GNU Emacs Manual

GNU Emacs Manual

Updated for Emacs Version 29.1

Richard Stallman et al.

This is the GNU Emacs Manual, updated for Emacs version 29.1.
Copyright c 1985–1987, 1993–2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sections
being “The GNU Manifesto,” “Distribution” and “GNU GENERAL PUBLIC
LICENSE,” with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the
Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section
entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”
(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify
this GNU manual. Buying copies from the FSF supports it in developing GNU
and promoting software freedom.”

Published by the Free Software Foundation

51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
ISBN 978-0-9831592-8-5

Cover art by Etienne Suvasa; cover design by FSF staff.

 i

Short Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1 The Organization of the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Characters, Keys and Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3 Entering and Exiting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4 Basic Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5 The Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6 Running Commands by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
7 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
8 The Mark and the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
9 Killing and Moving Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
10 Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
11 Controlling the Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
12 Searching and Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
13 Commands for Fixing Typos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
14 Keyboard Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
15 File Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
16 Using Multiple Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
17 Multiple Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
18 Frames and Graphical Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
19 International Character Set Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
20 Major and Minor Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
21 Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
22 Commands for Human Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
23 Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
24 Compiling and Testing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
25 Maintaining Large Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
26 Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
27 Dired, the Directory Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
28 The Calendar and the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
29 Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
30 Reading Mail with Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
ii

31 Miscellaneous Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

32 Emacs Lisp Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
33 Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
34 Dealing with Common Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
A GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
B GNU Free Documentation License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
C Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation . . . . . . . . . . 568
D X Options and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
E Emacs 28 Antinews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
F Emacs and macOS / GNUstep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
G Emacs and Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
H Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
The GNU Manifesto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619
Key (Character) Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643
Command and Function Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654
Variable Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670
Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680
 iii

Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1 The Organization of the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.1 Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 The Echo Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 The Mode Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 The Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2 Characters, Keys and Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.1 Kinds of User Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 Mouse Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.4 Keys and Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3 Entering and Exiting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.1 Entering Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2 Exiting Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4 Basic Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.1 Inserting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2 Changing the Location of Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3 Erasing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.4 Undoing Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.5 Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.6 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.7 Blank Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.8 Continuation Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.9 Cursor Position Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.10 Numeric Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4.11 Repeating a Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5 The Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.1 Using the Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.2 Minibuffers for File Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.3 Editing in the Minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
iv

5.4 Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.4.1 Completion Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.4.2 Completion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.4.3 Completion Exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.4.4 How Completion Alternatives Are Chosen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.4.5 Completion Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.5 Minibuffer History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.6 Repeating Minibuffer Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.7 Entering passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.8 Yes or No Prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

6 Running Commands by Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

7 Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
7.1 Documentation for a Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.2 Help by Command or Variable Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.3 Apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7.4 Help Mode Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
7.5 Keyword Search for Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
7.6 Help for International Language Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
7.7 Other Help Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
7.8 Help Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
7.9 Help on Active Text and Tooltips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

8 The Mark and the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

8.1 Setting the Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.2 Commands to Mark Textual Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
8.3 Operating on the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
8.4 The Mark Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8.5 The Global Mark Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
8.6 Shift Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8.7 Disabling Transient Mark Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

9 Killing and Moving Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

9.1 Deletion and Killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.1.1 Deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.1.2 Killing by Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
9.1.3 Other Kill Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.1.4 Options for Killing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
9.2 Yanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
9.2.1 The Kill Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
9.2.2 Yanking Earlier Kills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
9.2.3 Appending Kills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
9.3 “Cut and Paste” Operations on Graphical Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9.3.1 Using the Clipboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
 v

9.3.2 Cut and Paste with Other Window Applications . . . . . . . . . . 65

9.3.3 Secondary Selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
9.4 Accumulating Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
9.5 Rectangles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
9.6 CUA Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

10 Registers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
10.1 Saving Positions in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
10.2 Saving Text in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
10.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
10.4 Saving Window and Frame Configurations in Registers . . . . . . . . 73
10.5 Keeping Numbers in Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
10.6 Keeping File and Buffer Names in Registers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
10.7 Keyboard Macro Registers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
10.8 Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

