Window Convenience:: Convenience functions for window handling. ** 20.1 Concepts of Emacs Windows Each Emacs window displays one Emacs buffer at any time. A single buffer may appear in more than one window; if it does, any changes in its text are displayed in all the windows where it appears. But these windows can show different parts of the buffer, because each window has its own value of point. At any time, one Emacs window is the "selected window"; the buffer this window is displaying is the current buffer. On graphical displays, the point is indicated by a solid blinking cursor in the selected window, and by a hollow box in non-selected windows. On text terminals, the cursor is drawn only in the selected window. *Note Cursor Display::. Commands to move point affect the value of point for the selected Emacs window only. They do not change the value of point in other Emacs windows, even those showing the same buffer. The same is true for buffer-switching commands such as ‘C-x b’; they do not affect other windows at all. However, there are other commands such as ‘C-x 4 b’ that select a different window and switch buffers in it. Also, all commands that display information in a window, including (for example) ‘C-h f’ (‘describe-function’) and ‘C-x C-b’ (‘list-buffers’), work by switching buffers in a nonselected window without affecting the selected window. When multiple windows show the same buffer, they can have different regions, because they can have different values of point. However, they all have the same value for the mark, because each buffer has only one mark position. Each window has its own mode line, which displays the buffer name, modification status and major and minor modes of the buffer that is displayed in the window. The selected window’s mode line appears in a different color. *Note Mode Line::, for details. ** 20.2 Splitting Windows ‘C-x 2’ Split the selected window into two windows, one above the other (‘split-window-below’). ‘C-x 3’ Split the selected window into two windows, positioned side by side (‘split-window-right’). ‘C-mouse-2’ In the mode line of a window, split that window. ‘C-x 2’ (‘split-window-below’) splits the selected window into two windows, one above the other. After splitting, the selected window is the upper one, and the newly split-off window is below. Both windows have the same value of point as before, and display the same portion of the buffer (or as close to it as possible). If necessary, the windows are scrolled to keep point on-screen. By default, the two windows each get half the height of the original window. A positive numeric argument specifies how many lines to give to the top window; a negative numeric argument specifies how many lines to give to the bottom window. If you change the variable ‘split-window-keep-point’ to ‘nil’, ‘C-x 2’ instead adjusts the portion of the buffer displayed by the two windows, as well as the value of point in each window, in order to keep the text on the screen as close as possible to what it was before; furthermore, if point was in the lower half of the original window, the bottom window is selected instead of the upper one. ‘C-x 3’ (‘split-window-right’) splits the selected window into two side-by-side windows. The left window is the selected one; the right window displays the same portion of the same buffer, and has the same value of point. A positive numeric argument specifies how many columns to give the left window; a negative numeric argument specifies how many columns to give the right window. When you split a window with ‘C-x 3’, each resulting window occupies less than the full width of the frame. If it becomes too narrow, the buffer may be difficult to read if continuation lines are in use (*note Continuation Lines::). Therefore, Emacs automatically switches to line truncation if the window width becomes narrower than 50 columns. This truncation occurs regardless of the value of the variable ‘truncate-lines’ (*note Line Truncation::); it is instead controlled by the variable ‘truncate-partial-width-windows’. If the value of this variable is a positive integer (the default is 50), that specifies the minimum total width for a partial-width window before automatic line truncation occurs; if the value is ‘nil’, automatic line truncation is disabled; and for any other non-‘nil’ value, Emacs truncates lines in every partial-width window regardless of its width. The total width of a window is in column units as reported by ‘window-total-width’ (*note (elisp)Window Sizes::), it includes the fringes, the continuation and truncation glyphs, the margins, and the scroll bar. On text terminals, side-by-side windows are separated by a vertical divider which is drawn using the ‘vertical-border’ face. If you click ‘C-mouse-2’ in the mode line of a window, that splits the window, putting a vertical divider where you click. Depending on how Emacs is compiled, you can also split a window by clicking ‘C-mouse-2’ in the scroll bar, which puts a horizontal divider where you click (this feature does not work when Emacs uses GTK+ scroll bars). By default, when you split a window, Emacs gives each of the resulting windows dimensions that are an integral multiple of the default font size of the frame. That might subdivide the screen estate unevenly between the resulting windows. If you set the variable ‘window-resize-pixelwise’ to a non-‘nil’ value, Emacs will give each window the same number of pixels (give or take one pixel if the initial dimension was an odd number of pixels). Note that when a frame’s pixel size is not a multiple of the frame’s character size, at least one window may get resized pixelwise even if this option is ‘nil’. ** 20.3 Using Other Windows ‘C-x o’ Select another window (‘other-window’). ‘C-M-v’ Scroll the next window (‘scroll-other-window’). ‘mouse-1’ ‘mouse-1’, in the text area of a window, selects the window and moves point to the position clicked. Clicking in the mode line selects the window without moving point in it. With the keyboard, you can switch windows by typing ‘C-x o’ (‘other-window’). That is an ‘o’, for “other”, not a zero. When there are more than two windows, this command moves through all the windows in a cyclic order, generally top to bottom and left to right. After the rightmost and bottommost window, it goes back to the one at the upper left corner. A numeric argument means to move several steps in the cyclic order of windows. A negative argument moves around the cycle in the opposite order. When the minibuffer is active, the minibuffer window is the last window in the cycle; you can switch from the minibuffer window to one of the other windows, and later switch back and finish supplying the minibuffer argument that is requested. *Note Minibuffer Edit::. The usual scrolling commands (*note Display::) apply to the selected window only, but there is one command to scroll the next window. ‘C-M-v’ (‘scroll-other-window’) scrolls the window that ‘C-x o’ would select. It takes arguments, positive and negative, like ‘C-v’. (In the minibuffer, ‘C-M-v’ scrolls the help window associated with the minibuffer, if any, rather than the next window in the standard cyclic order; *note Minibuffer Edit::.) If you set ‘mouse-autoselect-window’ to a non-‘nil’ value, moving the mouse over a different window selects that window. This feature is off by default. ** 20.4 Displaying in Another Window ‘C-x 4’ is a prefix key for a variety of commands that switch to a buffer in a different window—either another existing window, or a new window created by splitting the selected window. *Note Window Choice::, for how Emacs picks or creates the window to use. ‘C-x 4 b BUFNAME ’ Select buffer BUFNAME in another window (‘switch-to-buffer-other-window’). *Note Select Buffer::. ‘C-x 4 C-o BUFNAME ’ Display buffer BUFNAME in some window, without trying to select it (‘display-buffer’). *Note Displaying Buffers::, for details about how the window is chosen. ‘C-x 4 f FILENAME ’ Visit file FILENAME and select its buffer in another window (‘find-file-other-window’). *Note Visiting::. ‘C-x 4 d DIRECTORY ’ Select a Dired buffer for directory DIRECTORY in another window (‘dired-other-window’). *Note Dired::. ‘C-x 4 m’ Start composing a mail message, similar to ‘C-x m’ (*note Sending Mail::), but in another window (‘compose-mail-other-window’). ‘C-x 4 .’ Find the definition of an identifier, similar to ‘M-.’ (*note Xref::), but in another window (‘xref-find-definitions-other-window’). ‘C-x 4 r FILENAME ’ Visit file FILENAME read-only, and select its buffer in another window (‘find-file-read-only-other-window’). *Note Visiting::. ** 20.5 Deleting and Resizing Windows ‘C-x 0’ Delete the selected window (‘delete-window’). ‘C-x 1’ Delete all windows in the selected frame except the selected window (‘delete-other-windows’). ‘C-x 4 0’ Delete the selected window and kill the buffer that was showing in it (‘kill-buffer-and-window’). The last character in this key sequence is a zero. ‘C-x ^’ Make selected window taller (‘enlarge-window’). ‘C-x }’ Make selected window wider (‘enlarge-window-horizontally’). ‘C-x {’ Make selected window narrower (‘shrink-window-horizontally’). ‘C-x -’ Shrink this window if its buffer doesn’t need so many lines (‘shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer’). ‘C-x +’ Make all windows the same height (‘balance-windows’). To delete the selected window, type ‘C-x 0’ (‘delete-window’). (That is a zero.) Once a window is deleted, the space that it occupied is given to an adjacent window (but not the minibuffer window, even if that is active at the time). Deleting the window has no effect on the buffer it used to display; the buffer continues to exist, and you can still switch to it with ‘C-x b’. ‘C-x 4 0’ (‘kill-buffer-and-window’) is a stronger command than ‘C-x 0’; it kills the current buffer and then deletes the selected window. ‘C-x 1’ (‘delete-other-windows’) deletes all the windows, _except_ the selected one; the selected window expands to use the whole frame. (This command cannot be used while the minibuffer window is active; attempting to do so signals an error.) The command ‘C-x ^’ (‘enlarge-window’) makes the selected window one line taller, taking space from a vertically adjacent window without changing the height of the frame. With a positive numeric argument, this command increases the window height by that many lines; with a negative argument, it reduces the height by that many lines. If there are no vertically adjacent windows (i.e., the window is at the full frame height), that signals an error. The command also signals an error if you attempt to reduce the height of any window below a certain minimum number of lines, specified by the variable ‘window-min-height’ (the default is 4). Similarly, ‘C-x }’ (‘enlarge-window-horizontally’) makes the selected window wider, and ‘C-x {’ (‘shrink-window-horizontally’) makes it narrower. These commands signal an error if you attempt to reduce the width of any window below a certain minimum number of columns, specified by the variable ‘window-min-width’ (the default is 10). Mouse clicks on the mode line (*note Mode Line Mouse::) or on window dividers (*note Window Dividers::) provide another way to change window heights and to split or delete windows. ‘C-x -’ (‘shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer’) reduces the height of the selected window, if it is taller than necessary to show the whole text of the buffer it is displaying. It gives the extra lines to other windows in the frame. You can also use ‘C-x +’ (‘balance-windows’) to even out the heights of all the windows in the selected frame. ** 20.6 Displaying a Buffer in a Window It is a common Emacs operation to display or pop up some buffer in response to a user command. There are several different ways in which commands do this. Many commands, like ‘C-x C-f’ (‘find-file’), display the buffer by “taking over” the selected window, expecting that the user’s attention will be diverted to that buffer. These commands usually work by calling ‘switch-to-buffer’ internally (*note Select Buffer::). Some commands try to display intelligently, trying not to take over the selected window, e.g., by splitting off a new window and displaying the desired buffer there. Such commands, which include the various help commands (*note Help::), work by calling ‘display-buffer’ internally. *Note Window Choice::, for details. Other commands do the same as ‘display-buffer’, and additionally select the displaying window so that you can begin editing its buffer. The command ‘C-x `’ (‘next-error’) is one example (*note Compilation Mode::). Such commands work by calling the function ‘pop-to-buffer’ internally. *Note Switching to a Buffer in a Window: (elisp)Switching Buffers. Commands with names ending in ‘-other-window’ behave like ‘display-buffer’, except that they never display in the selected window. Several of these commands are bound in the ‘C-x 4’ prefix key (*note Pop Up Window::). Commands with names ending in ‘-other-frame’ behave like ‘display-buffer’, except that they (i) never display in the selected window and (ii) prefer to create a new frame to display the desired buffer instead of splitting a window—as though the variable ‘pop-up-frames’ is set to ‘t’ (*note Window Choice::). Several of these commands are bound in the ‘C-x 5’ prefix key. + Menu: - Window Choice:: How ‘display-buffer’ works. - Temporary Displays:: Displaying non-editable buffers. *** 20.6.1 How ‘display-buffer’ works The ‘display-buffer’ command (as well as commands that call it internally) chooses a window to display by following the steps given below. *Note Choosing a Window for Display: (elisp)Choosing Window, for details about how to alter this sequence of steps. • First, check if the buffer should be displayed in the selected window regardless of other considerations. You can tell Emacs to do this by adding the desired buffer’s name to the list ‘same-window-buffer-names’, or adding a matching regular expression to the list ‘same-window-regexps’. By default, these variables are ‘nil’, so this step is skipped. • Otherwise, if the buffer is already displayed in an existing window, reuse that window. Normally, only windows on the selected frame are considered, but windows on other frames are also reusable if you change ‘pop-up-frames’ (see below) to ‘t’. • Otherwise, optionally create a new frame and display the buffer there. By default, this step is skipped. To enable it, change the variable ‘pop-up-frames’ to a non-‘nil’ value. The special value ‘graphic-only’ means to do this only on graphical displays. • Otherwise, try to create a new window by splitting a window on the selected frame, and display the buffer in that new window. The split can be either vertical or horizontal, depending on the variables ‘split-height-threshold’ and ‘split-width-threshold’. These variables should have integer values. If ‘split-height-threshold’ is smaller than the chosen window’s height, the split puts the new window below. Otherwise, if ‘split-width-threshold’ is smaller than the window’s width, the split puts the new window on the right. If neither condition holds, Emacs tries to split so that the new window is below—but only if the window was not split before (to avoid excessive splitting). • Otherwise, display the buffer in a window previously showing it. Normally, only windows on the selected frame are considered, but if ‘pop-up-frames’ is non-‘nil’ the window may be also on another frame. • Otherwise, display the buffer in an existing window on the selected frame. • If all the above methods fail for whatever reason, create a new frame and display the buffer there. A more advanced and flexible way to customize the behavior of ‘display-buffer’ is by using the option ‘display-buffer-alist’ mentioned in the next section. *** 20.6.2 Displaying non-editable buffers. Some buffers are shown in windows for perusal rather than for editing. Help commands (*note Help::) typically use a buffer called ‘*Help*’ for that purpose, minibuffer completion (*note Completion::) uses a buffer called ‘*Completions*’ instead. Such buffers are usually displayed only for a short period of time. Normally, Emacs chooses the window for such temporary displays via ‘display-buffer’ as described above. The ‘*Completions*’ buffer, on the other hand, is normally displayed in a window at the bottom of the selected frame, regardless of the number of windows already shown on that frame. If you prefer Emacs to display a temporary buffer in a different fashion, we recommend customizing the variable ‘display-buffer-alist’ (*note Choosing a Window for Display: (elisp)Choosing Window.). For example, to display ‘*Completions*’ by splitting a window as described in the previous section, use the following form in your initialization file (*note Init File::): (customize-set-variable 'display-buffer-alist '(("\\*Completions\\*" display-buffer-pop-up-window))) The ‘*Completions*’ buffer is also special in the sense that Emacs usually tries to make its window just as large as necessary to display all of its contents. To resize windows showing other temporary displays like, for example, the ‘*Help*’ buffer accordingly, turn on the minor mode (*note Minor Modes::) ‘temp-buffer-resize-mode’ (*note Temporary Displays: (elisp)Temporary Displays.). The maximum size of windows resized by ‘temp-buffer-resize-mode’ can be controlled by customizing the options ‘temp-buffer-max-height’ and ‘temp-buffer-max-width’ (*note Temporary Displays: (elisp)Temporary Displays.) and cannot exceed the size of the containing frame. ** 20.7 Convenience Features for Window Handling Winner mode is a global minor mode that records the changes in the window configuration (i.e., how the frames are partitioned into windows), so that you can undo them. You can toggle Winner mode with ‘M-x winner-mode’, or by customizing the variable ‘winner-mode’. When the mode is enabled, ‘C-c left’ (‘winner-undo’) undoes the last window configuration change. If you change your mind while undoing, you can redo the changes you had undone using ‘C-c right’ (‘M-x winner-redo’). Follow mode (‘M-x follow-mode’) synchronizes several windows on the same buffer so that they always display adjacent sections of that buffer. *Note Follow Mode::. The Windmove package defines commands for moving directionally between neighboring windows in a frame. ‘M-x windmove-right’ selects the window immediately to the right of the currently selected one, and similarly for the left, up, and down counterparts. ‘M-x windmove-default-keybindings’ binds these commands to ‘S-right’ etc.; doing so disables shift selection for those keys (*note Shift Selection::). The command ‘M-x compare-windows’ lets you compare the text shown in different windows. *Note Comparing Files::. Scroll All mode (‘M-x scroll-all-mode’) is a global minor mode that causes scrolling commands and point motion commands to apply to every single window. * 21 Frames and Graphical Displays When Emacs is started on a graphical display, e.g., on the X Window System, it occupies a graphical system-level display region. In this manual, we call this a "frame", reserving the word “window” for the part of the frame used for displaying a buffer. A frame initially contains one window, but it can be subdivided into multiple windows (*note Windows::). A frame normally also contains a menu bar, tool bar, and echo area. You can also create additional frames (*note Creating Frames::). All frames created in the same Emacs session have access to the same underlying buffers and other data. For instance, if a buffer is being shown in more than one frame, any changes made to it in one frame show up immediately in the other frames too. Typing ‘C-x C-c’ closes all the frames on the current display, and ends the Emacs session if it has no frames open on any other displays (*note Exiting::). To close just the selected frame, type ‘C-x 5 0’ (that is zero, not ‘o’). This chapter describes Emacs features specific to graphical displays (particularly mouse commands), and features for managing multiple frames. On text terminals, many of these features are unavailable. However, it is still possible to create multiple frames on text terminals; such frames are displayed one at a time, filling the entire terminal screen (*note Non-Window Terminals::). It is also possible to use the mouse on some text terminals (*note Text-Only Mouse::, for doing so on GNU and Unix systems; and *note MS-DOS Mouse::, for doing so on MS-DOS). Menus are supported on all text terminals. + Menu: - Mouse Commands:: Moving, cutting, and pasting, with the mouse. - Word and Line Mouse:: Mouse commands for selecting whole words or lines. - Mouse References:: Using the mouse to select an item from a list. - Menu Mouse Clicks:: Mouse clicks that bring up menus. - Mode Line Mouse:: Mouse clicks on the mode line. - Creating Frames:: Creating additional Emacs frames with various contents. - Frame Commands:: Iconifying, deleting, and switching frames. - Fonts:: Changing the frame font. - Speedbar:: How to make and use a speedbar frame. - Multiple Displays:: How one Emacs instance can talk to several displays. - Frame Parameters:: Changing the colors and other modes of frames. - Scroll Bars:: How to enable and disable scroll bars; how to use them. - Window Dividers:: Window separators that can be dragged with the mouse. - Drag and Drop:: Using drag and drop to open files and insert text. - Menu Bars:: Enabling and disabling the menu bar. - Tool Bars:: Enabling and disabling the tool bar. - Dialog Boxes:: Controlling use of dialog boxes. - Tooltips:: Displaying information at the current mouse position. - Mouse Avoidance:: Preventing the mouse pointer from obscuring text. - Non-Window Terminals:: Multiple frames on terminals that show only one. - Text-Only Mouse:: Using the mouse in text terminals. ** 21.1 Mouse Commands for Editing ‘mouse-1’ Move point to where you click (‘mouse-set-point’). ‘Drag-mouse-1’ Activate the region around the text selected by dragging, and put the text in the primary selection (‘mouse-set-region’). ‘mouse-2’ Move point to where you click, and insert the contents of the primary selection there (‘mouse-yank-primary’). ‘mouse-3’ If the region is active, move the nearer end of the region to the click position; otherwise, set mark at the current value of point and point at the click position. Save the resulting region in the kill ring; on a second click, kill it (‘mouse-save-then-kill’). The most basic mouse command is ‘mouse-set-point’, which is invoked by clicking with the left mouse button, ‘mouse-1’, in the text area of a window. This moves point to the position where you clicked. If that window was not the selected window, it becomes the selected window. You can also activate a region by double-clicking ‘mouse-1’ (*note Word and Line Mouse::). Normally, if the frame you clicked in was not the selected frame, it is made the selected frame, in addition to selecting the window and setting the cursor. On the X Window System, you can change this by setting the variable ‘x-mouse-click-focus-ignore-position’ to ‘t’. In that case, the initial click on an unselected frame just selects the frame, without doing anything else; clicking again selects the window and sets the cursor position. Holding down ‘mouse-1’ and dragging the mouse over a stretch of text activates the region around that text (‘mouse-set-region’), placing the mark where you started holding down the mouse button, and point where you release it (*note Mark::). In addition, the text in the region becomes the primary selection (*note Primary Selection::). If you change the variable ‘mouse-drag-copy-region’ to a non-‘nil’ value, dragging the mouse over a stretch of text also adds the text to the kill ring. The default is ‘nil’. If you move the mouse off the top or bottom of the window while dragging, the window scrolls at a steady rate until you move the mouse back into the window. This way, you can select regions that don’t fit entirely on the screen. The number of lines scrolled per step depends on how far away from the window edge the mouse has gone; the variable ‘mouse-scroll-min-lines’ specifies a minimum step size. Clicking with the middle mouse button, ‘mouse-2’, moves point to the position where you clicked and inserts the contents of the primary selection (‘mouse-yank-primary’). *Note Primary Selection::. This behavior is consistent with other X applications. Alternatively, you can rebind ‘mouse-2’ to ‘mouse-yank-at-click’, which performs a yank at the position you click. If you change the variable ‘mouse-yank-at-point’ to a non-‘nil’ value, ‘mouse-2’ does not move point; it inserts the text at point, regardless of where you clicked or even which of the frame’s windows you clicked on. This variable affects both ‘mouse-yank-primary’ and ‘mouse-yank-at-click’. Clicking with the right mouse button, ‘mouse-3’, runs the command ‘mouse-save-then-kill’. This performs several actions depending on where you click and the status of the region: • If no region is active, clicking ‘mouse-3’ activates the region, placing the mark where point was and point at the clicked position. • If a region is active, clicking ‘mouse-3’ adjusts the nearer end of the region by moving it to the clicked position. The adjusted region’s text is copied to the kill ring; if the text in the original region was already on the kill ring, it replaces it there. • If you originally specified the region using a double or triple ‘mouse-1’, so that the region is defined to consist of entire words or lines (*note Word and Line Mouse::), then adjusting the region with ‘mouse-3’ also proceeds by entire words or lines. • If you use ‘mouse-3’ a second time consecutively, at the same place, that kills the region already selected. Thus, the simplest way to kill text with the mouse is to click ‘mouse-1’ at one end, then click ‘mouse-3’ twice at the other end. To copy the text into the kill ring without deleting it from the buffer, press ‘mouse-3’ just once—or just drag across the text with ‘mouse-1’. Then you can copy it elsewhere by yanking it. The ‘mouse-save-then-kill’ command also obeys the variable ‘mouse-drag-copy-region’ (described above). If the value is non-‘nil’, then whenever the command sets or adjusts the active region, the text in the region is also added to the kill ring. If the latest kill ring entry had been added the same way, that entry is replaced rather than making a new entry. Whenever you set the region using any of the mouse commands described above, the mark will be deactivated by any subsequent unshifted cursor motion command, in addition to the usual ways of deactivating the mark. *Note Shift Selection::. Some mice have a “wheel” which can be used for scrolling. Emacs supports scrolling windows with the mouse wheel, by default, on most graphical displays. To toggle this feature, use ‘M-x mouse-wheel-mode’. The variables ‘mouse-wheel-follow-mouse’ and ‘mouse-wheel-scroll-amount’ determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled. The variable ‘mouse-wheel-progressive-speed’ determines whether the scroll speed is linked to how fast you move the wheel. Emacs can also support horizontal scrolling if your mouse’s wheel can be tilted. This feature is off by default; the variable ‘mouse-wheel-tilt-scroll’ turns it on. If you’d like to reverse the direction of horizontal scrolling, customize the variable ‘mouse-wheel-flip-direction’ to a non-‘nil’ value. ** 21.2 Mouse Commands for Words and Lines These variants of ‘mouse-1’ select entire words or lines at a time. Emacs activates the region around the selected text, which is also copied to the kill ring. ‘Double-mouse-1’ Select the text around the word or character which you click on. Double-clicking on a character with symbol syntax (such as underscore, in C mode) selects the symbol surrounding that character. Double-clicking on a character with open- or close-parenthesis syntax selects the parenthetical grouping which that character starts or ends. Double-clicking on a character with string-delimiter syntax (such as a single-quote or double-quote in C) selects the string constant (Emacs uses heuristics to figure out whether that character is the beginning or the end of it). Double-clicking on the beginning of a parenthetical grouping or beginning string-delimiter moves point to the end of the region, scrolling the buffer display forward if necessary to show the new location of point. Double-clicking on the end of a parenthetical grouping or end string-delimiter keeps point at the end of the region by default, so the beginning of the region will not be visible if it is above