GNU Emacs Manual

GNU Emacs Manual

Seventeenth Edition, Updated for Emacs Version 26.2.

Richard Stallman et al.

This is the Seventeenth edition of the GNU Emacs Manual,
updated for Emacs version 26.2.
Copyright c 1985–1987, 1993–2019 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.”

Published by the Free Software Foundation

51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
ISBN 978-0-9831592-5-4

Cover art by Etienne Suvasa; cover design by Matt Lee.

 i

Short Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1 The Organization of the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Characters, Keys and Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3 Entering and Exiting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4 Basic Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5 The Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6 Running Commands by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
8 The Mark and the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
9 Killing and Moving Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
10 Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
11 Controlling the Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
12 Searching and Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
13 Commands for Fixing Typos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
14 Keyboard Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
15 File Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
16 Using Multiple Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
17 Multiple Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
18 Frames and Graphical Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
19 International Character Set Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
20 Major and Minor Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
21 Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
22 Commands for Human Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
23 Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
24 Compiling and Testing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
25 Maintaining Large Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
26 Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
27 Dired, the Directory Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
28 The Calendar and the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
29 Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
30 Reading Mail with Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
 ii

31 Miscellaneous Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404

32 Emacs Lisp Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
33 Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
34 Dealing with Common Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
A GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
B GNU Free Documentation License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
C Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation . . . . . . . . . . 514
D X Options and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
E Emacs 25 Antinews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
F Emacs and macOS / GNUstep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
G Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
The GNU Manifesto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
Key (Character) Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
Command and Function Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
Variable Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618
 iii

Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1 The Organization of the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.1 Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 The Echo Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 The Mode Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 The Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2 Characters, Keys and Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.1 Kinds of User Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 Keys and Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3 Entering and Exiting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.1 Entering Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2 Exiting Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4 Basic Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.1 Inserting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2 Changing the Location of Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3 Erasing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.4 Undoing Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.5 Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.6 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.7 Blank Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.8 Continuation Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.9 Cursor Position Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.10 Numeric Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.11 Repeating a Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5 The Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.1 Using the Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.2 Minibuffers for File Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.3 Editing in the Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.4 Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
 iv

5.4.1 Completion Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

5.4.2 Completion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
5.4.3 Completion Exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.4.4 How Completion Alternatives Are Chosen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5.4.5 Completion Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.5 Minibuffer History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.6 Repeating Minibuffer Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.7 Entering passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.8 Yes or No Prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

6 Running Commands by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

7 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
7.1 Documentation for a Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
7.2 Help by Command or Variable Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
7.3 Apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
7.4 Help Mode Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.5 Keyword Search for Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.6 Help for International Language Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.7 Other Help Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.8 Help Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
7.9 Help on Active Text and Tooltips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

8 The Mark and the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

8.1 Setting the Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.2 Commands to Mark Textual Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8.3 Operating on the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8.4 The Mark Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.5 The Global Mark Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
8.6 Shift Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
8.7 Disabling Transient Mark Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

9 Killing and Moving Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

9.1 Deletion and Killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9.1.1 Deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9.1.2 Killing by Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
9.1.3 Other Kill Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.1.4 Options for Killing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.2 Yanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.2.1 The Kill Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.2.2 Yanking Earlier Kills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.2.3 Appending Kills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
9.3 “Cut and Paste” Operations on Graphical Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.3.1 Using the Clipboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.3.2 Cut and Paste with Other Window Applications . . . . . . . . . . 61
9.3.3 Secondary Selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
 v

9.4 Accumulating Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

9.5 Rectangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
9.6 CUA Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

10 Registers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
10.1 Saving Positions in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
10.2 Saving Text in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
10.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
10.4 Saving Window Configurations in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
10.5 Keeping Numbers in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
10.6 Keeping File Names in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
10.7 Keyboard Macro Registers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
10.8 Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

11 Controlling the Display. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

11.1 Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
11.2 Recentering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
11.3 Automatic Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
11.4 Horizontal Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
11.5 Narrowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
11.6 View Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.7 Follow Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.8 Text Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.9 Colors for Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
11.10 Standard Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
11.11 Text Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
11.12 Font Lock mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
11.13 Interactive Highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
11.14 Window Fringes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
11.15 Displaying Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
11.16 Useless Whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
11.17 Selective Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
11.18 Optional Mode Line Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
11.19 How Text Is Displayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.20 Displaying the Cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.21 Line Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
11.22 Visual Line Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.23 Customization of Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

12 Searching and Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

12.1 Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
12.1.1 Basics of Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
12.1.2 Repeating Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
12.1.3 Isearch Yanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.1.4 Errors in Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.1.5 Special Input for Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
12.1.6 Not Exiting Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
 vi

12.1.7 Searching the Minibuffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

12.2 Nonincremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
12.3 Word Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
12.4 Symbol Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
12.5 Regular Expression Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
12.6 Syntax of Regular Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
12.7 Backslash in Regular Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
12.8 Regular Expression Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
12.9 Lax Matching During Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
12.10 Replacement Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12.10.1 Unconditional Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12.10.2 Regexp Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12.10.3 Replace Commands and Lax Matches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
12.10.4 Query Replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
12.11 Other Search-and-Loop Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
12.12 Tailoring Search to Your Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

13 Commands for Fixing Typos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

13.1 Undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
13.2 Transposing Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
13.3 Case Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
13.4 Checking and Correcting Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

14 Keyboard Macros. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

14.1 Basic Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
14.2 The Keyboard Macro Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
14.3 The Keyboard Macro Counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
14.4 Executing Macros with Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
14.5 Naming and Saving Keyboard Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
14.6 Editing a Keyboard Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
14.7 Stepwise Editing a Keyboard Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

15 File Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

15.1 File Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
15.2 Visiting Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
15.3 Saving Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
15.3.1 Commands for Saving Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
15.3.2 Backup Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
15.3.2.1 Single or Numbered Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
15.3.2.2 Automatic Deletion of Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
15.3.2.3 Copying vs. Renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
15.3.3 Customizing Saving of Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
15.3.4 Protection against Simultaneous Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
15.3.5 Shadowing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
15.3.6 Updating Time Stamps Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
15.4 Reverting a Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
15.5 Auto-Saving: Protection Against Disasters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
 vii

15.5.1 Auto-Save Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

15.5.2 Controlling Auto-Saving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
15.5.3 Recovering Data from Auto-Saves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
15.6 File Name Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
15.7 File Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
15.8 Comparing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
15.9 Diff Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
15.10 Copying, Naming and Renaming Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
15.11 Miscellaneous File Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
15.12 Accessing Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
15.13 File Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
15.14 Remote Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
15.15 Quoted File Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
15.16 File Name Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
15.17 Convenience Features for Finding Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
15.18 Filesets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

16 Using Multiple Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

16.1 Creating and Selecting Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
16.2 Listing Existing Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
16.3 Miscellaneous Buffer Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
16.4 Killing Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
16.5 Operating on Several Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
16.6 Indirect Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
16.7 Convenience Features and Customization of Buffer Handling . . 166
16.7.1 Making Buffer Names Unique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
16.7.2 Fast minibuffer selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
16.7.3 Customizing Buffer Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

17 Multiple Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

17.1 Concepts of Emacs Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
17.2 Splitting Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
17.3 Using Other Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
17.4 Displaying in Another Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
17.5 Deleting and Resizing Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
17.6 Displaying a Buffer in a Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
17.6.1 How display-buffer works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
17.6.2 Displaying non-editable buffers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
17.7 Convenience Features for Window Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

18 Frames and Graphical Displays. . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

18.1 Mouse Commands for Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
18.2 Mouse Commands for Words and Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
18.3 Following References with the Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
18.4 Mouse Clicks for Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
18.5 Mode Line Mouse Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
18.6 Creating Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
 viii

18.7 Frame Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

18.8 Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
18.9 Speedbar Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
18.10 Multiple Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
18.11 Frame Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
18.12 Scroll Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
18.13 Window Dividers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
18.14 Drag and Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
18.15 Menu Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
18.16 Tool Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
18.17 Using Dialog Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
18.18 Tooltips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
18.19 Mouse Avoidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
18.20 Non-Window Terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
18.21 Using a Mouse in Text Terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

19 International Character Set Support. . . . . . . 192

19.1 Introduction to International Character Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
19.2 Language Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
19.3 Input Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
19.4 Selecting an Input Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
19.5 Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
19.6 Recognizing Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
19.7 Specifying a File’s Coding System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
19.8 Choosing Coding Systems for Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
19.9 Specifying a Coding System for File Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
19.10 Coding Systems for Interprocess Communication . . . . . . . . . . . 204
19.11 Coding Systems for File Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
19.12 Coding Systems for Terminal I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
19.13 Fontsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
19.14 Defining Fontsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
19.15 Modifying Fontsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
19.16 Undisplayable Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
19.17 Unibyte Editing Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
19.18 Charsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
19.19 Bidirectional Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

20 Major and Minor Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

20.1 Major Modes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
20.2 Minor Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
20.3 Choosing File Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

21 Indentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
21.1 Indentation Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
21.2 Tab Stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
21.3 Tabs vs. Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
21.4 Convenience Features for Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
 ix

22 Commands for Human Languages . . . . . . . . . 225

22.1 Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
22.2 Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
22.3 Paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
22.4 Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
22.5 Quotation Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
22.6 Filling Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
22.6.1 Auto Fill Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
22.6.2 Explicit Fill Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
22.6.3 The Fill Prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
22.6.4 Adaptive Filling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
22.7 Case Conversion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
22.8 Text Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
22.9 Outline Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
22.9.1 Format of Outlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
22.9.2 Outline Motion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
22.9.3 Outline Visibility Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
22.9.4 Viewing One Outline in Multiple Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
22.9.5 Folding Editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
22.10 Org Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
22.10.1 Org as an organizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
22.10.2 Org as an authoring system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
22.11 TEX Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
22.11.1 TEX Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
22.11.2 LATEX Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
22.11.3 TEX Printing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
22.11.4 TEX Mode Miscellany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
22.12 SGML and HTML Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
22.13 Nroff Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
22.14 Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
22.14.1 Enriched Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
22.14.2 Hard and Soft Newlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
22.14.3 Editing Format Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
22.14.4 Faces in Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
22.14.5 Indentation in Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
22.14.6 Justification in Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
22.14.7 Setting Other Text Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
22.15 Editing Text-based Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
22.15.1 What is a Text-based Table? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
22.15.2 Creating a Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
22.15.3 Table Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
22.15.4 Commands for Table Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
22.15.5 Cell Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
22.15.6 Table Rows and Columns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
22.15.7 Converting Between Plain Text and Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
22.15.8 Table Miscellany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
22.16 Two-Column Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
 x

23 Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

23.1 Major Modes for Programming Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
23.2 Top-Level Definitions, or Defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
23.2.1 Left Margin Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
23.2.2 Moving by Defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
23.2.3 Imenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
23.2.4 Which Function Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
23.3 Indentation for Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
23.3.1 Basic Program Indentation Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
23.3.2 Indenting Several Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
23.3.3 Customizing Lisp Indentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
23.3.4 Commands for C Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
23.3.5 Customizing C Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
23.4 Commands for Editing with Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
23.4.1 Expressions with Balanced Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
23.4.2 Moving in the Parenthesis Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
23.4.3 Matching Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
23.5 Manipulating Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
23.5.1 Comment Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
23.5.2 Multiple Lines of Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
23.5.3 Options Controlling Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
23.6 Documentation Lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
23.6.1 Info Documentation Lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
23.6.2 Man Page Lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
23.6.3 Emacs Lisp Documentation Lookup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
23.7 Hideshow minor mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
23.8 Completion for Symbol Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
23.9 MixedCase Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
23.10 Semantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
23.11 Other Features Useful for Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
23.12 C and Related Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
23.12.1 C Mode Motion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
23.12.2 Electric C Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
23.12.3 Hungry Delete Feature in C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
23.12.4 Other Commands for C Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
23.13 Asm Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

24 Compiling and Testing Programs . . . . . . . . . . 280

24.1 Running Compilations under Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
24.2 Compilation Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
24.3 Subshells for Compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
24.4 Searching with Grep under Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
24.5 Finding Syntax Errors On The Fly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
24.6 Running Debuggers Under Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
24.6.1 Starting GUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
24.6.2 Debugger Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
24.6.3 Commands of GUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
24.6.4 GUD Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
 xi

24.6.5 GDB Graphical Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290

24.6.5.1 GDB User Interface Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
24.6.5.2 Source Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
24.6.5.3 Breakpoints Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
24.6.5.4 Threads Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
24.6.5.5 Stack Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
24.6.5.6 Other GDB Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
24.6.5.7 Watch Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
24.6.5.8 Multithreaded Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
24.7 Executing Lisp Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
24.8 Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
24.9 Evaluating Emacs Lisp Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
24.10 Lisp Interaction Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
24.11 Running an External Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

