Emacs
What is Emacs?
vi and its clones are very functional
and powerful editors. However, they are often considered not
particularly extensible. vim is a
successful and powerful
vi variant that shrugs this trend,
being both extremely extensible and lightweight. However, many
users prefer a more "heavy" and extensible editor. This is why
many people (including the author of this chapter) prefer
Emacs.
Emacs takes extensibility up to eleven. Outside of a core of C,
the rest of Emacs is written in a
Lisp variant, nearly all of which is exposed to you, so that you
may configure it or even extend it at will (many good Emacs Lisp
tutorials can be found on the Internet). People have written
all sorts of extensions in Emacs Lisp, from syntax highlighting
for an obscure language, to a built-in terminal. In fact,
there's even a vi emulation mode
within Emacs (called viper), so you
can still get the modal editing that comes with vi, while having
access to the power of the Emacs
core.
Like vi, there are many variants of
Emacs (termed "emacsen"). However,
the one most commonly used (and the only one in Slackware) is
GNU Emacs. When people reference "Emacs" directly, they almost
always mean GNU Emacs.
Unlike vi,
Emacs operates more like a
traditional editor by default. This means that most keyboard
shortcuts can be performed without repeatedly changing modes.
You can open up a file and start typing away without having to
learn what the modes do, or forgetting which one you are
currently using.
Starting Out
Emacs can be started simply by
running the emacs command in your
terminal. When
you first start it in a console without arguments, you will see
something that resembles this:
If you are in X windows, Emacs may
start a GUI instead of running in your console. If this is the
case and you don't want a GUI, you can invoke it with the flag
'-nw'.
While here, you can browse around using the
keyboard arrow keys.
Underlined elements are links, and you can activate them by
moving over them and pressing 'enter'. The documentation
mentioned is very good, and can help you get your bearings
should you have any problems. Also note how they describe key
sequences such as C-h, meaning press the
h
key while holding down the CTRL key. Same deal
with M-`, meaning to hold the the
Meta key (usually "Alt") and
press the backtick "`" key. When they say (e.g.) C-x
C-c, this means to press the "x" key while holding down
the CTRL key, then press the "x" key while also
holding down the CTRL key. Conveniently, this
is also one of the more important commands in
Emacs: to close it.
Alternatively, if you call emacs with a
file name as an argument, it will open that file, just like
vi. Upon doing this, you will be
presented with the contents of the file in question. Here, you can
navigate the document using traditional arrow keys and type in
information at will without any issues.
Say you make some edits, and you now want to save your file.
The following key sequence will do that: C-x C-s.
If you made a new file, you will be prompted for this in what is
called the "minibuffer", the blank line below the gray line at
the bottom of the screen. Type in the file name of your choice,
then hit Enter. If you don't want to
save the file, you can press C-g, which aborts
operations that ask for input. Do note that tab-completion is
usually available for operations that use the minibuffer.
Should you want to open a new file within your same
Emacs session, type in C-x
C-f. You will be prompted for a file name in the
minibuffer. Emacs doesn't care
whether it exists or not. If it doesn't exist, a new buffer
will be created for it (the file will be created upon saving
with C-x C-s), or it will be opened as
expected. However, the old file will still be open! You can
switch back to it using C-x C-b, entering in
the file's name (or more technically, the buffer's name), then
hitting Enter.
How to Move Around
Like vi,
Emacs is also older than the arrow
keys on your keyboard. Also, like in
vi, using the arrow keys to navigate
files is also supported. While the
vi movement keys are more ergonomic,
emacs's are more "mnemonic".
However, it is still very possible to operate using the main
Emacs keybindings quickly and
efficiently. Here is a table of the basic movement keybindings:
Emacs Cursor Movement
Command
Result
C-f
Move the cursor one character to the right (forward)
C-b
Move the cursor one character to the left (backward)
C-n
Move the cursor one line down (next)
C-p
Move the cursor one line up (previous)
Of course, like with vi it is also
possible to repeat these commands with a numeric argument. If you
type in M-1 M-0 C-p, or C-u 10
C-p, the cursor will move ten lines up. If you type in
M-5 C-f or C-u 5 C-f, the cursor
will move five characters to the right.
Getting Help
Emacs contains a great deal of
documentation, to the point that it is often called a
"self-documenting" editor. This is because it provides
mechanisms for providing users with documentation while you are
using it.
Here are some useful functions that display documentation (they
all start with C-h):
Accessing Emacs Documentation
Command
Result
C-h f FUNCTION-NAME Enter
Show documentation for function FUNCTION-NAME
C-h k C-x C-c
Show documentation for the function bound to the keys
C-x C-c
C-h t
Show the Emacs tutorial
C-h ?
Show all help-related functions
C-h t is especially useful if
you want or need practice using Emacs.
Calling Functions
As noted earlier, Emacs exports a
large number of functions to for interactive use. Some of
these, like those opening and saving files, are mapped to keys.
Others (like the ones for moving to the beginning and end of
lines) are not. To call them, you have to invoke them. Say we
want to call the function "end-of-line". We would do
this:
M-x end-of-line Enter
And the cursor would move to the end of the line, as the function name
suggests.
Emacs Cheat Sheet
While Emacs can be simple to use, its scope can easily be
overwhelming. Below are some useful Emacs commands. Some
aspects have been simplified, most notably regarding text
selection. These concepts, and more, are described the
Emacs manual, and various on-line
tutorials. Decent summaries can also be gleaned from web
searches.
Emacs Cheat Sheet
Command
Result
C-f
Move the cursor one character to the right (forward)
C-b
Move the cursor one character to the left (backward)
C-n
Move the cursor one line down (next)
C-p
Move the cursor one line up (previous)
C-h f FUNCTION-NAME Enter
Show documentation for function FUNCTION-NAME
C-h k C-x C-c
Show documentation for the function bound to the keys C-x C-c
C-h t
Show the Emacs tutorial
C-h ?
Show all help-related functions
M-`
Access the Menu Bar
C-g
Cancel the current operation. This is most useful when in the minibuffer.
M-x FUNCTION-NAME Enter
Call the interactive function FUNCTION-NAME
M-1 M-0 C-n
Move the cursor ten lines down
C-u 10 C-n
Move the cursor ten lines down (same as above)
M-x beginning-of-line
Move the cursor to the beginning of the current line
M-x end-of-line
Move the cursor to the end of the current line
M->
Move the cursor to the end of the buffer
M-<
Move the cursor to the beginning of the buffer
C-k
Remove text from the cursor to the end of the line and
place it into the kill ring
C-space
Enter selection mode (use normal motion keys to move around). Press C-space again to leave it.
C-w
While in selection mode, delete the selected region, and store the result into the kill ring
M-w
While in selection mode, store the selected region into the kill ring.
C-y
"Yanks" the contents of the kill ring and places them at the cursor's location
C-/
Undo the previous action. Unlike most other editors, this includes previous undo actions.
insert
Enable or disable overwriting characters
C-s asdf Enter
Forward incremental search for the string "asdf". Repeat C-s as needed to search for future items, or C-r (below) to search backwards.
C-r asdf Enter
Backward incremental search for the string "asdf". Repeat C-r as needed to search for future items, or C-s (above) to search forwards.
M-% old Enter new Enter
Search for each instance of "old" and prompt you to replace it with "new". You can force replacement of all items by typing "!" at the replacement prompt.
C-x C-c
Exit Emacs, prompting you to save each unsaved buffer before doing so
C-x C-s
Save the currrent buffer to its file
C-x C-w new-file.txt Enter
Save the current buffer to a file "new-file.txt"