the top of the window; setting the user option ‘mouse-select-region-move-to-beginning’ to non-‘nil’ changes this to move point to the beginning of the region, scrolling the display backward if necessary. ‘Double-Drag-mouse-1’ Select the text you drag across, in units of whole words. ‘Triple-mouse-1’ Select the line you click on. ‘Triple-Drag-mouse-1’ Select the text you drag across, in units of whole lines. ** 21.3 Following References with the Mouse Some Emacs buffers include "buttons", or "hyperlinks": pieces of text that perform some action (e.g., following a reference) when activated (e.g., by clicking on them). Usually, a button’s text is visually highlighted: it is underlined, or a box is drawn around it. If you move the mouse over a button, the shape of the mouse cursor changes and the button lights up. If you change the variable ‘mouse-highlight’ to ‘nil’, Emacs disables this highlighting. You can activate a button by moving point to it and typing , or by clicking either ‘mouse-1’ or ‘mouse-2’ on the button. For example, in a Dired buffer, each file name is a button; activating it causes Emacs to visit that file (*note Dired::). In a ‘*Compilation*’ buffer, each error message is a button, and activating it visits the source code for that error (*note Compilation::). Although clicking ‘mouse-1’ on a button usually activates the button, if you hold the mouse button down for a period of time before releasing it (specifically, for more than 450 milliseconds), then Emacs moves point where you clicked, without activating the button. In this way, you can use the mouse to move point over a button without activating it. Dragging the mouse over or onto a button has its usual behavior of setting the region, and does not activate the button. You can change how ‘mouse-1’ applies to buttons by customizing the variable ‘mouse-1-click-follows-link’. If the value is a positive integer, that determines how long you need to hold the mouse button down for, in milliseconds, to cancel button activation; the default is 450, as described in the previous paragraph. If the value is ‘nil’, ‘mouse-1’ just sets point where you clicked, and does not activate buttons. If the value is ‘double’, double clicks activate buttons but single clicks just set point. Normally, ‘mouse-1’ on a button activates the button even if it is in a non-selected window. If you change the variable ‘mouse-1-click-in-non-selected-windows’ to ‘nil’, ‘mouse-1’ on a button in an unselected window moves point to the clicked position and selects that window, without activating the button. ** 21.4 Mouse Clicks for Menus Several mouse clicks with the and modifiers bring up menus. ‘C-mouse-1’ This menu is for selecting a buffer. The MSB (“mouse select buffer”) global minor mode makes this menu smarter and more customizable. *Note Buffer Menus::. ‘C-mouse-2’ This menu contains entries for examining faces and other text properties, and well as for setting them (the latter is mainly useful when editing enriched text; *note Enriched Text::). ‘C-mouse-3’ This menu is mode-specific. For most modes if Menu-bar mode is on, this menu has the same items as all the mode-specific menu-bar menus put together. Some modes may specify a different menu for this button. If Menu Bar mode is off, this menu contains all the items which would be present in the menu bar—not just the mode-specific ones—so that you can access them without having to display the menu bar. ‘S-mouse-1’ This menu is for changing the default face within the window’s buffer. *Note Text Scale::. Some graphical applications use ‘mouse-3’ for a mode-specific menu. If you prefer ‘mouse-3’ in Emacs to bring up such a menu instead of running the ‘mouse-save-then-kill’ command, rebind ‘mouse-3’ by adding the following line to your init file (*note Init Rebinding::): (global-set-key [mouse-3] 'mouse-popup-menubar-stuff) ** 21.5 Mode Line Mouse Commands You can use mouse clicks on window mode lines to select and manipulate windows. Some areas of the mode line, such as the buffer name, and major and minor mode names, have their own special mouse bindings. These areas are highlighted when you hold the mouse over them, and information about the special bindings will be displayed (*note Tooltips::). This section’s commands do not apply in those areas. ‘mouse-1’ ‘mouse-1’ on a mode line selects the window it belongs to. By dragging ‘mouse-1’ on the mode line, you can move it, thus changing the height of the windows above and below. Changing heights with the mouse in this way never deletes windows, it just refuses to make any window smaller than the minimum height. ‘mouse-2’ ‘mouse-2’ on a mode line expands that window to fill its frame. ‘mouse-3’ ‘mouse-3’ on a mode line deletes the window it belongs to. If the frame has only one window, it does nothing. ‘C-mouse-2’ ‘C-mouse-2’ on a mode line splits that window, producing two side-by-side windows with the boundary running through the click position (*note Split Window::). Furthermore, by clicking and dragging ‘mouse-1’ on the divider between two side-by-side mode lines, you can move the vertical boundary to the left or right. Note that resizing windows is affected by the value of ‘window-resize-pixelwise’, see *note Split Window::. ** 21.6 Creating Frames The prefix key ‘C-x 5’ is analogous to ‘C-x 4’. Whereas each ‘C-x 4’ command pops up a buffer in a different window in the selected frame (*note Pop Up Window::), the ‘C-x 5’ commands use a different frame. If an existing visible or iconified (a.k.a. “minimized”, *note (elisp)Visibility of Frames::) frame already displays the requested buffer, that frame is raised and deiconified (“un-minimized”); otherwise, a new frame is created on the current display terminal. The various ‘C-x 5’ commands differ in how they find or create the buffer to select: ‘C-x 5 2’ Create a new frame (‘make-frame-command’). ‘C-x 5 b BUFNAME ’ Select buffer BUFNAME in another frame. This runs ‘switch-to-buffer-other-frame’. ‘C-x 5 f FILENAME ’ Visit file FILENAME and select its buffer in another frame. This runs ‘find-file-other-frame’. *Note Visiting::. ‘C-x 5 d DIRECTORY ’ Select a Dired buffer for directory DIRECTORY in another frame. This runs ‘dired-other-frame’. *Note Dired::. ‘C-x 5 m’ Start composing a mail message in another frame. This runs ‘compose-mail-other-frame’. It is the other-frame variant of ‘C-x m’. *Note Sending Mail::. ‘C-x 5 .’ Find the definition of an identifier in another frame. This runs ‘xref-find-definitions-other-frame’, the multiple-frame variant of ‘M-.’. *Note Xref::. ‘C-x 5 r FILENAME ’ Visit file FILENAME read-only, and select its buffer in another frame. This runs ‘find-file-read-only-other-frame’. *Note Visiting::. You can control the appearance and behavior of the newly-created frames by specifying "frame parameters". *Note Frame Parameters::. ** 21.7 Frame Commands The following commands are used to delete and operate on frames: ‘C-x 5 0’ Delete the selected frame (‘delete-frame’). This signals an error if there is only one frame. ‘C-z’ Minimize (or iconify) the selected Emacs frame (‘suspend-frame’). *Note Exiting::. ‘C-x 5 o’ Select another frame, and raise it. If you repeat this command, it cycles through all the frames on your terminal. ‘C-x 5 1’ Delete all frames on the current terminal, except the selected one. ‘M-’ Toggle the maximization state of the current frame. When a frame is maximized, it fills the screen. ‘’ Toggle full-screen mode for the current frame. (The difference between full-screen and maximized is normally that the former hides window manager decorations, giving slightly more screen space to Emacs itself.) Note that with some window managers you may have to customize the variable ‘frame-resize-pixelwise’ to a non-‘nil’ value in order to make a frame truly maximized or full-screen. This variable, when set to a non-‘nil’ value, in general allows resizing frames at pixel resolution, rather than in integral multiples of lines and columns. The ‘C-x 5 0’ (‘delete-frame’) command deletes the selected frame. However, it will refuse to delete the last frame in an Emacs session, to prevent you from losing the ability to interact with the Emacs session. Note that when Emacs is run as a daemon (*note Emacs Server::), there is always a virtual frame that remains after all the ordinary, interactive frames are deleted. In this case, ‘C-x 5 0’ can delete the last interactive frame; you can use ‘emacsclient’ to reconnect to the Emacs session. The ‘C-x 5 1’ (‘delete-other-frames’) command deletes all other frames on the current terminal (this terminal refers to either a graphical display, or a text terminal; *note Non-Window Terminals::). If the Emacs session has frames open on other graphical displays or text terminals, those are not deleted. The ‘C-x 5 o’ (‘other-frame’) command selects the next frame on the current terminal. If you are using Emacs on the X Window System with a window manager that selects (or "gives focus to") whatever frame the mouse cursor is over, you have to change the variable ‘focus-follows-mouse’ to ‘t’ in order for this command to work properly. Then invoking ‘C-x 5 o’ will also warp the mouse cursor to the chosen frame. ** 21.8 Fonts By default, Emacs displays text on graphical displays using a 10-point monospace font. There are several different ways to specify a different font: • Click on ‘Set Default Font’ in the ‘Options’ menu. This makes the selected font the default on all existing graphical frames. To save this for future sessions, click on ‘Save Options’ in the ‘Options’ menu. • Add a line to your init file, modifying the variable ‘default-frame-alist’ to specify the ‘font’ parameter (*note Frame Parameters::), like this: (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "DejaVu Sans Mono-10")) This makes the font the default on all graphical frames created after restarting Emacs with that init file. • Add an ‘emacs.font’ X resource setting to your X resource file, like this: emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono-12 You must restart X, or use the ‘xrdb’ command, for the X resources file to take effect. *Note Resources::. Do not quote font names in X resource files. • If you are running Emacs on the GNOME desktop, you can tell Emacs to use the default system font by setting the variable ‘font-use-system-font’ to ‘t’ (the default is ‘nil’). For this to work, Emacs must have been compiled with support for Gsettings (or the older Gconf). • Use the command line option ‘-fn’ (or ‘--font’). *Note Font X::. To check what font you’re currently using, the ‘C-u C-x =’ command can be helpful. It describes the character at point, and names the font that it’s rendered in. On X, there are four different ways to express a font name. The first is to use a "Fontconfig pattern". Fontconfig patterns have the following form: FONTNAME[-FONTSIZE][:NAME1=VALUES1][:NAME2=VALUES2]... Within this format, any of the elements in brackets may be omitted. Here, FONTNAME is the "family name" of the font, such as ‘Monospace’ or ‘DejaVu Sans Mono’; FONTSIZE is the "point size" of the font (one "printer’s point" is about 1/72 of an inch); and the ‘NAME=VALUES’ entries specify settings such as the slant and weight of the font. Each VALUES may be a single value, or a list of values separated by commas. In addition, some property values are valid with only one kind of property name, in which case the ‘NAME=’ part may be omitted. Here is a list of common font properties: ‘slant’ One of ‘italic’, ‘oblique’, or ‘roman’. ‘weight’ One of ‘light’, ‘medium’, ‘demibold’, ‘bold’ or ‘black’. ‘style’ Some fonts define special styles which are a combination of slant and weight. For instance, ‘Dejavu Sans’ defines the ‘book’ style, which overrides the slant and weight properties. ‘width’ One of ‘condensed’, ‘normal’, or ‘expanded’. ‘spacing’ One of ‘monospace’, ‘proportional’, ‘dual-width’, or ‘charcell’. Here are some examples of Fontconfig patterns: Monospace Monospace-12 Monospace-12:bold DejaVu Sans Mono:bold:italic Monospace-12:weight=bold:slant=italic For a more detailed description of Fontconfig patterns, see the Fontconfig manual, which is distributed with Fontconfig and available online at . The second way to specify a font is to use a "GTK font pattern". These have the syntax FONTNAME [PROPERTIES] [FONTSIZE] where FONTNAME is the family name, PROPERTIES is a list of property values separated by spaces, and FONTSIZE is the point size. The properties that you may specify for GTK font patterns are as follows: • Slant properties: ‘Italic’ or ‘Oblique’. If omitted, the default (roman) slant is implied. • Weight properties: ‘Bold’, ‘Book’, ‘Light’, ‘Medium’, ‘Semi-bold’, or ‘Ultra-light’. If omitted, ‘Medium’ weight is implied. • Width properties: ‘Semi-Condensed’ or ‘Condensed’. If omitted, a default width is used. Here are some examples of GTK font patterns: Monospace 12 Monospace Bold Italic 12 The third way to specify a font is to use an "XLFD" ("X Logical Font Description"). This is the traditional method for specifying fonts under X. Each XLFD consists of fourteen words or numbers, separated by dashes, like this: -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-*-*-*-c-60-iso8859-1 A wildcard character (‘*’) in an XLFD matches any sequence of characters (including none), and ‘?’ matches any single character. However, matching is implementation-dependent, and can be inaccurate when wildcards match dashes in a long name. For reliable results, supply all 14 dashes and use wildcards only within a field. Case is insignificant in an XLFD. The syntax for an XLFD is as follows: -MAKER-FAMILY-WEIGHT-SLANT-WIDTHTYPE-STYLE… …-PIXELS-HEIGHT-HORIZ-VERT-SPACING-WIDTH-REGISTRY-ENCODING The entries have the following meanings: MAKER The name of the font manufacturer. FAMILY The name of the font family (e.g., ‘courier’). WEIGHT The font weight—normally either ‘bold’, ‘medium’ or ‘light’. Some font names support other values. SLANT The font slant—normally ‘r’ (roman), ‘i’ (italic), ‘o’ (oblique), ‘ri’ (reverse italic), or ‘ot’ (other). Some font names support other values. WIDTHTYPE The font width—normally ‘normal’, ‘condensed’, ‘semicondensed’, or ‘extended’. Some font names support other values. STYLE An optional additional style name. Usually it is empty—most XLFDs have two hyphens in a row at this point. The style name can also specify a two-letter ISO-639 language name, like ‘ja’ or ‘ko’; some fonts that support CJK scripts have that spelled out in the style name part. PIXELS The font height, in pixels. HEIGHT The font height on the screen, measured in tenths of a printer’s point. This is the point size of the font, times ten. For a given vertical resolution, HEIGHT and PIXELS are proportional; therefore, it is common to specify just one of them and use ‘*’ for the other. HORIZ The horizontal resolution, in pixels per inch, of the screen for which the font is intended. VERT The vertical resolution, in pixels per inch, of the screen for which the font is intended. Normally the resolution of the fonts on your system is the right value for your screen; therefore, you normally specify ‘*’ for this and HORIZ. SPACING This is ‘m’ (monospace), ‘p’ (proportional) or ‘c’ (character cell). WIDTH The average character width, in pixels, multiplied by ten. REGISTRY ENCODING The X font character set that the font depicts. (X font character sets are not the same as Emacs character sets, but they are similar.) You can use the ‘xfontsel’ program to check which choices you have. Normally you should use ‘iso8859’ for REGISTRY and ‘1’ for ENCODING. The fourth and final method of specifying a font is to use a font nickname. Certain fonts have shorter nicknames, which you can use instead of a normal font specification. For instance, ‘6x13’ is equivalent to -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-*-*-*-c-60-iso8859-1 On X, Emacs recognizes two types of fonts: "client-side" fonts, which are provided by the Xft and Fontconfig libraries, and "server-side" fonts, which are provided by the X server itself. Most client-side fonts support advanced font features such as antialiasing and subpixel hinting, while server-side fonts do not. Fontconfig and GTK patterns match only client-side fonts. You will probably want to use a fixed-width default font—that is, a font in which all characters have the same width. For Xft and Fontconfig fonts, you can use the ‘fc-list’ command to list the available fixed-width fonts, like this: fc-list :spacing=mono fc-list :spacing=charcell For server-side X fonts, you can use the ‘xlsfonts’ program to list the available fixed-width fonts, like this: xlsfonts -fn '*x*' | grep -E '^[0-9]+x[0-9]+' xlsfonts -fn '*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-m*' xlsfonts -fn '*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-c*' Any font with ‘m’ or ‘c’ in the SPACING field of the XLFD is a fixed-width font. To see what a particular font looks like, use the ‘xfd’ command. For example: xfd -fn 6x13 displays the entire font ‘6x13’. While running Emacs, you can also set the font of a specific kind of text (*note Faces::), or a particular frame (*note Frame Parameters::). ** 21.9 Speedbar Frames The "speedbar" is a special frame for conveniently navigating in or operating on another frame. The speedbar, when it exists, is always associated with a specific frame, called its "attached frame"; all speedbar operations act on that frame. Type ‘M-x speedbar’ to create the speedbar and associate it with the current frame. To dismiss the speedbar, type ‘M-x speedbar’ again, or select the speedbar and type ‘q’. (You can also delete the speedbar frame like any other Emacs frame.) If you wish to associate the speedbar with a different frame, dismiss it and call ‘M-x speedbar’ from that frame. The speedbar can operate in various modes. Its default mode is "File Display" mode, which shows the files in the current directory of the selected window of the attached frame, one file per line. Clicking on a non-directory visits that file in the selected window of the attached frame, and clicking on a directory shows that directory in the speedbar (*note Mouse References::). Each line also has a box, ‘[+]’ or ‘<+>’, that you can click on to "expand" the contents of that item. Expanding a directory adds the contents of that directory to the speedbar display, underneath the directory’s own line. Expanding an ordinary file adds a list of the tags in that file to the speedbar display; you can click on a tag name to jump to that tag in the selected window of the attached frame. When a file or directory is expanded, the ‘[+]’ changes to ‘[-]’; you can click on that box to "contract" the item, hiding its contents. You navigate through the speedbar using the keyboard, too. Typing while point is on a line in the speedbar is equivalent to clicking the item on the current line, and expands or contracts the item. ‘U’ displays the parent directory of the current directory. To copy, delete, or rename the file on the current line, type ‘C’, ‘D’, and ‘R’ respectively. To create a new directory, type ‘M’. Another general-purpose speedbar mode is "Buffer Display" mode; in this mode, the speedbar displays a list of Emacs buffers. To switch to this mode, type ‘b’ in the speedbar. To return to File Display mode, type ‘f’. You can also change the display mode by clicking ‘mouse-3’ anywhere in the speedbar window (or ‘mouse-1’ on the mode-line) and selecting ‘Displays’ in the pop-up menu. Some major modes, including Rmail mode, Info, and GUD, have specialized ways of putting useful items into the speedbar for you to select. For example, in Rmail mode, the speedbar shows a list of Rmail files, and lets you move the current message to another Rmail file by clicking on its ‘’ box. For more details on using and programming the speedbar, *Note Speedbar: (speedbar)Top. ** 21.10 Multiple Displays A single Emacs can talk to more than one X display. Initially, Emacs uses just one display—the one specified with the ‘DISPLAY’ environment variable or with the ‘--display’ option (*note Initial Options::). To connect to another display, use the command ‘make-frame-on-display’: ‘M-x make-frame-on-display DISPLAY ’ Create a new frame on display DISPLAY. A single X server can handle more than one screen. When you open frames on two screens belonging to one server, Emacs knows they share a single keyboard, and it treats all the commands arriving from these screens as a single stream of input. When you open frames on different X servers, Emacs makes a separate input stream for each server. Each server also has its own selected frame. The commands you enter with a particular X server apply to that server’s selected frame. ** 21.11 Frame Parameters You can control the default appearance and behavior of all frames by specifying a default list of "frame parameters" in the variable ‘default-frame-alist’. Its value should be a list of entries, each specifying a parameter name and a value for that parameter. These entries take effect whenever Emacs creates a new frame, including the initial frame. For example, you can add the following lines to your init file (*note Init File::) to set the default frame width to 90 character columns, the default frame height to 40 character rows, and the default font to ‘Monospace-10’: (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(width . 90)) (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(height . 40)) (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Monospace-10")) For a list of frame parameters and their effects, see *note (elisp)Frame Parameters::. You can also specify a list of frame parameters which apply to just the initial frame, by customizing the variable ‘initial-frame-alist’. If Emacs is compiled to use an X toolkit, frame parameters that specify colors and fonts don’t affect menus and the menu bar, since those are drawn by the toolkit and not directly by Emacs. Note that if you are using the desktop library to save and restore your sessions, the frames to be restored are recorded in the desktop file, together with their parameters. When these frames are restored, the recorded parameters take precedence over the frame parameters specified by ‘default-frame-alist’ and ‘initial-frame-alist’ in your init file. *Note Saving Emacs Sessions::, for how to avoid that. ** 21.12 Scroll Bars On graphical displays, there is a "vertical scroll bar" on the side of each Emacs window. Clicking ‘mouse-1’ on the scroll bar’s up and down buttons scrolls the window by one line at a time (but some toolkits allow you to customize the scroll bars to not have those buttons). Clicking ‘mouse-1’ above or below the scroll bar’s inner box scrolls the window by nearly the entire height of the window, like ‘M-v’ and ‘C-v’ respectively (*note Moving Point::). (This, too, can behave differently with some toolkits.) Dragging the inner box scrolls continuously. If Emacs is compiled on the X Window System without X toolkit support, the scroll bar behaves differently. Clicking ‘mouse-1’ anywhere on the scroll bar scrolls forward like ‘C-v’, while ‘mouse-3’ scrolls backward like ‘M-v’. Clicking ‘mouse-2’ in the scroll bar lets you drag the inner box up and down. To toggle the use of vertical scroll bars, type ‘M-x scroll-bar-mode’. This command applies to all frames, including frames yet to be created. To toggle vertical scroll bars for just the selected frame, use the command ‘M-x toggle-scroll-bar’. To control the use of vertical scroll bars at startup, customize the variable ‘scroll-bar-mode’. Its value should be either ‘right’ (put scroll bars on the right side of windows), ‘left’ (put them on the left), or ‘nil’ (disable vertical scroll bars). By default, Emacs puts scroll bars on the right if it was compiled with GTK+ support on the X Window System, and on MS-Windows or macOS; Emacs puts scroll bars on the left if compiled on the X Window System without GTK+ support (following the old convention for X applications). You can also use the X resource ‘verticalScrollBars’ to enable or disable the scroll bars (*note Resources::). To control the scroll bar width, change the ‘scroll-bar-width’ frame parameter (*note (elisp)Frame Parameters::). If you’re using Emacs on X (with GTK+ or Motif), you can customize the variable ‘scroll-bar-adjust-thumb-portion’ to control "overscrolling" of the scroll bar, i.e., dragging the thumb down even when the end of the buffer is visible. If its value is non-‘nil’, the scroll bar can be dragged downwards even if the end of the buffer is shown; if ‘nil’, the thumb will be at the bottom when the end of the buffer is shown. You cannot over-scroll when the entire buffer is visible. The visual appearance of the scroll bars is controlled by the ‘scroll-bar’ face. (Some toolkits, such as GTK+ and MS-Windows, ignore this face; the scroll-bar appearance there can only be customized system-wide, for GTK+ *note GTK resources::). On graphical frames, vertical scroll bars implicitly serve to separate side-by-side windows visually. When vertical scroll bars are disabled, Emacs by default separates such windows with the help of a one-pixel wide "vertical border". That border occupies the first pixel column of the window on the right and may thus overdraw the leftmost pixels of any glyph displayed there. If these pixels convey important information, you can make them visible by enabling window dividers, see *note Window Dividers::. To replicate the look of vertical borders, set the ‘right-divider-width’ parameter of frames to one and have the ‘window-divider’ face inherit from that of ‘vertical-border’, *note Window Dividers: (elisp)Window Dividers. On graphical displays with toolkit support, Emacs may also supply a "horizontal scroll bar" on the bottom of each window. Clicking ‘mouse-1’ on that scroll bar’s left and right buttons scrolls the window horizontally by one column at a time. (Note that some toolkits allow customizations of the scroll bar that cause these buttons not to be shown.) Clicking ‘mouse-1’ on the left or right of the scroll bar’s inner box scrolls the window by four columns. Dragging the inner box scrolls the window continuously. Note that such horizontal scrolling can make the window’s position of point disappear on the left or the right. Typing a character to insert text or moving point with a keyboard command will usually bring it back into view. To toggle the use of horizontal scroll bars, type ‘M-x horizontal-scroll-bar-mode’. This command applies to all frames, including frames yet to be created. To toggle horizontal scroll bars for just the selected frame, use the command ‘M-x toggle-horizontal-scroll-bar’. To control the use of horizontal scroll bars at startup, customize the variable ‘horizontal-scroll-bar-mode’. You can also use the X resource ‘horizontalScrollBars’ to enable or disable horizontal scroll bars (*note Resources::). To control the scroll bar height, change the ‘scroll-bar-height’ frame parameter (*note (elisp)Frame Parameters::). ** 21.13 Window Dividers On graphical displays, you can use "window dividers" in order to separate windows visually. Window dividers are bars that can be dragged with the mouse, thus allowing you to easily resize adjacent windows. To toggle the display of window dividers, use the command ‘M-x window-divider-mode’. To customize where dividers should appear, use the option ‘window-divider-default-places’. Its value should be either ‘bottom-only’ (to show dividers only on the bottom of windows), ‘right-only’ (to show dividers only on the right of windows), or ‘t’ (to show them on the bottom and on the right). To adjust the width of window dividers displayed by this mode customize the options ‘window-divider-default-bottom-width’ and ‘window-divider-default-right-width’. When vertical scroll bars are disabled, dividers can be also useful to make the first pixel column of a window visible, which would be otherwise covered by the vertical border used to separate side-by-side windows (*note Scroll Bars::). For more details about window dividers see *note Window Dividers: (elisp)Window Dividers. ** 21.14 Drag and Drop In most graphical desktop environments, Emacs has basic support for "drag and drop" operations. For instance, dropping text onto an Emacs frame inserts the text where it is dropped. Dropping a file onto an Emacs frame visits that file. As a special case, dropping the file on a Dired buffer moves or copies the file (according to the conventions of the application it came from) into the directory displayed in that buffer. Dropping a file normally visits it in the window you drop it on. If you prefer to visit the file in a new window in such