25 Maintaining Large Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301

25.1 Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
25.1.1 Introduction to Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
25.1.1.1 Understanding the Problems it Addresses . . . . . . . . . . 302
25.1.1.2 Supported Version Control Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
25.1.1.3 Concepts of Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
25.1.1.4 Merge-based vs Lock-based Version Control . . . . . . . . 303
25.1.1.5 Changeset-based vs File-based Version Control . . . . . 304
25.1.1.6 Decentralized vs Centralized Repositories . . . . . . . . . . 304
25.1.1.7 Types of Log File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
25.1.2 Version Control and the Mode Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
25.1.3 Basic Editing under Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
25.1.3.1 Basic Version Control with Merging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
25.1.3.2 Basic Version Control with Locking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
25.1.3.3 Advanced Control in C-x v v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
25.1.4 Features of the Log Entry Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
25.1.5 Registering a File for Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
25.1.6 Examining And Comparing Old Revisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
25.1.7 VC Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
25.1.8 Undoing Version Control Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
25.1.9 Ignore Version Control Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
25.1.10 VC Directory Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
25.1.10.1 The VC Directory Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
25.1.10.2 VC Directory Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
25.1.11 Version Control Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
25.1.11.1 Switching between Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
25.1.11.2 Pulling/Pushing Changes into/from a Branch . . . . . 316
25.1.11.3 Merging Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
25.1.11.4 Creating New Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
25.2 Change Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
25.2.1 Change Log Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
25.2.2 Format of ChangeLog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
25.3 Find Identifier References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
 xii

25.3.1 Find Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

25.3.1.1 Looking Up Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
25.3.1.2 Commands Available in the *xref* Buffer . . . . . . . . . 322
25.3.1.3 Searching and Replacing with Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . 323
25.3.1.4 Identifier Inquiries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
25.3.2 Tags Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
25.3.2.1 Source File Tag Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
25.3.2.2 Creating Tags Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
25.3.2.3 Etags Regexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
25.3.3 Selecting a Tags Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
25.4 Emacs Development Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

26 Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
26.1 Abbrev Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
26.2 Defining Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
26.3 Controlling Abbrev Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
26.4 Examining and Editing Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
26.5 Saving Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
26.6 Dynamic Abbrev Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
26.7 Customizing Dynamic Abbreviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

27 Dired, the Directory Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338

27.1 Entering Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
27.2 Navigation in the Dired Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
27.3 Deleting Files with Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
27.4 Flagging Many Files at Once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
27.5 Visiting Files in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
27.6 Dired Marks vs. Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
27.7 Operating on Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
27.8 Shell Commands in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
27.9 Transforming File Names in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
27.10 File Comparison with Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
27.11 Subdirectories in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
27.12 Moving Over Subdirectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
27.13 Hiding Subdirectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
27.14 Updating the Dired Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
27.15 Dired and find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
27.16 Editing the Dired Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
27.17 Viewing Image Thumbnails in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
27.18 Other Dired Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

28 The Calendar and the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

28.1 Movement in the Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
28.1.1 Motion by Standard Lengths of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
28.1.2 Beginning or End of Week, Month or Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
28.1.3 Specified Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
28.2 Scrolling in the Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
 xiii

28.3 Counting Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

28.4 Miscellaneous Calendar Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
28.5 Writing Calendar Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
28.6 Holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
28.7 Times of Sunrise and Sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
28.8 Phases of the Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
28.9 Conversion To and From Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
28.9.1 Supported Calendar Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
28.9.2 Converting To Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
28.9.3 Converting From Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
28.10 The Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
28.10.1 The Diary File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
28.10.2 Displaying the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
28.10.3 Date Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
28.10.4 Commands to Add to the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
28.10.5 Special Diary Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
28.10.6 Appointments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
28.10.7 Importing and Exporting Diary Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
28.11 Daylight Saving Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
28.12 Summing Time Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373

29 Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

29.1 The Format of the Mail Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
29.2 Mail Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
29.3 Mail Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
29.4 Mail Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
29.4.1 Mail Sending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
29.4.2 Mail Header Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
29.4.3 Citing Mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
29.4.4 Mail Miscellany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
29.5 Mail Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
29.6 Mail Amusements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
29.7 Mail-Composition Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382

30 Reading Mail with Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

30.1 Basic Concepts of Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
30.2 Scrolling Within a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
30.3 Moving Among Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
30.4 Deleting Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
30.5 Rmail Files and Inboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
30.6 Multiple Rmail Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
30.7 Copying Messages Out to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
30.8 Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
30.9 Rmail Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
30.10 Sending Replies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
30.11 Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
30.11.1 Making Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
 xiv

30.11.2 Editing in Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

30.12 Sorting the Rmail File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
30.13 Display of Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
30.14 Rmail and Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
30.15 Editing Within a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
30.16 Digest Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
30.17 Reading Rot13 Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
30.18 movemail program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
30.19 Retrieving Mail from Remote Mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
30.20 Retrieving Mail from Local Mailboxes in Various Formats. . . 403

31 Miscellaneous Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404

31.1 Email and Usenet News with Gnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
31.1.1 Gnus Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
31.1.2 When Gnus Starts Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
31.1.3 Using the Gnus Group Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
31.1.4 Using the Gnus Summary Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
31.2 Host Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
31.3 Network Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
31.4 Document Viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
31.4.1 DocView Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
31.4.2 DocView Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
31.4.3 DocView Slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
31.4.4 DocView Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
31.5 Running Shell Commands from Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
31.5.1 Single Shell Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
31.5.2 Interactive Subshell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
31.5.3 Shell Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
31.5.4 Shell Prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
31.5.5 Shell Command History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
31.5.5.1 Shell History Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
31.5.5.2 Shell History Copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
31.5.5.3 Shell History References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
31.5.6 Directory Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
31.5.7 Shell Mode Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
31.5.8 Emacs Terminal Emulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
31.5.9 Term Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
31.5.10 Remote Host Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
31.5.11 Serial Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
31.6 Using Emacs as a Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
31.6.1 TCP Emacs server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
31.6.2 Invoking emacsclient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
31.6.3 emacsclient Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
31.7 Printing Hard Copies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
31.7.1 PostScript Hardcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
31.7.2 Variables for PostScript Hardcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
31.7.3 Printing Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
31.8 Sorting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
 xv

31.9 Editing Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

31.10 Saving Emacs Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
31.11 Recursive Editing Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
31.12 Hyperlinking and Web Navigation Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
31.12.1 Web Browsing with EWW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
31.12.2 Embedded WebKit Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
31.12.3 Following URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
31.12.4 Activating URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
31.12.5 Finding Files and URLs at Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
31.13 Games and Other Amusements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

32 Emacs Lisp Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

32.1 The Package Menu Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
32.2 Package Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
32.3 Package Files and Directory Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442

33 Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
33.1 Easy Customization Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
33.1.1 Customization Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
33.1.2 Browsing and Searching for Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
33.1.3 Changing a Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
33.1.4 Saving Customizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
33.1.5 Customizing Faces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
33.1.6 Customizing Specific Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
33.1.7 Custom Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
33.1.8 Creating Custom Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
33.2 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
33.2.1 Examining and Setting Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
33.2.2 Hooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
33.2.3 Local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
33.2.4 Local Variables in Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
33.2.4.1 Specifying File Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
33.2.4.2 Safety of File Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
33.2.5 Per-Directory Local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
33.3 Customizing Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
33.3.1 Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
33.3.2 Prefix Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
33.3.3 Local Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
33.3.4 Minibuffer Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
33.3.5 Changing Key Bindings Interactively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
33.3.6 Rebinding Keys in Your Init File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
33.3.7 Modifier Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
33.3.8 Rebinding Function Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
33.3.9 Named ASCII Control Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
33.3.10 Rebinding Mouse Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
33.3.11 Disabling Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
33.4 The Emacs Initialization File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
 xvi

33.4.1 Init File Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

33.4.2 Init File Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
33.4.3 Terminal-specific Initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
33.4.4 How Emacs Finds Your Init File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
33.4.5 Non-ASCII Characters in Init Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
33.5 Keeping Persistent Authentication Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

34 Dealing with Common Problems . . . . . . . . . . . 477

34.1 Quitting and Aborting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
34.2 Dealing with Emacs Trouble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
34.2.1 If DEL Fails to Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
34.2.2 Recursive Editing Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
34.2.3 Garbage on the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
34.2.4 Garbage in the Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
34.2.5 Running out of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
34.2.6 When Emacs Crashes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
34.2.7 Recovery After a Crash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
34.2.8 Emergency Escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
34.3 Reporting Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
34.3.1 Reading Existing Bug Reports and Known Problems . . . . 482
34.3.2 When Is There a Bug. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
34.3.3 Understanding Bug Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
34.3.4 Checklist for Bug Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
34.3.5 Sending Patches for GNU Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
34.4 Contributing to Emacs Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
34.4.1 Coding Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
34.4.2 Copyright Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
34.5 How To Get Help with GNU Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494

Appendix A GNU GENERAL

PUBLIC LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

Appendix B GNU Free Documentation License . . 506

Appendix C Command Line Arguments

for Emacs Invocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
C.1 Action Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
C.2 Initial Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
C.3 Command Argument Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
C.4 Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
C.4.1 General Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
C.4.2 Miscellaneous Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
C.4.3 The MS-Windows System Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
C.5 Specifying the Display Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
C.6 Font Specification Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
C.7 Window Color Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
 xvii

C.8 Options for Window Size and Position. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

C.9 Internal and Outer Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
C.10 Frame Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
C.11 Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
C.12 Other Display Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528

Appendix D X Options and Resources . . . . . . . . 529

D.1 X Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
D.2 Table of X Resources for Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
D.3 GTK+ resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
D.3.1 GTK+ Resource Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
D.3.2 GTK+ widget names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
D.3.3 GTK+ Widget Names in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
D.3.4 GTK+ styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534

Appendix E Emacs 25 Antinews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536

Appendix F Emacs and macOS / GNUstep . . 539

F.1 Basic Emacs usage under macOS and GNUstep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
F.1.1 Grabbing environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
F.2 Mac / GNUstep Customization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
F.2.1 Font Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
F.3 Windowing System Events under macOS / GNUstep . . . . . . . . . 540
F.4 GNUstep Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541

Appendix G Emacs and Microsoft

Windows/MS-DOS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
G.1 How to Start Emacs on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
G.2 Text Files and Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
G.3 File Names on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
G.4 Emulation of ls on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
G.5 HOME and Startup Directories on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
G.6 Keyboard Usage on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
G.7 Mouse Usage on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
G.8 Subprocesses on Windows 9X/ME and
Windows NT/2K/XP/Vista/7/8/10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
G.9 Printing and MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
G.10 Specifying Fonts on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550
G.11 Miscellaneous Windows-specific features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
 xviii

The GNU Manifesto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553

What’s GNU? Gnu’s Not Unix! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Why I Must Write GNU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
Why GNU Will Be Compatible with Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
How GNU Will Be Available. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
How You Can Contribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Why All Computer Users Will Benefit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU’s Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561

Key (Character) Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585

Command and Function Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595

Variable Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609

Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618

 1

Preface
This manual documents the use and simple customization of the Emacs editor. Simple
Emacs customizations do not require you to be a programmer, but if you are not interested
in customizing, you can ignore the customization hints.
This is primarily a reference manual, but can also be used as a primer. If you are
new to Emacs, we recommend you start with the integrated, learn-by-doing tutorial, before
reading the manual. To run the tutorial, start Emacs and type C-h t. The tutorial describes
commands, tells you when to try them, and explains the results. The tutorial is available
in several languages.
On first reading, just skim chapters 1 and 2, which describe the notational conventions of
the manual and the general appearance of the Emacs display screen. Note which questions
are answered in these chapters, so you can refer back later. After reading chapter 4, you
should practice the commands shown there. The next few chapters describe fundamental
techniques and concepts that are used constantly. You need to understand them thoroughly,
so experiment with them until you are fluent.
Chapters 14 through 19 describe intermediate-level features that are useful for many
kinds of editing. Chapter 20 and following chapters describe optional but useful features;
read those chapters when you need them.
Read the Common Problems chapter if Emacs does not seem to be working properly. It
explains how to cope with several common problems (see Section 34.2 [Dealing with Emacs
Trouble], page 478), as well as when and how to report Emacs bugs (see Section 34.3 [Bugs],
page 482).
To find the documentation of a particular command, look in the index. Keys (character
commands) and command names have separate indexes. There is also a glossary, with a
cross reference for each term.
This manual is available as a printed book and also as an Info file. The Info file is
for reading from Emacs itself, or with the Info program. Info is the principal format for
documentation in the GNU system. The Info file and the printed book contain substantially
the same text and are generated from the same source files, which are also distributed with
GNU Emacs.
GNU Emacs is a member of the Emacs editor family. There are many Emacs editors,
all sharing common principles of organization. For information on the underlying philos-
ophy of Emacs and the lessons learned from its development, see Emacs, the Extensible,
Customizable Self-Documenting Display Editor, available from http://hdl.handle.net/
1721.1/5736.
This version of the manual is mainly intended for use with GNU Emacs installed on GNU
and Unix systems. GNU Emacs can also be used on MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and
Macintosh systems. The Info file version of this manual contains some more information
about using Emacs on those systems. Those systems use different file name syntax; in
addition MS-DOS does not support all GNU Emacs features. See Appendix G [Microsoft
Windows], page 542, for information about using Emacs on Windows. See Appendix F
[Mac OS / GNUstep], page 539, for information about using Emacs on Macintosh (and
GNUstep).
 2

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 manual1 . See Appendix A [Copying], page 495.
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 https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs 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 https://my.fsf.org/donate/. For other ways in which you can
help, see https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html.
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 https://shop.fsf.
org/. 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 https://www.fsf.org/about/
contact/, or write to
Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
Boston, MA 02110-1301
USA

