Getting Started with Emacs

In emacs, the C stands for CTRL or CTL button on your keyboard. The M stands for the ALT button on your keyboard.

Features

The Menu Bar The topmost line of the Emacs interface is a menu. If you’re running X, you’ll recognize them as traditional pull−down menus that you can access using your mouse. You can use the F10 key to pull down the menu and then arrow keys to traverse.

The Status Bar and Mini−buffer

Of the last two lines in the Emacs interface

• The topmost one is essentially a status bar. It contains information about the buffer you’re working in, which mode Emacs is in, and various other things

  

• The bottommost line is called the mini−buffer. It is where commands that you give Emacs appear and it is where status messages are printed in response to things you do.

  

Termiologies

Buffer

Instead, Emacs reads the file into a buffer in memory. While you’re editing the buffer and working with the data nothing is changed on disk. Only when you actually save the buffer does the file on disk get updated

Point & Region

• In general terms the point is the cursor.
• The cursor is the visual representation of the point. The cursor is always on'' a particular character position in the current buffer. The point, on the other hand, lives in the space between characters on in the buffer. So you might say that if the cursor is on the letter h’ in the wordthe'' then the point is between thet’ and the` h’.
• In Emacs, a block of text is called a region.
• You can highlight (or “mark”) a block of text using the keyboard or mouse and then perform operations on just the selected block of text

Frames

In Emacs, a frame is a separate X window in which an Emacs buffer is displayed

Command Keys C−p Up one line C−n Down one line C−f Forward one character C−b Backward one character C−a Beginning of line C−e End of line C−v Down one page M−v Up one page M−f Forward one word M−b Backward one word M−< Beginning of buffer M−> End of buffer C−g Quit current operation

All “command keystrokes” in Emacs (those that are M−x something or C−something) are actually just shortcuts to functions which are part of Emacs. You can call any of those functions by typing M−x function−name and hitting Enter. You can also use the keyboard shortcut for that function (if it has one).

C−x C−s save−buffer Save the current buffer to disk C−x u undo Undo the last operation C−x C−f find−file Open a file from disk C−s isearch−forward Search forward for a string C−r isearch−backward Search backward for a string replace−string Search & replace for a string replace−regexp Search & replace using regexp C−h t help−with−tutorial Use the interactive tutorial C−h f describe−function Display help for a function C−h v describe−variable Display help for a variable C−h x describe−key Display what a key sequence does C−h a apropos Search help for string/regexp C−h F view−emacs−FAQ Display the Emacs FAQ C−h i info Read the Emacs documentation C−x r m bookmark−set Set a bookmark. Useful in searches C−x r b bookmark−jump Jump to a bookmark. −−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−

Tab Completion

As an example, try M−x search and then hit Tab. Emacs will append a hyphen to indicate that there are several possible completions but they all have a hyphen as the next character. Hit Tab once more and Emacs will display a list of the possible matches for you to choose from. Notice that it does so in a new window. It temporarily splits your display into two windows: one which contains the buffer you were editing and the other contains the list of possible completions for “search−”. You may hit C−g to exit out of the selection process and close the new window.