cases, customize the variable ‘dnd-open-file-other-window’. The XDND and Motif drag and drop protocols, and the old KDE 1.x protocol, are currently supported. Emacs can also optionally drag the region with the mouse into another portion of this or another buffer. To enable that, customize the variable ‘mouse-drag-and-drop-region’ to a non-‘nil’ value. Normally, the text is moved, i.e. cut and pasted, when the destination is the same buffer as the origin; dropping the region on another buffer copies the text instead. If the value of this variable names a modifier key, such as ‘shift’, ‘control’ or ‘alt’, then pressing that modifier key when dropping the text will copy it instead of cutting it, even if you drop on the same buffer as the one from which the text came. In order to cut text even when source and destination buffers differ, set the option ‘mouse-drag-and-drop-region-cut-when-buffers-differ’ to a non-‘nil’ value. By default, on a graphic display the selected text is shown in a tooltip and point moves together with the mouse cursor during dragging. To suppress such behavior, set the options ‘mouse-drag-and-drop-region-show-tooltip’ and/or ‘mouse-drag-and-drop-region-show-cursor’ to ‘nil’. ** 21.15 Menu Bars You can toggle the use of menu bars with ‘M-x menu-bar-mode’. With no argument, this command toggles Menu Bar mode, a global minor mode. With an argument, the command turns Menu Bar mode on if the argument is positive, off if the argument is not positive. To control the use of menu bars at startup, customize the variable ‘menu-bar-mode’. Expert users often turn off the menu bar, especially on text terminals, where this makes one additional line available for text. If the menu bar is off, you can still pop up a menu of its contents with ‘C-mouse-3’ on a display which supports pop-up menus. *Note Menu Mouse Clicks::. *Note Menu Bar::, for information on how to invoke commands with the menu bar. *Note X Resources::, for how to customize the menu bar menus’ visual appearance. ** 21.16 Tool Bars On graphical displays, Emacs puts a "tool bar" at the top of each frame, just below the menu bar. This is a row of icons which you can click on with the mouse to invoke various commands. The global (default) tool bar contains general commands. Some major modes define their own tool bars; whenever a buffer with such a major mode is current, the mode’s tool bar replaces the global tool bar. To toggle the use of tool bars, type ‘M-x tool-bar-mode’. This command applies to all frames, including frames yet to be created. To control the use of tool bars at startup, customize the variable ‘tool-bar-mode’. When Emacs is compiled with GTK+ support, each tool bar item can consist of an image, or a text label, or both. By default, Emacs follows the Gnome desktop’s tool bar style setting; if none is defined, it displays tool bar items as just images. To impose a specific tool bar style, customize the variable ‘tool-bar-style’. You can also control the placement of the tool bar for the GTK+ tool bar with the frame parameter ‘tool-bar-position’. *Note (elisp)Frame Parameters::. NS builds consider the tool bar to be a window decoration, and therefore do not display it when a window is undecorated. *Note (elisp)Frame Parameters::. On macOS the tool bar is hidden when the frame is put into fullscreen, but can be displayed by moving the mouse pointer to the top of the screen. ** 21.17 Using Dialog Boxes A dialog box is a special kind of menu for asking you a yes-or-no question or some other special question. Many Emacs commands use a dialog box to ask a yes-or-no question, if you used the mouse to invoke the command that led to the question. To disable the use of dialog boxes, change the variable ‘use-dialog-box’ to ‘nil’. In that case, Emacs always performs yes-or-no prompts using the echo area and keyboard input. This variable also controls whether to use file selection windows (but those are not supported on all platforms). A file selection window is a special kind of dialog box for asking for file names. You can customize the variable ‘use-file-dialog’ to suppress the use of file selection windows, even if you still want other kinds of dialogs. This variable has no effect if you have suppressed all dialog boxes with the variable ‘use-dialog-box’. When Emacs is compiled with GTK+ support, it uses the GTK+ file chooser dialog. Emacs adds an additional toggle button to this dialog, which you can use to enable or disable the display of hidden files (files starting with a dot) in that dialog. If you want this toggle to be activated by default, change the variable ‘x-gtk-show-hidden-files’ to ‘t’. In addition, Emacs adds help text to the GTK+ file chooser dialog; to disable this help text, change the variable ‘x-gtk-file-dialog-help-text’ to ‘nil’. ** 21.18 Tooltips "Tooltips" are small special frames that display text information at the current mouse position. They activate when there is a pause in mouse movement over some significant piece of text in a window, or the mode line, or some other part of the Emacs frame such as a tool bar button or menu item. You can toggle the use of tooltips with the command ‘M-x tooltip-mode’. When Tooltip mode is disabled, the help text is displayed in the echo area instead. To control the use of tooltips at startup, customize the variable ‘tooltip-mode’. The following variables provide customization options for tooltip display: ‘tooltip-delay’ This variable specifies how long Emacs should wait before displaying the first tooltip. The value is in seconds. ‘tooltip-short-delay’ This variable specifies how long Emacs should wait before displaying subsequent tooltips on different items, having already displayed the first tooltip. The value is in seconds. ‘tooltip-hide-delay’ The number of seconds since displaying a tooltip to hide it, if the mouse doesn’t move. ‘tooltip-x-offset’ ‘tooltip-y-offset’ The X and Y offsets, in pixels, of the left top corner of the tooltip from the mouse pointer position. Note that these are ignored if ‘tooltip-frame-parameters’ was customized to include, respectively, the ‘left’ and ‘top’ parameters. The values of the offsets should be chosen so that the tooltip doesn’t cover the mouse pointer’s hot spot, or it might interfere with clicking the mouse. ‘tooltip-frame-parameters’ The frame parameters used for displaying tooltips. *Note (elisp)Frame Parameters::, and also *note (elisp)Tooltips::. For additional customization options for displaying tooltips, use ‘M-x customize-group tooltip ’. If Emacs is built with GTK+ support, it displays tooltips via GTK+, using the default appearance of GTK+ tooltips. To disable this, change the variable ‘x-gtk-use-system-tooltips’ to ‘nil’. If you do this, or if Emacs is built without GTK+ support, most attributes of the tooltip text are specified by the ‘tooltip’ face, and by X resources (*note X Resources::). "GUD tooltips" are special tooltips that show the values of variables when debugging a program with GUD. *Note Debugger Operation::. ** 21.19 Mouse Avoidance On graphical terminals, the mouse pointer may obscure the text in the Emacs frame. Emacs provides two methods to avoid this problem. Firstly, Emacs hides the mouse pointer each time you type a self-inserting character, if the pointer lies inside an Emacs frame; moving the mouse pointer makes it visible again. To disable this feature, set the variable ‘make-pointer-invisible’ to ‘nil’. *Note Display Custom::. Secondly, you can use Mouse Avoidance mode, a minor mode, to keep the mouse pointer away from point. To use Mouse Avoidance mode, customize the variable ‘mouse-avoidance-mode’. You can set this to various values to move the mouse in several ways: ‘banish’ Move the pointer to a corner of the frame on any key-press. You can customize the variable ‘mouse-avoidance-banish-position’ to specify where the pointer goes when it is banished. ‘exile’ Banish the pointer only if the cursor gets too close, and allow it to return once the cursor is out of the way. ‘jump’ If the cursor gets too close to the pointer, displace the pointer by a random distance and direction. ‘animate’ As ‘jump’, but shows steps along the way for illusion of motion. ‘cat-and-mouse’ The same as ‘animate’. ‘proteus’ As ‘animate’, but changes the shape of the mouse pointer too. You can also use the command ‘M-x mouse-avoidance-mode’ to enable the mode. Whenever Mouse Avoidance mode moves the mouse, it also raises the frame. ** 21.20 Non-Window Terminals On a text terminal, Emacs can display only one Emacs frame at a time. However, you can still create multiple Emacs frames, and switch between them. Switching frames on these terminals is much like switching between different window configurations. Use ‘C-x 5 2’ to create a new frame and switch to it; use ‘C-x 5 o’ to cycle through the existing frames; use ‘C-x 5 0’ to delete the current frame. Each frame has a number to distinguish it. If your terminal can display only one frame at a time, the selected frame’s number N appears near the beginning of the mode line, in the form ‘FN’. ‘FN’ is in fact the frame’s initial name. You can give frames more meaningful names if you wish, and you can select a frame by its name. Use the command ‘M-x set-frame-name NAME ’ to specify a new name for the selected frame, and use ‘M-x select-frame-by-name NAME ’ to select a frame according to its name. The name you specify appears in the mode line when the frame is selected. ** 21.21 Using a Mouse in Text Terminals Some text terminals support mouse clicks in the terminal window. In a terminal emulator which is compatible with ‘xterm’, you can use ‘M-x xterm-mouse-mode’ to give Emacs control over simple uses of the mouse—basically, only non-modified single clicks are supported. Newer versions of ‘xterm’ also support mouse-tracking. The normal ‘xterm’ mouse functionality for such clicks is still available by holding down the key when you press the mouse button. Xterm Mouse mode is a global minor mode (*note Minor Modes::). Repeating the command turns the mode off again. In the console on GNU/Linux, you can use ‘M-x gpm-mouse-mode’ to enable mouse support. You must have the gpm server installed and running on your system in order for this to work. Note that when this mode is enabled, you cannot use the mouse to transfer text between Emacs and other programs which use GPM. This is due to limitations in GPM and the Linux kernel. *Note MS-DOS Mouse::, for information about mouse support on MS-DOS. * 22 International Character Set Support Emacs supports a wide variety of international character sets, including European and Vietnamese variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Arabic scripts, Brahmic scripts (for languages such as Bengali, Hindi, and Thai), Cyrillic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Greek, Han (for Chinese and Japanese), Hangul (for Korean), Hebrew and IPA. Emacs also supports various encodings of these characters that are used by other internationalized software, such as word processors and mailers. Emacs allows editing text with international characters by supporting all the related activities: • You can visit files with non-ASCII characters, save non-ASCII text, and pass non-ASCII text between Emacs and programs it invokes (such as compilers, spell-checkers, and mailers). Setting your language environment (*note Language Environments::) takes care of setting up the coding systems and other options for a specific language or culture. Alternatively, you can specify how Emacs should encode or decode text for each command; see *note Text Coding::. • You can display non-ASCII characters encoded by the various scripts. This works by using appropriate fonts on graphics displays (*note Defining Fontsets::), and by sending special codes to text displays (*note Terminal Coding::). If some characters are displayed incorrectly, refer to *note Undisplayable Characters::, which describes possible problems and explains how to solve them. • Characters from scripts whose natural ordering of text is from right to left are reordered for display (*note Bidirectional Editing::). These scripts include Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Thaana, and a few others. • You can insert non-ASCII characters or search for them. To do that, you can specify an input method (*note Select Input Method::) suitable for your language, or use the default input method set up when you choose your language environment. If your keyboard can produce non-ASCII characters, you can select an appropriate keyboard coding system (*note Terminal Coding::), and Emacs will accept those characters. Latin-1 characters can also be input by using the ‘C-x 8’ prefix, see *note Unibyte Mode::. With the X Window System, your locale should be set to an appropriate value to make sure Emacs interprets keyboard input correctly; see *note locales: Language Environments. The rest of this chapter describes these issues in detail. + Menu: - International Chars:: Basic concepts of multibyte characters. - Language Environments:: Setting things up for the language you use. - Input Methods:: Entering text characters not on your keyboard. - Select Input Method:: Specifying your choice of input methods. - Coding Systems:: Character set conversion when you read and write files, and so on. - Recognize Coding:: How Emacs figures out which conversion to use. - Specify Coding:: Specifying a file’s coding system explicitly. - Output Coding:: Choosing coding systems for output. - Text Coding:: Choosing conversion to use for file text. - Communication Coding:: Coding systems for interprocess communication. - File Name Coding:: Coding systems for file _names_. - Terminal Coding:: Specifying coding systems for converting terminal input and output. - Fontsets:: Fontsets are collections of fonts that cover the whole spectrum of characters. - Defining Fontsets:: Defining a new fontset. - Modifying Fontsets:: Modifying an existing fontset. - Undisplayable Characters:: When characters don’t display. - Unibyte Mode:: You can pick one European character set to use without multibyte characters. - Charsets:: How Emacs groups its internal character codes. - Bidirectional Editing:: Support for right-to-left scripts. ** 22.1 Introduction to International Character Sets The users of international character sets and scripts have established many more-or-less standard coding systems for storing files. These coding systems are typically "multibyte", meaning that sequences of two or more bytes are used to represent individual non-ASCII characters. Internally, Emacs uses its own multibyte character encoding, which is a superset of the "Unicode" standard. This internal encoding allows characters from almost every known script to be intermixed in a single buffer or string. Emacs translates between the multibyte character encoding and various other coding systems when reading and writing files, and when exchanging data with subprocesses. The command ‘C-h h’ (‘view-hello-file’) displays the file ‘etc/HELLO’, which illustrates various scripts by showing how to say “hello” in many languages. If some characters can’t be displayed on your terminal, they appear as ‘?’ or as hollow boxes (*note Undisplayable Characters::). Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used, generally don’t have keys for all the characters in them. You can insert characters that your keyboard does not support, using ‘C-x 8 ’ (‘insert-char’). *Note Inserting Text::. Shorthands are available for some common characters; for example, you can insert a left single quotation mark ‘ by typing ‘C-x 8 [’, or in Electric Quote mode, usually by simply typing ‘`’. *Note Quotation Marks::. Emacs also supports various "input methods", typically one for each script or language, which make it easier to type characters in the script. *Note Input Methods::. The prefix key ‘C-x ’ is used for commands that pertain to multibyte characters, coding systems, and input methods. The command ‘C-x =’ (‘what-cursor-position’) shows information about the character at point. In addition to the character position, which was described in *note Position Info::, this command displays how the character is encoded. For instance, it displays the following line in the echo area for the character ‘c’: Char: c (99, #o143, #x63) point=28062 of 36168 (78%) column=53 The four values after ‘Char:’ describe the character that follows point, first by showing it and then by giving its character code in decimal, octal and hex. For a non-ASCII multibyte character, these are followed by ‘file’ and the character’s representation, in hex, in the buffer’s coding system, if that coding system encodes the character safely and with a single byte (*note Coding Systems::). If the character’s encoding is longer than one byte, Emacs shows ‘file ...’. On rare occasions, Emacs encounters "raw bytes": single bytes whose values are in the range 128 (0200 octal) through 255 (0377 octal), which Emacs cannot interpret as part of a known encoding of some non-ASCII character. Such raw bytes are treated as if they belonged to a special character set ‘eight-bit’; Emacs displays them as escaped octal codes (this can be customized; *note Display Custom::). In this case, ‘C-x =’ shows ‘raw-byte’ instead of ‘file’. In addition, ‘C-x =’ shows the character codes of raw bytes as if they were in the range ‘#x3FFF80..#x3FFFFF’, which is where Emacs maps them to distinguish them from Unicode characters in the range ‘#x0080..#x00FF’. With a prefix argument (‘C-u C-x =’), this command displays a detailed description of the character in a window: • The character set name, and the codes that identify the character within that character set; ASCII characters are identified as belonging to the ‘ascii’ character set. • The character’s script, syntax and categories. • What keys to type to input the character in the current input method (if it supports the character). • The character’s encodings, both internally in the buffer, and externally if you were to save the file. • If you are running Emacs on a graphical display, the font name and glyph code for the character. If you are running Emacs on a text terminal, the code(s) sent to the terminal. • The character’s text properties (*note (elisp)Text Properties::), including any non-default faces used to display the character, and any overlays containing it (*note (elisp)Overlays::). Here’s an example, with some lines folded to fit into this manual: position: 1 of 1 (0%), column: 0 character: ê (displayed as ê) (codepoint 234, #o352, #xea) preferred charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646)) code point in charset: 0xEA script: latin syntax: w which means: word category: .:Base, L:Left-to-right (strong), c:Chinese, j:Japanese, l:Latin, v:Viet to input: type "C-x 8 RET ea" or "C-x 8 RET LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX" buffer code: #xC3 #xAA file code: #xC3 #xAA (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix) display: by this font (glyph code) xft:-PfEd-DejaVu Sans Mono-normal-normal- normal-*-15-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#xAC) Character code properties: customize what to show name: LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX old-name: LATIN SMALL LETTER E CIRCUMFLEX general-category: Ll (Letter, Lowercase) decomposition: (101 770) ('e' '^') ** 22.2 Language Environments All supported character sets are supported in Emacs buffers whenever multibyte characters are enabled; there is no need to select a particular language in order to display its characters. However, it is important to select a "language environment" in order to set various defaults. Roughly speaking, the language environment represents a choice of preferred script rather than a choice of language. The language environment controls which coding systems to recognize when reading text (*note Recognize Coding::). This applies to files, incoming mail, and any other text you read into Emacs. It may also specify the default coding system to use when you create a file. Each language environment also specifies a default input method. To select a language environment, customize ‘current-language-environment’ or use the command ‘M-x set-language-environment’. It makes no difference which buffer is current when you use this command, because the effects apply globally to the Emacs session. See the variable ‘language-info-alist’ for the list of supported language environments, and use the command ‘C-h L LANG-ENV ’ (‘describe-language-environment’) for more information about the language environment LANG-ENV. Supported language environments include: ASCII, Arabic, Belarusian, Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cham, Chinese-BIG5, Chinese-CNS, Chinese-EUC-TW, Chinese-GB, Chinese-GB18030, Chinese-GBK, Croatian, Cyrillic-ALT, Cyrillic-ISO, Cyrillic-KOI8, Czech, Devanagari, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Ethiopic, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, IPA, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Latin-1, Latin-2, Latin-3, Latin-4, Latin-5, Latin-6, Latin-7, Latin-8, Latin-9, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Oriya, Persian, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, TaiViet, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, UTF-8, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, and Windows-1255. To display the script(s) used by your language environment on a graphical display, you need to have suitable fonts. *Note Fontsets::, for more details about setting up your fonts. Some operating systems let you specify the character-set locale you are using by setting the locale environment variables ‘LC_ALL’, ‘LC_CTYPE’, or ‘LANG’. (If more than one of these is set, the first one that is nonempty specifies your locale for this purpose.) During startup, Emacs looks up your character-set locale’s name in the system locale alias table, matches its canonical name against entries in the value of the variables ‘locale-charset-language-names’ and ‘locale-language-names’ (the former overrides the latter), and selects the corresponding language environment if a match is found. It also adjusts the display table and terminal coding system, the locale coding system, the preferred coding system as needed for the locale, and—last but not least—the way Emacs decodes non-ASCII characters sent by your keyboard. If you modify the ‘LC_ALL’, ‘LC_CTYPE’, or ‘LANG’ environment variables while running Emacs (by using ‘M-x setenv’), you may want to invoke the ‘set-locale-environment’ command afterwards to readjust the language environment from the new locale. The ‘set-locale-environment’ function normally uses the preferred coding system established by the language environment to decode system messages. But if your locale matches an entry in the variable ‘locale-preferred-coding-systems’, Emacs uses the corresponding coding system instead. For example, if the locale ‘ja_JP.PCK’ matches ‘japanese-shift-jis’ in ‘locale-preferred-coding-systems’, Emacs uses that encoding even though it might normally use ‘japanese-iso-8bit’. You can override the language environment chosen at startup with explicit use of the command ‘set-language-environment’, or with customization of ‘current-language-environment’ in your init file. To display information about the effects of a certain language environment LANG-ENV, use the command ‘C-h L LANG-ENV ’ (‘describe-language-environment’). This tells you which languages this language environment is useful for, and lists the character sets, coding systems, and input methods that go with it. It also shows some sample text to illustrate scripts used in this language environment. If you give an empty input for LANG-ENV, this command describes the chosen language environment. You can customize any language environment with the normal hook ‘set-language-environment-hook’. The command ‘set-language-environment’ runs that hook after setting up the new language environment. The hook functions can test for a specific language environment by checking the variable ‘current-language-environment’. This hook is where you should put non-default settings for specific language environments, such as coding systems for keyboard input and terminal output, the default input method, etc. Before it starts to set up the new language environment, ‘set-language-environment’ first runs the hook ‘exit-language-environment-hook’. This hook is useful for undoing customizations that were made with ‘set-language-environment-hook’. For instance, if you set up a special key binding in a specific language environment using ‘set-language-environment-hook’, you should set up ‘exit-language-environment-hook’ to restore the normal binding for that key. ** 22.3 Input Methods An "input method" is a kind of character conversion designed specifically for interactive input. In Emacs, typically each language has its own input method; sometimes several languages that use the same characters can share one input method. A few languages support several input methods. The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into another alphabet; this allows you to use one other alphabet instead of ASCII. The Greek and Russian input methods work this way. A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of characters into one letter. Many European input methods use composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter from a sequence that consists of a letter followed by accent characters (or vice versa). For example, some methods convert the sequence ‘o ^’ into a single accented letter. These input methods have no special commands of their own; all they do is compose sequences of printing characters. The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed by composition. The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way. First, letters are mapped into symbols for particular sounds or tone marks; then, sequences of these that make up a whole syllable are mapped into one syllable sign. Chinese and Japanese require more complex methods. In Chinese input methods, first you enter the phonetic spelling of a Chinese word (in input method ‘chinese-py’, among others), or a sequence of portions of the character (input methods ‘chinese-4corner’ and ‘chinese-sw’, and others). One input sequence typically corresponds to many possible Chinese characters. You select the one you mean using keys such as ‘C-f’, ‘C-b’, ‘C-n’, ‘C-p’ (or the arrow keys), and digits, which have special meanings in this situation. The possible characters are conceptually arranged in several rows, with each row holding up to 10 alternatives. Normally, Emacs displays just one row at a time, in the echo area; ‘(I/J)’ appears at the beginning, to indicate that this is the Ith row out of a total of J rows. Type ‘C-n’ or ‘C-p’ to display the next row or the previous row. Type ‘C-f’ and ‘C-b’ to move forward and backward among the alternatives in the current row. As you do this, Emacs highlights the current alternative with a special color; type ‘C-’ to select the current alternative and use it as input. The alternatives in the row are also numbered; the number appears before the alternative. Typing a number selects the associated alternative of the current row and uses it as input. in these Chinese input methods displays a buffer showing all the possible characters at once; then clicking ‘mouse-2’ on one of them selects that alternative. The keys ‘C-f’, ‘C-b’, ‘C-n’, ‘C-p’, and digits continue to work as usual, but they do the highlighting in the buffer showing the possible characters, rather than in the echo area. In Japanese input methods, first you input a whole word using phonetic spelling; then, after the word is in the buffer, Emacs converts it into one or more characters using a large dictionary. One phonetic spelling corresponds to a number of different Japanese words; to select one of them, use ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’ to cycle through the alternatives. Sometimes it is useful to cut off input method processing so that the characters you have just entered will not combine with subsequent characters. For example, in input method ‘latin-1-postfix’, the sequence ‘o ^’ combines to form an ‘o’ with an accent. What if you want to enter them as separate characters? One way is to type the accent twice; this is a special feature for entering the separate letter and accent. For example, ‘o ^ ^’ gives you the two characters ‘o^’. Another way is to type another letter after the ‘o’—something that won’t combine with that—and immediately delete it. For example, you could type ‘o o ^’ to get separate ‘o’ and ‘^’. Another