Acknowledgments
Contributors to GNU Emacs include Jari Aalto, Per Abrahamsen, Tomas Abrahamsson, Jay
K. Adams, Alon Albert, Michael Albinus, Nagy Andras, Benjamin Andresen, Ralf Angeli,
Dmitry Antipov, Joe Arceneaux, Emil Åström, Miles Bader, David Bakhash, Juanma Bar-
ranquero, Eli Barzilay, Thomas Baumann, Steven L. Baur, Jay Belanger, Alexander L. Be-
likoff, Thomas Bellman, Scott Bender, Boaz Ben-Zvi, Sergey Berezin, Stephen Berman, Karl
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. See Appendix B [GNU Free
Documentation License], page 506.
Distribution 3

Berry, Anna M. Bigatti, Ray Blaak, Martin Blais, Jim Blandy, Johan Bockgård, Jan Böcker,
Joel Boehland, Lennart Borgman, Per Bothner, Terrence Brannon, Frank Bresz, Peter Bre-
ton, Emmanuel Briot, Kevin Broadey, Vincent Broman, Michael Brouwer, David M. Brown,
Ken Brown, Stefan Bruda, Georges Brun-Cottan, Joe Buehler, Scott Byer, Wlodek Bzyl,
Tino Calancha, Bill Carpenter, Per Cederqvist, Hans Chalupsky, Chris Chase, Bob Chassell,
Andrew Choi, Chong Yidong, Sacha Chua, Stewart Clamen, James Clark, Mike Clarkson,
Glynn Clements, Andrew Cohen, Daniel Colascione, Christoph Conrad, Ludovic Courtès,
Andrew Csillag, Toby Cubitt, Baoqiu Cui, Doug Cutting, Mathias Dahl, Julien Danjou,
Satyaki Das, Vivek Dasmohapatra, Dan Davison, Michael DeCorte, Gary Delp, Nachum
Dershowitz, Dave Detlefs, Matthieu Devin, Christophe de Dinechin, Eri Ding, Jan Djärv,
Lawrence R. Dodd, Carsten Dominik, Scott Draves, Benjamin Drieu, Viktor Dukhovni,
Jacques Duthen, Dmitry Dzhus, John Eaton, Rolf Ebert, Carl Edman, David Edmondson,
Paul Eggert, Stephen Eglen, Christian Egli, Torbjörn Einarsson, Tsugutomo Enami, David
Engster, Hans Henrik Eriksen, Michael Ernst, Ata Etemadi, Frederick Farnbach, Oscar
Figueiredo, Fred Fish, Steve Fisk, Karl Fogel, Gary Foster, Eric S. Fraga, Romain Francoise,
Noah Friedman, Andreas Fuchs, Shigeru Fukaya, Xue Fuqiao, Hallvard Furuseth, Keith
Gabryelski, Peter S. Galbraith, Kevin Gallagher, Fabián E. Gallina, Kevin Gallo, Juan
León Lahoz Garcı́a, Howard Gayle, Daniel German, Stephen Gildea, Julien Gilles, David
Gillespie, Bob Glickstein, Deepak Goel, David De La Harpe Golden, Boris Goldowsky,
David Goodger, Chris Gray, Kevin Greiner, Michelangelo Grigni, Odd Gripenstam, Kai
Großjohann, Michael Gschwind, Bastien Guerry, Henry Guillaume, Dmitry Gutov, Doug
Gwyn, Bruno Haible, Ken’ichi Handa, Lars Hansen, Chris Hanson, Jesper Harder, Alexan-
dru Harsanyi, K. Shane Hartman, John Heidemann, Jon K. Hellan, Magnus Henoch, Markus
Heritsch, Dirk Herrmann, Karl Heuer, Manabu Higashida, Konrad Hinsen, Anders Holst,
Jeffrey C. Honig, Tassilo Horn, Kurt Hornik, Tom Houlder, Joakim Hove, Denis Howe,
Lars Ingebrigtsen, Andrew Innes, Seiichiro Inoue, Philip Jackson, Martyn Jago, Pavel Janik,
Paul Jarc, Ulf Jasper, Thorsten Jolitz, Michael K. Johnson, Kyle Jones, Terry Jones, Simon
Josefsson, Alexandre Julliard, Arne Jørgensen, Tomoji Kagatani, Brewster Kahle, Tokuya
Kameshima, Lute Kamstra, Ivan Kanis, David Kastrup, David Kaufman, Henry Kautz,
Taichi Kawabata, Taro Kawagishi, Howard Kaye, Michael Kifer, Richard King, Peter Klei-
weg, Karel Klı́č, Shuhei Kobayashi, Pavel Kobyakov, Larry K. Kolodney, David M. Koppel-
man, Koseki Yoshinori, Robert Krawitz, Sebastian Kremer, Ryszard Kubiak, Igor Kuzmin,
David Kågedal, Daniel LaLiberte, Karl Landstrom, Mario Lang, Aaron Larson, James R.
Larus, Vinicius Jose Latorre, Werner Lemberg, Frederic Lepied, Peter Liljenberg, Chris-
tian Limpach, Lars Lindberg, Chris Lindblad, Anders Lindgren, Thomas Link, Juri Linkov,
Francis Litterio, Sergey Litvinov, Leo Liu, Emilio C. Lopes, Martin Lorentzon, Dave Love,
Eric Ludlam, Károly Lőrentey, Sascha Lüdecke, Greg McGary, Roland McGrath, Michael
McNamara, Alan Mackenzie, Christopher J. Madsen, Neil M. Mager, Artur Malabarba, Ken
Manheimer, Bill Mann, Brian Marick, Simon Marshall, Bengt Martensson, Charlie Martin,
Yukihiro Matsumoto, Tomohiro Matsuyama, David Maus, Thomas May, Will Mengarini,
David Megginson, Stefan Merten, Ben A. Mesander, Wayne Mesard, Brad Miller, Lawrence
Mitchell, Richard Mlynarik, Gerd Möllmann, Dani Moncayo, Stefan Monnier, Keith Moore,
Jan Moringen, Morioka Tomohiko, Glenn Morris, Don Morrison, Diane Murray, Riccardo
Murri, Sen Nagata, Erik Naggum, Gergely Nagy, Nobuyoshi Nakada, Thomas Neumann,
Mike Newton, Thien-Thi Nguyen, Jurgen Nickelsen, Dan Nicolaescu, Hrvoje Nikšić, Jeff
Norden, Andrew Norman, Theresa O’Connor, Kentaro Ohkouchi, Christian Ohler, Kenichi
Okada, Alexandre Oliva, Bob Olson, Michael Olson, Takaaki Ota, Mark Oteiza, Pieter E.
 4

J. Pareit, Ross Patterson, David Pearson, Juan Pechiar, Jeff Peck, Damon Anton Permezel,
Tom Perrine, William M. Perry, Per Persson, Jens Petersen, Nicolas Petton, Daniel Pfeif-
fer, Justus Piater, Richard L. Pieri, Fred Pierresteguy, François Pinard, Daniel Pittman,
Christian Plaunt, Alexander Pohoyda, David Ponce, Noam Postavsky, Francesco A. Potortı̀,
Michael D. Prange, Mukesh Prasad, Ken Raeburn, Marko Rahamaa, Ashwin Ram, Eric S.
Raymond, Paul Reilly, Edward M. Reingold, David Reitter, Alex Rezinsky, Rob Riepel, Lara
Rios, Adrian Robert, Nick Roberts, Roland B. Roberts, John Robinson, Denis B. Roegel,
Danny Roozendaal, Sebastian Rose, William Rosenblatt, Markus Rost, Guillermo J. Rozas,
Martin Rudalics, Ivar Rummelhoff, Jason Rumney, Wolfgang Rupprecht, Benjamin Rutt,
Kevin Ryde, James B. Salem, Masahiko Sato, Timo Savola, Jorgen Schäfer, Holger Schauer,
William Schelter, Ralph Schleicher, Gregor Schmid, Michael Schmidt, Ronald S. Schnell,
Philippe Schnoebelen, Jan Schormann, Alex Schroeder, Stefan Schoef, Rainer Schöpf, Ray-
mond Scholz, Eric Schulte, Andreas Schwab, Randal Schwartz, Oliver Seidel, Manuel Ser-
rano, Paul Sexton, Hovav Shacham, Stanislav Shalunov, Marc Shapiro, Richard Sharman,
Olin Shivers, Tibor Šimko, Espen Skoglund, Rick Sladkey, Lynn Slater, Chris Smith, David
Smith, Paul D. Smith, Wilson Snyder, William Sommerfeld, Simon South, Andre Spiegel,
Michael Staats, Thomas Steffen, Ulf Stegemann, Reiner Steib, Sam Steingold, Ake Sten-
hoff, Philipp Stephani, Peter Stephenson, Ken Stevens, Andy Stewart, Jonathan Stigelman,
Martin Stjernholm, Kim F. Storm, Steve Strassmann, Christopher Suckling, Olaf Sylvester,
Naoto Takahashi, Steven Tamm, Jan Tatarik, Luc Teirlinck, Jean-Philippe Theberge, Jens
T. Berger Thielemann, Spencer Thomas, Jim Thompson, Toru Tomabechi, David O’Toole,
Markus Triska, Tom Tromey, Enami Tsugutomo, Eli Tziperman, Daiki Ueno, Masanobu
Umeda, Rajesh Vaidheeswarran, Neil W. Van Dyke, Didier Verna, Joakim Verona, Ulrik
Vieth, Geoffrey Voelker, Johan Vromans, Inge Wallin, John Paul Wallington, Colin Wal-
ters, Barry Warsaw, Christoph Wedler, Ilja Weis, Zhang Weize, Morten Welinder, Joseph
Brian Wells, Rodney Whitby, John Wiegley, Sascha Wilde, Ed Wilkinson, Mike Williams,
Roland Winkler, Bill Wohler, Steven A. Wood, Dale R. Worley, Francis J. Wright, Fe-
lix S. T. Wu, Tom Wurgler, Yamamoto Mitsuharu, Katsumi Yamaoka, Masatake Yamato,
Jonathan Yavner, Ryan Yeske, Ilya Zakharevich, Milan Zamazal, Victor Zandy, Eli Zaret-
skii, Jamie Zawinski, Andrew Zhilin, Shenghuo Zhu, Piotr Zieliński, Ian T. Zimmermann,
Reto Zimmermann, Neal Ziring, Teodor Zlatanov, and Detlev Zundel.
 5

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, sen-
tences, 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. See Chapter 7 [Help], page 39.
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 (see Section 23.5 [Comments], page 268). 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. See Chapter 33 [Customization], page 444.
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. See Section “Preface” in An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp, if
you want to learn Emacs Lisp programming.
 6

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 (see Chapter 18 [Frames], page 175).
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 (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 168).
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.

1.1 Point
The cursor in the selected window shows the location where most editing commands take
effect, which is called point1 . 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
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.
Chapter 1: The Organization of the Screen 7

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.
See Section 11.20 [Cursor Display], page 91, for options that control how Emacs displays
the cursor.

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 (see Section 2.2 [Keys], page 11) 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 Ctrl and type x, then let go of Ctrl 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 Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 159, 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 Section 33.2 [Variables], page 452, 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.
See Section 11.23 [Display Custom], page 92, 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. See Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 26.
Chapter 1: The Organization of the Screen 8

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 con-
vention 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 (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 199). 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 (see Section 19.3 [Input
Methods], page 196).
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 (see Section 31.6.2 [Invoking emacsclient], page 423),
the next character is ‘@’. This indication is typical for frames of an Emacs process running
as a daemon (see Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 421).
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 (see
Section 15.1 [File Names], page 133) for the current buffer is on a remote machine, ‘@’ is
displayed instead.
fr gives the selected frame name (see Chapter 18 [Frames], page 175). It appears only
on text terminals. The initial frame’s name is ‘F1’.
Chapter 1: The Organization of the Screen 9

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. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 159.
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. See
Section 11.18 [Optional Mode Line], page 88.
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. See Section 11.18
[Optional Mode Line], page 88.)
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. See
Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 215. 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. See Section 20.2 [Minor Modes],
page 216.
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 (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 76).
‘Def’ means that a keyboard macro is currently being defined (see Chapter 14 [Keyboard
Macros], page 125).
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. See
Section 31.11 [Recursive Edit], page 434.
You can change the appearance of the mode line as well as the format of its contents.
See Section 11.18 [Optional Mode Line], page 88. In addition, the mode line is mouse-
sensitive; clicking on different parts of the mode line performs various commands. See
Section 18.5 [Mode Line Mouse], page 179. Also, hovering the mouse pointer above mouse-
sensitive portions of the mode line shows tooltips (see Section 18.18 [Tooltips], page 189)
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.
Chapter 1: The Organization of the Screen 10

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
(see Section 7.1 [Key Help], page 41).
Instead of using the mouse, you can also invoke the first menu bar item by pressing F10
(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 RET; to cancel menu navigation, press C-g or ESC ESC ESC. (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
F10 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 RET
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.
 11

2 Characters, Keys and Commands

This chapter explains the character sets used by Emacs for input commands, and the
fundamental concepts of keys and commands, whereby Emacs interprets your keyboard
and mouse input.