11 Controlling the Display. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

11.1 Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
11.2 Recentering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.3 Automatic Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
11.4 Horizontal Scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
11.5 Narrowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
11.6 View Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
11.7 Follow Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
11.8 Text Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
11.9 Colors for Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
11.9.1 Color Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
11.9.2 RGB Triplets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
11.10 Standard Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
11.11 Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
11.12 Text Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
11.13 Font Lock mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
11.13.1 Traditional Font Lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.13.2 Parser-based Font Lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.14 Interactive Highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11.15 Window Fringes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.16 Displaying Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
11.17 Useless Whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
11.18 Selective Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
11.19 Optional Mode Line Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
11.20 How Text Is Displayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
11.21 Displaying the Cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
11.22 Line Truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
11.23 Visual Line Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
11.24 Customization of Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
vi

12 Searching and Replacement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

12.1 Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
12.1.1 Basics of Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
12.1.2 Repeating Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
12.1.3 Isearch Yanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
12.1.4 Errors in Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
12.1.5 Special Input for Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
12.1.6 Not Exiting Incremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
12.1.7 Searching the Minibuffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12.2 Nonincremental Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
12.3 Word Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
12.4 Symbol Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
12.5 Regular Expression Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
12.6 Syntax of Regular Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
12.7 Backslash in Regular Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
12.8 Regular Expression Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
12.9 Lax Matching During Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
12.10 Replacement Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
12.10.1 Unconditional Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
12.10.2 Regexp Replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
12.10.3 Replace Commands and Lax Matches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
12.10.4 Query Replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
12.11 Other Search-and-Loop Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
12.12 Tailoring Search to Your Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

13 Commands for Fixing Typos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

13.1 Undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
13.2 Transposing Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
13.3 Case Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
13.4 Checking and Correcting Spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

14 Keyboard Macros. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

14.1 Basic Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
14.2 The Keyboard Macro Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
14.3 The Keyboard Macro Counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
14.4 Executing Macros with Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
14.5 Naming and Saving Keyboard Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
14.6 Editing a Keyboard Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
14.7 Stepwise Editing a Keyboard Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
 vii

15 File Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

15.1 File Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
15.2 Visiting Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
15.3 Saving Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
15.3.1 Commands for Saving Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
15.3.2 Backup Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
15.3.2.1 Single or Numbered Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
15.3.2.2 Automatic Deletion of Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
15.3.2.3 Copying vs. Renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
15.3.3 Customizing Saving of Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
15.3.4 Protection against Simultaneous Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
15.3.5 Shadowing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
15.3.6 Updating Time Stamps Automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
15.4 Reverting a Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
15.5 Auto Revert: Keeping buffers automatically up-to-date . . . . . . 158
15.6 Auto-Saving: Protection Against Disasters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
15.6.1 Auto-Save Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
15.6.2 Controlling Auto-Saving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
15.6.3 Recovering Data from Auto-Saves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
15.7 File Name Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
15.8 File Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
15.9 Comparing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
15.10 Diff Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
15.11 Copying, Naming and Renaming Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
15.12 Miscellaneous File Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
15.13 Accessing Compressed Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.14 File Archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
15.15 Remote Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
15.16 Quoted File Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
15.17 File Name Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
15.18 Convenience Features for Finding Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
15.19 Viewing Image Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
15.20 Filesets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

16 Using Multiple Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

16.1 Creating and Selecting Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
16.2 Listing Existing Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
16.3 Miscellaneous Buffer Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
16.4 Killing Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
16.5 Operating on Several Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
16.6 Indirect Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
16.7 Convenience Features and Customization of Buffer Handling . . 182
16.7.1 Making Buffer Names Unique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
16.7.2 Fast minibuffer selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
16.7.3 Customizing Buffer Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
viii

17 Multiple Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

17.1 Concepts of Emacs Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
17.2 Splitting Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
17.3 Using Other Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
17.4 Displaying in Another Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
17.5 Deleting and Resizing Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
17.6 Displaying a Buffer in a Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
17.6.1 How display-buffer works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
17.6.2 Displaying non-editable buffers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
17.7 Convenience Features for Window Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
17.8 Window Tab Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

18 Frames and Graphical Displays. . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

18.1 Mouse Commands for Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
18.2 Mouse Commands for Words and Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
18.3 Following References with the Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
18.4 Mouse Clicks for Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
18.5 Mode Line Mouse Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
18.6 Creating Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
18.7 Frame Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
18.8 Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
18.9 Speedbar Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
18.10 Multiple Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
18.11 Frame Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
18.12 Scroll Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
18.13 Window Dividers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
18.14 Drag and Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
18.15 Menu Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
18.16 Tool Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
18.17 Tab Bars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
18.18 Using Dialog Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
18.19 Tooltips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
18.20 Mouse Avoidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
18.21 Non-Window Terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
18.22 Using a Mouse in Text Terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

