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).
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 Point.
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 Indentation)
according to the major mode. If point is at the end of the line, the
effect is to create a new blank line after it and indent the new line;
if point is in the middle of a line, the line is split at that
position. To turn off the auto-indentation, you can either disable
Electric Indent mode (see Convenience Features for Indentation) 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 Filling Text). The minor mode called Overwrite mode causes inserted characters to replace (overwrite) existing text, instead of shoving it to the right. See Minor Modes.
Only graphic characters can be inserted by typing the associated
key; other keys act as editing commands and do not insert themselves.
For instance, 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:
The use of octal sequences is disabled in ordinary non-binary Overwrite mode, to give you a convenient way to insert a digit instead of overwriting with it.
To use decimal or hexadecimal instead of octal, set the variable
read-quoted-char-radix to 10 or 16. If the radix is 16,
the letters a to f serve as part of a character code,
just like digits. Case is ignored.
A few common Unicode characters can be inserted via a command
starting with C-x 8. For example, C-x 8 [ inserts ‘
which is Unicode code-point U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK,
sometimes called a left single “curved quote” or “curly quote”.
Similarly, C-x 8 ], C-x 8 { and C-x 8 } insert the
curved quotes ’, “ and ”, respectively. Also, a working
Alt key acts like C-x 8 (unless followed by RET);
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 Completion). If you enter a
code-point, it should be as a hexadecimal number (the convention for
Unicode), or a number with a specified radix, e.g., #o23072
(octal); See 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 Numeric Arguments).
As an alternative to C-x 8, you can select the corresponding
transient input method by typing C-u C-x \ iso-transl RET,
then temporarily activating this transient input method by typing
C-x \ [ will insert the same character ‘ (see transient input method).
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 Quotation Marks.
To do more than insert characters, you have to know how to move point (see Point). The keyboard commands C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p move point to the right, left, down, and up, respectively. You can also move point using the arrow keys present on most keyboards: 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.
Move forward one character (forward-char).
This command (right-char) behaves like C-f, except when
point is in a right-to-left paragraph (see Bidirectional Editing).
Move backward one character (backward-char).
This command (left-char) behaves like C-b, except if the
current paragraph is right-to-left (see Bidirectional Editing).
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.
Move up one screen line (previous-line). This command
preserves position within the line, like C-n.
Move to the beginning of the line (move-beginning-of-line).
Move to the end of the line (move-end-of-line).
Move forward one word (forward-word). See Words.
This command (right-word) behaves like M-f, except it
moves backward by one word if the current paragraph is
right-to-left. See Bidirectional Editing.
Move backward one word (backward-word). See Words.
This command (left-word) behaves like M-b, except it
moves forward by one word if the current paragraph is
right-to-left. See Bidirectional Editing.
Without moving the text on the screen, reposition point on the left
margin of the center-most text line of the window; on subsequent
consecutive invocations, move point to the left margin of the top-most
line, the bottom-most line, and so forth, in cyclic order
(move-to-window-line-top-bottom).
A numeric argument says which screen line to place point on, counting downward from the top of the window (zero means the top line). A negative argument counts lines up from the bottom (−1 means the bottom line). See Numeric Arguments, for more information on numeric arguments.
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.
Move to the end of the buffer (end-of-buffer). On graphical
displays, C-END does the same.
Scroll the display one screen forward, and move point onscreen if
necessary (scroll-up-command). See Scrolling.
Scroll one screen backward, and move point onscreen if necessary
(scroll-down-command). See Scrolling.
Read a number n and move point to buffer position n. Position 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 c a numeric prefix argument.
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 Creating and Selecting Buffers, for the behavior of M-g M-g when you give it
a plain prefix argument. Alternatively, you can use the command
goto-line-relative to move point to the line relative to the
accessible portion of the narrowed buffer.
goto-line has its own history list (see Minibuffer History). You can have either a single list shared between all
buffers (the default) or a separate list for each buffer, by
customizing the user option goto-line-history-local.
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.
Use the current column of point as the semipermanent goal column
(set-goal-column) in the current buffer. When a semipermanent
goal column is in effect, C-n, C-p, <prior> and
<next> 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.
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,
a.k.a. visual 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 Continuation Lines. See Variables, for how to set variables such as
line-move-visual.
Unlike C-n and C-p, most of the Emacs commands that work
on lines work on logical lines. For instance, C-a
(move-beginning-of-line) and C-e
(move-end-of-line) respectively move to the beginning and end
of the logical line. Whenever we encounter commands that work on
screen lines, such as C-n and C-p, we will point these
out.