2.1 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 SPC), are entered by
typing the corresponding key. Control characters, such as RET, TAB, DEL, ESC, F1, Home, and
LEFT, are also entered this way, as are certain characters found on non-English keyboards
(see Chapter 19 [International], page 192).
Emacs also recognizes control characters that are entered using modifier keys. Two
commonly-used modifier keys are Control (usually labeled Ctrl), and Meta (usually labeled
Alt)1 . For example, Control-a is entered by holding down the Ctrl key while pressing a; we
will refer to this as C-a for short. Similarly, Meta-a, or M-a for short, is entered by holding
down the Alt key and pressing a. Modifier keys can also be applied to non-alphanumerical
characters, e.g., C-F1 or M-LEFT.
You can also type Meta characters using two-character sequences starting with ESC.
Thus, you can enter M-a by typing ESC a. You can enter C-M-a (holding down both Ctrl
and Alt, then pressing a) by typing ESC C-a. Unlike Meta, ESC is entered as a separate
character. You don’t hold down ESC while typing the next character; instead, press ESC and
release it, then enter the next character. This feature is useful on certain text terminals
where the Meta key does not function reliably.
On graphical displays, the window manager might block some keyboard inputs, including
M-TAB, M-SPC, 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 (see
Chapter 33 [Customization], page 444).
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 Section “Input Events” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.

2.2 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
1
We refer to Alt as Meta for historical reasons.
Chapter 2: Characters, Keys and Commands 12

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; see Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 7). 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 RET, C-x @, C-x a, C-x n,
C-x r, C-x v, C-x 4, C-x 5, C-x 6, ESC, M-g, and M-o. (F1 and F2 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. See Section 33.3 [Key Bindings], page 461.
Typing the help character (C-h or F1) after a prefix key displays a list of the commands
starting with that prefix. The sole exception to this rule is ESC: ESC C-h is equivalent to
C-M-h, which does something else entirely. You can, however, use F1 to display a list of
commands starting with ESC.

2.3 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. Inter-
nally, each command is a special type of Lisp function, and the actions associated with the
command are performed by running the function. See Section “What Is a Function” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
The bindings between keys and commands are recorded in tables called keymaps. See
Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 461.
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 com-
mand 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.
Chapter 2: Characters, Keys and Commands 13

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 (see Section 33.2 [Variables], page 452) and the information about specific variables
will make sense.
 14

3 Entering and Exiting Emacs

This chapter explains how to enter Emacs, and how to exit it.

3.1 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 Section G.1
[Windows Startup], page 542.)
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 RET, 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. See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 168.
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. See Chapter 15 [Files], page 133, 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. See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server],
page 421.
Emacs accepts other command line arguments that tell it to load certain Lisp files, where
to put the initial frame, and so forth. See Appendix C [Emacs Invocation], page 514.
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. See Section 24.10 [Lisp Interaction],
page 299. You can set the variable inhibit-startup-screen using the Customize facility
(see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 444), or by editing your initialization file (see
Section 33.4 [Init File], page 470).1

1
Setting inhibit-startup-screen in site-start.el doesn’t work, because the startup screen is set up be-
fore reading site-start.el. See Section 33.4 [Init File], page 470, for information about site-start.el.
Chapter 3: Entering and Exiting Emacs 15

You can also force Emacs to display a file or directory at startup by setting the vari-
able 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.

3.2 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 “mini-
mize”) 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 (see
Section 31.5 [Shell], page 410).
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. See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 421.
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. See Section 31.10 [Saving Emacs Sessions], page 432.
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 Section “Killing Emacs”
in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
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 (see Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 461).
 16

4 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).

4.1 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. See Section 1.1 [Point], page 6.
To end a line and start a new one, type RET (newline). (The RET key may be labeled
Return, or Enter, or with a funny-looking left-pointing arrow on your keyboard, but we
refer to it as RET in this manual.) This command inserts a newline character into the
buffer, then indents (see Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 221) 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 (see Section 21.4
[Indent Convenience], page 223) 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 (see Section 22.6 [Filling], page 230). The minor
mode called Overwrite mode causes inserted characters to replace (overwrite) existing text,
instead of shoving it to the right. See Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 216.
Only graphic characters can be inserted by typing the associated key; other keys act
as editing commands and do not insert themselves. For instance, DEL 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 in-
stance, C-q DEL 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 RET, that RET 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
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 17

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 RET (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 (see Section 5.4 [Completion], page 28). 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); See Section “Integer Basics” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual. The command then inserts the corresponding character into the
buffer.
For example, the following all insert the same character:
C-x 8 RET left single quotation mark RET
C-x 8 RET left sin TAB RET
C-x 8 RET 2018 RET
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 (see Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24).
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.
See Section 22.5 [Quotation Marks], page 229.

4.2 Changing the Location of Point

To do more than insert characters, you have to know how to move point (see Section 1.1
[Point], page 6). 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: RIGHT, LEFT, DOWN, and UP; 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).
RIGHT This command (right-char) behaves like C-f, except when point is in a right-
to-left paragraph (see Section 19.19 [Bidirectional Editing], page 212).
C-b Move backward one character (backward-char).
LEFT This command (left-char) behaves like C-b, except if the current paragraph
is right-to-left (see Section 19.19 [Bidirectional Editing], page 212).
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 18

C-n
DOWN 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
UP Move up one screen line (previous-line). This command preserves position
within the line, like C-n.
C-a
Home Move to the beginning of the line (move-beginning-of-line).
C-e
End Move to the end of the line (move-end-of-line).
M-f Move forward one word (forward-word). See Section 22.1 [Words], page 225.
C-RIGHT
M-RIGHT This command (right-word) behaves like M-f, except it moves backward by one
word if the current paragraph is right-to-left. See Section 19.19 [Bidirectional
Editing], page 212.
M-b Move backward one word (backward-word). See Section 22.1 [Words], page 225.
C-LEFT
M-LEFT This command (left-word) behaves like M-b, except it moves forward by one
word if the current paragraph is right-to-left. See Section 19.19 [Bidirectional
Editing], page 212.
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 down-
ward 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). See Section 4.10
[Arguments], page 24, 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-HOME does
the same.
M-> Move to the end of the buffer (end-of-buffer). On graphical displays, C-END
does the same.
C-v
PageDown
next Scroll the display one screen forward, and move point onscreen if necessary
(scroll-up-command). See Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 72.
M-v
PageUp
prior Scroll one screen backward, and move point onscreen if necessary
(scroll-down-command). See Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 72.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 19

M-g c Read a number n and move point to buffer position n. Position 1 is the begin-
ning 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 RET in the minibuffer
to use it. You can also specify n by giving M-g M-g a numeric prefix argument.
See Section 16.1 [Select Buffer], page 159, for the behavior of M-g M-g when
you give it a plain prefix argument.
M-g TAB 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 down and up. 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 Section 4.8 [Continuation
Lines], page 22. See Section 33.2 [Variables], page 452, 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) respec-
tively 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.

4.3 Erasing Text

DEL
BACKSPACE
Delete the character before point, or the region if it is active (delete-backward-
char).
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 20

Delete 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-DEL
M-BACKSPACE
Kill back to the beginning of the previous word (backward-kill-word).
The DEL (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, DEL instead deletes the text in the region. See Chapter 8
[Mark], page 48, for a description of the region.
On most keyboards, DEL is labeled BACKSPACE, but we refer to it as DEL in this manual.
(Do not confuse DEL with the Delete key; we will discuss Delete momentarily.) On some
text terminals, Emacs may not recognize the DEL key properly. See Section 34.2.1 [DEL
Does Not Delete], page 478, if you encounter this problem.
The Delete (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 DEL, it deletes the text in
the region if the region is active (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48).
C-d (delete-char) deletes the character after point, similar to Delete, but regardless
of whether the region is active.
See Section 9.1.1 [Deletion], page 55, 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.
See Chapter 9 [Killing], page 55, for more information about C-k and related commands.

4.4 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.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 21

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 Section 13.1 [Undo], page 119.

4.5 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 RET
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 RET to terminate the
argument (see Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 26).
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 Chapter 15 [Files], page 133.

4.6 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 F1 serves as an alias for C-h. Apart from
C-h k, there are many other help commands providing different kinds of help.
See Chapter 7 [Help], page 39, for details.

4.7 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 RET (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.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 22

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. See Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24,
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. See Section 22.6.3 [Fill Prefix], page 231.
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.

4.8 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 (see
Section 4.2 [Moving Point], page 17).
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. See Section 11.21 [Line Truncation], page 91.
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. See Section 22.6 [Filling], page 230.
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. See Section 11.22
[Visual Line Mode], page 92.

4.9 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.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 23

M-x line-number-mode
M-x column-number-mode
Toggle automatic display of the current line number or column number. See
Section 11.18 [Optional Mode Line], page 88. If you want to have a line number
displayed before each line, see Section 11.23 [Display Custom], page 92.
M-= Display the number of lines, words, and characters that are present in the region
(count-words-region). See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48, 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 (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48), 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. See Section 11.20 [Cursor
Display], page 91.
M-x size-indication-mode
Toggle automatic display of the size of the buffer. See Section 11.18 [Optional
Mode Line], page 88.
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 (see Section 1.3
[Mode Line], page 8). However, if you narrow the buffer, the mode line shows the line number
relative to the accessible portion (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 76). 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 (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48, 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 conven-
tion. 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 in-
formation about how C-x = displays character information, see Section 19.1 [International
Chars], page 192. 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 paren-
thesis 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.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 24

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. See
Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 76.
Related, but different feature is display-line-numbers-mode (see Section 11.23 [Dis-
play Custom], page 92).

4.10 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 Meta 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 Meta 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’.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 25

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.
(See Section 22.6 [Filling], page 230, 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. (See Chapter 9 [Killing], page 55, 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 (see Chapter 5 [Minibuffer],
page 26), which are entered after invoking the command.
On graphical displays, C-0, C-1, etc. act the same as M-0, M-1, etc.

4.11 Repeating a Command

Many simple commands, such as those invoked with a single key or with
M-x command-name RET, can be repeated by invoking them with a numeric argument that
serves as a repeat count (see Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24). 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.
 26

5 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.

5.1 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 (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 77).
The simplest way to enter a minibuffer argument is to type the text, then RET 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 (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 477).
Sometimes, the prompt shows a default argument, inside parentheses before the colon.
This default will be used as the argument if you just type RET. For example, commands
that read buffer names usually show a buffer name as the default; you can type RET 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
RET would no longer submit that default). If you ever bring back the original minibuf-
fer 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 en-
able 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.

5.2 Minibuffers for File Names

Commands such as C-x C-f (find-file) use the minibuffer to read a file name argument
(see Section 4.5 [Basic Files], page 21). 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. See Section 15.1
[File Names], page 133, for information about the default directory.
Alternative defaults for the file name you may want are available by typing M-n, see
Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 33.
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-DEL to kill directory names backwards (see
Section 22.1 [Words], page 225).
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 27

To specify a file in a completely different directory, you can kill the entire default with
C-a C-k (see Section 5.3 [Minibuffer Edit], page 27). 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 dim-
ming, turn off File Name Shadow mode with the command M-x file-name-shadow-mode.)
When completing remote file names (see Section 15.14 [Remote Files], page 155), 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. See Section “File name completion” in The Tramp
Manual.
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 direc-
tory, Emacs uses several alternatives. For MS-Windows, see Section G.5 [Windows HOME],
page 545; for MS-DOS, see Section “MS-DOS File Names” in the digital version of the Emacs
Manual. 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. See Section 15.14 [Remote Files],
page 155.

5.3 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 RET 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 (see Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16). Alternatively,
you can use the C-o (open-line) command (see Section 4.7 [Blank Lines], page 21).
Inside a minibuffer, the keys TAB, SPC, and ? are often bound to completion commands,
which allow you to easily fill in the desired text without typing all of it. See Section 5.4
[Completion], page 28. As with RET, you can use C-q to insert a TAB, SPC, or ‘?’ character.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 28

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. See
Chapter 17 [Windows], page 168.
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 (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 168).
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-PageUp
and M-PageDown (or, equivalently, M-prior and M-next). This is especially useful with long
lists of possible completions. See Section 17.3 [Other Window], page 169.
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.

5.4 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 TAB, RET, and SPC) are rebound in
the minibuffer to special completion commands (see Section 5.4.2 [Completion Commands],
page 29). 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. See Section 23.8 [Symbol Completion], page 273.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 29

5.4.1 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 RET, but it is easier to use completion.
If you type M-x a u TAB, the TAB looks for completion alternatives (in this case, com-
mand 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 TAB again immediately, it cannot determine the next character; it could be
‘-’, ‘a’, or ‘c’. So it does not add any characters; instead, TAB 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 TAB, completion fills in the rest of the
argument ‘auto-fill-mode’ into the minibuffer.
Hence, typing just a u TAB - f TAB allows you to enter ‘auto-fill-mode’.