19 International Character Set Support. . . . . . . 216

19.1 Introduction to International Character Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
19.2 Language Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
19.3 Input Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
19.4 Selecting an Input Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
19.5 Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
19.6 Recognizing Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
19.7 Specifying a File’s Coding System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
19.8 Choosing Coding Systems for Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
 ix

19.9 Specifying a Coding System for File Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

19.10 Coding Systems for Interprocess Communication . . . . . . . . . . . 229
19.11 Coding Systems for File Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
19.12 Coding Systems for X Keyboard Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
19.13 Coding Systems for Terminal I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
19.14 Fontsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
19.15 Defining Fontsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
19.16 Modifying Fontsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
19.17 Undisplayable Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
19.18 Unibyte Editing Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
19.19 Charsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
19.20 Bidirectional Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

20 Major and Minor Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

20.1 Major Modes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
20.2 Minor Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
20.3 Choosing File Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

21 Indentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
21.1 Indentation Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
21.2 Tab Stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
21.3 Tabs vs. Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
21.4 Convenience Features for Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

22 Commands for Human Languages . . . . . . . . . 251

22.1 Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
22.2 Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
22.3 Paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
22.4 Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
22.5 Quotation Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
22.6 Filling Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
22.6.1 Auto Fill Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
22.6.2 Explicit Fill Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
22.6.3 The Fill Prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
22.6.4 Adaptive Filling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
22.7 Case Conversion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
22.8 Text Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
22.9 Outline Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
22.9.1 Outline Minor Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
22.9.2 Format of Outlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
22.9.3 Outline Motion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
22.9.4 Outline Visibility Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
22.9.5 Viewing One Outline in Multiple Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
22.9.6 Folding Editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
22.10 Org Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
x

22.10.1 Org as an organizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

22.10.2 Org as an authoring system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
22.11 TEX Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
22.11.1 TEX Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
22.11.2 LATEX Editing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
22.11.3 TEX Printing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
22.11.4 TEX Mode Miscellany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
22.12 SGML and HTML Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
22.13 Nroff Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
22.14 Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
22.14.1 Enriched Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
22.14.2 Hard and Soft Newlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
22.14.3 Editing Format Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
22.14.4 Faces in Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
22.14.5 Indentation in Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
22.14.6 Justification in Enriched Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
22.14.7 Setting Other Text Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
22.15 Editing Text-based Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
22.15.1 What is a Text-based Table? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
22.15.2 Creating a Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
22.15.3 Table Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
22.15.4 Commands for Table Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
22.15.5 Cell Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
22.15.6 Table Rows and Columns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
22.15.7 Converting Between Plain Text and Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
22.15.8 Table Miscellany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
22.16 Two-Column Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

23 Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

23.1 Major Modes for Programming Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
23.2 Top-Level Definitions, or Defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
23.2.1 Left Margin Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
23.2.2 Moving by Defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
23.2.3 Imenu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
23.2.4 Which Function Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
23.3 Indentation for Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
23.3.1 Basic Program Indentation Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
23.3.2 Indenting Several Lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
23.3.3 Customizing Lisp Indentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
23.3.4 Commands for C Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
23.3.5 Customizing C Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
23.4 Commands for Editing with Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
23.4.1 Expressions with Balanced Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
23.4.2 Moving in the Parenthesis Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
23.4.3 Matching Parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
23.5 Manipulating Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
 xi

23.5.1 Comment Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

23.5.2 Multiple Lines of Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
23.5.3 Options Controlling Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
23.6 Documentation Lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
23.6.1 Info Documentation Lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
23.6.2 Man Page Lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
23.6.3 Programming Language Documentation Lookup . . . . . . . . 299
23.7 Hideshow minor mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
23.8 Completion for Symbol Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
23.9 MixedCase Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
23.10 Semantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
23.11 Other Features Useful for Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
23.12 C and Related Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
23.12.1 C Mode Motion Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
23.12.2 Electric C Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
23.12.3 Hungry Delete Feature in C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
23.12.4 Other Commands for C Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
23.13 Asm Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308

