Emacs Tips

Emacs Tips

Some of the useful Emacs features are not obvious to users. Here are just some things that I have figured out the hard way.

Get Around Backspace Problem During Search

If you have used XEmacs before, you would have noticed while typing a search word in GNU Emacs, hitting the backspace key will not modify the search word, but delete a charater in the edit buffer. This is sometime annoying. Here is the fix.

(define-key isearch-mode-map '[backspace] 'isearch-delete-char)
          

Useful Emacs Commands

Commands	Comments
C-q C-j	insert new line This will insert a newline character in the buffer. It is especially useful when trying to insert a newline in the minibuffer.
M-:	eval-expression After typing the command, you can invoke an interactive lisp command with argument. For example, (forward-char 10).
C-x ESC ESC	repeat-complex-command After typing the command, you will see "Redo: (....)" at the mini buffer. the (....) is the last command you have executed through the mini buffer. You may press enter to execute the command. Or you may press alt-p or alt-n to select from the history of commands that you have executed through the mini buffer.
C-h k	describe-key After typing the command, you will see the "Describe Key:" prompt in the mini buffer. Now you can press any combination of keys to check what function is bound to the keys.
C-h l	100 keystrokes Lists the last 100 keystrokes.
C-h f	describe-function After typing the command, you will see the "Describe Function:" prompt in the mini buffer. Now you can enter a function name, for example forward-char. The description of the function will be shown in another buffer.
C-h v	describe-variable After typing the command, you will see the "Describe Variable:" prompt in the mini buffer. Now you can enter a variable name, for example inhibit-read-only. The description of the variable will be shown in another buffer.
M-x hexl-mode	Hex Editor Mode   While viewing a file, you may invoke the command to view the file in Hex/Binary mode. It allows you to "hex edit" the file. To insert a hex string, use "M-x hexl-insert-hex-char" or "M-x hexl-insert-hex-string". The external program used is distributed together with GNU Emacs. This means no additional installation is required.
M-x calendar	Calendar A calendar.
M-x calculator	Calculator This is a handy calculator. You can do number conversion with the following commands. D - to decimal X - to hexadecimal O - to octal B - to binary
M-x occur	Find the occurence of a specified string While visiting a buffer, this utility allows you to list out all the occurence of a specified regular expression.

 

From : http://www.khngai.com/emacs/tips.php