5.4.2 Completion Commands

Here is a list of the completion commands defined in the minibuffer when completion is
allowed.
TAB Complete the text in the minibuffer as much as possible; if unable to complete,
display a list of possible completions (minibuffer-complete).
SPC 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.
RET Submit the text in the minibuffer as the argument, possibly completing first
(minibuffer-complete-and-exit). See Section 5.4.3 [Completion Exit],
page 30.
? Display a list of completions (minibuffer-completion-help).
TAB (minibuffer-complete) is the most fundamental completion command. It searches
for all possible completions that match the existing minibuffer text, and attempts to com-
plete as much as it can. See Section 5.4.4 [Completion Styles], page 31, for how completion
alternatives are chosen.
SPC (minibuffer-complete-word) completes like TAB, but only up to the next hyphen
or space. If you have ‘auto-f’ in the minibuffer and type SPC, it finds that the completion
is ‘auto-fill-mode’, but it only inserts ‘ill-’, giving ‘auto-fill-’. Another SPC at this
point completes all the way to ‘auto-fill-mode’.
If TAB or SPC is unable to complete, it displays a list of matching completion alter-
natives (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 com-
pletion list:
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 30

M-v
PageUp
prior 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. PageUp or prior does the same. You can also select the window in other
ways (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 168).
RET
mouse-1
mouse-2 While in the completion list buffer, this chooses the completion at point
(choose-completion).
RIGHT While in the completion list buffer, this moves point to the following completion
alternative (next-completion).
LEFT While in the completion list buffer, this moves point to the previous completion
alternative (previous-completion).

5.4.3 Completion Exit

When a command reads an argument using the minibuffer with completion, it also con-
trols what happens when you type RET (minibuffer-complete-and-exit) to submit the
argument. There are four types of behavior:
• Strict completion accepts only exact completion matches. Typing RET exits the mini-
buffer 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 RET exits only if the text is already
an exact match. If the text completes to an exact match, RET performs that completion
but does not exit yet; you must type a second RET 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 RET does not complete, it just submits the argument as you have entered it.
• Permissive completion with confirmation is like permissive completion, with an excep-
tion: if you typed TAB and this completed the text up to some intermediate state (i.e.,
one that is not yet an exact completion match), typing RET right afterward does not
submit the argument. Instead, Emacs asks for confirmation by momentarily displaying
‘[Confirm]’ after the text; type RET again to confirm and submit the text. This catches
a common mistake, in which one types RET before realizing that TAB 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
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 31

non-nil value, Emacs asks for confirmation whether or not the preceding command
was TAB.
This behavior is used by most commands that read file names, like C-x C-f, and com-
mands that read buffer names, like C-x b.

5.4.4 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 Section 5.4.1
[Completion Example], page 29, 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 sepa-
rated 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 alter-
native.
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 (see Chapter 33 [Customization], page 444):
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 ini-
tialisms. For example, when completing command names, it matches ‘lch’ to
‘list-command-history’.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 32

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.

5.4.5 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 con-
sidered 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 (/) repre-
sents 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’ com-
pletes 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, see Section 31.5.7 [Shell
Options], page 418.

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 TAB echoes ‘Next char not unique’; the second TAB 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 sub-
string. 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 man-
ner. 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.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 33

5.5 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).
UP
DOWN Like M-p and M-n, but move to the previous or next line of a multi-line item be-
fore going to the previous history item (previous-line-or-history-element
and next-line-or-history-element) .
M-r regexp RET
Move to an earlier item in the minibuffer history that matches regexp
(previous-matching-history-element).
M-s regexp RET
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 minibuf-
fer 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
(see Section 31.12.5 [FFAP], page 436), 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 UP and DOWN 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 ele-
ments 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
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 34

fetches the first matching entry into the minibuffer. See Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 104,
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 (see Section 12.9
[Lax Search], page 109).
You can also search through the history using an incremental search. See Section 12.1.7
[Isearch Minibuffer], page 100.
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 his-
tory. 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.

5.6 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 ESC ESC
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 ESC ESC
can repeat, most recent first.
C-x ESC ESC 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 ESC ESC 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
RET, 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 ESC ESC, you can use the usual minibuffer history
commands (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 33) 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 RET.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 35

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 ESC ESC. You can make incremental search commands appear in the history by setting
isearch-resume-in-command-history to a non-nil value. See Section 12.1 [Incremental
Search], page 95.
The list of previous minibuffer-using commands is stored as a Lisp list in the vari-
able 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.

5.7 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 (see Section 15.14 [Remote Files],
page 155).
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 RET 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 DEL to delete backwards, removing
the last character entered. C-u deletes everything you have typed so far. C-g quits the
password prompt (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 477). C-y inserts the current kill into
the password (see Chapter 9 [Killing], page 55). You may type either RET or ESC to submit
the password. Any other self-inserting character key inserts the associated character into
the password, and all other input is ignored.

5.8 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 com-
mands 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 PageDown, or next) scrolls
forward; M-v (or PageUp, or prior) scrolls backward; C-M-v scrolls forward in the next win-
dow; and C-M-S-v scrolls backward in the next window. Typing C-g dismisses the query,
and quits the command that issued it (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 477).
 36

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 RET. 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.
 37

6 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. (See Section 33.3 [Key Bindings], page 461, 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 RET. 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. RET exits the minibuffer and runs the command. See Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 26,
for more information on the minibuffer.
You can use completion to enter the command name. For example, to invoke the com-
mand forward-char, you can type
M-x forward-char RET
or
M-x forw TAB c RET
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 nu-
meric 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 RET.
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
RET that terminates the name. Thus we might say M-x auto-fill-mode rather than
 38

M-x auto-fill-mode RET. We mention the RET only for emphasis, such as when the com-
mand 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.
 39

7 Help
Emacs provides a wide variety of help commands, all accessible through the prefix key C-h
(or, equivalently, the function key F1). 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 SPC and DEL, 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 SPC and DEL to scroll and type RET to follow hyperlinks. See Section 7.4 [Help
Mode], page 44.
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 RET
This searches for commands whose names match the argument topics. The
argument can be a keyword, a list of keywords, or a regular expression (see
Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 104). See Section 7.3 [Apropos], page 42.
C-h i d m emacs RET i topic RET
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 RET s topic RET
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. See Section 7.5
[Package Keywords], page 44.
C-h or F1 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 F1.)
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 RET
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 RET
Display the commands and variables whose documentation matches topics
(apropos-documentation).
Chapter 7: Help 40

C-h e Display the *Messages* buffer (view-echo-area-messages).

C-h f function RET
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. See Chapter 32 [Packages], page 439.
C-h P package RET
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 syn-
tax table says which characters are opening delimiters, which are parts of words,
and so on. See Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual,
for details.
C-h t Enter the Emacs interactive tutorial (help-with-tutorial).
C-h v var RET
Display the documentation of the Lisp variable var (describe-variable).
C-h w command RET
Show which keys run the command named command (where-is).
C-h C coding RET
Describe the coding system coding (describe-coding-system).
C-h C RET Describe the coding systems currently in use.
C-h F command RET
Enter Info and go to the node that documents the Emacs command command
(Info-goto-emacs-command-node).
Chapter 7: Help 41

C-h I method RET

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 RET
Display information on the character sets, coding systems, and input
methods used in language environment language-env (describe-language-
environment).
C-h S symbol RET
Display the Info documentation on symbol symbol according to the program-
ming 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.)

7.1 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 corre-
sponding 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 RET 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.

7.2 Help by Command or Variable Name

C-h f function RET (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 RET
displays the documentation of auto-fill-mode. This is the only way to get the documen-
tation 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 RET. Because C-h f allows all function
Chapter 7: Help 42

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 RET, 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 RET 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. See Section 33.2 [Variables], page 452.
Help buffers that describe Emacs variables and functions normally have hyperlinks to
the corresponding source code, if you have the source files installed (see Section 31.12
[Hyperlinking], page 435).
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.

7.3 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.
Chapter 7: Help 43

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 spec-
ified 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 RET. 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
RET.
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
RET. 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 (see Section 12.6 [Reg-
exps], page 104). 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, back-
ward, 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 with-
out 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.
Chapter 7: Help 44

7.4 Help Mode Commands

Help buffers provide the same commands as View mode (see Section 11.6 [View Mode],
page 77); for instance, SPC scrolls forward, and DEL or S-SPC scrolls backward. A few
special commands are also provided:
RET Follow a cross reference at point (help-follow).
TAB Move point forward to the next hyperlink (forward-button).
S-TAB 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 (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 77)
appears in the documentation in the help buffer, it is normally an underlined hyperlink.
To view the associated documentation, move point there and type RET (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 (see Section 31.12.3 [Browse-URL], page 435).
In a help buffer, TAB (forward-button) moves point forward to the next hyperlink, while
S-TAB (backward-button) moves point back to the previous hyperlink. These commands
act cyclically; for instance, typing TAB 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.

7.5 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 (see Chapter 32 [Packages],
page 439).
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 RET on that line; this displays the list of
packages in a Package Menu buffer (see Section 32.1 [Package Menu], page 439).
C-h P (describe-package) prompts for the name of a package (see Chapter 32 [Pack-
ages], page 439), and displays a help buffer describing the attributes of the package and
Chapter 7: Help 45

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.

7.6 Help for International Language Support

For information on a specific language environment (see Section 19.2 [Language Environ-
ments], page 194), 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 demon-
strates 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. See Section 19.3
[Input Methods], page 196.
The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) describes coding systems—either a
specified coding system, or the ones currently in use. See Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 199.

7.7 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*<n>’. 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 RET 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.
Chapter 7: Help 46

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 (see Section 33.3 [Key
Bindings], page 461). C-h s displays the contents of the syntax table, with explanations
of each character’s syntax (see Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual).
You can get a list of subcommands for a particular prefix key by typing C-h, ?, or F1
(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 ESC, because ESC C-h is actually C-M-h, which marks a defun. However,
ESC F1 and ESC ? work fine.)

7.8 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 re-
porting 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 worka-
rounds (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).
Chapter 7: Help 47

7.9 Help on Active Text and Tooltips

In Emacs, stretches of active text (text that does something special in response to mouse
clicks or RET) 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. See Section 18.18 [Tooltips], page 189.
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.
 48

8 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 (see Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 448).
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 (see Section 34.1
[Quitting], page 477).
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. See Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient Mark], page 53.
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. See Chapter 17 [Windows],
page 168. 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. See Section 9.5 [Rectangles],
page 63.

8.1 Setting the Mark

Here are some commands for setting the mark:

C-SPC 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. See Section 8.6
[Shift Selection], page 52.
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 49

The most common way to set the mark is with C-SPC (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-SPC, 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 (see Section 34.1 [Quit-
ting], page 477). 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-SPC C-SPC), and later jump back there (by
typing C-u C-SPC). See Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 51, 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-SPC.
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. See Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 175, 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-RIGHT, 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 Section 8.6 [Shift
Selection], page 52.
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 (see
Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 51). 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. See Section 9.3.2 [Primary Selection], page 61.

1
There is no C-SPC character in ASCII; usually, typing C-SPC 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-SPC.
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 50

8.2 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 (see Section 22.1 [Words],
page 225, 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
(see Section 23.4.1 [Expressions], page 265). Repeated invocations extend the region to sub-
sequent 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 ob-
ject in the buffer. M-h (mark-paragraph) marks paragraphs (see Section 22.3 [Paragraphs],
page 227), C-M-h (mark-defun) marks top-level definitions (see Section 23.2.2 [Moving
by Defuns], page 259), and C-x C-p (mark-page) marks pages (see Section 22.4 [Pages],
page 228). Repeated invocations again play the same role, extending the region to consec-
utive 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.

8.3 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 (see Chapter 9 [Killing], page 55).
• Copy it to the kill ring with M-w (see Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 58).
• Convert case with C-x C-l or C-x C-u (see Section 22.7 [Case], page 234).
• Undo changes within it using C-u C-/ (see Section 13.1 [Undo], page 119).
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 51

• Replace text within it using M-% (see Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace], page 113).
• Indent it with C-x TAB or C-M-\ (see Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 221).
• Fill it as text with M-x fill-region (see Section 22.6 [Filling], page 230).
• Check the spelling of words within it with M-$ (see Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 121).
• Evaluate it as Lisp code with M-x eval-region (see Section 24.9 [Lisp Eval], page 297).
• Save it in a register with C-x r s (see Chapter 10 [Registers], page 67).
• Save it in a buffer or a file (see Section 9.4 [Accumulating Text], page 62).
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 (see Section 13.4
[Spelling], page 121). 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 Section 4.3 [Erasing], page 19, the DEL (backward-delete-char) and
Delete (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 (see Chapter 9 [Killing], page 55).
Other commands always operate on the region, and have no default behavior. Such com-
mands 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 (see Section 8.4 [Mark
Ring], page 51). 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.

