Emacs editing environment, Part 3: Advanced Emacs text operations

Level: Intermediate

Michael Stutz (stutz@dsl.org), Author, Consultant

01 May 2007

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This tutorial, the third in a series, builds on what you've learned by taking you through a tour of some of the more advanced Emacs features for text operations. You get a hands-on demonstration of advanced editing techniques, including how to perform a recursive edit, mark and use rectangles of text, and handle complex selection techniques using the kill ring and the secondary selection.

In this tutorial

• Modify the command execution of Emacs
  • Specify a digit prefix
  • Repeat the last command
  • Perform a recursive edit
  
  
• Rectangles
  • Mark a rectangle
  • Erase a rectangle
  • Yank a rectangle
  • Table of rectangle commands
  
  
• Manipulate the mark
  • Move to the mark
  • Mark special parts of a buffer
  • Use the mark ring
  • Set a transient mark
  • Use the secondary selection
  • Table of mark and selection commands
  
  
• Advanced kill and yank commands
  • Advanced kill commands
  • Zap to a character
  • Use the kill ring
  • Table of kill and yank commands
  
  

Objectives

The primary objective of this tutorial is to take users who already have a basic understanding of Emacs text-editing techniques and show you how to build on those basic and intermediate techniques to perform advanced editing tasks, such as making secondary selections, entering recursive edits, and using rectangles. After working through this tutorial, you should be familiar with all these topics and be able to use them in your editing sessions.

Prerequisites

This tutorial builds on several concepts introduced in the first two installments in this series, so you should take them before attempting this tutorial. The practice file from the first installment is used in the examples here.

System requirements

This tutorial requires a user account on any UNIX-based system that has a recent copy of Emacs installed.

There are several varieties of Emacs; the original and most popular is GNU Emacs, which is published online by the GNU Project.

You should have a recent copy of GNU Emacs -- one that is at version 20 or greater. Versions 20 and 21 are the most commonly available, and development snapshots of version 22 are also available. This tutorial works with any of these versions for Emacs. If your system is running something older, it's time to upgrade.

Duration

2 hours

Formats

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