When line-move-visual is nil, you can also set the
variable track-eol to a non-nil value. Then C-n
and C-p, when starting at the end of the logical line, move to
the end of the next logical line. Normally, track-eol is
nil.
C-n normally stops at the end of the buffer when you use it on
the last line in the buffer. However, if you set the variable
next-line-add-newlines to a non-nil value, C-n on
the last line of a buffer creates an additional line at the end and
moves down into it.
Delete the character before point, or the region if it is active
(delete-backward-char).
Delete the character or grapheme cluster after point, or the region if
it is active (delete-forward-char).
Delete the character after point (delete-char).
Kill to the end of the line (kill-line).
Kill forward to the end of the next word (kill-word).
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 The Mark and the Region, 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 If DEL Fails to Delete, 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 The Mark and the Region).
If the character after point is composed with following characters and
displayed as a single display unit, a so-called grapheme cluster
representing the entire sequence, Delete deletes the entire
sequence in one go. This is in contrast to DEL which always
deletes a single character, even if the character is composed.
C-d (delete-char) deletes the character after point,
similar to Delete, but regardless of whether the region is
active.
See Deletion, for more detailed information about the above deletion commands.
C-k (kill-line) erases (kills) a line at a time. If
you type C-k at the beginning or middle of a line, it kills all
the text up to the end of the line. If you type C-k at the end
of a line, it joins that line with the following line.
See Killing and Moving Text, for more information about C-k and related commands.
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.
On a terminal that supports the Control modifier on all other
keys, the easiest way to invoke undo is with C-/, since
that doesn’t need the Shift modifier. On terminals which allow
only the ASCII control characters, C-/ does not exist, but for
many of them C-/ still works because it actually sends C-_
to Emacs, while many others allow you to omit the Shift modifier
when you type C-_ (in effect pressing C--), making that
the most convenient way to invoke undo.
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 Undo.
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 The Minibuffer).
Emacs obeys this command by visiting the file: it creates a
buffer, copies the contents of the file into the buffer, and then
displays the buffer for editing. If you alter the text, you can
save the new text in the file by typing C-x C-s
(save-buffer). This copies the altered buffer contents back
into the file test.emacs, making them permanent. Until you
save, the changed text exists only inside Emacs, and the file
test.emacs is unaltered.
To create a file, just visit it with C-x C-f as if it already existed. This creates an empty buffer, in which you can insert the text you want to put in the file. Emacs actually creates the file the first time you save this buffer with C-x C-s.
To learn more about using files in Emacs, see File Handling.
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 Help, for details.
Here are special commands and techniques for inserting and deleting blank lines.
Insert a blank line after the cursor (open-line).
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.
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 Numeric Arguments, for how. If you have a fill prefix, the C-o command inserts the fill prefix on the new line, if typed at the beginning of a line. See The Fill Prefix.
The easy way to get rid of extra blank lines is with the command
C-x C-o (delete-blank-lines). If point lies within a run
of several blank lines, C-x C-o deletes all but one of them. If
point is on a single blank line, C-x C-o deletes it. If point
is on a nonblank line, C-x C-o deletes all following blank
lines, if any exists.
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, or visual 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 Changing the Location of Point).
Emacs can optionally truncate long logical lines instead of continuing them. This means that every logical line occupies a single screen line; if it is longer than the width of the window, the rest of the line is not displayed. On a graphical display, a truncated line is indicated by a small straight arrow in the right fringe; on a text terminal, it is indicated by a ‘$’ character in the right margin. See Line Truncation.
By default, continued lines are wrapped at the right window edge. Since the wrapping may occur in the middle of a word, continued lines can be difficult to read. The usual solution is to break your lines before they get too long, by inserting newlines. If you prefer, you can make Emacs insert a newline automatically when a line gets too long, by using Auto Fill mode. See Filling Text.
Normally, the first character of each continuation line is
positioned at the beginning of the screen line where it is displayed.
The minor mode visual-wrap-prefix-mode and its global
counterpart (see Minor Modes) global-visual-wrap-prefix-mode
arranges for continuation lines to be indented on display using a fill
prefix (see The Fill Prefix) automatically computed from each line’s
surrounding context. These prefixes are display-only feature, and do
not change the buffer text in any way.
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 Visual Line Mode.
Here are commands to get information about the size and position of parts of the buffer, and to count words and lines.
Display the line number of point.