8.4 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-SPC C-SPC
Set the mark, pushing it onto the mark ring, without activating it.
C-u C-SPC Move point to where the mark was, and restore the mark from the ring of former
marks.
The command C-SPC C-SPC 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,
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 52

without activating the mark (which would cause Emacs to highlight the region). This is
actually two consecutive invocations of C-SPC (set-mark-command); the first C-SPC sets the
mark, and the second C-SPC deactivates it. (When Transient Mark mode is off, C-SPC C-
SPC instead activates Transient Mark mode temporarily; see Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient
Mark], page 53.)
To return to a marked position, use set-mark-command with a prefix argument: C-u
C-SPC. This moves point to where the mark was, and deactivates the mark if it was active.
Each subsequent C-u C-SPC 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-SPC, you can type C-SPC instead of C-u C-SPC 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-SPC 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-SPC 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 (see
Section 10.1 [Saving Positions in Registers], page 67).

8.5 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-SPC (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-SPC
take you to earlier buffers and mark positions.

8.6 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.
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 53

Shift-selection only works if the shifted cursor motion key is not already bound to a
separate command (see Chapter 33 [Customization], page 444). 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 (see
Section 8.1 [Setting Mark], page 48). 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.

8.7 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-SPC 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 (see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark],
page 48).
• 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-SPC C-SPC
or C-u C-x C-x.
C-SPC C-SPC
Set the mark at point (like plain C-SPC) and enable Transient Mark mode just
once, until the mark is deactivated. (This is not really a separate command;
you are using the C-SPC 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.
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 54

When you specify a region with the mouse (see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark], page 48),
or with shift-selection (see Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 52), this likewise activates
Transient Mark mode temporarily and highlights the region.
 55

9 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. See Section 9.2.1 [Kill Ring], page 58.
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.

9.1 Deletion and Killing

Most commands which erase text from the buffer save it in the kill ring (see Section 9.2.1
[Kill Ring], page 58). 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 (see Section 13.1 [Undo], page 119),
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. See Section 9.3
[Cut and Paste], page 60.
Commands that erase text but do not save it in the kill ring are known as delete com-
mands; their names usually contain the word ‘delete’. These include C-d (delete-char)
and DEL (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. See Section 9.3 [Cut and Paste], page 60.

9.1.1 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.
DEL
BACKSPACE
Delete the previous character, or the text in the region if it is active
(delete-backward-char).
Delete 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-SPC 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).
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 56

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 DEL (delete-backward-char),
delete (delete-forward-char), and C-d (delete-char). See Section 4.3 [Erasing],
page 19. With a numeric argument, they delete the specified number of characters. If the
numeric argument is omitted or one, DEL and delete delete all the text in the region if it
is active (see Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 50).
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-SPC (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. See Chapter 21 [Inden-
tation], page 221.
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.

9.1.2 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 (see Section 4.8 [Con-
tinuation Lines], page 22).
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 57

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.

9.1.3 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). See Section 22.1 [Words], page 225.
M-DEL Kill one word backwards (backward-kill-word).
C-x DEL Kill back to beginning of sentence (backward-kill-sentence). See
Section 22.2 [Sentences], page 226.
M-k Kill to the end of the sentence (kill-sentence).
C-M-k Kill the following balanced expression (kill-sexp). See Section 23.4.1 [Expres-
sions], page 265.
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 (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48). 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 (see Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 50).
Emacs also provides commands to kill specific syntactic units: words, with M-DEL and M-d
(see Section 22.1 [Words], page 225); balanced expressions, with C-M-k (see Section 23.4.1
[Expressions], page 265); and sentences, with C-x DEL and M-k (see Section 22.2 [Sentences],
page 226).
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.

9.1.4 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.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 58

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.

9.2 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).
See Section 9.2.2 [Earlier Kills], page 58.
C-M-w Cause the following command, if it is a kill command, to append to the previous
kill (append-next-kill). See Section 9.2.3 [Appending Kills], page 59.
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-SPC (see Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 51).
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. See Section 9.2.2 [Earlier
Kills], page 58.
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. See
Section 9.3 [Cut and Paste], page 60, for details.

9.2.1 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 Chapter 10 [Registers],
page 67. See Section 9.4 [Accumulating Text], page 62, 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.

9.2.2 Yanking Earlier Kills

As explained in Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 58, 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.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 59

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.

9.2.3 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-DEL M-d M-DEL, 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-SPC 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
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 60

in the kill ring. M-f M-f C-u M-DEL 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.

9.3 “Cut and Paste” Operations on Graphical Displays

In most graphical desktop environments, you can transfer data (usually text) between dif-
ferent 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 RET x or C-x RET X. You can also request a different data type by cus-
tomizing x-select-request-type. See Section 19.10 [Communication Coding], page 204.

9.3.1 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. How-
ever, 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.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 61

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 clip-
board, 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 (see
Section 9.3.2 [Primary Selection], page 61), 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.

9.3.2 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 (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48), 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 (see Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 175),
or by keyboard commands (e.g., by typing C-SPC and moving point; see Section 8.1 [Setting
Mark], page 48).
If you change the variable select-active-regions to only, Emacs saves only temporar-
ily active regions to the primary selection, i.e., those made with the mouse or with shift
selection (see Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 52). 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. See Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 175.
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.

9.3.3 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:
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 62

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 (see Section 18.1
[Mouse Commands], page 175).
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. See Section 18.1
[Mouse Commands], page 175.

9.4 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.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 63

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. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 159, 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. See Chapter 10 [Registers],
page 67.

9.5 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. Rect-
angle 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 rect-
angle (kill-rectangle).
C-x r M-w Save the text of the region-rectangle as the last killed rectangle
(copy-rectangle-as-kill).
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 64

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 RET
Replace rectangle contents with string on each line (string-rectangle).
M-x string-insert-rectangle RET string RET
Insert string on each line of the rectangle.
C-x SPC 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. See
Section 10.3 [Rectangle Registers], page 68.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 65

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 par-
ticular 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 (see Section “Formatting Strings”
in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
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 in-
serts the string on each line, shifting the original text to the right.
The command C-x SPC (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. See Chapter 9 [Killing], page 55. 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.

9.6 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 (see Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 50).
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.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 66

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 (see Section 18.1 [Mouse Com-
mands], page 175) 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-RET to start a rectangle, extend it using the movement commands, and cut or copy it
using C-x or C-c. RET 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 Section 9.5 [Rectangles], page 63.
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-SPC 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 RET.
 67

10 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 (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 477).
A register can store a position, a piece of text, a rectangle, a number, a window con-
figuration, 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 RET 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 F1.
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.

10.1 Saving Positions in Registers

C-x r SPC 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 SPC (point-to-register), followed by a character r, saves both the posi-
tion 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.
Chapter 10: Registers 68

10.2 Saving Text in Registers

When you want to insert a copy of the same piece of text several times, it may be inconve-
nient 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 RET 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. See Section 10.5 [Number Registers], page 69.
M-x prepend-to-register RET 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. See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48. 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 RET 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.

10.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers

A register can contain a rectangle instead of linear text. See Section 9.5 [Rectangles],
page 63, 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).
Chapter 10: Registers 69

The C-x r i r (insert-register) command, previously documented in Section 10.2

[Text Registers], page 68, inserts a rectangle rather than a text string, if the register contains
a rectangle.

10.4 Saving Window Configurations in Registers

You can save the window configuration of the selected frame in a register, or even the con-
figuration of all windows in all frames, and restore the configuration later. See Chapter 17
[Windows], page 168, 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.

10.5 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 (see
Chapter 14 [Keyboard Macros], page 125).

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. See Section 10.2 [Text Registers], page 68.

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.

10.6 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))
Chapter 10: Registers 70

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.)

10.7 Keyboard Macro Registers

If you need to execute a keyboard macro (see Chapter 14 [Keyboard Macros], page 125)
frequently, it is more convenient to put it in a register or save it (see Section 14.5 [Save
Keyboard Macro], page 130). 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.)

10.8 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 RET
Set the bookmark for the visited file, at point.
C-x r m bookmark RET
Set the bookmark named bookmark at point (bookmark-set).
C-x r M bookmark RET
Like C-x r m, but don’t overwrite an existing bookmark.
C-x r b bookmark RET
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.
 71

When you kill Emacs, Emacs saves your bookmarks, if you have changed any book-
mark 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 RET filename RET
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 RET filename RET
Save all the current bookmark values in the file filename.
M-x bookmark-delete RET bookmark RET
Delete the bookmark named bookmark.
M-x bookmark-insert-location RET bookmark RET
Insert in the buffer the name of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.
M-x bookmark-insert RET bookmark RET
Insert in the buffer the contents of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.
 72

11 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.

11.1 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 wide-
spread. Hence, the strange result that PageDown 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 (see Section 11.3 [Auto Scrolling], page 74). You can also scroll explicitly with
these commands:
C-v
PageDown
next Scroll forward by nearly a full window (scroll-up-command).
M-v
PageUp
prior 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 PageDown (or next) key is equivalent to
C-v.
M-v (scroll-down-command) scrolls backward in a similar way. The PageUp (or prior)
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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 73

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 (see Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands],
page 175); in general, it affects any command that has a non-nil scroll-command property.
See Section “Property Lists” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Sometimes, particularly when you hold down keys such as C-v and M-v, activating key-
board 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 (see Section 11.12
[Font Lock], page 82) 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 (see Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 464).

11.2 Recentering
C-l Scroll the selected window so the current line is the center-most text line; on sub-
sequent 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. Pos-
sibly 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
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 74

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 (see Section 11.3 [Auto
Scrolling], page 74).
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 (see Section 34.2.3 [Screen Garbled], page 479).
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.

11.3 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
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 75

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.

11.4 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 hori-
zontally, text lines are truncated rather than continued (see Section 11.21 [Line Truncation],
page 91). 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).
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 76

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.

11.5 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. Cancel-
ing 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. See
Section 22.4 [Pages], page 228, for the definition of a page. C-x n d (narrow-to-defun)
narrows down to the defun containing point (see Section 23.2 [Defuns], page 259).
The way to cancel narrowing is to widen with C-x n w (widen). This makes all text in
the buffer accessible again.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 77

You can get information on what part of the buffer you are narrowed down to using the
C-x = command. See Section 4.9 [Position Info], page 22.
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. See Section 33.3.11 [Disabling], page 469.

11.6 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 SPC to scroll forward one
windowful, S-SPC or DEL 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.

11.7 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.

11.8 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. See Section 11.12 [Font Lock], page 82, 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 (see Section 12.6
[Regexps], page 104).
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
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 78

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. See Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 448, 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. See Section 11.9 [Colors],
page 78.
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. See Section D.1
[Resources], page 529.
Emacs can display variable-width fonts, but some Emacs commands, particularly in-
dentation 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.

11.9 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 (see Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization],
page 448)—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
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 79

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;
See Section 18.11 [Frame Parameters], page 185.

11.10 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 (see Section 12.1 [In-
cremental Search], page 95).
query-replace
This face is used to highlight the current Query Replace match (see
Section 12.10 [Replace], page 111).
lazy-highlight
This face is used to highlight lazy matches for Isearch and Query Replace
(matches other than the current one).
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 80

region This face is used for displaying an active region (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48).
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 (see Section 9.3.3 [Sec-
ondary Selection], page 61).
trailing-whitespace
The face for highlighting excess spaces and tabs at the end of a line
when show-trailing-whitespace is non-nil (see Section 11.16 [Useless
Whitespace], page 86).
escape-glyph
The face for displaying control characters and escape sequences (see
Section 11.19 [Text Display], page 89).
homoglyph
The face for displaying lookalike characters, i.e., characters that look like but are
not the characters being represented (see Section 11.19 [Text Display], page 89).
nobreak-space
The face for displaying no-break space characters (see Section 11.19 [Text Dis-
play], page 89).
nobreak-hyphen
The face for displaying no-break hyphen characters (see Section 11.19 [Text
Display], page 89).
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 shad-
ows 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 (see Section 18.18 [Tooltips],
page 189) 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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 81

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 de-
fault, Emacs automatically adds this face to the value of minibuffer-prompt-
properties, which is a list of text properties (see Section “Text Properties”
in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) 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.) See Section 11.14 [Fringes], page 85.
cursor The :background attribute of this face specifies the color of the text cursor.
See Section 11.20 [Cursor Display], page 91.
tooltip This face is used for tooltip text. By default, if Emacs is built with GTK+ sup-
port, tooltips are drawn via GTK+ and this face has no effect. See Section 18.18
[Tooltips], page 189.
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. See Section 18.12
[Scroll Bars], page 186.
tool-bar This face determines the color of tool bar icons. See Section 18.16 [Tool Bars],
page 188.
menu This face determines the colors and font of Emacs’s menus. See Section 18.15
[Menu Bars], page 188.
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 RET.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 82

11.11 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.

11.12 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 (see
Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 444), 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 (see Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 454). 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 RET font-lock-faces RET. You can then use that customiza-
tion buffer to customize the appearance of these faces. See Section 33.1.5 [Face Customiza-
tion], page 448.
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
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 83

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. See Section 23.2.1 [Left Margin Paren],
page 259, 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. See Section “Search-based Fontification” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.
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’. See Section 33.1.6 [Specific Customization], page 449.