method, more general but not quite as easy to type, is to use ‘C-\ C-\’ between two characters to stop them from combining. This is the command ‘C-\’ (‘toggle-input-method’) used twice. *Note Select Input Method::. ‘C-\ C-\’ is especially useful inside an incremental search, because it stops waiting for more characters to combine, and starts searching for what you have already entered. To find out how to input the character after point using the current input method, type ‘C-u C-x =’. *Note Position Info::. The variables ‘input-method-highlight-flag’ and ‘input-method-verbose-flag’ control how input methods explain what is happening. If ‘input-method-highlight-flag’ is non-‘nil’, the partial sequence is highlighted in the buffer (for most input methods—some disable this feature). If ‘input-method-verbose-flag’ is non-‘nil’, the list of possible characters to type next is displayed in the echo area (but not when you are in the minibuffer). You can modify how an input method works by making your changes in a function that you add to the hook variable ‘quail-activate-hook’. *Note Hooks::. For example, you can redefine some of the input method’s keys by defining key bindings in the keymap returned by the function ‘quail-translation-keymap’, using ‘define-key’. *Note Init Rebinding::. Another facility for typing characters not on your keyboard is by using ‘C-x 8 ’ (‘insert-char’) to insert a single character based on its Unicode name or code-point; see *note Inserting Text::. ** 22.4 Selecting an Input Method ‘C-\’ Enable or disable use of the selected input method (‘toggle-input-method’). ‘C-x C-\ METHOD ’ Select a new input method for the current buffer (‘set-input-method’). ‘C-h I METHOD ’ ‘C-h C-\ METHOD ’ Describe the input method METHOD (‘describe-input-method’). By default, it describes the current input method (if any). This description should give you the full details of how to use any particular input method. ‘M-x list-input-methods’ Display a list of all the supported input methods. To choose an input method for the current buffer, use ‘C-x C-\’ (‘set-input-method’). This command reads the input method name from the minibuffer; the name normally starts with the language environment that it is meant to be used with. The variable ‘current-input-method’ records which input method is selected. Input methods use various sequences of ASCII characters to stand for non-ASCII characters. Sometimes it is useful to turn off the input method temporarily. To do this, type ‘C-\’ (‘toggle-input-method’). To reenable the input method, type ‘C-\’ again. If you type ‘C-\’ and you have not yet selected an input method, it prompts you to specify one. This has the same effect as using ‘C-x C-\’ to specify an input method. When invoked with a numeric argument, as in ‘C-u C-\’, ‘toggle-input-method’ always prompts you for an input method, suggesting the most recently selected one as the default. Selecting a language environment specifies a default input method for use in various buffers. When you have a default input method, you can select it in the current buffer by typing ‘C-\’. The variable ‘default-input-method’ specifies the default input method (‘nil’ means there is none). In some language environments, which support several different input methods, you might want to use an input method different from the default chosen by ‘set-language-environment’. You can instruct Emacs to select a different default input method for a certain language environment, if you wish, by using ‘set-language-environment-hook’ (*note set-language-environment-hook: Language Environments.). For example: (defun my-chinese-setup () "Set up my private Chinese environment." (if (equal current-language-environment "Chinese-GB") (setq default-input-method "chinese-tonepy"))) (add-hook 'set-language-environment-hook 'my-chinese-setup) This sets the default input method to be ‘chinese-tonepy’ whenever you choose a Chinese-GB language environment. You can instruct Emacs to activate a certain input method automatically. For example: (add-hook 'text-mode-hook (lambda () (set-input-method "german-prefix"))) This automatically activates the input method ‘german-prefix’ in Text mode. Some input methods for alphabetic scripts work by (in effect) remapping the keyboard to emulate various keyboard layouts commonly used for those scripts. How to do this remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify which layout your keyboard has, use the command ‘M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout’. You can use the command ‘M-x quail-show-key’ to show what key (or key sequence) to type in order to input the character following point, using the selected keyboard layout. The command ‘C-u C-x =’ also shows that information, in addition to other information about the character. ‘M-x list-input-methods’ displays a list of all the supported input methods. The list gives information about each input method, including the string that stands for it in the mode line. ** 22.5 Coding Systems Users of various languages have established many more-or-less standard coding systems for representing them. Emacs does not use these coding systems internally; instead, it converts from various coding systems to its own system when reading data, and converts the internal coding system to other coding systems when writing data. Conversion is possible in reading or writing files, in sending or receiving from the terminal, and in exchanging data with subprocesses. Emacs assigns a name to each coding system. Most coding systems are used for one language, and the name of the coding system starts with the language name. Some coding systems are used for several languages; their names usually start with ‘iso’. There are also special coding systems, such as ‘no-conversion’, ‘raw-text’, and ‘emacs-internal’. A special class of coding systems, collectively known as "codepages", is designed to support text encoded by MS-Windows and MS-DOS software. The names of these coding systems are ‘cpNNNN’, where NNNN is a 3- or 4-digit number of the codepage. You can use these encodings just like any other coding system; for example, to visit a file encoded in codepage 850, type ‘C-x c cp850 C-x C-f FILENAME ’. In addition to converting various representations of non-ASCII characters, a coding system can perform end-of-line conversion. Emacs handles three different conventions for how to separate lines in a file: newline (Unix), carriage return followed by linefeed (DOS), and just carriage return (Mac). ‘C-h C CODING ’ Describe coding system CODING (‘describe-coding-system’). ‘C-h C ’ Describe the coding systems currently in use (‘describe-coding-system’). ‘M-x list-coding-systems’ Display a list of all the supported coding systems. The command ‘C-h C’ (‘describe-coding-system’) displays information about particular coding systems, including the end-of-line conversion specified by those coding systems. You can specify a coding system name as the argument; alternatively, with an empty argument, it describes the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, both in the current buffer and as the defaults, and the priority list for recognizing coding systems (*note Recognize Coding::). To display a list of all the supported coding systems, type ‘M-x list-coding-systems’. The list gives information about each coding system, including the letter that stands for it in the mode line (*note Mode Line::). Each of the coding systems that appear in this list—except for ‘no-conversion’, which means no conversion of any kind—specifies how and whether to convert printing characters, but leaves the choice of end-of-line conversion to be decided based on the contents of each file. For example, if the file appears to use the sequence carriage return and linefeed to separate lines, DOS end-of-line conversion will be used. Each of the listed coding systems has three variants, which specify exactly what to do for end-of-line conversion: ‘…-unix’ Don’t do any end-of-line conversion; assume the file uses newline to separate lines. (This is the convention normally used on Unix and GNU systems, and macOS.) ‘…-dos’ Assume the file uses carriage return followed by linefeed to separate lines, and do the appropriate conversion. (This is the convention normally used on Microsoft systems.(1)) ‘…-mac’ Assume the file uses carriage return to separate lines, and do the appropriate conversion. (This was the convention used in Classic Mac OS.) These variant coding systems are omitted from the ‘list-coding-systems’ display for brevity, since they are entirely predictable. For example, the coding system ‘iso-latin-1’ has variants ‘iso-latin-1-unix’, ‘iso-latin-1-dos’ and ‘iso-latin-1-mac’. The coding systems ‘unix’, ‘dos’, and ‘mac’ are aliases for ‘undecided-unix’, ‘undecided-dos’, and ‘undecided-mac’, respectively. These coding systems specify only the end-of-line conversion, and leave the character code conversion to be deduced from the text itself. The coding system ‘raw-text’ is good for a file which is mainly ASCII text, but may contain byte values above 127 that are not meant to encode non-ASCII characters. With ‘raw-text’, Emacs copies those byte values unchanged, and sets ‘enable-multibyte-characters’ to ‘nil’ in the current buffer so that they will be interpreted properly. ‘raw-text’ handles end-of-line conversion in the usual way, based on the data encountered, and has the usual three variants to specify the kind of end-of-line conversion to use. In contrast, the coding system ‘no-conversion’ specifies no character code conversion at all—none for non-ASCII byte values and none for end of line. This is useful for reading or writing binary files, tar files, and other files that must be examined verbatim. It, too, sets ‘enable-multibyte-characters’ to ‘nil’. The easiest way to edit a file with no conversion of any kind is with the ‘M-x find-file-literally’ command. This uses ‘no-conversion’, and also suppresses other Emacs features that might convert the file contents before you see them. *Note Visiting::. The coding system ‘emacs-internal’ (or ‘utf-8-emacs’, which is equivalent) means that the file contains non-ASCII characters stored with the internal Emacs encoding. This coding system handles end-of-line conversion based on the data encountered, and has the usual three variants to specify the kind of end-of-line conversion. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) It is also specified for MIME ‘text/*’ bodies and in other network transport contexts. It is different from the SGML reference syntax record-start/record-end format, which Emacs doesn’t support directly. ** 22.6 Recognizing Coding Systems Whenever Emacs reads a given piece of text, it tries to recognize which coding system to use. This applies to files being read, output from subprocesses, text from X selections, etc. Emacs can select the right coding system automatically most of the time—once you have specified your preferences. Some coding systems can be recognized or distinguished by which byte sequences appear in the data. However, there are coding systems that cannot be distinguished, not even potentially. For example, there is no way to distinguish between Latin-1 and Latin-2; they use the same byte values with different meanings. Emacs handles this situation by means of a priority list of coding systems. Whenever Emacs reads a file, if you do not specify the coding system to use, Emacs checks the data against each coding system, starting with the first in priority and working down the list, until it finds a coding system that fits the data. Then it converts the file contents assuming that they are represented in this coding system. The priority list of coding systems depends on the selected language environment (*note Language Environments::). For example, if you use French, you probably want Emacs to prefer Latin-1 to Latin-2; if you use Czech, you probably want Latin-2 to be preferred. This is one of the reasons to specify a language environment. However, you can alter the coding system priority list in detail with the command ‘M-x prefer-coding-system’. This command reads the name of a coding system from the minibuffer, and adds it to the front of the priority list, so that it is preferred to all others. If you use this command several times, each use adds one element to the front of the priority list. If you use a coding system that specifies the end-of-line conversion type, such as ‘iso-8859-1-dos’, what this means is that Emacs should attempt to recognize ‘iso-8859-1’ with priority, and should use DOS end-of-line conversion when it does recognize ‘iso-8859-1’. Sometimes a file name indicates which coding system to use for the file. The variable ‘file-coding-system-alist’ specifies this correspondence. There is a special function ‘modify-coding-system-alist’ for adding elements to this list. For example, to read and write all ‘.txt’ files using the coding system ‘chinese-iso-8bit’, you can execute this Lisp expression: (modify-coding-system-alist 'file "\\.txt\\'" 'chinese-iso-8bit) The first argument should be ‘file’, the second argument should be a regular expression that determines which files this applies to, and the third argument says which coding system to use for these files. Emacs recognizes which kind of end-of-line conversion to use based on the contents of the file: if it sees only carriage returns, or only carriage return followed by linefeed sequences, then it chooses the end-of-line conversion accordingly. You can inhibit the automatic use of end-of-line conversion by setting the variable ‘inhibit-eol-conversion’ to non-‘nil’. If you do that, DOS-style files will be displayed with the ‘^M’ characters visible in the buffer; some people prefer this to the more subtle ‘(DOS)’ end-of-line type indication near the left edge of the mode line (*note eol-mnemonic: Mode Line.). By default, the automatic detection of the coding system is sensitive to escape sequences. If Emacs sees a sequence of characters that begin with an escape character, and the sequence is valid as an ISO-2022 code, that tells Emacs to use one of the ISO-2022 encodings to decode the file. However, there may be cases that you want to read escape sequences in a file as is. In such a case, you can set the variable ‘inhibit-iso-escape-detection’ to non-‘nil’. Then the code detection ignores any escape sequences, and never uses an ISO-2022 encoding. The result is that all escape sequences become visible in the buffer. The default value of ‘inhibit-iso-escape-detection’ is ‘nil’. We recommend that you not change it permanently, only for one specific operation. That’s because some Emacs Lisp source files in the Emacs distribution contain non-ASCII characters encoded in the coding system ‘iso-2022-7bit’, and they won’t be decoded correctly when you visit those files if you suppress the escape sequence detection. The variables ‘auto-coding-alist’ and ‘auto-coding-regexp-alist’ are the strongest way to specify the coding system for certain patterns of file names, or for files containing certain patterns, respectively. These variables even override ‘-*-coding:-*-’ tags in the file itself (*note Specify Coding::). For example, Emacs uses ‘auto-coding-alist’ for tar and archive files, to prevent it from being confused by a ‘-*-coding:-*-’ tag in a member of the archive and thinking it applies to the archive file as a whole. Another way to specify a coding system is with the variable ‘auto-coding-functions’. For example, one of the builtin ‘auto-coding-functions’ detects the encoding for XML files. Unlike the previous two, this variable does not override any ‘-*-coding:-*-’ tag. ** 22.7 Specifying a File’s Coding System If Emacs recognizes the encoding of a file incorrectly, you can reread the file using the correct coding system with ‘C-x r’ (‘revert-buffer-with-coding-system’). This command prompts for the coding system to use. To see what coding system Emacs actually used to decode the file, look at the coding system mnemonic letter near the left edge of the mode line (*note Mode Line::), or type ‘C-h C’ (‘describe-coding-system’). You can specify the coding system for a particular file in the file itself, using the ‘-*-…-*-’ construct at the beginning, or a local variables list at the end (*note File Variables::). You do this by defining a value for the “variable” named ‘coding’. Emacs does not really have a variable ‘coding’; instead of setting a variable, this uses the specified coding system for the file. For example, ‘-*-mode: C; coding: latin-1; -*-’ specifies use of the Latin-1 coding system, as well as C mode. When you specify the coding explicitly in the file, that overrides ‘file-coding-system-alist’. ** 22.8 Choosing Coding Systems for Output Once Emacs has chosen a coding system for a buffer, it stores that coding system in ‘buffer-file-coding-system’. That makes it the default for operations that write from this buffer into a file, such as ‘save-buffer’ and ‘write-region’. You can specify a different coding system for further file output from the buffer using ‘set-buffer-file-coding-system’ (*note Text Coding::). You can insert any character Emacs supports into any Emacs buffer, but most coding systems can only handle a subset of these characters. Therefore, it’s possible that the characters you insert cannot be encoded with the coding system that will be used to save the buffer. For example, you could visit a text file in Polish, encoded in ‘iso-8859-2’, and add some Russian words to it. When you save that buffer, Emacs cannot use the current value of ‘buffer-file-coding-system’, because the characters you added cannot be encoded by that coding system. When that happens, Emacs tries the most-preferred coding system (set by ‘M-x prefer-coding-system’ or ‘M-x set-language-environment’). If that coding system can safely encode all of the characters in the buffer, Emacs uses it, and stores its value in ‘buffer-file-coding-system’. Otherwise, Emacs displays a list of coding systems suitable for encoding the buffer’s contents, and asks you to choose one of those coding systems. If you insert the unsuitable characters in a mail message, Emacs behaves a bit differently. It additionally checks whether the most-preferred coding system is recommended for use in MIME messages; if not, it informs you of this fact and prompts you for another coding system. This is so you won’t inadvertently send a message encoded in a way that your recipient’s mail software will have difficulty decoding. (You can still use an unsuitable coding system if you enter its name at the prompt.) When you send a mail message (*note Sending Mail::), Emacs has four different ways to determine the coding system to use for encoding the message text. It first tries the buffer’s own value of ‘buffer-file-coding-system’, if that is non-‘nil’. Otherwise, it uses the value of ‘sendmail-coding-system’, if that is non-‘nil’. Thirdly, it uses the value of ‘default-sendmail-coding-system’. If all of these three values are ‘nil’, Emacs encodes outgoing mail using the default coding system for new files (i.e., the default value of ‘buffer-file-coding-system’), which is controlled by your choice of language environment. ** 22.9 Specifying a Coding System for File Text In cases where Emacs does not automatically choose the right coding system for a file’s contents, you can use these commands to specify one: ‘C-x f CODING ’ Use coding system CODING to save or revisit the file in the current buffer (‘set-buffer-file-coding-system’). ‘C-x c CODING ’ Specify coding system CODING for the immediately following command (‘universal-coding-system-argument’). ‘C-x r CODING ’ Revisit the current file using the coding system CODING (‘revert-buffer-with-coding-system’). ‘M-x recode-region RIGHT WRONG ’ Convert a region that was decoded using coding system WRONG, decoding it using coding system RIGHT instead. The command ‘C-x f’ (‘set-buffer-file-coding-system’) sets the file coding system for the current buffer (i.e., the coding system to use when saving or reverting the file). You specify which coding system using the minibuffer. You can also invoke this command by clicking with ‘mouse-3’ on the coding system indicator in the mode line (*note Mode Line::). If you specify a coding system that cannot handle all the characters in the buffer, Emacs will warn you about the troublesome characters, and ask you to choose another coding system, when you try to save the buffer (*note Output Coding::). You can also use this command to specify the end-of-line conversion (*note end-of-line conversion: Coding Systems.) for encoding the current buffer. For example, ‘C-x f dos ’ will cause Emacs to save the current buffer’s text with DOS-style carriage return followed by linefeed line endings. Another way to specify the coding system for a file is when you visit the file. First use the command ‘C-x c’ (‘universal-coding-system-argument’); this command uses the minibuffer to read a coding system name. After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding system is used for _the immediately following command_. So if the immediately following command is ‘C-x C-f’, for example, it reads the file using that coding system (and records the coding system for when you later save the file). Or if the immediately following command is ‘C-x C-w’, it writes the file using that coding system. When you specify the coding system for saving in this way, instead of with ‘C-x f’, there is no warning if the buffer contains characters that the coding system cannot handle. Other file commands affected by a specified coding system include ‘C-x i’ and ‘C-x C-v’, as well as the other-window variants of ‘C-x C-f’. ‘C-x c’ also affects commands that start subprocesses, including ‘M-x shell’ (*note Shell::). If the immediately following command does not use the coding system, then ‘C-x c’ ultimately has no effect. An easy way to visit a file with no conversion is with the ‘M-x find-file-literally’ command. *Note Visiting::. The default value of the variable ‘buffer-file-coding-system’ specifies the choice of coding system to use when you create a new file. It applies when you find a new file, and when you create a buffer and then save it in a file. Selecting a language environment typically sets this variable to a good choice of default coding system for that language environment. If you visit a file with a wrong coding system, you can correct this with ‘C-x r’ (‘revert-buffer-with-coding-system’). This visits the current file again, using a coding system you specify. If a piece of text has already been inserted into a buffer using the wrong coding system, you can redo the decoding of it using ‘M-x recode-region’. This prompts you for the proper coding system, then for the wrong coding system that was actually used, and does the conversion. It first encodes the region using the wrong coding system, then decodes it again using the proper coding system. ** 22.10 Coding Systems for Interprocess Communication This section explains how to specify coding systems for use in communication with other processes. ‘C-x x CODING ’ Use coding system CODING for transferring selections to and from other graphical applications (‘set-selection-coding-system’). ‘C-x X CODING ’ Use coding system CODING for transferring _one_ selection—the next one—to or from another graphical application (‘set-next-selection-coding-system’). ‘C-x p INPUT-CODING OUTPUT-CODING ’ Use coding systems INPUT-CODING and OUTPUT-CODING for subprocess input and output in the current buffer (‘set-buffer-process-coding-system’). The command ‘C-x x’ (‘set-selection-coding-system’) specifies the coding system for sending selected text to other windowing applications, and for receiving the text of selections made in other applications. This command applies to all subsequent selections, until you override it by using the command again. The command ‘C-x X’ (‘set-next-selection-coding-system’) specifies the coding system for the next selection made in Emacs or read by Emacs. The variable ‘x-select-request-type’ specifies the data type to request from the X Window System for receiving text selections from other applications. If the value is ‘nil’ (the default), Emacs tries ‘UTF8_STRING’ and ‘COMPOUND_TEXT’, in this order, and uses various heuristics to choose the more appropriate of the two results; if none of these succeed, Emacs falls back on ‘STRING’. If the value of ‘x-select-request-type’ is one of the symbols ‘COMPOUND_TEXT’, ‘UTF8_STRING’, ‘STRING’, or ‘TEXT’, Emacs uses only that request type. If the value is a list of some of these symbols, Emacs tries only the request types in the list, in order, until one of them succeeds, or until the list is exhausted. The command ‘C-x p’ (‘set-buffer-process-coding-system’) specifies the coding system for input and output to a subprocess. This command applies to the current buffer; normally, each subprocess has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command in the corresponding buffer. You can also use ‘C-x c’ (‘universal-coding-system-argument’) just before the command that runs or starts a subprocess, to specify the coding system for communicating with that subprocess. *Note Text Coding::. The default for translation of process input and output depends on the current language environment. The variable ‘locale-coding-system’ specifies a coding system to use when encoding and decoding system strings such as system error messages and ‘format-time-string’ formats and time stamps. That coding system is also used for decoding non-ASCII keyboard input on the X Window System and for encoding text sent to the standard output and error streams when in batch mode. You should choose a coding system that is compatible with the underlying system’s text representation, which is normally specified by one of the environment variables ‘LC_ALL’, ‘LC_CTYPE’, and ‘LANG’. (The first one, in the order specified above, whose value is nonempty is the one that determines the text representation.) ** 22.11 Coding Systems for File Names ‘C-x F CODING ’ Use coding system CODING for encoding and decoding file names (‘set-file-name-coding-system’). The command ‘C-x F’ (‘set-file-name-coding-system’) specifies a coding system to use for encoding file _names_. It has no effect on reading and writing the _contents_ of files. In fact, all this command does is set the value of the variable ‘file-name-coding-system’. If you set the variable to a coding system name (as a Lisp symbol or a string), Emacs encodes file names using that coding system for all file operations. This makes it possible to use non-ASCII characters in file names—or, at least, those non-ASCII characters that the specified coding system can encode. If ‘file-name-coding-system’ is ‘nil’, Emacs uses a default coding system determined by the selected language environment, and stored in the ‘default-file-name-coding-system’ variable. In the default language environment, non-ASCII characters in file names are not encoded specially; they appear in the file system using the internal Emacs representation. When Emacs runs on MS-Windows versions that are descendants of the NT family (Windows 2000, XP, and all the later versions), the value of ‘file-name-coding-system’ is largely ignored, as Emacs by default uses APIs that allow passing Unicode file names directly. By contrast, on Windows 9X, file names are encoded using ‘file-name-coding-system’, which should be set to the codepage (*note codepage: Coding Systems.) pertinent for the current system locale. The value of the variable ‘w32-unicode-filenames’ controls whether Emacs uses the Unicode APIs when it calls OS functions that accept file names. This variable is set by the startup code to ‘nil’ on Windows 9X, and to ‘t’ on newer versions of MS-Windows. *Warning:* if you change ‘file-name-coding-system’ (or the language environment) in the middle of an Emacs session, problems can result if you have already visited files whose names were encoded using the earlier coding system and cannot be encoded (or are encoded differently) under the new coding system. If you try to save one of these buffers under the visited file name, saving may use the wrong file name, or it may encounter an error. If such a problem happens, use ‘C-x C-w’ to specify a new file name for that buffer. If a mistake occurs when encoding a file name, use the command ‘M-x recode-file-name’ to change the file name’s coding system. This prompts for an existing file name, its old coding system, and the coding system to which you wish to convert. ** 22.12 Coding Systems for Terminal I/O ‘C-x t CODING ’ Use coding system CODING for terminal output (‘set-terminal-coding-system’). ‘C-x k CODING ’ Use coding system CODING for keyboard input (‘set-keyboard-coding-system’). The command ‘C-x t’ (‘set-terminal-coding-system’) specifies the coding system for terminal output. If you specify a character code for terminal output, all characters output to the terminal are translated into that coding system. This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built to support specific languages or character sets—for example, European terminals that support one of the ISO Latin character sets. You need to specify the terminal coding system when using multibyte text, so that Emacs knows which characters the terminal can actually handle. By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all, unless Emacs can deduce the proper coding system from your terminal type or your locale specification (*note Language Environments::). The command ‘C-x k’ (‘set-keyboard-coding-system’), or the variable ‘keyboard-coding-system’, specifies the coding system for keyboard input. Character-code translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals with keys that send non-ASCII graphic characters—for example, some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it. By default, keyboard input is translated based on your system locale setting. If your terminal does not really support the encoding implied by your locale (for example, if you find it inserts a non-ASCII character if you type ‘M-i’), you will need to set ‘keyboard-coding-system’ to ‘nil’ to turn off encoding. You can do this by putting (set-keyboard-coding-system nil) in your init file. There is a similarity between using a coding system translation for keyboard input, and using an input method: both define sequences of keyboard input that translate into single characters. However, input methods are designed to be convenient for interactive use by humans, and the sequences that are translated are typically sequences of ASCII printing characters. Coding systems typically translate sequences of non-graphic characters. ** 22.13 Fontsets A font typically defines shapes for a single alphabet or script. Therefore, displaying the entire range of scripts that Emacs supports requires a collection of many fonts. In Emacs, such a collection is called a "fontset". A fontset is defined by a list of font specifications, each assigned to handle a range of character codes, and may fall back on another fontset for characters that are not covered by the fonts it specifies. Each fontset has a name, like a font. However, while fonts are stored in the system and the available font names are defined by the system, fontsets are defined within Emacs itself. Once you have defined a fontset, you can use it within Emacs by specifying its name, anywhere that you could use a single font. Of course, Emacs fontsets can use only the fonts that the system supports. If some characters appear on the screen as empty boxes or hex codes, this means that the fontset in use for them has no font for those characters. In this case, or if the characters are shown, but not as well as you would like, you may need to install extra fonts. Your operating system may have optional fonts that you can install; or you can install the GNU Intlfonts package, which includes fonts for most supported scripts.