Emacs Notes

Getting Emacs

DONT use Debian's package — build this from source. Its easy and more up to date. And make sure you look at the configure results so all the libraries are in place before building.

Help

Binding	Command	Notes
C-h k	help on keys	describe function bound to keys
C-h m	help on mode	Describe mode functions and bindings
C-h b	current bindings	Lists bindings for current buffer
C-h l	history	Lists all the keys pressed so far
## l	completion	List what starts with

Miscellaneous Bindings

Binding	Command	Notes
C-_	undo	Undoes very deep yank buffer, one step at a time.
M-/	dabbrev-completion	Autocompletion from tokens list for current buffers.
M-q	fill-paragraph	Autoformats paragraph text. It's fairly smart about preserving prefixes, which is useful when replying to with indented quoted sections '>', '>>'. You have to manually put blank lines between prefixed paragraphs, before formatting, otherwise Emacs thinks it's all one paragraph. Also usually does the right thing with numbered/bulletted paragraphs.

Note: you may have to run e16keyedit to turn off some of the bindings enlightenment captures first.

Using Tags

Run tags from a shell in current directory on code extensions. If just one directory, etags *.c *.h is sufficient (in C). For a source tree, do something like this:

find . -name '*.cpp' -o -name '*.h' -o -name '*.c' -print0 
    | xargs $(ETAGS) --extra=+q --fields=+fksaiS --c++-kinds=+px --append

Then emacs responds to the following commands:

Binding	Command	Notes
M-.	undo	Go to symbol definition.
M-0 M-.	dabbrev-completion	Go to next match.
M-*	fill-paragraph	Return to your starting point.
M-.	M-x tags-search	Initiate a tags search.
M-,	M-x tags-search	Go to next match.

Dired Commands

In a directory (dired) buffer:

Binding	Command	Notes
m		select file
u		unselct selected file
t		select all files
%-m	dired-mark-files-regexp	Pick files by regex (e.g. .[ch]$' selects all .h and .c files
M-x -	dired-do-query-replace-regexp	replace all regex matchs with string with query

Search and Replace (multiple files)

You can do multi-directory global search and replace on marked files in a Dired. You can get mixed-path files in one Dired using find-dired with a regex. Then clean up with ibuffer when you're done.

Binding	Command	Notes
M-x -	find-dired	e.g. '-name "*.lisp"'
t		selct all files
Q		query regex search and replace
M-x -	ibuffer	launch ibuffer
*u		mark all unsaved buffers with changes
S		save marked buffers
D		delete marked buffers