Toggle automatic display of the current line number or column number. See Optional Mode Line Features. If you want to have a line number displayed before each line, see Customization of Display.
Display the number of lines, sentences, words, and characters that are
present in the region (count-words-region). See The Mark and the Region, for
information about the region.
Display the number of lines, sentences, words, and characters that are present in the buffer. If the region is active (see The Mark and the Region), display the numbers for the region instead.
Display the character code of character after point, character position of
point, and column of point (what-cursor-position).
Enable or disable highlighting of the current line. See Displaying the Cursor.
Toggle automatic display of the size of the buffer. See Optional Mode Line Features.
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 The Mode Line). However, if you
narrow the buffer, the mode line shows the line number relative to
the accessible portion (see Narrowing). By contrast,
what-line displays both the line number relative to the
narrowed region and the line number relative to the whole buffer.
M-= (count-words-region) displays a message reporting
the number of lines, sentences, words, and characters in the region
(see The Mark and the Region, for an explanation of the region). With a prefix
argument, C-u M-=, the command displays a count for the entire
buffer.
The command M-x count-words does the same job, but with a different calling convention. It displays a count for the region if the region is active, and for the buffer otherwise.
The command C-x = (what-cursor-position) shows
information about the current cursor position and the buffer contents
at that position. It displays a line in the echo area that looks like
this:
Char: c (99, #o143, #x63) point=28062 of 36168 (78%) column=53
After ‘Char:’, this shows the character in the buffer at point. The text inside the parenthesis shows the corresponding decimal, octal and hex character codes; for more information about how C-x = displays character information, see Introduction to International Character Sets. After ‘point=’ is the position of point as a character count (the first character in the buffer is position 1, the second character is position 2, and so on). The number after that is the total number of characters in the buffer, and the number in parenthesis expresses the position as a percentage of the total. After ‘column=’ is the horizontal position of point, in columns counting from the left edge of the window.
If the user option what-cursor-show-names is non-nil,
the name of the character, as defined by the Unicode Character
Database, is shown as well. The part in parentheses would then become:
(99, #o143, #x63, LATIN SMALL LETTER C)
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 Narrowing.
Related, but different feature is display-line-numbers-mode
(see Customization of Display).
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’.
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 Filling Text, 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 Killing and Moving Text, 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 The Minibuffer), which are entered after invoking the command.
On graphical displays, C-0, C-1, etc. act the same as M-0, M-1, etc.
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 Numeric Arguments). However, if the command you want to repeat prompts for input, or uses a numeric argument in another way, that method won’t work.
The command C-x z (repeat) provides another way to repeat
an Emacs command many times. This command repeats the previous Emacs
command, whatever that was. Repeating a command uses the same arguments
that were used before; it does not read new arguments each time.
To repeat the command more than once, type additional z’s: each z repeats the command one more time. Repetition ends when you type a character other than z or press a mouse button.
For example, suppose you type C-u 2 0 C-d to delete 20 characters. You can repeat that command (including its argument) three additional times, to delete a total of 80 characters, by typing C-x z z z. The first C-x z repeats the command once, and each subsequent z repeats it once again.
You can also activate repeat-mode which allows repeating
commands bound to sequences of two or more keys by typing a single
character. For example, after typing C-x u (undo,
see Undo) to undo the most recent edits, you can undo many more
edits by typing u u u…. Similarly, type C-x o o o… instead of C-x o C-x o C-x o… to switch
to the window several windows away. This works by entering a
transient repeating mode after you type the full key sequence that
invokes the command; the single-key shortcuts are shown in the echo
area.
Only some commands support repetition in repeat-mode; type
M-x describe-repeat-maps RET to see which ones.
The single-character shortcuts enabled by the transient repeating mode
do not need to be identical: for example, after typing C-x {, either { or } or ^ or v, or any series
that mixes these characters in any order, will resize the selected
window in respective ways. Similarly, after M-g n or
M-g p, typing any sequence of n and/or p in any mix
will repeat next-error and previous-error to navigate in
a *compilation* or *grep* buffer (see Compilation Mode).
Typing any key other than those defined to repeat the previous command
exits the transient repeating mode, and then the key you typed is
executed normally. You can also define a key which will exit the
transient repeating mode without executing the key which caused
the exit. To this end, customize the user option
repeat-exit-key to name a key; one natural value is RET.
Finally, it’s possible to break the repetition chain automatically
after some amount of idle time: customize the user option
repeat-exit-timeout to specify the idle time in seconds after
which this transient repetition mode will be turned off automatically.