24 Compiling and Testing Programs . . . . . . . . . . 309

24.1 Running Compilations under Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
24.2 Compilation Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
24.3 Subshells for Compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
24.4 Searching with Grep under Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
24.5 Finding Syntax Errors On The Fly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
24.6 Running Debuggers Under Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
24.6.1 Starting GUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
24.6.2 Debugger Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
24.6.3 Commands of GUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
24.6.4 GUD Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
24.6.5 GDB Graphical Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
24.6.5.1 GDB User Interface Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
24.6.5.2 Source Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
24.6.5.3 Breakpoints Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
24.6.5.4 Threads Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
24.6.5.5 Stack Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
24.6.5.6 Other GDB Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
24.6.5.7 Watch Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
24.6.5.8 Multithreaded Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
24.7 Executing Lisp Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
24.8 Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
24.9 Evaluating Emacs Lisp Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
24.10 Lisp Interaction Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
24.11 Running an External Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
xii

25 Maintaining Large Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332

25.1 Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
25.1.1 Introduction to Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
25.1.1.1 Understanding the Problems it Addresses . . . . . . . . . . 333
25.1.1.2 Supported Version Control Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
25.1.1.3 Concepts of Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
25.1.1.4 Merge-based vs Lock-based Version Control . . . . . . . . 334
25.1.1.5 Changeset-based vs File-based Version Control . . . . . 335
25.1.1.6 Decentralized vs Centralized Repositories . . . . . . . . . . 335
25.1.1.7 Types of Log File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
25.1.2 Version Control and the Mode Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
25.1.3 Basic Editing under Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
25.1.3.1 Basic Version Control with Merging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
25.1.3.2 Basic Version Control with Locking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
25.1.3.3 Advanced Control in C-x v v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
25.1.4 Features of the Log Entry Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
25.1.5 Registering a File for Version Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
25.1.6 Examining And Comparing Old Revisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
25.1.7 VC Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
25.1.8 Undoing Version Control Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
25.1.9 Ignore Version Control Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
25.1.10 VC Directory Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
25.1.10.1 The VC Directory Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
25.1.10.2 VC Directory Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
25.1.11 Version Control Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
25.1.11.1 Switching between Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
25.1.11.2 Pulling/Pushing Changes into/from a Branch . . . . . 349
25.1.11.3 Merging Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
25.1.11.4 Creating New Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
25.2 Working with Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
25.2.1 Project Commands That Operate on Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
25.2.2 Project Commands That Operate on Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
25.2.3 Switching Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
25.2.4 Managing the Project List File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
25.3 Change Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
25.3.1 Change Log Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
25.3.2 Format of ChangeLog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
25.4 Find Identifier References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
25.4.1 Find Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
25.4.1.1 Looking Up Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
25.4.1.2 Commands Available in the *xref* Buffer . . . . . . . . . 358
25.4.1.3 Searching and Replacing with Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . 359
25.4.1.4 Identifier Inquiries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
25.4.2 Tags Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
25.4.2.1 Source File Tag Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
25.4.2.2 Creating Tags Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
 xiii

25.4.2.3 Etags Regexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365

25.4.3 Selecting a Tags Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
25.5 Emacs Development Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
25.6 Bug Reference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

26 Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
26.1 Abbrev Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
26.2 Defining Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
26.3 Controlling Abbrev Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
26.4 Abbrevs Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
26.5 Examining and Editing Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
26.6 Saving Abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
26.7 Dynamic Abbrev Expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
26.8 Customizing Dynamic Abbreviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376

27 Dired, the Directory Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378

27.1 Entering Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
27.2 Navigation in the Dired Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
27.3 Deleting Files with Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
27.4 Flagging Many Files at Once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
27.5 Visiting Files in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
27.6 Dired Marks vs. Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
27.7 Operating on Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
27.8 Shell Commands in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
27.9 Shell Command Guessing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
27.10 Transforming File Names in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
27.11 File Comparison with Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
27.12 Subdirectories in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
27.13 Moving Over Subdirectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
27.14 Hiding Subdirectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
27.15 Updating the Dired Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
27.16 Dired and find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
27.17 Editing the Dired Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
27.18 Viewing Image Thumbnails in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
27.19 Other Dired Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

28 The Calendar and the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399

28.1 Movement in the Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
28.1.1 Motion by Standard Lengths of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
28.1.2 Beginning or End of Week, Month or Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
28.1.3 Specified Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
28.2 Scrolling in the Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
28.3 Counting Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
28.4 Miscellaneous Calendar Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
28.5 Writing Calendar Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
xiv

