Wartburg College
Linux Computation Lab

Useful Emacs Commands

Emacs is a very powerful multi-windowing text editor. You can get a tutorial by typing <ctrl>-h t (control-h followed by a t) from the fire-up screen. If you are brand new to emacs, it would be worth your while to walk through it. In the commands below, the notation "C-" indicates a control character (hold down <Ctrl> and type the character), and "M-" indicates a meta-character. On most terminals, a meta character is obtained by prefixing the character with <Esc> (i.e. push and release the escape key before hitting the character). Some terminals may have an <Alt>, <Edit> or <Meta> key that works like a <shift> for typing meta-characters.

Cursor movement:

Some terminals may allow use of arrow keys, if not:

C-f

forward one char

C-b

backward one char

C-p

up to previous line

C-n

down to next line

C-a

beginning of line

C-e

end of line

C-v

scroll screen down

M-v

scroll screen up

M->

end of file

M-<

top of file

C-l

re-center screen on current line

File manipulation:

C-x C-f

Open or create a file

C-x C-v

Replace buffer with a different file

C-x i

Insert file at current cursor position

C-x C-s

Save buffer to file (This may hang your terminal, use

C-q

to restart it).

C-x s

Save all changed buffers.

C-x C-w

Write buffer to file (will prompt for file name).

C-x C-c

Save buffers and exit emacs

C-z

Suspend emacs (use "fg" to restart where you lef off)

Help commands:

C-h

Enter help system

C-h f

Get help for a given emacs command

C-h k

Get help for a certain keystroke sequence

M-x

"apropos" Find commands relevant to a key word.

Editing Commands:

<delete> or <backspace> Delete previous character

C-d

Delete the current character

C-k

Cut to the end of line into "clipboard"

C-<space>

to mark the beginning of a region.

C-w

Cut region between mark and cursor.

M-w

Copy region between mark and cursor to clipboard.

C-y

"yank" (paste) clipboard text back into buffer at cursor.

C-_ or C-x u

Undo previous edit (can go back multiple steps).

Buffer manipulation:

C-x 2

Split screen into two windows

C-x 1

Revert to one window

C-x o

Switch to other window

C-x b

Change buffer displayed in this window.

C-x k

Kill this buffer (close the file).

Searching:

C-s

Incremental search forward

C-r

Incremental search backward

<esc>

Exit a search

M-%

Search and replace

Compiling:

M-x

"Compile" Start a compilation. Emacs will prompt for a compiling command (suggesting "make -k"). Enter the appropriate command (i.e. "g++ -o myprogram myprogram.cpp")

C-x

Cycle through messages in the compile buffer. Emacs will show the line on which the error is reported in the editing buffer.

Universal panic:

C-g

Quit this comand!