11.13 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 (see Section 11.12 [Font Lock], page 82), except
that you specify explicitly the regular expressions to highlight. You can control them with
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 84

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 RET face RET
C-x w h regexp RET face RET
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 RET RET. 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 RET
C-x w r regexp RET
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
RET to exit the minibuffer and unhighlight it.
M-s h l regexp RET face RET
C-x w l regexp RET face RET
Highlight entire lines containing a match for regexp, using face face
(highlight-lines-matching-regexp).
M-s h p phrase RET face RET
C-x w p phrase RET face RET
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).
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 85

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 sym-
bol is a member of the list hi-lock-exclude-modes.

11.14 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 (see Section 4.8
[Continuation Lines], page 22). 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 (see
Section 19.19 [Bidirectional Editing], page 212), the meanings of the curving arrows in the
fringes are swapped.
The fringes indicate line truncation (see Section 11.21 [Line Truncation], page 91) 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 (see Section 11.15
[Displaying Boundaries], page 86), and where a program you are debugging is executing
(see Section 24.6 [Debuggers], page 286).
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 con-
tinuation and truncation are an exception: when fringes are not available, Emacs uses the
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 86

leftmost and rightmost character cells to indicate continuation and truncation with special
ASCII characters, see Section 4.8 [Continuation Lines], page 22, and Section 11.21 [Line
Truncation], page 91. 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 (see Section 19.19 [Bidirectional Editing], page 212), 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.

11.15 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 bound-
aries 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 (see Section “Association Lists” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual),
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)).

11.16 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 com-
mand 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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 87

On graphical displays, Emacs can indicate unused lines at the end of the window with
a small image in the left fringe (see Section 11.14 [Fringes], page 85). 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 vari-
able’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 consecu-
tive 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.

11.17 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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 88

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 Section 22.9 [Outline Mode], page 235, for another way to hide part of the text
in a buffer.

11.18 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)’.
See Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 216, 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 (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 76), 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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 89

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.
See Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 448.
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.

11.19 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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 90

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 TAB 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 (mi-
nus) 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. See Section “Display Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

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 hex-
adecimal character code. Similarly, on text terminals, characters that cannot be displayed
using the terminal encoding (see Section 19.12 [Terminal Coding], page 206) 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. See Section “Glyphless Character Dis-
play” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, 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
(see Section “Keys in Documentation” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).

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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 91

11.20 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 (see
Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 448). (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 (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 444), 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.

11.21 Line Truncation

As an alternative to continuation (see Section 4.8 [Continuation Lines], page 22), 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.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 92

Horizontal scrolling automatically causes line truncation (see Section 11.4 [Horizontal
Scrolling], page 75). 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.
See Section 17.2 [Split Window], page 168, for the variable truncate-partial-width-
windows which controls this.

11.22 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. See
Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 464.
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.

11.23 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:
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 93

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 (see Section 22.9
[Outline Mode], page 235), 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 dis-
played 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 (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 76) lines are normally num-
bered 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 narrow-
ing and will start at the first character of the buffer.
In selective display mode (see Section 11.17 [Selective Display], page 87), 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
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 94

echo at all. The value takes effect when there is something to echo. See Section 1.2 [Echo
Area], page 7.
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. See Section 4.1 [Inserting Text],
page 16.) 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 mini-
mum 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 spac-
ing was specified for the underlined text, see Section “Line Height” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual, 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.
 95

12 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 (see Section 25.3.1.3 [Identifier
Search], page 323) or through the Dired A command (see Section 27.7 [Operating on Files],
page 344), or ask the grep program to do it (see Section 24.4 [Grep Searching], page 284).

12.1 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 RET.
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.

12.1.1 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 (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 77). See Section 12.12
[Search Customizations], page 117, 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 DEL (isearch-delete-char). Each
DEL cancels the last input item entered during the search. Emacs records a new input item
whenever you type a command that changes the search string, the position of point, the
success or failure of the search, the direction of the search, the position of the other end of
the current search result, or the “wrappedness” of the search. See Section 12.1.4 [Error in
Isearch], page 97, for more about dealing with unsuccessful search.
When you are satisfied with the place you have reached, type RET (isearch-exit). 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
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 96

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. RET is necessary
only if the next command you want to type is a printing character, DEL, RET, 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
Section 12.1.6 [Not Exiting Isearch], page 99.
As a special exception, entering RET when the search string is empty launches non-
incremental search (see Section 12.2 [Nonincremental Search], page 101). (This can be
customized; see Section 12.12 [Search Customizations], page 117.)
To abandon the search and return to the place where you started, type ESC ESC ESC
(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-SPC or C-x C-x to return to
where you were before beginning the search. See Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 51. (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-SPC 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.

12.1.2 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
(isearch-repeat-forward) 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 commands with
DEL. Similarly, each C-r (isearch-repeat-backward) 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 (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 77). 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 Section 12.12 [Search Customizations], page 117.
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
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 97

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 (isearch-ring-
retreat) and M-n (isearch-ring-advance) 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 RET 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 (isearch-edit-string) or click mouse-1 in the minibuffer. Type
RET, C-s or C-r to finish editing the string and search for it. Type C-f or RIGHT to add
to the search string characters following point from the buffer from which you started the
search.

12.1.3 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
(see Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 58). Clicking mouse-2 in the echo area appends the
current X selection (see Section 9.3.2 [Primary Selection], page 61) 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 alter-
native method to add the character after point is to enter the minibuffer with M-e (see
Section 12.1.2 [Repeat Isearch], page 96) and type C-f or RIGHT at the end of the search
string in the minibuffer. Each C-f or RIGHT 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 (see Section 12.9
[Lax Search], page 109). However, if the value of the variable search-upper-case
(see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109) is other than not-yanks, that disables this
down-casing.

12.1.4 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
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 98

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, use DEL
to cancel a previous input item (see Section 12.1.1 [Basic Isearch], page 95), C-M-w to erase
one character at a time, or M-e to edit it. If you like the place you have found, you can
type RET 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.

12.1.5 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 (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109), type M-s SPC.
To toggle case sensitivity of the search, type M-c or M-s c. See Section 12.9 [Lax Search],
page 109. 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 '. See Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109. 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). See [Outline Search], page 238.
To toggle between non-regexp and regexp incremental search, type M-r or M-s r
(isearch-toggle-regexp). See Section 12.5 [Regexp Search], page 103.
To toggle symbol mode, type M-s _. See Section 12.4 [Symbol Search], page 102.
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 (isearch-quote-char), 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 (see Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16). For example, C-q C-s
during incremental search adds the ‘control-S’ character to the search string.
• Type C-x 8 RET (isearch-char-by-name), 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 (see Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16).
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 99

• Use an input method (see Section 19.3 [Input Methods], page 196). If an input method
is enabled in the current buffer when you start the search, the same method will be ac-
tive 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. See Section 12.11 [Other Repeating Search], page 115.
Typing M-% (isearch-query-replace) 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.
See Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace], page 113. Typing C-M-% (isearch-query-replace-
regexp) invokes query-replace-regexp with the current search string used as the regexp
to replace.
Typing M-TAB in incremental search invokes isearch-complete, which attempts to com-
plete the search string using the search ring (the previous search strings you used) as a list
of completion alternatives. See Section 5.4 [Completion], page 28. In many operating
systems, the M-TAB 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 (see Section 33.3.5
[Rebinding], page 463).
You can exit the search while leaving the matches for the last search string high-
lighted on display. To this end, type M-s h r (isearch-highlight-regexp), which will
run highlight-regexp (see Section 11.13 [Highlight Interactively], page 83) passing it the
regexp derived from the last search string and prompting you for the face to use for high-
lighting. 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 (see Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 461).

12.1.6 Not Exiting Incremental Search

This subsection describes how to control whether typing a command not specifically mean-
ingful 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
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 100

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 argu-
ment (see Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24), 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 vari-
able 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 (see
Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 72). 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 (see Section 7.1 [Key
Help], page 41), which is view-lossage. Then you can put the following line
in your init file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 470):
(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).

12.1.7 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.
See Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 33. You can visualize the minibuffer and its
history as a series of pages, with the earliest history element on the first page and the
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 101

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 RET), it remains
in the minibuffer afterwards. Canceling the search, with C-g, restores the contents of the
minibuffer when you began the search.

12.2 Nonincremental Search

Emacs also has conventional nonincremental search commands, which require you to type
the entire search string before searching begins.
C-s RET string RET
Search for string.
C-r RET string RET
Search backward for string.
To start a nonincremental search, first type C-s RET. This enters the minibuffer to read
the search string; terminate the string with RET, and then the search takes place. If the
string is not found, the search command signals an error.
When you type C-s RET, 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 RET 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 (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109) except
case folding.

12.3 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 RET words RET
Search for words, using a forward nonincremental word search.
M-s w C-r RET words RET
Search backward for words, using a nonincremental word search.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 102

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 runs the command
isearch-toggle-word, which 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 RET for a forward search, or M-s
w C-r RET 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 (see Section 12.1 [Incremental Search], page 95), 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 (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109) 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 (see Section “Basics” in The Emacs Web Wowser Manual).
If the region is not active, or doesn’t contain any words, this command prompts the user
for a URL or keywords to search.

12.4 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 _ RET symbol RET
Search forward for symbol, nonincrementally.
M-s _ C-r RET symbol RET
Search backward for symbol, nonincrementally.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 103

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 _ RET for a forward search, or M-s _
C-r RET 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 white-
space matching (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109) has no effect on them.

12.5 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 (see Section 12.1.5
[Special Isearch], page 98) do similar things in an incremental regexp search. For instance,
typing C-s immediately after starting the search retrieves the last incremental search reg-
exp 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 SPC (isearch-toggle-lax-
whitespace). Then any SPC 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. See Section 12.1.5 [Special Isearch], page 98.
Also unlike ordinary incremental search, incremental regexp search cannot use character
folding (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109). (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.)
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 104

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’. See
Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 104.
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 RET and C-M-r RET. 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 (see
Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109) 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. See Section 12.1
[Incremental Search], page 95.

12.6 Syntax of Regular Expressions

This section (and this manual in general) describes regular expression features that users
typically use. See Section “Regular Expressions” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, 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’.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 105

* 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 rep-
etitions 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 pre-
ceding 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
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 106

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 char-
acters, 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. See Section “Char Classes”
in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, 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 intro-
duces 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.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 107

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.

12.7 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 group-
ing; 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 ‘\( ... \)’ con-
struct. This is called a back reference.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 108

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 reg-
ular 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 any-
thing, 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. See Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.
\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,
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 109

‘.’ for ordinary punctuation, etc. See Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual.
\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 de-
scription of the known categories, type M-x describe-categories RET.
\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. See Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

12.8 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.

12.9 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 Section 12.5 [Regexp Search], page 103.) 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 SPC (isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace) within an incremental search.
Another M-s SPC 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]’
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 110

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. See Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 455.
This variable applies to nonincremental searches also, including those performed by the re-
place commands (see Section 12.10 [Replace], page 111) and the minibuffer history matching
commands (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 33).
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 RET case-fold-search RET.
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 fold-
ing, 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. See Section 12.12 [Search
Customizations], page 117. 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 Section 12.10.3 [Replacement and
Lax Matches], page 112.)
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.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 111

12.10 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 (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48). 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 (see Section 26.3 [Expanding Abbrevs], page 333).

12.10.1 Unconditional Replacement

M-x replace-string RET string RET newstring RET
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 (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48).
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-SPC to move back there. See Section 8.4 [Mark
Ring], page 51.
A prefix argument restricts replacement to matches that are surrounded by word bound-
aries.
See Section 12.10.3 [Replacement and Lax Matches], page 112, for details about case-
sensitivity and character folding in replace commands.

12.10.2 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
(see Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 104).
M-x replace-regexp RET regexp RET newstring RET
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 RET c[ad]+r RET \&-safe RET
replaces (for example) ‘cadr’ with ‘cadr-safe’ and ‘cddr’ with ‘cddr-safe’.
M-x replace-regexp RET \(c[ad]+r\)-safe RET \1 RET
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 112

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 RET \(x\)\|y RET
\,(if \1 "y" "x") RET
For computing replacement strings for ‘\,’, the format function is often useful (see
Section “Formatting Strings” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). 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 RET ^.\{0,72\}$ RET
\,(format "%-72sABC%05d" \& \#) RET

12.10.3 Replace Commands and Lax Matches

This subsection describes the behavior of replace commands with respect to lax matches
(see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109) 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
(see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109) 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 com-
mands try to preserve the case pattern of each occurrence. Thus, the command
M-x replace-string RET foo RET bar RET
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 113

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 (see Section 12.9
[Lax Search], page 109) 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.)