28.6 Holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

28.7 Times of Sunrise and Sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
28.8 Phases of the Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
28.9 Conversion To and From Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
28.9.1 Supported Calendar Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
28.9.2 Converting To Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
28.9.3 Converting From Other Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
28.10 The Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
28.10.1 The Diary File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
28.10.2 Displaying the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
28.10.3 Date Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
28.10.4 Commands to Add to the Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
28.10.5 Special Diary Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
28.10.6 Appointments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
28.10.7 Importing and Exporting Diary Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
28.11 Daylight Saving Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
28.12 Summing Time Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416

29 Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418

29.1 The Format of the Mail Buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
29.2 Mail Header Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
29.3 Mail Aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
29.4 Mail Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
29.4.1 Mail Sending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
29.4.2 Mail Header Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
29.4.3 Citing Mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
29.4.4 Mail Miscellany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
29.5 Mail Signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
29.6 Mail Amusements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
29.7 Mail-Composition Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

30 Reading Mail with Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426

30.1 Basic Concepts of Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
30.2 Scrolling Within a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
30.3 Moving Among Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
30.4 Deleting Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
30.5 Rmail Files and Inboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
30.6 Multiple Rmail Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
30.7 Copying Messages Out to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
30.8 Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
30.9 Rmail Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
30.10 Sending Replies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
30.11 Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
30.11.1 Making Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
30.11.2 Editing in Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
30.12 Sorting the Rmail File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
 xv

30.13 Display of Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

30.14 Rmail and Coding Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
30.15 Editing Within a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
30.16 Digest Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
30.17 Reading Rot13 Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
30.18 movemail program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
30.19 Retrieving Mail from Remote Mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
30.20 Retrieving Mail from Local Mailboxes in Various Formats. . . 445

31 Miscellaneous Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

31.1 Email and Usenet News with Gnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
31.1.1 Gnus Buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
31.1.2 When Gnus Starts Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
31.1.3 Using the Gnus Group Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
31.1.4 Using the Gnus Summary Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
31.2 Host Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
31.3 Network Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
31.4 Document Viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
31.4.1 DocView Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
31.4.2 DocView Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
31.4.3 DocView Slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
31.4.4 DocView Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
31.5 Running Shell Commands from Emacs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
31.5.1 Single Shell Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
31.5.2 Interactive Subshell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
31.5.3 Shell Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
31.5.4 Shell Prompts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
31.5.5 Shell Command History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
31.5.5.1 Shell History Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
31.5.5.2 Shell History Copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
31.5.5.3 Shell History References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
31.5.6 Directory Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
31.5.7 Shell Mode Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
31.5.8 Emacs Terminal Emulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
31.5.9 Term Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
31.5.10 Remote Host Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
31.5.11 Serial Terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
31.6 Using Emacs as a Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
31.6.1 TCP Emacs server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
31.6.2 Invoking emacsclient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
31.6.3 emacsclient Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
31.7 Printing Hard Copies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
31.7.1 PostScript Hardcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
31.7.2 Variables for PostScript Hardcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
31.7.3 Printing Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
31.8 Sorting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
xvi

31.9 Editing Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477

31.10 Saving Emacs Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
31.11 Recursive Editing Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
31.12 Hyperlinking and Web Navigation Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
31.12.1 Web Browsing with EWW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
31.12.2 Embedded WebKit Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
31.12.3 Following URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
31.12.4 Activating URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
31.12.5 Finding Files and URLs at Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
31.13 Games and Other Amusements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

32 Emacs Lisp Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

32.1 The Package Menu Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
32.2 Package Statuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
32.3 Package Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
32.4 Package Files and Directory Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
32.5 Fetching Package Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
32.5.1 Specifying Package Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492

33 Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
33.1 Easy Customization Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
33.1.1 Customization Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
33.1.2 Browsing and Searching for Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
33.1.3 Changing a Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
33.1.4 Saving Customizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
33.1.5 Customizing Faces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
33.1.6 Customizing Specific Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
33.1.7 Custom Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
33.1.8 Creating Custom Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
33.2 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
33.2.1 Examining and Setting Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
33.2.2 Hooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
33.2.3 Local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
33.2.4 Local Variables in Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
33.2.4.1 Specifying File Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
33.2.4.2 Safety of File Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
33.2.5 Per-Directory Local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
33.2.6 Per-Connection Local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
33.3 Customizing Key Bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
33.3.1 Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
33.3.2 Prefix Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
33.3.3 Local Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
33.3.4 Minibuffer Keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
33.3.5 Changing Key Bindings Interactively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
33.3.6 Rebinding Keys in Your Init File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
33.3.7 Modifier Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
 xvii