(1) Emacs creates three fontsets automatically: the "standard fontset", the "startup fontset" and the "default fontset". The default fontset is most likely to have fonts for a wide variety of non-ASCII characters, and is the default fallback for the other two fontsets, and if you set a default font rather than fontset. However, it does not specify font family names, so results can be somewhat random if you use it directly. You can specify a particular fontset by starting Emacs with the ‘-fn’ option. For example, emacs -fn fontset-standard You can also specify a fontset with the ‘Font’ resource (*note X Resources::). If no fontset is specified for use, then Emacs uses an ASCII font, with ‘fontset-default’ as a fallback for characters the font does not cover. The standard fontset is only used if explicitly requested, despite its name. To show the information about a specific fontset, use the ‘M-x describe-fontset’ command. It prompts for a fontset name, defaulting to the one used by the current frame, and then displays all the subranges of characters and the fonts assigned to them in that fontset. A fontset does not necessarily specify a font for every character code. If a fontset specifies no font for a certain character, or if it specifies a font that does not exist on your system, then it cannot display that character properly. It will display that character as a hex code or thin space or an empty box instead. (*Note glyphless characters: Text Display, for details.) ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) If you run Emacs on X, you may need to inform the X server about the location of the newly installed fonts with commands such as: xset fp+ /usr/local/share/emacs/fonts xset fp rehash ** 22.14 Defining Fontsets When running on X, Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value of ‘standard-fontset-spec’. This fontset’s name is -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-standard or just ‘fontset-standard’ for short. On GNUstep and macOS, the standard fontset is created using the value of ‘ns-standard-fontset-spec’, and on MS Windows it is created using the value of ‘w32-standard-fontset-spec’. Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the standard fontset are created automatically. Their names have ‘bold’ instead of ‘medium’, or ‘i’ instead of ‘r’, or both. Emacs generates a fontset automatically, based on any default ASCII font that you specify with the ‘Font’ resource or the ‘-fn’ argument, or the default font that Emacs found when it started. This is the "startup fontset" and its name is ‘fontset-startup’. Emacs generates this fontset by replacing the CHARSET_REGISTRY field with ‘fontset’, and replacing the CHARSET_ENCODING field with ‘startup’, then using the resulting string to specify a fontset. For instance, if you start Emacs with a font of this form, emacs -fn "*courier-medium-r-normal--14-140-*-iso8859-1" Emacs generates the following fontset and uses it for the initial X window frame: -*-courier-medium-r-normal-*-14-140-*-*-*-*-fontset-startup The startup fontset will use the font that you specify, or a variant with a different registry and encoding, for all the characters that are supported by that font, and fallback on ‘fontset-default’ for other characters. With the X resource ‘Emacs.Font’, you can specify a fontset name just like an actual font name. But be careful not to specify a fontset name in a wildcard resource like ‘Emacs*Font’—that wildcard specification matches various other resources, such as for menus, and menus cannot handle fontsets. *Note X Resources::. You can specify additional fontsets using X resources named ‘Fontset-N’, where N is an integer starting from 0. The resource value should have this form: FONTPATTERN, [CHARSET:FONT]… where FONTPATTERN should have the form of a standard X font name (see the previous fontset-startup example), except for the last two fields. They should have the form ‘fontset-ALIAS’. Each fontset has two names, one long and one short. The long name is FONTPATTERN. The short name is ‘fontset-ALIAS’, the last 2 fields of the long name (e.g., ‘fontset-startup’ for the fontset automatically created at startup). You can refer to the fontset by either name. The construct ‘CHARSET:FONT’ specifies which font to use (in this fontset) for one particular character set. Here, CHARSET is the name of a character set, and FONT is the font to use for that character set. You can use this construct any number of times in defining one fontset. For the other character sets, Emacs chooses a font based on FONTPATTERN. It replaces ‘fontset-ALIAS’ with values that describe the character set. For the ASCII character font, ‘fontset-ALIAS’ is replaced with ‘ISO8859-1’. In addition, when several consecutive fields are wildcards, Emacs collapses them into a single wildcard. This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts. Fonts made by scaling larger fonts are not usable for editing, and scaling a smaller font is also not useful, because it is better to use the smaller font in its own size, which is what Emacs does. Thus if FONTPATTERN is this, -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24 the font specification for ASCII characters would be this: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1 and the font specification for Chinese GB2312 characters would be this: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-gb2312*-* You may not have any Chinese font matching the above font specification. Most X distributions include only Chinese fonts that have ‘song ti’ or ‘fangsong ti’ in the FAMILY field. In such a case, ‘Fontset-N’ can be specified as: Emacs.Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24,\ chinese-gb2312:-*-*-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-gb2312*-* Then, the font specifications for all but Chinese GB2312 characters have ‘fixed’ in the FAMILY field, and the font specification for Chinese GB2312 characters has a wild card ‘*’ in the FAMILY field. The function that processes the fontset resource value to create the fontset is called ‘create-fontset-from-fontset-spec’. You can also call this function explicitly to create a fontset. *Note Fonts::, for more information about font naming. ** 22.15 Modifying Fontsets Fontsets do not always have to be created from scratch. If only minor changes are required it may be easier to modify an existing fontset. Modifying ‘fontset-default’ will also affect other fontsets that use it as a fallback, so can be an effective way of fixing problems with the fonts that Emacs chooses for a particular script. Fontsets can be modified using the function ‘set-fontset-font’, specifying a character, a charset, a script, or a range of characters to modify the font for, and a font specification for the font to be used. Some examples are: ;; Use Liberation Mono for latin-3 charset. (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'iso-8859-3 "Liberation Mono") ;; Prefer a big5 font for han characters. (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'han (font-spec :registry "big5") nil 'prepend) ;; Use DejaVu Sans Mono as a fallback in fontset-startup ;; before resorting to fontset-default. (set-fontset-font "fontset-startup" nil "DejaVu Sans Mono" nil 'append) ;; Use MyPrivateFont for the Unicode private use area. (set-fontset-font "fontset-default" '(#xe000 . #xf8ff) "MyPrivateFont") Some fonts installed on your system might be broken, or produce unpleasant results for characters for which they are used, and you may wish to instruct Emacs to completely ignore them while searching for a suitable font required to display a character. You can do that by adding the offending fonts to the value of the variable ‘face-ignored-fonts’, which is a list. Here’s an example to put in your ‘~/.emacs’: (add-to-list 'face-ignored-fonts "Some Bad Font") ** 22.16 Undisplayable Characters There may be some non-ASCII characters that your terminal cannot display. Most text terminals support just a single character set (use the variable ‘default-terminal-coding-system’ to tell Emacs which one, *note Terminal Coding::); characters that can’t be encoded in that coding system are displayed as ‘?’ by default. Graphical displays can display a broader range of characters, but you may not have fonts installed for all of them; characters that have no font appear as a hollow box. If you use Latin-1 characters but your terminal can’t display Latin-1, you can arrange to display mnemonic ASCII sequences instead, e.g., ‘"o’ for o-umlaut. Load the library ‘iso-ascii’ to do this. If your terminal can display Latin-1, you can display characters from other European character sets using a mixture of equivalent Latin-1 characters and ASCII mnemonics. Customize the variable ‘latin1-display’ to enable this. The mnemonic ASCII sequences mostly correspond to those of the prefix input methods. ** 22.17 Unibyte Editing Mode The ISO 8859 Latin-N character sets define character codes in the range 0240 to 0377 octal (160 to 255 decimal) to handle the accented letters and punctuation needed by various European languages (and some non-European ones). Note that Emacs considers bytes with codes in this range as raw bytes, not as characters, even in a unibyte buffer, i.e., if you disable multibyte characters. However, Emacs can still handle these character codes as if they belonged to _one_ of the single-byte character sets at a time. To specify _which_ of these codes to use, invoke ‘M-x set-language-environment’ and specify a suitable language environment such as ‘Latin-N’. *Note Disabling Multibyte Characters: (elisp)Disabling Multibyte. Emacs can also display bytes in the range 160 to 255 as readable characters, provided the terminal or font in use supports them. This works automatically. On a graphical display, Emacs can also display single-byte characters through fontsets, in effect by displaying the equivalent multibyte characters according to the current language environment. To request this, set the variable ‘unibyte-display-via-language-environment’ to a non-‘nil’ value. Note that setting this only affects how these bytes are displayed, but does not change the fundamental fact that Emacs treats them as raw bytes, not as characters. If your terminal does not support display of the Latin-1 character set, Emacs can display these characters as ASCII sequences which at least give you a clear idea of what the characters are. To do this, load the library ‘iso-ascii’. Similar libraries for other Latin-N character sets could be implemented, but have not been so far. Normally non-ISO-8859 characters (decimal codes between 128 and 159 inclusive) are displayed as octal escapes. You can change this for non-standard extended versions of ISO-8859 character sets by using the function ‘standard-display-8bit’ in the ‘disp-table’ library. There are two ways to input single-byte non-ASCII characters: • You can use an input method for the selected language environment. *Note Input Methods::. When you use an input method in a unibyte buffer, the non-ASCII character you specify with it is converted to unibyte. • If your keyboard can generate character codes 128 (decimal) and up, representing non-ASCII characters, you can type those character codes directly. On a graphical display, you should not need to do anything special to use these keys; they should simply work. On a text terminal, you should use the command ‘M-x set-keyboard-coding-system’ or customize the variable ‘keyboard-coding-system’ to specify which coding system your keyboard uses (*note Terminal Coding::). Enabling this feature will probably require you to use to type Meta characters; however, on a console terminal or a terminal emulator such as ‘xterm’, you can arrange for Meta to be converted to and still be able to type 8-bit characters present directly on the keyboard or using or keys. *Note User Input::. • You can use the key ‘C-x 8’ as a compose-character prefix for entry of non-ASCII Latin-1 and a few other printing characters. ‘C-x 8’ is good for insertion (in the minibuffer as well as other buffers), for searching, and in any other context where a key sequence is allowed. ‘C-x 8’ works by loading the ‘iso-transl’ library. Once that library is loaded, the modifier key, if the keyboard has one, serves the same purpose as ‘C-x 8’: use together with an accent character to modify the following letter. In addition, if the keyboard has keys for the Latin-1 dead accent characters, they too are defined to compose with the following character, once ‘iso-transl’ is loaded. Use ‘C-x 8 C-h’ to list all the available ‘C-x 8’ translations. ** 22.18 Charsets In Emacs, "charset" is short for “character set”. Emacs supports most popular charsets (such as ‘ascii’, ‘iso-8859-1’, ‘cp1250’, ‘big5’, and ‘unicode’), in addition to some charsets of its own (such as ‘emacs’, ‘unicode-bmp’, and ‘eight-bit’). All supported characters belong to one or more charsets. Emacs normally does the right thing with respect to charsets, so that you don’t have to worry about them. However, it is sometimes helpful to know some of the underlying details about charsets. One example is font selection (*note Fonts::). Each language environment (*note Language Environments::) defines a priority list for the various charsets. When searching for a font, Emacs initially attempts to find one that can display the highest-priority charsets. For instance, in the Japanese language environment, the charset ‘japanese-jisx0208’ has the highest priority, so Emacs tries to use a font whose ‘registry’ property is ‘JISX0208.1983-0’. There are two commands that can be used to obtain information about charsets. The command ‘M-x list-charset-chars’ prompts for a charset name, and displays all the characters in that character set. The command ‘M-x describe-character-set’ prompts for a charset name, and displays information about that charset, including its internal representation within Emacs. ‘M-x list-character-sets’ displays a list of all supported charsets. The list gives the names of charsets and additional information to identity each charset; for more details, see the ISO International Register of Coded Character Sets to be Used with Escape Sequences (ISO-IR) (https://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/itscj_english/iso-ir/ISO-IR.pdf) maintained by the Information Processing Society of Japan/Information Technology Standards Commission of Japan (IPSJ/ITSCJ) (https://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/itscj_english/). In this list, charsets are divided into two categories: "normal charsets" are listed first, followed by "supplementary charsets". A supplementary charset is one that is used to define another charset (as a parent or a subset), or to provide backward-compatibility for older Emacs versions. To find out which charset a character in the buffer belongs to, put point before it and type ‘C-u C-x =’ (*note International Chars::). ** 22.19 Bidirectional Editing Emacs supports editing text written in scripts, such as Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew, whose natural ordering of horizontal text for display is from right to left. However, digits and Latin text embedded in these scripts are still displayed left to right. It is also not uncommon to have small portions of text in Arabic or Hebrew embedded in an otherwise Latin document; e.g., as comments and strings in a program source file. For these reasons, text that uses these scripts is actually "bidirectional": a mixture of runs of left-to-right and right-to-left characters. This section describes the facilities and options provided by Emacs for editing bidirectional text. Emacs stores right-to-left and bidirectional text in the so-called "logical" (or "reading") order: the buffer or string position of the first character you read precedes that of the next character. Reordering of bidirectional text into the "visual" order happens at display time. As a result, character positions no longer increase monotonically with their positions on display. Emacs implements the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA) described in the Unicode Standard Annex #9 (http://unicode.org/reports/tr9/), for reordering of bidirectional text for display. It deviates from the UBA only in how continuation lines are displayed when text direction is opposite to the base paragraph direction, e.g., when a long line of English text appears in a right-to-left paragraph. The buffer-local variable ‘bidi-display-reordering’ controls whether text in the buffer is reordered for display. If its value is non-‘nil’, Emacs reorders characters that have right-to-left directionality when they are displayed. The default value is ‘t’. Each paragraph of bidirectional text can have its own "base direction", either right-to-left or left-to-right. Text in left-to-right paragraphs begins on the screen at the left margin of the window and is truncated or continued when it reaches the right margin. By contrast, text in right-to-left paragraphs is displayed starting at the right margin and is continued or truncated at the left margin. By default, paragraph boundaries are empty lines, i.e., lines consisting entirely of whitespace characters. To change that, you can customize the two variables ‘bidi-paragraph-start-re’ and ‘bidi-paragraph-separate-re’, whose values should be regular expressions (strings); e.g., to have a single newline start a new paragraph, set both of these variables to ‘"^"’. These two variables are buffer-local (*note Locals::). Emacs determines the base direction of each paragraph dynamically, based on the text at the beginning of the paragraph. However, sometimes a buffer may need to force a certain base direction for its paragraphs. The variable ‘bidi-paragraph-direction’, if non-‘nil’, disables the dynamic determination of the base direction, and instead forces all paragraphs in the buffer to have the direction specified by its buffer-local value. The value can be either ‘right-to-left’ or ‘left-to-right’. Any other value is interpreted as ‘nil’. Alternatively, you can control the base direction of a paragraph by inserting special formatting characters in front of the paragraph. The special character ‘RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK’, or RLM, forces the right-to-left direction on the following paragraph, while ‘LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK’, or LRM forces the left-to-right direction. (You can use ‘C-x 8 ’ to insert these characters.) In a GUI session, the LRM and RLM characters display as very thin blank characters; on text terminals they display as blanks. Because characters are reordered for display, Emacs commands that operate in the logical order or on stretches of buffer positions may produce unusual effects. For example, the commands ‘C-f’ and ‘C-b’ move point in the logical order, so the cursor will sometimes jump when point traverses reordered bidirectional text. Similarly, a highlighted region covering a contiguous range of character positions may look discontinuous if the region spans reordered text. This is normal and similar to the behavior of other programs that support bidirectional text. Cursor motion commands bound to arrow keys, such as and ‘C-’, are sensitive to the base direction of the current paragraph. In a left-to-right paragraph, commands bound to with or without modifiers move _forward_ through buffer text, but in a right-to-left paragraph they move _backward_ instead. This reflects the fact that in a right-to-left paragraph buffer positions predominantly increase when moving to the left on display. When you move out of a paragraph, the meaning of the arrow keys might change if the base direction of the preceding or the following paragraph is different from the paragraph out of which you moved. When that happens, you need to adjust the arrow key you press to the new base direction. By default, and move in the logical order, but if ‘visual-order-cursor-movement’ is non-‘nil’, these commands move to the character that is, correspondingly, to the left or right of the current screen position, moving to the next or previous screen line as appropriate. Note that this might potentially move point many buffer positions away, depending on the surrounding bidirectional context. * 23 Major and Minor Modes Emacs contains many "editing modes" that alter its basic behavior in useful ways. These are divided into "major modes" and "minor modes". Major modes provide specialized facilities for working on a particular file type, such as a C source file (*note Programs::), or a particular type of non-file buffer, such as a shell buffer (*note Shell::). Major modes are mutually exclusive; each buffer has one and only one major mode at any time. Minor modes are optional features which you can turn on or off, not necessarily specific to a type of file or buffer. For example, Auto Fill mode is a minor mode in which breaks lines between words as you type (*note Auto Fill::). Minor modes are independent of one another, and of the selected major mode. + Menu: - Major Modes:: Text mode vs. Lisp mode vs. C mode... - Minor Modes:: Each minor mode is a feature you can turn on independently of any others. - Choosing Modes:: How modes are chosen when visiting files. ** 23.1 Major Modes Every buffer possesses a major mode, which determines the editing behavior of Emacs while that buffer is current. The mode line normally shows the name of the current major mode, in parentheses (*note Mode Line::). The least specialized major mode is called "Fundamental mode". This mode has no mode-specific redefinitions or variable settings, so that each Emacs command behaves in its most general manner, and each user option variable is in its default state. For editing text of a specific type that Emacs knows about, such as Lisp code or English text, you typically use a more specialized major mode, such as Lisp mode or Text mode. Most major modes fall into three major groups. The first group contains modes for normal text, either plain or with mark-up. It includes Text mode, HTML mode, SGML mode, TeX mode and Outline mode. The second group contains modes for specific programming languages. These include Lisp mode (which has several variants), C mode, Fortran mode, and others. The third group consists of major modes that are not associated directly with files; they are used in buffers created for specific purposes by Emacs. Examples include Dired mode for buffers made by Dired (*note Dired::), Message mode for buffers made by ‘C-x m’ (*note Sending Mail::), and Shell mode for buffers used to communicate with an inferior shell process (*note Interactive Shell::). Usually, the major mode is automatically set by Emacs, when you first visit a file or create a buffer (*note Choosing Modes::). You can explicitly select a new major mode by using an ‘M-x’ command. Take the name of the mode and add ‘-mode’ to get the name of the command to select that mode (e.g., ‘M-x lisp-mode’ enters Lisp mode). Since every buffer has exactly one major mode, there is no way to “turn off” a major mode; instead you must switch to a different one. The value of the buffer-local variable ‘major-mode’ is a symbol with the same name as the major mode command (e.g., ‘lisp-mode’). This variable is set automatically; you should not change it yourself. The default value of ‘major-mode’ determines the major mode to use for files that do not specify a major mode, and for new buffers created with ‘C-x b’. Normally, this default value is the symbol ‘fundamental-mode’, which specifies Fundamental mode. You can change this default value via the Customization interface (*note Easy Customization::), or by adding a line like this to your init file (*note Init File::): (setq-default major-mode 'text-mode) If the default value of ‘major-mode’ is ‘nil’, the major mode is taken from the previously current buffer. Specialized major modes often change the meanings of certain keys to do something more suitable for the mode. For instance, programming language modes bind to indent the current line according to the rules of the language (*note Indentation::). The keys that are commonly changed are , , and ‘C-j’. Many modes also define special commands of their own, usually bound to key sequences whose prefix key is ‘C-c’ (*note Keys::). Major modes can also alter user options and variables; for instance, programming language modes typically set a buffer-local value for the variable ‘comment-start’, which determines how source code comments are delimited (*note Comments::). To view the documentation for the current major mode, including a list of its key bindings, type ‘C-h m’ (‘describe-mode’). *Note Misc Help::. Every major mode, apart from Fundamental mode, defines a "mode hook", a customizable list of Lisp functions to run each time the mode is enabled in a buffer. *Note Hooks::, for more information about hooks. Each mode hook is named after its major mode, e.g., Fortran mode has ‘fortran-mode-hook’. Furthermore, all text-based major modes run ‘text-mode-hook’, and many programming language modes (1) (including all those distributed with Emacs) run ‘prog-mode-hook’, prior to running their own mode hooks. Hook functions can look at the value of the variable ‘major-mode’ to see which mode is actually being entered. Mode hooks are commonly used to enable minor modes (*note