Help File Library: Basic emacs
By Bryan Dotzour
Table of Contents
What is emacs?
The Basics of emacs
How emacs Looks
The Basic Commands
Well, how to begin is a question for philosophers, so
I'm just going to dig in and go for it. The first question
you may ask is, "What exactly is emacs?" And that would
be a very good question. Some highbrow users may raise their
eyebrows and reply, "What isn't emacs?" But not here, we
will go into detail about the purpose, uses, and general
basics of the emacs editor.
As mentioned in that last sentence, emacs, in the most
basic sense, is a text editor. It allows you to create,
edit, and save new or existing text files on your machine.
But its scope and power is not limited to mere text editing.
Emacs incorporates various operational modes specific to
the type of document that you are working on. This document
is being written in emacs under the text-mode. Other modes
include HTML, C++, LISP, and SCHEME.
"What," you may ask, "is the purpose of these operating
modes?" Excellent question! For now, let's just say that
they make emacs smarter and friendlier to use when editing
these types of files. For any programmers out there, can
you say automatic parentheses matching?
By now, you have a very basic understanding of what emacs
is and what it is capable of. So, given that, let's start
working with emacs.
So, now you're ready to begin using the emacs editor.
There are several ways of invoking emacs, but we'll talk
about two main ones in this document.
If you are using and X-windows interface, you may have
a graphical representation of emacs. This method of "emacs-ing"
is very nice because you have access to the mouse for highlighting
text and moving around in the window. On my standard KDE
desktop environment, the graphical edition of emacs is found
in /usr/bin/emacs.
The other option is to run emacs within a terminal window
or console. This method does not include mouse functionality,
but everything else is there. The executable is /usr/bin/emacs-nox.
Your system may not support X or does not have an X-compatible
emacs. Just try typing "emacs" from a terminal and see what
you get.
So, the way you use emacs is up to you. Just like most
things on your computer, it's a matter of personal preference.
Now, it's really time to work with emacs. Start it up in
whatever way you've decided upon and let's begin.
Commands in emacs are usually invoked by a sequence of
key combinations involving the CONTROL key and the META
(on most systems ESC) and any other normal key. This is
not a big deal, but it takes some getting used to. Throughout
this document, these combinations will be notated in the
following way :
C-x : means hold down the CONTROL key and press
the 'x' key. M-x : means hold down the ESC (or META)
key and press the 'x' key.
Commands may involve one of these sequences followed by
a standard key. These commands will be written as :
C-x-o : means C-x, let up on both keys and
press the 'o' key.
Commands often involve a series of these combinations,
they will be written in the following manner :
C-x-C-w : means C-x AND THEN C-w.
Emacs provides its own tutorial that covers the very
basics. It can be run at any time by C-h-t. The same
basics covered in the tutorial will be covered in the next
section.
So, you have a nice emacs interface started up, but what
do you do with it? First of all, familiarize yourself with
the general setup of the screen. If your emacs is graphical,
you will probably have a menu bar at the top of the window.
This is very useful, but not necessary. As a true student
of emacs, you will find your mouse all but useless. Well,
maybe not, but you can certainly get along without it. From
this point on, almost all of the commands will referenced
as keyboard commands. It should be fairly simple to find
what you need in the menu if necessary.
Take a look at the bottom of the screen. There is a white
bar with some very useful information about what's going
on in your document.
The '---' on the far left indicates the save status of
the current file you are working with. If no changes have
been made since you last saved, the file looks like '---'.
If you have made changes since then it will look like this
'-**'.
The next bit is the name of the file you are working on.
If you just started emacs up, it will say '*scratch*'.
The scratch pad is the default document that comes up when
emacs starts. For the most part, you can just ignore the
scratch pad.
To the right of the file name, right in the middle of
the white bar, is the operation mode that emacs is currently
running. The default mode of the *scratch*
file is (Lisp Interaction). What this means is not important
right now. What is important is that you see that this mode
is dependent on the type of file we use. We will see this
shortly, I promise.
To the right of the operation mode is the line number
on which the cursor currently resides. When you first start
out, it is probably on line 1 which looks like 'L1'. If
you move the cursor down a few lines, the line marker will
go along with you. This can be very handy in many situations.
Next to the line marker is the file position indicator.
It is telling you whether you are at the 'Top' or 'Bot'tom
of the file.
Directly under the white bar is the message box which
will display the keyboard commands that you execute as well
as any messages about the file on which you are working
on.
To get started, you are going to want to create your own file to work
with. This is done by issuing the open file command. Type
C-x-C-v.
In the message box the path of the file will appear. What you will
probably see looks like this : '~/'. This indicates that emacs is looking
in the directory from which it was called for the file.
Hopefully, you started emacs up from your home directory, or wherever you
like to keep your files. So, it'll be just fine to type in the name of the
document you want to open. If it doesn't exist in the current directory, a
new file of that name will be created. So, type in 'example.txt' or
anything that ends with the '.txt' extension, and hit Enter. And presto!
You have a new, blank emacs document to work with. Take note of the
changes that have occured on the white info bar at the bottom of the
screen. The filename you chose is now there and the operation mode is now
(Text Fill). This is the standard plain text editing mode. You're ready to
type away.
Saving a File
Now that you have played around and created this new, or edited an
existing, document you may find it useful to save the changes you have
made. This is easily done by typing the command C-x-C-w to save
those changes. This allows you to save the document and continue working.
Exiting emacs
When you have had enough of emacs, the command C-x-C-c will lead
you out. If you try to exit emacs without saving your document it will ask
you if you really want to discard the changes you have made. You can
answer with a 'y' for yes, 'n' for no, or '!' to force quitting with no
questions asked. This precaution can be a pain, but it only takes once to
learn how useful it is for the computer to ask before your changes are
deleted.
Moving Around in emacs
For moving around from space to space or from line to line, it is
probably easiest to simply use the arrow keys. However, if the arrow keys
are not mapped on your terminal, or if you like to do things the "special"
way, here are the movement commands.
C-f forward one character
C-b backward one character
C-n move to next line
C-p move to previous line
Now, there are some other movement commands that are useful no matter what
kind of emacs you are using. A few of the most useful are listed here for
your convenience.
C-a moves to the beginning of a line
C-e moves to the end of a line
C-v moves forward one screen
M-v moves backward one screen
C--> moves right to the end of the next word
C-<- moves left to the beginning of previous word
There are a number of editing commands that are also helpful in basic
text-editing mode.
C-k deletes everything to the right of the cursor on current
line
C-d deletes characters from the left (unlike standard DEL)