12.10.4 Query Replace

M-% string RET newstring RET
Replace some occurrences of string with newstring.
C-M-% regexp RET newstring RET
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 (see Section 12.10.1 [Unconditional Replace], page 111).
In particular, it preserves case provided case-replace is non-nil, as it normally is (see
Section 12.10.3 [Replacement and Lax Matches], page 112). 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 previ-
ous 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 RET 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 high-
light other matches using lazy-highlight just like incremental search (see Section 12.1
[Incremental Search], page 95); this can be disabled by setting query-replace-lazy-
highlight to nil. By default, query-replace-regexp will show the substituted replace-
ment 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.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 114

The characters you can type when you are shown a match for the string or regexp are:
SPC
y to replace the occurrence with newstring.
DEL
Delete
BACKSPACE
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, DEL and SPC 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 ESC ESC RET to restart
(see Section 5.6 [Repetition], page 34).
RET
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. See Section 31.11
[Recursive Edit], page 434.
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 RET, the minibuffer contents replace the current occurrence of the
pattern. They also become the new replacement string for any further occur-
rences.
C-l to redisplay the screen. Then you must type another character to specify what
to do with this occurrence.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 115

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 re-
maining 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
?
F1 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 ESC ESC, which repeats the
query-replace because it used the minibuffer to read its arguments. See Section 5.6
[Repetition], page 34.
The option search-invisible determines how query-replace treats invisible text. See
[Outline Search], page 238.
See Section 27.7 [Operating on Files], page 344, for the Dired Q command which performs
query replace on selected files. See also Section 27.9 [Transforming File Names], page 348,
for Dired commands to rename, copy, or link files by replacing regexp matches in file names.

12.11 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 RET; 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 in-
cremental regexp search.
M-x multi-isearch-files
Prompt for one or more file names, ending with RET; then, begin a multi-file
incremental search in those files. (If the search fails in one file, the next C-s
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 116

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 incre-
mental 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 con-
tains 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
RET, 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 (see Section 24.2 [Compilation Mode], page 281).
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.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 117

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.

12.12 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 (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 109). 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 search-
ing and type C-s or C-r during that time, Emacs will not respond until it fin-
ishes highlighting all those matches. Thus, smaller values make Emacs more
responsive.
Normally, entering RET within incremental search when the search string is empty
launches a nonincremental search. (Actually, it lets you edit the search string, and the next
 118

RET does the search.) However, if you customize the variable search-nonincremental-
instead to nil, typing RET 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 cus-
tomize 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 ma-
chines 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 termi-
nals, 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.
 119

13 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 DEL (delete-backward-char). These were described earlier in this manual. See
Section 4.3 [Erasing], page 19.

13.1 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 edit-
ing 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. Consec-
utive 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 (see Section 1.3
[Mode Line], page 8). 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.
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-_.
Chapter 13: Commands for Fixing Typos 120

Alternatively, you can discard all the changes since the buffer was last visited or saved
with M-x revert-buffer (see Section 15.4 [Reverting], page 144).
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 (see Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient Mark], page 53), 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 old-
est 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. See Section 34.3 [Reporting Bugs], page 482.

13.2 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. See Chapter 12
[Search], page 95.
Chapter 13: Commands for Fixing Typos 121

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 (see
Section 23.4.1 [Expressions], page 265), 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 trans-
pose 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.

13.3 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. See Section 22.7 [Case], page 234.

13.4 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.
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.
Chapter 13: Commands for Fixing Typos 122

M-x ispell-message
Check and correct spelling in a draft mail message, excluding cited material.
M-x ispell-change-dictionary RET dict RET
Restart the spell-checker process, using dict as the dictionary.
M-x ispell-kill-ispell
Kill the spell-checker subprocess.
M-TAB
ESC TAB
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. See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 48. (When Transient Mark mode is off,
M-$ always acts on the word around or before point, ignoring the region; see Section 8.7
[Disabled Transient Mark], page 53.)
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 respec-
tively. 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. See Chapter 29 [Sending Mail], page 375.
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.
SPC Skip this word—continue to consider it incorrect, but don’t change it here.
r new RET Replace the word, just this time, with new. (The replacement string will be
rescanned for more spelling errors.)
R new RET 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.
Chapter 13: Commands for Fixing Typos 123

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 RET
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-TAB (ispell-complete-word) performs in-buffer
completion based on spelling correction. Insert the beginning of a word, and then type
M-TAB; this shows a list of completions. (If your window manager intercepts M-TAB, type
ESC TAB 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 spell-
ing 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. See Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 454. Note that, as Flyspell mode needs to check each word across which you
Chapter 13: Commands for Fixing Typos 124

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 addi-
tion, C-. or ESC-TAB (flyspell-auto-correct-word) will propose various successive cor-
rections 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
(see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 454).
 125

14 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.

14.1 Basic Use

F3
C-x ( Start defining a keyboard macro (kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter).
F4
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 F3
C-u C-x ( Re-execute last keyboard macro, then append keys to its definition.
C-u C-u F3
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 F3. 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 F4 (kmacro-end-or-
call-macro) to terminate the definition. For example,
F3 M-f foo F4
defines a macro to move forward a word and then insert ‘foo’. Note that F3 and F4 do not
become part of the macro.
After defining the macro, you can call it with F4. For the above example, this has the
same effect as typing M-f foo again. (Note the two roles of the F4 command: it ends the
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 126

macro if you are in the process of defining one, or calls the last macro otherwise.) You can
also supply F4 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-BREAK).
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 F3. This is equivalent to plain F3 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 F3.
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,
F3 C-a C-k C-x b foo RET C-y C-x b RET F4
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 key-
board 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 F3 and F4 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 F3, 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 F4 (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.
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 127

14.2 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 key-
board 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 F4 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, F4 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.

14.3 The Keyboard Macro Counter

Each keyboard macro has an associated counter, which is initialized to 0 when you start
defining the macro. This current 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 normally
incremented each time its value is inserted into the buffer.
In addition to the current counter, keyboard macros also maintain the previous counter,
which records the value the current counter had last time it was incremented or set. Note
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 128

that incrementing the current counter by zero, e.g., with C-u 0 C-x C-k C-i, also records
the value of the current counter as the previous counter value.
F3 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 F3 (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, F3 begins a macro
definition instead. See Section 14.1 [Basic Keyboard Macro], page 125.) You can use a
numeric prefix argument to specify a different increment. If you just specify a C-u prefix,
that inserts the previous counter value, and doesn’t change the current value.
As an example, let us show how the keyboard macro counter can be used to build a
numbered list. Consider the following key sequence:
F3 C-a F3 . SPC F4
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 F4 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 F3, 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
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 129

this default. You can specify any format string that the format function accepts and that
makes sense with a single integer extra argument (see Section “Formatting Strings” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). 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. See Section 10.5 [Number
Registers], page 69. For most purposes, it is simpler to use a keyboard macro counter.

14.4 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:

SPC (or y) Continue executing the keyboard macro.

DEL (or n) Skip the remainder of this repetition of the macro, and start right away with
the next repetition.
RET (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 SPC 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. See Section 31.11 [Recursive Edit], page 434.
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 130

14.5 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 (see Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps],
page 461). 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 RET macroname RET
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 (see Section 24.8 [Lisp Libraries], page 296). If the file you save
in is your init file ~/.emacs (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 470) 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.
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 131

14.6 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 RET
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 RET
(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).

14.7 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 SPC (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:
• SPC and y execute the current command, and advance to the next command in the
keyboard macro.
• n, d, and DEL 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.
• TAB executes the current command, as well as all similar commands immediately fol-
lowing the current command; for example, TAB 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.
 132

• 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.
 133

15 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.

15.1 File Names

Many Emacs commands that operate on a file require you to specify the file name, using
the minibuffer (see Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 26).
While in the minibuffer, you can use the usual completion and history commands (see
Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 26). Note that file name completion ignores file names whose
extensions appear in the variable completion-ignored-extensions (see Section 5.4.5
[Completion Options], page 32). 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 RET immediately after completing up to a nonexistent file name,
Emacs prints ‘[Confirm]’ and you must type a second RET to confirm. See Section 5.4.3
[Completion Exit], page 30, for details.
Minibuffer history commands offer some special features for reading file names, see
Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 33.
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 (see
Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 26). 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 (see Section 16.1 [Select Buffer], page 159). 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.
Chapter 15: File Handling 134

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. See Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 26.
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 ‘/:’ (see Section 15.15 [Quoted File
Names], page 156). File names which begin with a literal ‘~’ should also be quoted with
‘/:’.
You can include non-ASCII characters in file names. See Section 19.11 [File Name Cod-
ing], page 205.

15.2 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. See
Section 15.1 [File Names], page 133, 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; see Section 15.14 [Remote Files], page 155). 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 (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8).
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
Chapter 15: File Handling 135

method is to add a suffix based on the directory name (e.g., ‘<rms>’, ‘<tmp>’, and so on),
but you can select other methods. See Section 16.7.1 [Uniquify], page 166.
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 (see Section 15.3
[Saving], page 137). 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 (see Chapter 16 [Buffers],
page 159). 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 disre-
garding 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 ?. See Section 15.15
[Quoted File Names], page 156, for information on how to visit a file whose name actu-
ally 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. See Chapter 27 [Dired], page 338. 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. See
Section 15.13 [File Archives], page 154, 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). See Section 16.3 [Misc Buffer], page 161.
Chapter 15: File Handling 136

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. See
Chapter 17 [Windows], page 168.
C-x 5 f (find-file-other-frame) is similar, but opens a new frame, or selects any
existing frame showing the specified file. See Chapter 18 [Frames], page 175.
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 Section 18.17
[Dialog Boxes], page 189.
Secondly, Emacs supports drag and drop: dropping a file into an ordinary Emacs win-
dow 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 Section 18.14 [Drag and Drop], page 188, and Section 27.18 [Misc Dired Features],
page 354.
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 char-
acter 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. See Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 199.
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 (see Section “Format Conversion” in the Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual), character code conversion (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 199), or automatic uncompression (see Section 15.12 [Compressed Files], page 154),
and does not add a final newline because of require-final-newline (see Section 15.3.3
[Customize Save], page 141). 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.
Chapter 15: File Handling 137

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. See Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 454.
There are several ways to specify automatically the major mode for editing the file (see
Section 20.3 [Choosing Modes], page 218), and to specify local variables defined for that file
(see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 456).

15.3 Saving Files

Saving a buffer in Emacs means writing its contents back into the file that was visited in
the buffer.

15.3.1 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. See Section 15.3.2 [Backup], page 138.
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.
RET 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.
Chapter 15: File Handling 138

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 (see
Section 15.8 [Comparing Files], page 149).
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. See Section 15.4 [Reverting], page 144. (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 visit-
ing. 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 (see
Section 15.1 [File Names], page 133).
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. See Section 20.3
[Choosing Modes], page 218.
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. See Section 15.3.4 [Simultaneous Editing], page 142.

15.3.2 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.
Chapter 15: File Handling 139

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 (see Section 25.1 [Version Control],
page 301), 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. See Section “General VC Options” in Specialized
Emacs Features.
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. See Section 15.3.2.1 [Backup Names],
page 139.
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.

15.3.2.1 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 mul-
tiple numbered backup files. Its possible values are:
nil Make numbered backups for files that have numbered backups already. Other-
wise, make single backups. This is the default.
Chapter 15: File Handling 140

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 (see Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 455). You can
have Emacs set version-control locally whenever you visit a given file (see Section 33.2.4
[File Variables], page 456). 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.

15.3.2.2 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. See Section 27.4
[Flagging Many Files], page 340.

15.3.2.3 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.
Chapter 15: File Handling 141

• 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 (see Section 25.1 [Version Control],
page 301), Emacs does not normally make backups in the usual way for that file. But
committing (a.k.a. checking in, see Section 25.1.1.3 [VCS Concepts], page 303) 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.

15.3.3 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 imple-
ment 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 (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 516).
Emacs never uses fsync when writing auto-save files, as these files might lose data
anyway.
Chapter 15: File Handling 142

15.3.4 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
link1 with special contents in the same directory. See Section “File Locks” in elisp, 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 com-
pare the buffer to its file is the M-x diff-buffer-with-file command. See Section 15.8
[Comparing Files], page 149.
1
If your file system does not support symbolic links, a regular file is used.
Chapter 15: File Handling 143

15.3.5 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 RET name RET
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.

15.3.6 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 (see Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 454). 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
Chapter 15: File Handling 144

to update the time stamp manually. By default the time stamp is formatted according to
your locale setting (see Section C.4 [Environment], page 518) and time zone (see Section
“Time of Day” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). For customizations, see the Custom
group time-stamp.

15.4 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. However, it adds the reverted changes as a
single modification to the buffer’s undo history (see Section 13.1 [Undo], page 119). Thus,
after reverting, you can type C-/ or its aliases to bring the reverted changes back, if you
happen to change your mind.
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 auto-
matically 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
Chapter 15: File Handling 145

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 (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 338), Auto-Revert mode refreshes the
buffer when a file is created or deleted in the buffer’s directory.
See Section 25.1.8 [VC Undo], page 313, for commands to revert to earlier versions of
files under version control. See Section 25.1.2 [VC Mode Line], page 305, for Auto Revert
peculiarities when visiting files under version control.

15.5 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.

15.5.1 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 aut