33.3.8 Rebinding Function Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

33.3.9 Named ASCII Control Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
33.3.10 Rebinding Mouse Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
33.3.11 Disabling Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
33.4 The Emacs Initialization File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
33.4.1 Init File Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
33.4.2 Init File Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
33.4.3 Terminal-specific Initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
33.4.4 How Emacs Finds Your Init File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
33.4.5 Non-ASCII Characters in Init Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
33.4.6 The Early Init File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
33.5 Keeping Persistent Authentication Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

34 Dealing with Common Problems . . . . . . . . . . . 530

34.1 Quitting and Aborting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
34.2 Dealing with Emacs Trouble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
34.2.1 Recursive Editing Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
34.2.2 Garbage on the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
34.2.3 Garbage in the Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
34.2.4 Running out of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
34.2.5 When Emacs Crashes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
34.2.6 Recovery After a Crash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
34.2.7 Emergency Escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
34.2.8 If DEL Fails to Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
34.3 Reporting Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
34.3.1 Reading Existing Bug Reports and Known Problems . . . . 536
34.3.2 When Is There a Bug. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
34.3.3 Understanding Bug Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
34.3.4 Checklist for Bug Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
34.3.5 Sending Patches for GNU Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
34.4 Contributing to Emacs Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
34.4.1 Coding Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
34.4.2 Copyright Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
34.5 How To Get Help with GNU Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

Appendix A GNU GENERAL

PUBLIC LICENSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

Appendix B GNU Free Documentation License . . 560

xviii

Appendix C Command Line Arguments

for Emacs Invocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
C.1 Action Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
C.2 Initial Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
C.3 Command Argument Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
C.4 Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
C.4.1 General Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
C.4.2 Miscellaneous Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
C.4.3 The MS-Windows System Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
C.5 Specifying the Display Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578
C.6 Font Specification Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
C.7 Window Color Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
C.8 Options for Window Size and Position. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
C.9 Internal and Outer Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
C.10 Frame Titles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
C.11 Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
C.12 Other Display Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583

Appendix D X Options and Resources . . . . . . . . 584

D.1 X Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
D.2 Table of X Resources for Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
D.3 GTK+ resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
D.3.1 GTK+ Resource Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
D.3.2 GTK+ widget names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
D.3.3 GTK+ Widget Names in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
D.3.4 GTK+ styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590

Appendix E Emacs 28 Antinews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592

Appendix F Emacs and macOS / GNUstep . . 594

F.1 Basic Emacs usage under macOS and GNUstep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
F.1.1 Grabbing environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
F.2 Mac / GNUstep Customization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
F.2.1 Modifier keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
F.2.2 Frame Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
F.2.3 macOS Trackpad/Mousewheel Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
F.3 Windowing System Events under macOS / GNUstep . . . . . . . . . 596
F.4 GNUstep Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597

Appendix G Emacs and Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598

G.1 Installation and usage peculiarities under Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
G.1.1 What to do when Emacs crashes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
G.2 Font and font backend selection on Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
 xix

Appendix H Emacs and Microsoft

Windows/MS-DOS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
H.1 How to Start Emacs on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
H.2 Text Files and Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
H.3 File Names on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
H.4 Emulation of ls on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
H.5 HOME and Startup Directories on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
H.6 Keyboard Usage on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
H.7 Mouse Usage on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
H.8 Subprocesses on Windows 9X/ME and Windows
NT/2K/XP/Vista/7/8/10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
H.9 Printing and MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606
H.10 Specifying Fonts on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
H.11 Miscellaneous Windows-specific features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610

The GNU Manifesto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611

What’s GNU? Gnu’s Not Unix! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611
Why I Must Write GNU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612
Why GNU Will Be Compatible with Unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612
How GNU Will Be Available. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612
Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 612
How You Can Contribute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613
Why All Computer Users Will Benefit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613
Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU’s Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619