Minor Modes::). For example, you can put the following lines in your init file to enable Flyspell minor mode in all text-based major modes (*note Spelling::), and Eldoc minor mode in Emacs Lisp mode (*note Lisp Doc::): (add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode) (add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook 'eldoc-mode) ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) More specifically, the modes which are ”derived” from ‘prog-mode’ (*note (elisp)Derived Modes::). ** 23.2 Minor Modes A minor mode is an optional editing mode that alters the behavior of Emacs in some well-defined way. Unlike major modes, any number of minor modes can be in effect at any time. Some minor modes are "buffer-local", and can be turned on (enabled) in certain buffers and off (disabled) in others. Other minor modes are "global": while enabled, they affect everything you do in the Emacs session, in all buffers. Most minor modes are disabled by default, but a few are enabled by default. Most buffer-local minor modes say in the mode line when they are enabled, just after the major mode indicator. For example, ‘Fill’ in the mode line means that Auto Fill mode is enabled. *Note Mode Line::. Like major modes, each minor mode is associated with a "mode command", whose name consists of the mode name followed by ‘-mode’. For instance, the mode command for Auto Fill mode is ‘auto-fill-mode’. But unlike a major mode command, which simply enables the mode, the mode command for a minor mode can either enable or disable it: • If you invoke the mode command directly with no prefix argument (either via ‘M-x’, or by binding it to a key and typing that key; *note Key Bindings::), that "toggles" the minor mode. The minor mode is turned on if it was off, and turned off if it was on. • If you invoke the mode command with a prefix argument, the minor mode is unconditionally turned off if that argument is zero or negative; otherwise, it is unconditionally turned on. • If the mode command is called via Lisp, the minor mode is unconditionally turned on if the argument is omitted or ‘nil’. This makes it easy to turn on a minor mode from a major mode’s mode hook (*note Major Modes::). A non-‘nil’ argument is handled like an interactive prefix argument, as described above. Most minor modes also have a "mode variable", with the same name as the mode command. Its value is non-‘nil’ if the mode is enabled, and ‘nil’ if it is disabled. In general, you should not try to enable or disable the mode by changing the value of the mode variable directly in Lisp; you should run the mode command instead. However, setting the mode variable through the Customize interface (*note Easy Customization::) will always properly enable or disable the mode, since Customize automatically runs the mode command for you. The following is a list of some buffer-local minor modes: • Abbrev mode automatically expands text based on pre-defined abbreviation definitions. *Note Abbrevs::. • Auto Fill mode inserts newlines as you type to prevent lines from becoming too long. *Note Filling::. • Auto Save mode saves the buffer contents periodically to reduce the amount of work you can lose in case of a crash. *Note Auto Save::. • Electric Quote mode automatically converts quotation marks. For example, it requotes text typed `like this' to text ‘like this’. You can control what kind of text it operates in, and you can disable it entirely in individual buffers. *Note Quotation Marks::. • Enriched mode enables editing and saving of formatted text. *Note Enriched Text::. • Flyspell mode automatically highlights misspelled words. *Note Spelling::. • Font-Lock mode automatically highlights certain textual units found in programs. It is enabled globally by default, but you can disable it in individual buffers. *Note Faces::. • Display Line Numbers mode is a convenience wrapper around ‘display-line-numbers’, setting it using the value of ‘display-line-numbers-type’. *Note Display Custom::. • Outline minor mode provides similar facilities to the major mode called Outline mode. *Note Outline Mode::. • Overwrite mode causes ordinary printing characters to replace existing text instead of shoving it to the right. For example, if point is in front of the ‘B’ in ‘FOOBAR’, then in Overwrite mode typing a ‘G’ changes it to ‘FOOGAR’, instead of producing ‘FOOGBAR’ as usual. In Overwrite mode, the command ‘C-q’ inserts the next character whatever it may be, even if it is a digit—this gives you a way to insert a character instead of replacing an existing character. The mode command, ‘overwrite-mode’, is bound to the key. • Binary Overwrite mode is a variant of Overwrite mode for editing binary files; it treats newlines and tabs like other characters, so that they overwrite other characters and can be overwritten by them. In Binary Overwrite mode, digits after ‘C-q’ specify an octal character code, as usual. • Visual Line mode performs word wrapping, causing long lines to be wrapped at word boundaries. *Note Visual Line Mode::. And here are some useful global minor modes: • Column Number mode enables display of the current column number in the mode line. *Note Mode Line::. • Delete Selection mode causes text insertion to first delete the text in the region, if the region is active. *Note Using Region::. • Icomplete mode displays an indication of available completions when you are in the minibuffer and completion is active. *Note Icomplete::. • Line Number mode enables display of the current line number in the mode line. It is enabled by default. *Note Mode Line::. • Menu Bar mode gives each frame a menu bar. It is enabled by default. *Note Menu Bars::. • Scroll Bar mode gives each window a scroll bar. It is enabled by default, but the scroll bar is only displayed on graphical terminals. *Note Scroll Bars::. • Tool Bar mode gives each frame a tool bar. It is enabled by default, but the tool bar is only displayed on graphical terminals. *Note Tool Bars::. • Transient Mark mode highlights the region, and makes many Emacs commands operate on the region when the mark is active. It is enabled by default. *Note Mark::. ** 23.3 Choosing File Modes When you visit a file, Emacs chooses a major mode automatically. Normally, it makes the choice based on the file name—for example, files whose names end in ‘.c’ are normally edited in C mode—but sometimes it chooses the major mode based on special text in the file. This special text can also be used to enable buffer-local minor modes. Here is the exact procedure: First, Emacs checks whether the file contains file-local mode variables. *Note File Variables::. If there is a file-local variable that specifies a major mode, then Emacs uses that major mode, ignoring all other criteria. There are several methods to specify a major mode using a file-local variable; the simplest is to put the mode name in the first nonblank line, preceded and followed by ‘-*-’. Other text may appear on the line as well. For example, ; -*-Lisp-*- tells Emacs to use Lisp mode. Note how the semicolon is used to make Lisp treat this line as a comment. You could equivalently write ; -*- mode: Lisp;-*- You can also use file-local variables to specify buffer-local minor modes, by using ‘eval’ specifications. For example, this first nonblank line puts the buffer in Lisp mode and enables Auto-Fill mode: ; -*- mode: Lisp; eval: (auto-fill-mode 1); -*- Note, however, that it is usually inappropriate to enable minor modes this way, since most minor modes represent individual user preferences. If you personally want to use a minor mode for a particular file type, it is better to enable the minor mode via a major mode hook (*note Major Modes::). Second, if there is no file variable specifying a major mode, Emacs checks whether the file’s contents begin with ‘#!’. If so, that indicates that the file can serve as an executable shell command, which works by running an interpreter named on the file’s first line (the rest of the file is used as input to the interpreter). Therefore, Emacs tries to use the interpreter name to choose a mode. For instance, a file that begins with ‘#!/usr/bin/perl’ is opened in Perl mode. The variable ‘interpreter-mode-alist’ specifies the correspondence between interpreter program names and major modes. When the first line starts with ‘#!’, you usually cannot use the ‘-*-’ feature on the first line, because the system would get confused when running the interpreter. So Emacs looks for ‘-*-’ on the second line in such files as well as on the first line. The same is true for man pages which start with the magic string ‘'\"’ to specify a list of troff preprocessors. Third, Emacs tries to determine the major mode by looking at the text at the start of the buffer, based on the variable ‘magic-mode-alist’. By default, this variable is ‘nil’ (an empty list), so Emacs skips this step; however, you can customize it in your init file (*note Init File::). The value should be a list of elements of the form (REGEXP . MODE-FUNCTION) where REGEXP is a regular expression (*note Regexps::), and MODE-FUNCTION is a major mode command. If the text at the beginning of the file matches REGEXP, Emacs chooses the major mode specified by MODE-FUNCTION. Alternatively, an element of ‘magic-mode-alist’ may have the form (MATCH-FUNCTION . MODE-FUNCTION) where MATCH-FUNCTION is a Lisp function that is called at the beginning of the buffer; if the function returns non-‘nil’, Emacs set the major mode with MODE-FUNCTION. Fourth—if Emacs still hasn’t found a suitable major mode—it looks at the file’s name. The correspondence between file names and major modes is controlled by the variable ‘auto-mode-alist’. Its value is a list in which each element has this form, (REGEXP . MODE-FUNCTION) or this form, (REGEXP MODE-FUNCTION FLAG) For example, one element normally found in the list has the form ‘("\\.c\\'" . c-mode)’, and it is responsible for selecting C mode for files whose names end in ‘.c’. (Note that ‘\\’ is needed in Lisp syntax to include a ‘\’ in the string, which must be used to suppress the special meaning of ‘.’ in regexps.) If the element has the form ‘(REGEXP MODE-FUNCTION FLAG)’ and FLAG is non-‘nil’, then after calling MODE-FUNCTION, Emacs discards the suffix that matched REGEXP and searches the list again for another match. On GNU/Linux and other systems with case-sensitive file names, Emacs performs a case-sensitive search through ‘auto-mode-alist’; if this search fails, it performs a second case-insensitive search through the alist. To suppress the second search, change the variable ‘auto-mode-case-fold’ to ‘nil’. On systems with case-insensitive file names, such as Microsoft Windows, Emacs performs a single case-insensitive search through ‘auto-mode-alist’. Finally, if Emacs _still_ hasn’t found a major mode to use, it compares the text at the start of the buffer to the variable ‘magic-fallback-mode-alist’. This variable works like ‘magic-mode-alist’, described above, except that it is consulted only _after_ ‘auto-mode-alist’. By default, ‘magic-fallback-mode-alist’ contains forms that check for image files, HTML/XML/SGML files, PostScript files, and Unix style Conf files. If you have changed the major mode of a buffer, you can return to the major mode Emacs would have chosen automatically, by typing ‘M-x normal-mode’. This is the same function that ‘find-file’ calls to choose the major mode. It also processes the file’s ‘-*-’ line or local variables list (if any). *Note File Variables::. The commands ‘C-x C-w’ and ‘set-visited-file-name’ change to a new major mode if the new file name implies a mode (*note Saving::). (‘C-x C-s’ does this too, if the buffer wasn’t visiting a file.) However, this does not happen if the buffer contents specify a major mode, and certain special major modes do not allow the mode to change. You can turn off this mode-changing feature by setting ‘change-major-mode-with-file-name’ to ‘nil’. * 24 Indentation "Indentation" refers to inserting or adjusting "whitespace characters" (space and/or tab characters) at the beginning of a line of text. This chapter documents indentation commands and options which are common to Text mode and related modes, as well as programming language modes. *Note Program Indent::, for additional documentation about indenting in programming modes. The simplest way to perform indentation is the key. In most major modes, this runs the command ‘indent-for-tab-command’. (In C and related modes, runs the command ‘c-indent-line-or-region’, which behaves similarly, *note C Indent::). Insert whitespace, or indent the current line, in a mode-appropriate way (‘indent-for-tab-command’). If the region is active, indent all the lines within it. The exact behavior of depends on the major mode. In Text mode and related major modes, normally inserts some combination of space and tab characters to advance point to the next tab stop (*note Tab Stops::). For this purpose, the position of the first non-whitespace character on the preceding line is treated as an additional tab stop, so you can use to align point with the preceding line. If the region is active (*note Using Region::), acts specially: it indents each line in the region so that its first non-whitespace character is aligned with the preceding line. In programming modes, indents the current line of code in a way that makes sense given the code in the preceding lines. If the region is active, all the lines in the region are indented this way. If point was initially within the current line’s indentation, it is repositioned to the first non-whitespace character on the line. If you just want to insert a tab character in the buffer, type ‘C-q ’ (*note Inserting Text::). + Menu: - Indentation Commands:: More commands for performing indentation. - Tab Stops:: Stop points for indentation in Text modes. - Just Spaces:: Using only space characters for indentation. - Indent Convenience:: Optional indentation features. ** 24.1 Indentation Commands Apart from the ‘’ (‘indent-for-tab-command’) command, Emacs provides a variety of commands to perform indentation in other ways. ‘C-M-o’ Split the current line at point (‘split-line’). The text on the line after point becomes a new line, indented to the same column where point is located. This command first moves point forward over any spaces and tabs. Afterward, point is positioned before the inserted newline. ‘M-m’ Move (forward or back) to the first non-whitespace character on the current line (‘back-to-indentation’). If there are no non-whitespace characters on the line, move to the end of the line. ‘M-i’ Indent whitespace at point, up to the next tab stop (‘tab-to-tab-stop’). *Note Tab Stops::. ‘M-x indent-relative’ Insert whitespace at point, until point is aligned with the first non-whitespace character on the previous line (actually, the last non-blank line). If point is already farther right than that, run ‘tab-to-tab-stop’ instead—unless called with a numeric argument, in which case do nothing. ‘M-^’ Merge the previous and the current line (‘delete-indentation’). This joins the two lines cleanly, by replacing any indentation at the front of the current line, together with the line boundary, with a single space. As a special case (useful for Lisp code), the single space is omitted if the characters to be joined are consecutive opening and closing parentheses, or if the junction follows another newline. If there is a fill prefix, ‘M-^’ deletes the fill prefix if it appears after the newline that is deleted. *Note Fill Prefix::. ‘C-M-\’ Indent all the lines in the region, as though you had typed ‘’ at the beginning of each line (‘indent-region’). If a numeric argument is supplied, indent every line in the region to that column number. ‘C-x ’ This command is used to change the indentation of all lines that begin in the region, moving the affected lines as a rigid unit. If called with no argument, the command activates a transient mode for adjusting the indentation of the affected lines interactively. While this transient mode is active, typing ‘’ or ‘’ indents leftward and rightward, respectively, by one space. You can also type ‘S-’ or ‘S-’ to indent leftward or rightward to the next tab stop (*note Tab Stops::). Typing any other key disables the transient mode, and resumes normal editing. If called with a prefix argument N, this command indents the lines forward by N spaces (without enabling the transient mode). Negative values of N indent backward, so you can remove all indentation from the lines in the region using a large negative argument, like this: C-u -999 C-x ** 24.2 Tab Stops Emacs defines certain column numbers to be "tab stops". These are used as stopping points by when inserting whitespace in Text mode and related modes (*note Indentation::), and by commands like ‘M-i’ (*note Indentation Commands::). The variable ‘tab-stop-list’ controls these positions. The default value is ‘nil’, which means a tab stop every 8 columns. The value can also be a list of zero-based column numbers (in increasing order) at which to place tab stops. Emacs extends the list forever by repeating the difference between the last and next-to-last elements. Instead of customizing the variable ‘tab-stop-list’ directly, a convenient way to view and set tab stops is via the command ‘M-x edit-tab-stops’. This switches to a buffer containing a description of the tab stop settings, which looks like this: : : : : : : 0 1 2 3 4 0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678 To install changes, type C-c C-c The first line contains a colon at each tab stop. The numbers on the next two lines are present just to indicate where the colons are. If the value of ‘tab-stop-list’ is ‘nil’, as it is by default, no colons are displayed initially. You can edit this buffer to specify different tab stops by placing colons on the desired columns. The buffer uses Overwrite mode (*note Minor Modes::). Remember that Emacs will extend the list of tab stops forever by repeating the difference between the last two explicit stops that you place. When you are done, type ‘C-c C-c’ to make the new tab stops take effect. Normally, the new tab stop settings apply to all buffers. However, if you have made the ‘tab-stop-list’ variable local to the buffer where you called ‘M-x edit-tab-stops’ (*note Locals::), then the new tab stop settings apply only to that buffer. To save the tab stop settings for future Emacs sessions, use the Customize interface to save the value of ‘tab-stop-list’ (*note Easy Customization::). Note that the tab stops discussed in this section have nothing to do with how tab characters are displayed in the buffer. Tab characters are always displayed as empty spaces extending to the next "display tab stop". *Note Text Display::. ** 24.3 Tabs vs. Spaces Normally, indentation commands insert (or remove) the shortest possible series of tab and space characters so as to align to the desired column. Tab characters are displayed as a stretch of empty space extending to the next "display tab stop". By default, there is one display tab stop every ‘tab-width’ columns (the default is 8). *Note Text Display::. If you prefer, all indentation can be made from spaces only. To request this, set the buffer-local variable ‘indent-tabs-mode’ to ‘nil’. *Note Locals::, for information about setting buffer-local variables. Note, however, that ‘C-q ’ always inserts a tab character, regardless of the value of ‘indent-tabs-mode’. One reason to set ‘indent-tabs-mode’ to ‘nil’ is that not all editors display tab characters in the same way. Emacs users, too, may have different customized values of ‘tab-width’. By using spaces only, you can make sure that your file always looks the same. If you only care about how it looks within Emacs, another way to tackle this problem is to set the ‘tab-width’ variable in a file-local variable (*note File Variables::). There are also commands to convert tabs to spaces or vice versa, always preserving the columns of all non-whitespace text. ‘M-x tabify’ scans the region for sequences of spaces, and converts sequences of at least two spaces to tabs if that can be done without changing indentation. ‘M-x untabify’ changes all tabs in the region to appropriate numbers of spaces. ** 24.4 Convenience Features for Indentation The variable ‘tab-always-indent’ tweaks the behavior of the (‘indent-for-tab-command’) command. The default value, ‘t’, gives the behavior described in *note Indentation::. If you change the value to the symbol ‘complete’, then first tries to indent the current line, and if the line was already indented, it tries to complete the text at point (*note Symbol Completion::). If the value is ‘nil’, then indents the current line only if point is at the left margin or in the line’s indentation; otherwise, it inserts a tab character. Electric Indent mode is a global minor mode that automatically indents the line after every you type. This mode is enabled by default. To toggle this minor mode, type ‘M-x electric-indent-mode’. To toggle the mode in a single buffer, use ‘M-x electric-indent-local-mode’. * 25 Commands for Human Languages This chapter describes Emacs commands that act on "text", by which we mean sequences of characters in a human language (as opposed to, say, a computer programming language). These commands act in ways that take into account the syntactic and stylistic conventions of human languages: conventions involving words, sentences, paragraphs, and capital letters. There are also commands for "filling", which means rearranging the lines of a paragraph to be approximately equal in length. These commands, while intended primarily for editing text, are also often useful for editing programs. Emacs has several major modes for editing human-language text. If the file contains ordinary text, use Text mode, which customizes Emacs in small ways for the syntactic conventions of text. Outline mode provides special commands for operating on text with an outline structure. *Note Outline Mode::. Org mode extends Outline mode and turns Emacs into a full-fledged organizer: you can manage TODO lists, store notes and publish them in many formats. *Note The Org Manual: (org)Top. Emacs has other major modes for text which contains embedded commands, such as TeX and LaTeX (*note TeX Mode::); HTML and SGML (*note HTML Mode::); XML (*note The nXML Mode Manual: (nxml-mode)Top.); and Groff and Nroff (*note Nroff Mode::). If you need to edit ASCII art pictures made out of text characters, use Picture mode, a special major mode for editing such pictures. *Note Picture Mode::. The automatic typing features may be useful when writing text. *note The Autotype Manual: (autotype)Top. + Menu: - Words:: Moving over and killing words. - Sentences:: Moving over and killing sentences. - Paragraphs:: Moving over paragraphs. - Pages:: Moving over pages. - Quotation Marks:: Inserting quotation marks. - Filling:: Filling or justifying text. - Case:: Changing the case of text. - Text Mode:: The major modes for editing text files. - Outline Mode:: Editing outlines. - Org Mode:: The Emacs organizer. - TeX Mode:: Editing TeX and LaTeX files. - HTML Mode:: Editing HTML and SGML files. - Nroff Mode:: Editing input to the nroff formatter. - Enriched Text:: Editing text enriched with fonts, colors, etc. - Text Based Tables:: Commands for editing text-based tables. - Two-Column:: Splitting text columns into separate windows. ** 25.1 Words Emacs defines several commands for moving over or operating on words: ‘M-f’ Move forward over a word (‘forward-word’). ‘M-b’ Move backward over a word (‘backward-word’). ‘M-d’ Kill up to the end of a word (‘kill-word’). ‘M-’ Kill back to the beginning of a word (‘backward-kill-word’). ‘M-@’ Set mark at the end of the next word (‘mark-word’). ‘M-t’ Transpose two words or drag a word across others (‘transpose-words’). Notice how these keys form a series that parallels the character-based ‘C-f’, ‘C-b’, ‘C-d’, and ‘C-t’. ‘M-@’ is cognate to ‘C-@’, which is an alias for ‘C-’. The commands ‘M-f’ (‘forward-word’) and ‘M-b’ (‘backward-word’) move forward and backward over words. These -based key sequences are analogous to the key sequences ‘C-f’ and ‘C-b’, which move over single characters. The analogy extends to numeric arguments, which serve as repeat counts. ‘M-f’ with a negative argument moves backward, and ‘M-b’ with a negative argument moves forward. Forward motion stops right after the last letter of the word, while backward motion stops right before the first letter. ‘M-d’ (‘kill-word’) kills the word after point. To be precise, it kills everything from point to the place ‘M-f’ would move to. Thus, if point is in the middle of a word, ‘M-d’ kills just the part after point. If some punctuation comes between point and the next word, it is killed along with the word. (If you wish to kill only the next word but not the punctuation before it, simply do ‘M-f’ to get the end, and kill the word backwards with ‘M-’.) ‘M-d’ takes arguments just like ‘M-f’. ‘M-’ (‘backward-kill-word’) kills the word before point. It kills everything from point back to where ‘M-b’ would move to. For instance, if point is after the space in ‘FOO, BAR’, it kills ‘FOO, ’. If you wish to kill just ‘FOO’, and not the comma and the space, use ‘M-b M-d’ instead of ‘M-’. ‘M-t’ (‘transpose-words’) exchanges the word before or containing point with the following word. The delimiter characters between the words do not move. For example, ‘FOO, BAR’ transposes into ‘BAR, FOO’ rather than ‘BAR FOO,’. *Note Transpose::, for more on transposition. To operate on words with an operation which acts on the region, use the command ‘M-@’ (‘mark-word’). This command sets the mark where ‘M-f’ would move to. *Note Marking Objects::, for more information about this command. The word commands’ understanding of word boundaries is controlled by the syntax table. Any character can, for example, be declared to be a word delimiter. *Note Syntax Tables: (elisp)Syntax Tables. In addition, see *note Position Info:: for the ‘M-=’ (‘count-words-region’) and ‘M-x count-words’ commands, which count and report the number of words in the region or buffer. ** 25.2 Sentences The Emacs commands for manipulating sentences and paragraphs are mostly on Meta keys, like the word-handling commands. ‘M-a’ Move back to the beginning of the sentence (‘backward-sentence’). ‘M-e’ Move forward to the end of the sentence (‘forward-sentence’). ‘M-k’ Kill forward to the end of the sentence (‘kill-sentence’). ‘C-x ’ Kill back to the beginning of the sentence (‘backward-kill-sentence’). The commands ‘M-a’ (‘backward-sentence’) and ‘M-e’ (‘forward-sentence’) move to the beginning and end of the current sentence, respectively. Their bindings were chosen to resemble ‘C-a’ and ‘C-e’, which move to the beginning and end of a line. Unlike them, ‘M-a’ and ‘M-e’ move over successive sentences if repeated. Moving backward over a sentence places point just before the first character of the sentence; moving forward places point right after the punctuation that ends the sentence. Neither one moves over the whitespace at the sentence boundary. Just as ‘C-a’ and ‘C-e’ have a kill command, ‘C-k’, to go with them, ‘M-a’ and ‘M-e’ have a corresponding kill command: ‘M-k’ (‘kill-sentence’) kills from point to the end of the sentence. With a positive numeric argument N, it kills the next N sentences; with a negative argument −N, it kills back to the beginning of the Nth preceding sentence. The ‘C-x ’ (‘backward-kill-sentence’) kills back to the beginning of a sentence. The sentence commands assume that you follow the American typist’s convention of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence. That is, a sentence ends wherever there is a ‘.’, ‘?’ or ‘!’ followed by the end of a line or two spaces, with any number of ‘)’, ‘]’, ‘'’, or ‘"’ characters allowed in between. A sentence also begins or ends wherever a paragraph begins or ends. It is useful to follow this convention, because it allows the Emacs sentence commands to distinguish between periods that end a sentence and periods that indicate abbreviations. If you want to use just one space between sentences, you can set the variable ‘sentence-end-double-space’ to ‘nil’ to make the sentence commands stop for single spaces. However, this has a drawback: there is no way to distinguish between periods that end sentences and those that indicate abbreviations. For convenient and reliable editing, we therefore recommend you follow the two-space convention. The variable ‘sentence-end-double-space’ also affects filling (*note Fill Commands::). The variable ‘sentence-end’ controls how to recognize the end of a sentence. If non-‘nil’, its value should be a regular expression, which is used to match the last few characters of a sentence, together with the whitespace following the sentence (*note Regexps::). If the value is ‘nil’, the default, then Emacs computes sentence ends according to various criteria such as the value of ‘sentence-end-double-space’. Some languages, such as Thai, do not use periods to indicate the end of a sentence. Set the variable ‘sentence-end-without-period’ to ‘t’ in such cases. ** 25.3 Paragraphs The Emacs commands for manipulating paragraphs are also on Meta keys. ‘M-{’ Move back to previous paragraph beginning (‘backward-paragraph’). ‘M-}’ Move forward to next paragraph end (‘forward-paragraph’). ‘M-h’ Put point and mark around this or next paragraph (‘mark-paragraph’). ‘M-{’ (‘backward-paragraph’) moves to the beginning of the current or previous paragraph, depending on where point is when the command is invoked (see below for the definition of a paragraph). ‘M-}’ (‘forward-paragraph’) similarly moves to the end of the current or next paragraph. If there is a blank line before the paragraph, ‘M-{’ moves to the blank line. When you wish to operate on a paragraph, type ‘M-h’ (‘mark-paragraph’) to set the region around it. For example, ‘M-h C-w’ kills the paragraph around or after point. ‘M-h’ puts point at the beginning and mark at the end of the paragraph point was in. If point is between paragraphs (in a run of blank lines, or at a boundary), ‘M-h’ sets the region around the paragraph following point. If there are blank lines preceding the first line of the paragraph, one of these blank lines is included in the region. If the region is already active, the command sets the mark without changing point, and each subsequent ‘M-h’ further advances the mark by one paragraph. The definition of a paragraph depends on the major mode. In Fundamental mode, as well as Text mode and related modes, a paragraph is separated from neighboring paragraphs by one or more "blank lines"—lines that are either empty, or consist solely of space, tab and/or formfeed characters. In programming language modes, paragraphs are usually defined in a similar way, so that you can use the paragraph commands even though there are no paragraphs as such in a program. Note that an indented line is _not_ itself a paragraph break in Text mode. If you want indented lines to separate paragraphs, use Paragraph-Indent Text mode instead. *Note Text Mode::. If you set a fill prefix, then paragraphs are delimited by all lines which don’t start with the fill prefix. *Note Filling::. The precise definition of a paragraph boundary is controlled by the variables ‘paragraph-separate’ and ‘paragraph-start’. The value of ‘paragraph-start’ is a regular expression that should match lines that either start or separate paragraphs (*note Regexps::). The value of ‘paragraph-separate’ is another regular expression that should match lines that separate paragraphs without being part of any paragraph (for example, blank lines). Lines that start a new paragraph and are contained in it must match only ‘paragraph-start’, not ‘paragraph-separate’. For example, in Fundamental mode, ‘paragraph-start’ is ‘"\f\\|[ \t]*$"’, and ‘paragraph-separate’ is ‘"[ \t\f]*$"’. Note that ‘paragraph-start’ and ‘paragraph-separate’ are matched against the text at the left margin, which is not necessarily the beginning of the line, so these regexps should not use ‘^’ as an anchor, to ensure that the paragraph functions will work equally within a region of text indented by a margin setting. ** 25.4 Pages Within some text files, text is divided into "pages" delimited by the "formfeed character" (ASCII code 12, also denoted as ‘control-L’), which is displayed in Emacs as the escape sequence ‘^L’ (*note Text Display::). Traditionally, when such text files are printed to hardcopy, each formfeed character forces a page break. Most Emacs commands treat it just like any other character, so you can insert it with ‘C-q C-l’, delete it with , etc. In addition, Emacs provides commands to move over pages and operate on them. ‘M-x what-page’ Display the page number of point, and the line number within that page. ‘C-x [’ Move point to previous page boundary (‘backward-page’). ‘C-x ]’ Move point to next page boundary (‘forward-page’). ‘C-x C-p’ Put point and mark around this page (or another page) (‘mark-page’). ‘C-x l’ Count the lines in this page (‘count-lines-page’). ‘M-x what-page’ counts pages from the beginning of the file, and counts lines within the page, showing both numbers in the echo area. The ‘C-x [’ (‘backward-page’) command moves point to immediately after the previous page delimiter. If point is already right after a page delimiter, it skips that one and stops at the previous one. A numeric argument serves as a repeat count. The ‘C-x ]’ (‘forward-page’) command moves forward past the next page delimiter. The ‘C-x C-p’ command (‘mark-page’) puts point at the beginning of the current page (after that page delimiter at the front), and the mark at the end of the page (after the page delimiter at the end). ‘C-x C-p C-w’ is a handy way to kill a page to move it elsewhere. If you move to another page delimiter with ‘C-x [’ and ‘C-x ]’, then yank the killed page, all the pages will be properly delimited once again. Making sure this works as expected is the reason ‘C-x C-p’ includes only the following page delimiter in the region. A numeric argument to ‘C-x C-p’ specifies which page to go to, relative to the current one. Zero means the current page, one means the next page, and −1 means the previous one. The ‘C-x l’ command (‘count-lines-page’) is good for deciding where to break a page in two. It displays in the echo area the total number of lines in the current page, and then divides it up into those preceding the current line and those following, as in Page has 96 (72+25) lines Notice that the sum is off by one; this is correct if point is not at the beginning of a line. The variable ‘page-delimiter’ controls where pages begin. Its value is a regular expression that matches the beginning of a line that separates pages (*note Regexps::). The normal value of this variable is ‘"^\f"’, which matches a formfeed character at the beginning of a line. ** 25.5 Quotation Marks One common way to quote is the typewriter convention, which quotes using straight apostrophes 'like this' or double-quotes "like this". Another common way is the curved quote convention, which uses left and right single or double quotation marks ‘like this’ or “like this”(1). In text files, typewriter quotes are simple and portable; curved quotes are less ambiguous and typically look nicer. Electric Quote mode makes it easier to type curved quotes. As you type characters it optionally converts ` to ‘, ' to ’, `` to “, and '' to ”. It’s possible to change the default quotes listed above, by customizing the variable ‘electric-quote-chars’, a list of four characters, where the items correspond to the left single quote, the right single quote, the left double quote and the right double quote, respectively, whose default value is ‘'(?‘ ?’ ?“ ?”)’. You can customize the behavior of Electric Quote mode by customizing variables that control where it is active. It is active in text paragraphs if ‘electric-quote-paragraph’ is non-‘nil’, in programming-language comments if ‘electric-quote-comment’ is non-‘nil’, and in programming-language strings if ‘electric-quote-string’ is non-‘nil’. The default is ‘nil’ for ‘electric-quote-string’ and ‘t’ for the other variables. Electric Quote mode is disabled by default. To toggle it in a single buffer, use ‘M-x electric-quote-local-mode’. To toggle it globally, type ‘M-x electric-quote-mode’. To suppress it for a single use, type ‘C-q `’ or ‘C-q '’ instead of ‘`’ or ‘'’. To insert a curved quote even when Electric Quote is disabled or inactive, you can type ‘C-x 8 [’ for ‘, ‘C-x 8 ]’ for ’, ‘C-x 8 {’ for “, and ‘C-x 8 }’ for ”. *Note Inserting Text::. Note that the value of ‘electric-quote-chars’ does not affect these keybindings, they are not keybindings of ‘electric-quote-mode’ but bound in ‘global-map’. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) The curved single quote characters are U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK and U+2018 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK; the curved double quotes are U+201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK and U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK. On text terminals which cannot display these characters, the Info reader might show them as the typewriter ASCII quote characters. ** 25.6 Filling Text "Filling" text means breaking it up into lines that fit a specified width. Emacs does filling in two ways. In Auto Fill mode, inserting text with self-inserting characters also automatically fills it. There are also explicit fill commands that you can use when editing text. + Menu: - Auto Fill:: Auto Fill mode breaks long lines automatically. - Fill Commands:: Commands to refill paragraphs and center lines. - Fill Prefix:: Filling paragraphs that are indented or in a comment, etc. - Adaptive Fill:: How Emacs can determine the fill prefix automatically. *** 25.6.1 Auto Fill Mode "Auto Fill" mode is a buffer-local minor mode (*note Minor Modes::) in which lines are broken automatically at spaces when the line becomes too wide. ‘M-x auto-fill-mode’ Enable or disable Auto Fill mode. ‘’ ‘’ In Auto Fill mode, break lines when appropriate. The mode command ‘M-x auto-fill-mode’ toggles Auto Fill mode in the current buffer. Like any other minor mode, with a positive numeric argument, it enables Auto Fill mode, and with a negative argument it disables it. To enable Auto Fill mode automatically in certain major modes, add ‘auto-fill-mode’ to the mode hooks (*note Major Modes::). When Auto Fill mode is enabled, the mode indicator ‘Fill’ appears in the mode line (*note Mode Line::). Auto Fill mode breaks lines automatically at spaces whenever they get longer than the desired width. This line breaking occurs only when you type or . If you wish to insert a space or newline without permitting line-breaking, type ‘C-q ’ or ‘C-q C-j’ respectively. Also, ‘C-o’ inserts a newline without line breaking. When Auto Fill mode breaks a line, it tries to obey the "adaptive fill prefix": if a fill prefix can be deduced from the first and/or second line of the current paragraph, it is inserted into the new line (*note Adaptive Fill::). Otherwise the new line is indented, as though you had typed on it (*note Indentation::). In a programming language mode, if a line is broken in the middle of a comment, the comment is split by inserting new comment delimiters as appropriate. Auto Fill mode does not refill entire paragraphs; it breaks lines but does not merge lines. Therefore, editing in the middle of a paragraph can result in a paragraph that is not correctly filled. To fill it, call the explicit fill commands (*note Fill Commands::). *** 25.6.2 Explicit Fill Commands ‘M-q’ Fill current paragraph (‘fill-paragraph’). ‘C-x f’ Set the fill column (‘set-fill-column’). ‘M-x fill-region’ Fill each paragraph in the region (‘fill-region’). ‘M-x fill-region-as-paragraph’ Fill the region, considering it as one paragraph. ‘M-o M-s’ Center a line. The command ‘M-q’ (‘fill-paragraph’) "fills" the current paragraph. It redistributes the line breaks within the paragraph, and deletes any excess space and tab characters occurring within the paragraph, in such a way that the lines end up fitting within a certain maximum width. Normally, ‘M-q’ acts on the paragraph where point is, but if point is between paragraphs, it acts on the paragraph after point. If the region is active, it acts instead on the text in the region. You can also call ‘M-x fill-region’ to specifically fill the text in the region. ‘M-q’ and ‘fill-region’ use the usual Emacs criteria for finding paragraph boundaries (*note Paragraphs::). For more control, you can use ‘M-x fill-region-as-paragraph’, which refills everything between point and mark as a single paragraph. This command deletes any blank lines within the region, so separate blocks of text end up combined into one block. A numeric argument to ‘M-q’ tells it to "justify" the text as well as filling it. This means that extra spaces are inserted to make the right margin line up exactly at the fill column. To remove the extra spaces, use ‘M-q’ with no argument. (Likewise for ‘fill-region’.) The maximum line width for filling is specified by the buffer-local variable ‘fill-column’. The default value (*note Locals::) is 70. The easiest way to set ‘fill-column’ in the current buffer is to use the command ‘C-x f’ (‘set-fill-column’). With a numeric argument, it uses that as the new fill column. With just ‘C-u’ as argument, it sets ‘fill-column’ to the current horizontal position of point. The command ‘M-o M-s’ (‘center-line’) centers the current line within the current fill column. With an argument N, it centers N lines individually and moves past them. This binding is made by Text mode and is available only in that and related modes (*note Text Mode::). By default, Emacs considers a period followed by two spaces or by a newline as the end of a sentence; a period followed by just one space indicates an abbreviation, not the end of a sentence. Accordingly, the fill commands will not break a line after a period followed by just one space. If you set the variable ‘sentence-end-double-space’ to ‘nil’, the fill commands will break a line after a period followed by one space, and put just one space after each period. *Note Sentences::, for other effects and possible drawbacks of this. If the variable ‘colon-double-space’ is non-‘nil’, the fill commands put two spaces after a colon. To specify additional conditions where line-breaking is not allowed, customize the abnormal hook variable ‘fill-nobreak-predicate’ (*note Hooks::). Each function in this hook is called with no arguments, with point positioned where Emacs is considering breaking a line. If a function returns a non-‘nil’ value, Emacs will not break the line there. Functions you can use there include: ‘fill-single-word-nobreak-p’ (don’t break after the first word of a sentence or before the last); ‘fill-single-char-nobreak-p’ (don’t break after a one-letter word); and ‘fill-french-nobreak-p’ (don’t break after ‘(’ or before ‘)’, ‘:’ or ‘?’). *** 25.6.3 The Fill Prefix The "fill prefix" feature allows paragraphs to be filled so that each line starts with a special string of characters (such as a sequence of spaces, giving an indented paragraph). You can specify a fill prefix explicitly; otherwise, Emacs tries to deduce one automatically (*note Adaptive Fill::). ‘C-x .’ Set the fill prefix (‘set-fill-prefix’). ‘M-q’ Fill a paragraph using current fill prefix (‘fill-paragraph’). ‘M-x fill-individual-paragraphs’ Fill the region, considering each change of indentation as starting a new paragraph. ‘M-x fill-nonuniform-paragraphs’ Fill the region, considering only paragraph-separator lines as starting a new paragraph. To specify a fill prefix for the current buffer, move to a line that starts with the desired prefix, put point at the end of the prefix, and type ‘C-x .’ (‘set-fill-prefix’). (That’s a period after the ‘C-x’.) To turn off the fill prefix, specify an empty prefix: type ‘C-x .’ with point at the beginning of a line. When a fill prefix is in effect, the fill commands remove the fill prefix from each line of the paragraph before filling, and insert it on each line after filling. (The beginning of the first line of the paragraph is left unchanged, since often that is intentionally different.) Auto Fill mode also inserts the fill prefix automatically when it makes a new line (*note Auto Fill::). The ‘C-o’ command inserts the fill prefix on new lines it creates, when you use it at the beginning of a line (*note Blank Lines::). Conversely, the command ‘M-^’ deletes the prefix (if it occurs) after the newline that it deletes (*note Indentation::). For example, if ‘fill-column’ is 40 and you set the fill prefix to ‘;; ’, then ‘M-q’ in the following text ;; This is an ;; example of a paragraph ;; inside a Lisp-style comment. produces this: ;; This is an example of a paragraph ;; inside a Lisp-style comment. Lines that do not start with the fill prefix are considered to start paragraphs, both in ‘M-q’ and the paragraph commands; this gives good results for paragraphs with hanging indentation (every line indented except the first one). Lines which are blank or indented once the prefix is removed also separate or start paragraphs; this is what you want if you are writing multi-paragraph comments with a comment delimiter on each line. You can use ‘M-x fill-individual-paragraphs’ to set the fill prefix for each paragraph automatically. This command divides the region into paragraphs, treating every change in the amount of indentation as the start of a new paragraph, and fills each of these paragraphs. Thus, all the lines in one paragraph have the same amount of indentation. That indentation serves as the fill prefix for that paragraph. ‘M-x fill-nonuniform-paragraphs’ is a similar command that divides the region into paragraphs in a different way. It considers only paragraph-separating lines (as defined by ‘paragraph-separate’) as starting a new paragraph. Since this means that the lines of one paragraph may have different amounts of indentation, the fill prefix used is the smallest amount of indentation of any of the lines of the paragraph. This gives good results with styles that indent a paragraph’s first line more or less that the rest of the paragraph. The fill prefix is stored in the variable ‘fill-prefix’. Its value is a string, or ‘nil’ when there is no fill prefix. This is a per-buffer variable; altering the variable affects only the current buffer, but there is a default value which you can change as well. *Note Locals::. The ‘indentation’ text property provides another way to control the amount of indentation paragraphs receive. *Note Enriched Indentation::. *** 25.6.4 Adaptive Filling The fill commands can deduce the proper fill prefix for a paragraph automatically in certain cases: either whitespace or certain punctuation characters at the beginning of a line are propagated to all lines of the paragraph. If the paragraph has two or more lines, the fill prefix is taken from the paragraph’s second line, but only if it appears on the first line as well. If a paragraph has just one line, fill commands _may_ take a prefix from that line. The decision is complicated because there are three reasonable things to do in such a case: • Use the first line’s prefix on all the lines of the paragraph. • Indent subsequent lines with whitespace, so that they line up under the text that follows the prefix on the first line, but don’t actually copy the prefix from the first line. • Don’t do anything special with the second and following lines. All three of these styles of formatting are commonly used. So the fill commands try to determine what you would like, based on the prefix that appears and on the major mode. Here is how. If the prefix found on the first line matches ‘adaptive-fill-first-line-regexp’, or if it appears to be a comment-starting sequence (this depends on the major mode), then the prefix found is used for filling the paragraph, provided it would not act as a paragraph starter on subsequent lines. Otherwise, the prefix found is converted to an equivalent number of spaces, and those spaces are used as the fill prefix for the rest of the lines, provided they would not act as a paragraph starter on subsequent lines. In Text mode, and other modes where only blank lines and page delimiters separate paragraphs, the prefix chosen by adaptive filling never acts as a paragraph starter, so it can always be used for filling. The variable ‘adaptive-fill-regexp’ determines what kinds of line beginnings can serve as a fill prefix: any characters at the start of the line that match this regular expression are used. If you set the variable ‘adaptive-fill-mode’ to ‘nil’, the fill prefix is never chosen automatically. You can specify more complex ways of choosing a fill prefix automatically by setting the variable ‘adaptive-fill-function’ to a function. This function is called with point after the left margin of a line, and it should return the appropriate fill prefix based on that line. If it returns ‘nil’, ‘adaptive-fill-regexp’ gets a chance to find a prefix. ** 25.7 Case Conversion Commands Emacs has commands for converting either a single word or any arbitrary range of text to upper case or to lower case. ‘M-l’ Convert following word to lower case (‘downcase-word’). ‘M-u’ Convert following word to upper case (‘upcase-word’). ‘M-c’ Capitalize the following word (‘capitalize-word’). ‘C-x C-l’ Convert region to lower case (‘downcase-region’). ‘C-x C-u’ Convert region to upper case (‘upcase-region’). ‘M-l’ (‘downcase-word’) converts the word after point to lower case, moving past it. Thus, repeating ‘M-l’ converts successive words. ‘M-u’ (‘upcase-word’) converts to all capitals instead, while ‘M-c’ (‘capitalize-word’) puts the first letter of the word into upper case and the rest into lower case. All these commands convert several words at once if given an argument. They are especially convenient for converting a large amount of text from all upper case to mixed case, because you can move through the text using ‘M-l’, ‘M-u’ or ‘M-c’ on each word as appropriate, occasionally using ‘M-f’ instead to skip a word. When given a negative argument, the word case conversion commands apply to the appropriate number of words before point, but do not move point. This is convenient when you have just typed a word in the wrong case: you can give the case conversion command and continue typing. If a word case conversion command is given in the middle of a word, it applies only to the part of the word which follows point. (This is comparable to what ‘M-d’ (‘kill-word’) does.) With a negative argument, case conversion applies only to the part of the word before point. The other case conversion commands are ‘C-x C-u’ (‘upcase-region’) and ‘C-x C-l’ (‘downcase-region’), which convert everything between point and mark to the specified case. Point and mark do not move. The region case conversion commands ‘upcase-region’ and ‘downcase-region’ are normally disabled. This means that they ask for confirmation if you try to use them. When you confirm, you may enable the command, which means it will not ask for confirmation again. *Note Disabling::. ** 25.8 Text Mode Text mode is a major mode for editing files of text in a human language. Files which have names ending in the extension ‘.txt’ are usually opened in Text mode (*note Choosing Modes::). To explicitly switch to Text mode, type ‘M-x text-mode’. In Text mode, only blank lines and page delimiters separate paragraphs. As a result, paragraphs can be indented, and adaptive filling determines what indentation to use when filling a paragraph. *Note Adaptive Fill::. In Text mode, the (‘indent-for-tab-command’) command usually inserts whitespace up to the next tab stop, instead of indenting the current line. *Note Indentation::, for details. Text mode turns off the features concerned with comments except when you explicitly invoke them. It changes the syntax table so that apostrophes are considered part of words (e.g., ‘don't’ is considered one word). However, if a word starts with an apostrophe, it is treated as a prefix for the purposes of capitalization (e.g., ‘M-c’ converts ‘'hello'’ into ‘'Hello'’, as expected). If you indent the first lines of paragraphs, then you should use Paragraph-Indent Text mode (‘M-x paragraph-indent-text-mode’) rather than Text mode. In that mode, you do not need to have blank lines between paragraphs, because the first-line indentation is sufficient to start a paragraph; however paragraphs in which every line is indented are not supported. Use ‘M-x paragraph-indent-minor-mode’ to enable an equivalent minor mode for situations where you shouldn’t change the major mode—in mail composition, for instance. Text mode binds ‘M-’ to ‘ispell-complete-word’. This command performs completion of the partial word in the buffer before point, using the spelling dictionary as the space of possible words. *Note Spelling::. If your window manager defines ‘M-’ to switch windows, you can type ‘ ’ or ‘C-M-i’ instead. Entering Text mode runs the mode hook ‘text-mode-hook’ (*note Major Modes::). The following sections describe several major modes that are "derived" from Text mode. These derivatives share most of the features of Text mode described above. In particular, derivatives of Text mode run ‘text-mode-hook’ prior to running their own mode hooks. ** 25.9 Outline Mode Outline mode is a major mode derived from Text mode, which is specialized for editing outlines. It provides commands to navigate between entries in the outline structure, and commands to make parts of a buffer temporarily invisible, so that the outline structure may be more easily viewed. Type ‘M-x outline-mode’ to switch to Outline mode. Entering Outline mode runs the hook ‘text-mode-hook’ followed by the hook ‘outline-mode-hook’ (*note Hooks::). When you use an Outline mode command to make a line invisible (*note Outline Visibility::), the line disappears from the screen. An ellipsis (three periods in a row) is displayed at the end of the previous visible line, to indicate the hidden text. Multiple consecutive invisible lines produce just one ellipsis. Editing commands that operate on lines, such as ‘C-n’ and ‘C-p’, treat the text of the invisible line as part of the previous visible line. Killing the ellipsis at the end of a visible line really kills all the following invisible text associated with the ellipsis. Outline minor mode is a buffer-local minor mode which provides the same commands as the major mode, Outline mode, but can be used in conjunction with other major modes. You can type ‘M-x outline-minor-mode’ to toggle Outline minor mode in the current buffer, or use a file-local variable setting to enable it in a specific file (*note File Variables::). The major mode, Outline mode, provides special key bindings on the ‘C-c’ prefix. Outline minor mode provides similar bindings with ‘C-c @’ as the prefix; this is to reduce the conflicts with the major mode’s special commands. (The variable ‘outline-minor-mode-prefix’ controls the prefix used.) + Menu: - Outline Format:: What the text of an outline looks like. - Outline Motion:: Special commands for moving through outlines. - Outline Visibility:: Commands to control what is visible. - Outline Views:: Outlines and multiple views. - Foldout:: Folding means zooming in on outlines. *** 25.9.1 Format of Outlines Outline mode assumes that the lines in the buffer are of two types: "heading lines" and "body lines". A heading line represents a topic in the outline. Heading lines start with one or more asterisk (‘*’) characters; the number of asterisks determines the depth of the heading in the outline structure. Thus, a heading line with one ‘*’ is a major topic; all the heading lines with two ‘*’s between it and the next one-‘*’ heading are its subtopics; and so on. Any line that is not a heading line is a body line. Body lines belong with the preceding heading line. Here is an example: * Food This is the body, which says something about the topic of food. ** Delicious Food This is the body of the second-level header. ** Distasteful Food This could have a body too, with several lines. *** Dormitory Food * Shelter Another first-level topic with its header line. A heading line together with all following body lines is called collectively an "entry". A heading line together with all following deeper heading lines and their body lines is called a "subtree". You can customize the criterion for distinguishing heading lines by setting the variable ‘outline-regexp’. (The recommended ways to do this are in a major mode function or with a file local variable.) Any line whose beginning has a match for this regexp is considered a heading line. Matches that start within a line (not at the left margin) do not count. The length of the matching text determines the level of the heading; longer matches make a more deeply nested level. Thus, for example, if a text formatter has commands ‘@chapter’, ‘@section’ and ‘@subsection’ to divide the document into chapters and sections, you could make those lines count as heading lines by setting ‘outline-regexp’ to ‘"@chap\\|@\\(sub\\)*section"’. Note the trick: the two words ‘chapter’ and ‘section’ are equally long, but by defining the regexp to match only ‘chap’ we ensure that the length of the text matched on a chapter heading is shorter, so that Outline mode will know that sections are contained in chapters. This works as long as no other command starts with ‘@chap’. You can explicitly specify a rule for calculating the level of a heading line by setting the variable ‘outline-level’. The value of ‘outline-level’ should be a function that takes no arguments and returns the level of the current heading. The recommended ways to set this variable are in a major mode command or with a file local variable. *** 25.9.2 Outline Motion Commands Outline mode provides special motion commands that move backward and forward to heading lines. ‘C-c C-n’ Move point to the next visible heading line (‘outline-next-visible-heading’). ‘C-c C-p’ Move point to the previous visible heading line (‘outline-previous-visible-heading’). ‘C-c C-f’ Move point to the next visible heading line at the same level as the one point is on (‘outline-forward-same-level’). ‘C-c C-b’ Move point to the previous visible heading line at the same level (‘outline-backward-same-level’). ‘C-c C-u’ Move point up to a lower-level (more inclusive) visible heading line (‘outline-up-heading’). All of the above commands accept numeric arguments as repeat counts. For example, ‘C-c C-f’, when given an argument, moves forward that many visible heading lines on the same level, and ‘C-c C-u’ with an argument moves out of that many nested levels. *** 25.9.3 Outline Visibility Commands Outline mode provides several commands for temporarily hiding or revealing parts of the buffer, based on the outline structure. These commands are not undoable; their effects are simply not recorded by the undo mechanism, so you can undo right past them (*note Undo::). Many of these commands act on the current heading line. If point is on a heading line, that is the current heading line; if point is on a body line, the current heading line is the nearest preceding header line. ‘C-c C-c’ Make the current heading line’s body invisible (‘outline-hide-entry’). ‘C-c C-e’ Make the current heading line’s body visible (‘outline-show-entry’). ‘C-c C-d’ Make everything under the current heading invisible, not including the heading itself (‘outline-hide-subtree’). ‘C-c C-s’ Make everything under the current heading visible, including body, subheadings, and their bodies (‘outline-show-subtree’). ‘C-c C-l’ Make the body of the current heading line, and of all its subheadings, invisible (‘outline-hide-leaves’). ‘C-c C-k’ Make all subheadings of the current heading line, at all levels, visible (‘outline-show-branches’). ‘C-c C-i’ Make immediate subheadings (one level down) of the current heading line visible (‘outline-show-children’). ‘C-c C-t’ Make all body lines in the buffer invisible (‘outline-hide-body’). ‘C-c C-a’ Make all lines in the buffer visible (‘outline-show-all’). ‘C-c C-q’ Hide everything except the top N levels of heading lines (‘outline-hide-sublevels’). ‘C-c C-o’ Hide everything except for the heading or body that point is in, plus the headings leading up from there to the top level of the outline (‘outline-hide-other’). The simplest of these commands are ‘C-c C-c’ (‘outline-hide-entry’), which hides the body lines directly following the current heading line, and ‘C-c C-e’ (‘outline-show-entry’), which reveals them. Subheadings and their bodies are not affected. The commands ‘C-c C-d’ (‘outline-hide-subtree’) and ‘C-c C-s’ (‘outline-show-subtree’) are more powerful. They apply to the current heading line’s "subtree": its body, all of its subheadings, both direct and indirect, and all of their bodies. The command ‘C-c C-l’ (‘outline-hide-leaves’) hides the body of the current heading line as well as all the bodies in its subtree; the subheadings themselves are left visible. The command ‘C-c C-k’ (‘outline-show-branches’) reveals the subheadings, if they had previously been hidden (e.g., by ‘C-c C-d’). The command ‘C-c C-i’ (‘outline-show-children’) is a weaker version of this; it reveals just the direct subheadings, i.e., those one level down. The command ‘C-c C-o’ (‘outline-hide-other’) hides everything except the entry that point is in, plus its parents (the headers leading up from there to top level in the outline) and the top level headings. It also reveals body lines preceding the first heading in the buffer. The remaining commands affect the whole buffer. ‘C-c C-t’ (‘outline-hide-body’) makes all body lines invisible, so that you see just the outline structure (as a special exception, it will not hide lines at the top of the file, preceding the first header line, even though these are technically body lines). ‘C-c C-a’ (‘outline-show-all’) makes all lines visible. ‘C-c C-q’ (‘outline-hide-sublevels’) hides all but the top level headings at and above the level of the current heading line (defaulting to 1 if point is not on a heading); with a numeric argument N, it hides everything except the top N levels of heading lines. Note that it completely reveals all the N top levels and the body lines before the first heading. When incremental search finds text that is hidden by Outline mode, it makes that part of the buffer visible. If you exit the search at that position, the text remains visible. To toggle whether or not an active incremental search can match hidden text, type ‘M-s i’. To change the default for future searches, customize the option ‘search-invisible’. (This option also affects how ‘query-replace’ and related functions treat hidden text, *note Query Replace::.) You can also automatically make text visible as you navigate in it by using Reveal mode (‘M-x reveal-mode’), a buffer-local minor mode. *** 25.9.4 Viewing One Outline in Multiple Views You can display two views of a single outline at the same time, in different windows. To do this, you must create an indirect buffer using ‘M-x make-indirect-buffer’. The first argument of this command is the existing outline buffer name, and its second argument is the name to use for the new indirect buffer. *Note Indirect Buffers::. Once the indirect buffer exists, you can display it in a window in the normal fashion, with ‘C-x 4 b’ or other Emacs commands. The Outline mode commands to show and hide parts of the text operate on each buffer independently; as a result, each buffer can have its own view. If you want more than two views on the same outline, create additional indirect buffers. *** 25.9.5 Folding Editing The Foldout package extends Outline mode and Outline minor mode with folding commands. The idea of folding is that you zoom in on a nested portion of the outline, while hiding its relatives at higher levels. Consider an Outline mode buffer with all the text and subheadings under level-1 headings hidden. To look at what is hidden under one of these headings, you could use ‘C-c C-e’ (‘M-x outline-show-entry’) to expose the body, or ‘C-c C-i’ to expose the child (level-2) headings. With Foldout, you use ‘C-c C-z’ (‘M-x foldout-zoom-subtree’). This exposes the body and child subheadings, and narrows the buffer so that only the level-1 heading, the body and the level-2 headings are visible. Now to look under one of the level-2 headings, position the cursor on it and use ‘C-c C-z’ again. This exposes the level-2 body and its level-3 child subheadings and narrows the buffer again. Zooming in on successive subheadings can be done as much as you like. A string in the mode line shows how deep you’ve gone. When zooming in on a heading, to see only the child subheadings specify a numeric argument: ‘C-u C-c C-z’. The number of levels of children can be specified too (compare ‘M-x outline-show-children’), e.g., ‘M-2 C-c C-z’ exposes two levels of child subheadings. Alternatively, the body can be specified with a negative argument: ‘M-- C-c C-z’. The whole subtree can be expanded, similarly to ‘C-c C-s’ (‘M-x outline-show-subtree’), by specifying a zero argument: ‘M-0 C-c C-z’. While you’re zoomed in, you can still use Outline mode’s exposure and hiding functions without disturbing Foldout. Also, since the buffer is narrowed, global editing actions will only affect text under the zoomed-in heading. This is useful for restricting changes to a particular chapter or section of your document. To unzoom (exit) a fold, use ‘C-c C-x’ (‘M-x foldout-exit-fold’). This hides all the text and subheadings under the top-level heading and returns you to the previous view of the buffer. Specifying a numeric argument exits that many levels of folds. Specifying a zero argument exits all folds. To cancel the narrowing of a fold without hiding the text and subheadings, specify a negative argument. For example, ‘M--2 C-c C-x’ exits two folds and leaves the text and subheadings exposed. Foldout mode also provides mouse commands for entering and exiting folds, and for showing and hiding text: ‘C-M-mouse-1’ zooms in on the heading clicked on single click: expose body. double click: expose subheadings. triple click: expose body and subheadings. quad click: expose entire subtree. ‘C-M-mouse-2’ exposes text under the heading clicked on single click: expose body. double click: expose subheadings. triple click: expose body and subheadings. quad click: expose entire subtree. ‘C-M-mouse-3’ hides text under the heading clicked on or exits fold single click: hide subtree. double click: exit fold and hide text. triple click: exit fold without hiding text. quad click: exit all folds and hide text. You can specify different modifier keys (instead of ‘--’) by setting ‘foldout-mouse-modifiers’; but if you have already loaded the ‘foldout.el’ library, you must reload it in order for this to take effect. To use the Foldout package, you can type ‘M-x load-library foldout ’; or you can arrange for to do that automatically by putting the following in your init file: (with-eval-after-load "outline" (require 'foldout)) ** 25.10 Org Mode Org mode is a variant of Outline mode for using Emacs as an organizer and/or authoring system. Files with names ending in the extension ‘.org’ are opened in Org mode (*note Choosing Modes::). To explicitly switch to Org mode, type ‘M-x org-mode’. In Org mode, as in Outline mode, each entry has a heading line that starts with one or more ‘*’ characters. *Note Outline Format::. In addition, any line that begins with the ‘#’ character is treated as a comment. Org mode provides commands for easily viewing and manipulating the outline structure. The simplest of these commands is (‘org-cycle’). If invoked on a heading line, it cycles through the different visibility states of the subtree: (i) showing only that heading line, (ii) showing only the heading line and the heading lines of its direct children, if any, and (iii) showing the entire subtree. If invoked in a body line, the global binding for is executed. Typing ‘S-’ (‘org-shifttab’) anywhere in an Org mode buffer cycles the visibility of the entire outline structure, between (i) showing only top-level heading lines, (ii) showing all heading lines but no body lines, and (iii) showing everything. You can move an entire entry up or down in the buffer, including its body lines and subtree (if any), by typing ‘M-’ (‘org-metaup’) or ‘M-’ (‘org-metadown’) on the heading line. Similarly, you can promote or demote a heading line with ‘M-’ (‘org-metaleft’) and ‘M-’ (‘org-metaright’). These commands execute their global bindings if invoked on a body line. The following subsections give basic instructions for using Org mode as an organizer and as an authoring system. For details, *note The Org Mode Manual: (org)Top. + Menu: - Org Organizer:: Managing TODO lists and agendas. - Org Authoring:: Exporting Org buffers to various formats. *** 25.10.1 Org as an organizer You can tag an Org entry as a "TODO" item by typing ‘C-c C-t’ (‘org-todo’) anywhere in the entry. This adds the keyword ‘TODO’ to the heading line. Typing ‘C-c C-t’ again switches the keyword to ‘DONE’; another ‘C-c C-t’ removes the keyword entirely, and so forth. You can customize the keywords used by ‘C-c C-t’ via the variable ‘org-todo-keywords’. Apart from marking an entry as TODO, you can attach a date to it, by typing ‘C-c C-s’ (‘org-schedule’) in the entry. This prompts for a date by popping up the Emacs Calendar (*note Calendar/Diary::), and then adds the tag ‘SCHEDULED’, together with the selected date, beneath the heading line. The command ‘C-c C-d’ (‘org-deadline’) has the same effect, except that it uses the tag ‘DEADLINE’. Once you have some TODO items planned in an Org file, you can add that file to the list of "agenda files" by typing ‘C-c [’ (‘org-agenda-file-to-front’). Org mode is designed to let you easily maintain multiple agenda files, e.g., for organizing different aspects of your life. The list of agenda files is stored in the variable ‘org-agenda-files’. To view items coming from your agenda files, type ‘M-x org-agenda’. This command prompts for what you want to see: a list of things to do this week, a list of TODO items with specific keywords, etc. *Note (org)Agenda views::, for details. *** 25.10.2 Org as an authoring system You may want to format your Org notes nicely and to prepare them for export and publication. To export the current buffer, type ‘C-c C-e’ (‘org-export’) anywhere in an Org buffer. This command prompts for an export format; currently supported formats include HTML, LaTeX, Texinfo, OpenDocument (‘.odt’), iCalendar, Markdown, man-page, and PDF. Some formats, such as PDF, require certain system tools to be installed. To export several files at once to a specific directory, either locally or over the network, you must define a list of projects through the variable ‘org-publish-project-alist’. See its documentation for details. Org supports a simple markup scheme for applying text formatting to exported documents: - This text is /emphasized/ - This text is *in bold* - This text is _underlined_ - This text uses =a teletype font= #+begin_quote ``This is a quote.'' #+end_quote #+begin_example This is an example. #+end_example For further details, *note (org)Exporting::, and *note (org)Publishing::. ** 25.11 TeX Mode TeX is a powerful text formatter written by Donald Knuth; like GNU Emacs, it is free software. The TeX format has several variants, including LaTeX, a simplified input format for TeX; DocTeX, a special file format in which the LaTeX sources are written, combining sources with documentation; and SliTeX, an obsolete special form of LaTeX(1). Emacs provides a TeX major mode for each of these variants: Plain TeX mode, LaTeX mode, DocTeX mode, and SliTeX mode. Emacs selects the appropriate mode by looking at the contents of the buffer. (This is done by invoking the ‘tex-mode’ command, which is normally called automatically when you visit a TeX-like file. *Note Choosing Modes::.) If the contents are insufficient to determine this, Emacs chooses the mode specified by the variable ‘tex-default-mode’; its default value is ‘latex-mode’. If Emacs does not guess right, you can select the correct variant of TeX mode using the commands ‘plain-tex-mode’, ‘latex-mode’, ‘slitex-mode’, or ‘doctex-mode’. The following sections document the features of TeX mode and its variants. There are several other TeX-related Emacs packages, which are not documented in this manual: • BibTeX mode is a major mode for BibTeX files, which are commonly used for keeping bibliographic references for LaTeX documents. For more information, see the documentation string for the command ‘bibtex-mode’. • The RefTeX package provides a minor mode which can be used with LaTeX mode to manage bibliographic references. *Note The RefTeX Manual: (reftex)Top. • The AUCTeX package provides more advanced features for editing TeX and its related formats, including the ability to preview TeX equations within Emacs buffers. Unlike BibTeX mode and the RefTeX package, AUCTeX is not distributed with Emacs by default. It can be downloaded via the Package Menu (*note Packages::); once installed, see *note The AUCTeX Manual: (auctex)Top. + Menu: - TeX Editing:: Special commands for editing in TeX mode. - LaTeX Editing:: Additional commands for LaTeX input files. - TeX Print:: Commands for printing part of a file with TeX. - TeX Misc:: Customization of TeX mode, and related features. ---------- Footnotes ---------- (1) It has been replaced by the ‘slides’ document class, which comes with LaTeX. *** 25.11.1 TeX Editing Commands ‘"’ Insert, according to context, either ‘``’ or ‘"’ or ‘''’ (‘tex-insert-quote’). ‘C-j’ Insert a paragraph break (two newlines) and check the previous paragraph for unbalanced braces or dollar signs (‘tex-terminate-paragraph’). ‘M-x tex-validate-region’ Check each paragraph in the region for unbalanced braces or dollar signs. ‘C-c {’ Insert ‘{}’ and position point between them (‘tex-insert-braces’). ‘C-c }’ Move forward past the next unmatched close brace (‘up-list’). In TeX, the character ‘"’ is not normally used; instead, quotations begin with ‘``’ and end with ‘''’. TeX mode therefore binds the ‘"’ key to the ‘tex-insert-quote’ command. This inserts ‘``’ after whitespace or an open brace, ‘"’ after a backslash, and ‘''’ after any other character. As a special exception, if you type ‘"’ when the text before point is either ‘``’ or ‘''’, Emacs replaces that preceding text with a single ‘"’ character. You can therefore type ‘""’ to insert ‘"’, should you ever need to do so. (You can also use ‘C-q "’ to insert this character.) In TeX mode, ‘$’ has a special syntax code which attempts to understand the way TeX math mode delimiters match. When you insert a ‘$’ that is meant to exit math mode, the position of the matching ‘$’ that entered math mode is displayed for a second. This is the same feature that displays the open brace that matches a close brace that is inserted. However, there is no way to tell whether a ‘$’ enters math mode or leaves it; so when you insert a ‘$’ that enters math mode, the previous ‘$’ position is shown as if it were a match, even though they are actually unrelated. TeX uses braces as delimiters that must match. Some users prefer to keep braces balanced at all times, rather than inserting them singly. Use ‘C-c {’ (‘tex-insert-braces’) to insert a pair of braces. It leaves point between the two braces so you can insert the text that belongs inside. Afterward, use the command ‘C-c }’ (‘up-list’) to move forward past the close brace. You can also invoke ‘C-c {’ after marking some text: then the command encloses the marked text in braces. There are two commands for checking the matching of braces. ‘C-j’ (‘tex-terminate-paragraph’) checks the paragraph before point, and inserts two newlines to start a new paragraph. It outputs a message in the echo area if any mismatch is found. ‘M-x tex-validate-region’ checks a region, paragraph by paragraph. The errors are listed in an ‘*Occur*’ buffer; you can use the usual Occur mode commands in that buffer, such as ‘C-c C-c’, to visit a particular mismatch (*note Other Repeating Search::). Note that Emacs commands count square brackets and parentheses in TeX mode, not just braces. This is not strictly correct for the purpose of checking TeX syntax. However, parentheses and square brackets are likely to be used in text as matching delimiters, and it is useful for the various motion commands and automatic match display to work with them. *** 25.11.2 LaTeX Editing Commands LaTeX mode provides a few extra features not applicable to plain TeX: ‘C-c C-o’ Insert ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ for LaTeX block and position point on a line between them (‘tex-latex-block’). ‘C-c C-e’ Close the innermost LaTeX block not yet closed (‘tex-close-latex-block’). In LaTeX input, ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ tags are used to group blocks of text. To insert a block, type ‘C-c C-o’ (‘tex-latex-block’). This prompts for a block type, and inserts the appropriate matching ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ tags, leaving a blank line between the two and moving point there. When entering the block type argument to ‘C-c C-o’, you can use the usual completion commands (*note Completion::). The default completion list contains the standard LaTeX block types. If you want additional block types for completion, customize the list variable ‘latex-block-names’. In LaTeX input, ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ tags must balance. You can use ‘C-c C-e’ (‘tex-close-latex-block’) to insert an ‘\end’ tag which matches the last unmatched ‘\begin’. It also indents the ‘\end’ to match the corresponding ‘\begin’, and inserts a newline after the ‘\end’ tag if point is at the beginning of a line. The minor mode ‘latex-electric-env-pair-mode’ automatically inserts an ‘\end’ or ‘\begin’ tag for you when you type the corresponding one. *** 25.11.3 TeX Printing Commands You can invoke TeX as a subprocess of Emacs, supplying either the entire contents of the buffer or just part of it (e.g., one chapter of a larger document). ‘C-c C-b’ Invoke TeX on the entire current buffer (‘tex-buffer’). ‘C-c C-r’ Invoke TeX on the current region, together with the buffer’s header (‘tex-region’). ‘C-c C-f’ Invoke TeX on the current file (‘tex-file’). ‘C-c C-v’ Preview the output from the last ‘C-c C-b’, ‘C-c C-r’, or ‘C-c C-f’ command (‘tex-view’). ‘C-c C-p’ Print the output from the last ‘C-c C-b’, ‘C-c C-r’, or ‘C-c C-f’ command (‘tex-print’). ‘C-c ’ Invoke BibTeX on the current file (‘tex-bibtex-file’). ‘C-c C-l’ Recenter the window showing output from TeX so that the last line can be seen (‘tex-recenter-output-buffer’). ‘C-c C-k’ Kill the TeX subprocess (‘tex-kill-job’). ‘C-c C-c’ Invoke some other compilation command on the entire current buffer (‘tex-compile’). To pass the current buffer through TeX, type ‘C-c C-b’ (‘tex-buffer’). The formatted output goes in a temporary file, normally a ‘.dvi’ file. Afterwards, you can type ‘C-c C-v’ (‘tex-view’) to launch an external program, such as ‘xdvi’, to view this output file. You can also type ‘C-c C-p’ (‘tex-print’) to print a hardcopy of the output file. By default, ‘C-c C-b’ runs TeX in the current directory. The output of TeX is also created in this directory. To run TeX in a different directory, change the variable ‘tex-directory’ to the desired directory. If your environment variable ‘TEXINPUTS’ contains relative names, or if your files contain ‘\input’ commands with relative file names, then ‘tex-directory’ _must_ be ‘"."’ or you will get the wrong results. Otherwise, it is safe to specify some other directory, such as ‘"/tmp"’. The buffer’s TeX variant determines what shell command ‘C-c C-b’ actually runs. In Plain TeX mode, it is specified by the variable ‘tex-run-command’, which defaults to ‘"tex"’. In LaTeX mode, it is specified by ‘latex-run-command’, which defaults to ‘"latex"’. The shell command that ‘C-c C-v’ runs to view the ‘.dvi’ output is determined by the variable ‘tex-dvi-view-command’, regardless of the TeX variant. The shell command that ‘C-c C-p’ runs to print the output is determined by the variable ‘tex-dvi-print-command’. The variable ‘tex-print-file-extension’ can be set to the required file extension for viewing and printing TeX-compiled files. For example, you can set it to ‘.pdf’, and update ‘tex-dvi-view-command’ and ‘tex-dvi-print-command’ accordingly. Normally, Emacs automatically appends the output file name to the shell command strings described in the preceding paragraph. For example, if ‘tex-dvi-view-command’ is ‘"xdvi"’, ‘C-c C-v’ runs ‘xdvi OUTPUT-FILE-NAME’. In some cases, however, the file name needs to be embedded in the command, e.g., if you need to provide the file name as an argument to one command whose output is piped to another. You can specify where to put the file name with ‘*’ in the command string. For example, (setq tex-dvi-print-command "dvips -f * | lpr") The terminal output from TeX, including any error messages, appears in a buffer called ‘*tex-shell*’. If TeX gets an error, you can switch to this buffer and feed it input (this works as in Shell mode; *note Interactive Shell::). Without switching to this buffer you can scroll it so that its last line is visible by typing ‘C-c C-l’. Type ‘C-c C-k’ (‘tex-kill-job’) to kill the TeX process if you see that its output is no longer useful. Using ‘C-c C-b’ or ‘C-c C-r’ also kills any TeX process still running. You can also pass an arbitrary region through TeX by typing ‘C-c C-r’ (‘tex-region’). This is tricky, however, because most files of TeX input contain commands at the beginning to set parameters and define macros, without which no later part of the file will format correctly. To solve this problem, ‘C-c C-r’ allows you to designate a part of the file as containing essential commands; it is included before the specified region as part of the input to TeX. The designated part of the file is called the "header". To indicate the bounds of the header in Plain TeX mode, you insert two special strings in the file. Insert ‘%**start of header’ before the header, and ‘%**end of header’ after it. Each string must appear entirely on one line, but there may be other text on the line before or after. The lines containing the two strings are included in the header. If ‘%**start of header’ does not appear within the first 100 lines of the buffer, ‘C-c C-r’ assumes that there is no header. In LaTeX mode, the header begins with ‘\documentclass’ or ‘\documentstyle’ and ends with ‘\begin{document}’. These are commands that LaTeX requires you to use in any case, so nothing special needs to be done to identify the header. The commands (‘tex-buffer’) and (‘tex-region’) do all of their work in a temporary directory, and do not have available any of the auxiliary files needed by TeX for cross-references; these commands are generally not suitable for running the final copy in which all of the cross-references need to be correct. When you want the auxiliary files for cross references, use ‘C-c C-f’ (‘tex-file’) which runs TeX on the current buffer’s file, in that file’s directory. Before running TeX, it offers to save any modified buffers. Generally, you need to use (‘tex-file’) twice to get the cross-references right. The value of the variable ‘tex-start-options’ specifies options for the TeX run. The value of the variable ‘tex-start-commands’ specifies TeX commands for starting TeX. The default value causes TeX to run in nonstop mode. To run TeX interactively, set the variable to ‘""’. Large TeX documents are often split into several files—one main file, plus subfiles. Running TeX on a subfile typically does not work; you have to run it on the main file. In order to make ‘tex-file’ useful when you are editing a subfile, you can set the variable ‘tex-main-file’ to the name of the main file. Then ‘tex-file’ runs TeX on that file. The most convenient way to use ‘tex-main-file’ is to specify it in a local variable list in each of the subfiles. *Note File Variables::. For LaTeX files, you can use BibTeX to process the auxiliary file for the current buffer’s file. BibTeX looks up bibliographic citations in a data base and prepares the cited references for the bibliography section. The command ‘C-c ’ (‘tex-bibtex-file’) runs the shell command (‘tex-bibtex-command’) to produce a ‘.bbl’ file for the current buffer’s file. Generally, you need to do ‘C-c C-f’ (‘tex-file’) once to generate the ‘.aux’ file, then do ‘C-c ’ (‘tex-bibtex-file’), and then repeat ‘C-c C-f’ (‘tex-file’) twice more to get the cross-references correct. To invoke some other compilation program on the current TeX buffer, type ‘C-c C-c’ (‘tex-compile’). This command knows how to pass arguments to many common programs, including ‘pdflatex’, ‘yap’, ‘xdvi’, and ‘dvips’. You can select your desired compilation program using the standard completion keys (*note Completion::). *** 25.11.4 TeX Mode Miscellany Entering any variant of TeX mode runs the hooks ‘text-mode-hook’ and ‘tex-mode-hook’. Then it runs either ‘plain-tex-mode-hook’, ‘doctex-mode-hook’, ‘latex-mode-hook’, or ‘slitex-mode-hook’, whichever is appropriate. Starting the TeX shell runs the hook ‘tex-shell-hook’. *Note Hooks::. The commands ‘M-x iso-iso2tex’, ‘M-x iso-tex2iso’, ‘M-x iso-iso2gtex’ and ‘M-x iso-gtex2iso’ can be used to convert between Latin-1 encoded files and TeX-encoded equivalents. ** 25.12 SGML and HTML Modes The major modes for SGML and HTML provide indentation support and commands for operating on tags. HTML consists of two modes—one, a basic mode called ‘html-mode’ is a slightly customized variant of SGML mode. The other, which is used by default for HTML files, is called ‘mhtml-mode’, and attempts to properly handle Javascript enclosed in a ‘