Key (Character) Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

Command and Function Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 654

Variable Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670

Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680

 1

Preface
This manual documents the use and simple customization of the Emacs editor. Simple
Emacs customizations do not require you to be a programmer, but if you are not interested
in customizing, you can ignore the customization hints.
This is primarily a reference manual, but can also be used as a primer. If you are new to
Emacs, we recommend you start with the integrated, learn-by-doing tutorial, before reading
the manual. To run the tutorial, start Emacs and type C-h t (which is “control h and then
t”). The tutorial describes commands, tells you when to try them, and explains the results.
The tutorial is available in several languages.
On first reading, just skim chapters 1 and 2, which describe the notational conventions of
the manual and the general appearance of the Emacs display screen. Note which questions
are answered in these chapters, so you can refer back later. After reading chapter 4, you
should practice the commands shown there. The next few chapters describe fundamental
techniques and concepts that are used constantly. You need to understand them thoroughly,
so experiment with them until you are fluent.
Chapters 14 through 19 describe intermediate-level features that are useful for many
kinds of editing. Chapter 20 and following chapters describe optional but useful features;
read those chapters when you need them.
Read the Common Problems chapter if Emacs does not seem to be working properly. It
explains how to cope with several common problems (see Section 34.2 [Dealing with Emacs
Trouble], page 531), as well as when and how to report Emacs bugs (see Section 34.3 [Bugs],
page 536).
To find the documentation of a particular command, look in the index. Keys (character
commands) and command names have separate indexes. There is also a glossary, with a
cross reference for each term.
This manual is available as a printed book and also as an Info file. The Info file is
for reading from Emacs itself, or with the Info program. Info is the principal format for
documentation in the GNU system. The Info file and the printed book contain substantially
the same text and are generated from the same source files, which are also distributed with
GNU Emacs.
GNU Emacs is a member of the Emacs editor family. There are many Emacs editors, all
sharing common principles of organization. For information on the underlying philosophy of
Emacs and the lessons learned from its development, see Emacs, the Extensible, Customiz-
able Self-Documenting Display Editor, available from https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/
1721.1/5736.
This version of the manual is mainly intended for use with GNU Emacs installed on
GNU and Unix systems. GNU Emacs can also be used on MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows,
and Macintosh systems. The Info file version of this manual contains some more information
about using Emacs on those systems. Those systems use different file name syntax; in
addition MS-DOS does not support all GNU Emacs features. See Appendix H [Microsoft
Windows], page 600, for information about using Emacs on Windows. See Appendix F [Mac
OS / GNUstep], page 594, for information about using Emacs on Macintosh (and GNUstep).
2 GNU Emacs Manual

Distribution
GNU Emacs is free software; this means that everyone is free to use it and free to redistribute
it under certain conditions. GNU Emacs is not in the public domain; it is copyrighted
and there are restrictions on its distribution, but these restrictions are designed to permit
everything that a good cooperating citizen would want to do. What is not allowed is to try
to prevent others from further sharing any version of GNU Emacs that they might get from
you. The precise conditions are found in the GNU General Public License that comes with
Emacs and also appears in this manual1 . See Appendix A [Copying], page 549.
One way to get a copy of GNU Emacs is from someone else who has it. You need not
ask for our permission to do so, or tell anyone else; just copy it. If you have access to the
Internet, you can get the latest distribution version of GNU Emacs by anonymous FTP; see
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs on our website for more information.
You may also receive GNU Emacs when you buy a computer. Computer manufacturers
are free to distribute copies on the same terms that apply to everyone else. These terms
require them to give you the full sources, including whatever changes they may have made,
and to permit you to redistribute the GNU Emacs received from them under the usual terms
of the General Public License. In other words, the program must be free for you when you
get it, not just free for the manufacturer.
If you find GNU Emacs useful, please send a donation to the Free Software Foundation
to support our work. Donations to the Free Software Foundation are tax-deductible in the
US. If you use GNU Emacs at your workplace, please suggest that the company make a
donation. To donate, see https://my.fsf.org/donate/. For other ways in which you can
help, see https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html.
We also sell hardcopy versions of this manual and An Introduction to Programming in
Emacs Lisp, by Robert J. Chassell. You can visit our online store at https://shop.fsf.
org/. The income from sales goes to support the foundation’s purpose: the development of
new free software, and improvements to our existing programs including GNU Emacs.
If you need to contact the Free Software Foundation, see https://www.fsf.org/about/
contact/, or write to
Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor
Boston, MA 02110-1301
USA

Acknowledgments
Contributors to GNU Emacs include Jari Aalto, Eric Abrahamsen, Per Abrahamsen, Tomas
Abrahamsson, Jay K. Adams, Alon Albert, Michael Albinus, Nagy Andras, Benjamin
Andresen, Ralf Angeli, Dmitry Antipov, Joe Arceneaux, Emil Åström, Miles Bader, David
Bakhash, Juanma Barranquero, Eli Barzilay, Thomas Baumann, Steven L. Baur, Jay
Belanger, Alexander L. Belikoff, Thomas Bellman, Scott Bender, Boaz Ben-Zvi, Sergey
1
This manual is itself covered by the GNU Free Documentation License. This license is similar in spirit
to the General Public License, but is more suitable for documentation. See Appendix B [GNU Free
Documentation License], page 560.
Distribution 3

Berezin, Stephen Berman, Jonas Bernoulli, Karl Berry, Anna M. Bigatti, Ray Blaak, Martin
Blais, Jim Blandy, Johan Bockgård, Jan Böcker, Joel Boehland, Lennart Borgman, Per
Bothner, Terrence Brannon, Frank Bresz, Peter Breton, Emmanuel Briot, Kevin Broadey,
Vincent Broman, Michael Brouwer, David M. Brown, Ken Brown, Stefan Bruda, Damien
Cassou, Daniel Colascione, Georges Brun-Cottan, Joe Buehler, Scott Byer, Włodek Bzyl,
Tino Calancha, Bill Carpenter, Per Cederqvist, Hans Chalupsky, Chris Chase, Bob Chassell,
Andrew Choi, Chong Yidong, Sacha Chua, Stewart Clamen, James Clark, Mike Clarkson,
Glynn Clements, Andrea Corallo, Andrew Cohen, Daniel Colascione, Christoph Conrad,
Ludovic Courtès, Andrew Csillag, Toby Cubitt, Baoqiu Cui, Doug Cutting, Mathias Dahl,
Yue Daian, Julien Danjou, Satyaki Das, Vivek Dasmohapatra, Dan Davison, Michael
DeCorte, Gary Delp, Nachum Dershowitz, Dave Detlefs, Matthieu Devin, Christophe de
Dinechin, Eri Ding, Jan Djärv, Lawrence R. Dodd, Carsten Dominik, Scott Draves, Benjamin
Drieu, Viktor Dukhovni, Jacques Duthen, Dmitry Dzhus, John Eaton, Rolf Ebert, Carl
Edman, David Edmondson, Paul Eggert, Stephen Eglen, Christian Egli, Torbjörn Einarsson,
Tsugutomo Enami, David Engster, Hans Henrik Eriksen, Michael Ernst, Ata Etemadi,
Frederick Farnbach, Oscar Figueiredo, Fred Fish, Steve Fisk, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Karl
Fogel, Gary Foster, Eric S. Fraga, Romain Francoise, Noah Friedman, Andreas Fuchs,
Shigeru Fukaya, Xue Fuqiao, Hallvard Furuseth, Keith Gabryelski, Peter S. Galbraith, Kevin
Gallagher, Fabián E. Gallina, Kevin Gallo, Juan León Lahoz Garcı́a, Howard Gayle, Daniel
German, Stephen Gildea, Julien Gilles, David Gillespie, Bob Glickstein, Nicolas Goaziou,
Deepak Goel, David De La Harpe Golden, Boris Goldowsky, David Goodger, Chris Gray,
Kevin Greiner, Michelangelo Grigni, Odd Gripenstam, Kai Großjohann, Michael Gschwind,
Bastien Guerry, Henry Guillaume, Dmitry Gutov, Doug Gwyn, Bruno Haible, Ken’ichi
Handa, Lars Hansen, Chris Hanson, Jesper Harder, Alexandru Harsanyi, K. Shane Hartman,
John Heidemann, Jon K. Hellan, Magnus Henoch, Markus Heritsch, Dirk Herrmann, Karl
Heuer, Manabu Higashida, Konrad Hinsen, Torsten Hilbrich, Anders Holst, Jeffrey C. Honig,
Jürgen Hötzel, Tassilo Horn, Kurt Hornik, Khaled Hosny, Tom Houlder, Joakim Hove, Denis
Howe, Lars Ingebrigtsen, Andrew Innes, Seiichiro Inoue, Philip Jackson, Martyn Jago, Pavel
Janik, Paul Jarc, Ulf Jasper, Thorsten Jolitz, Michael K. Johnson, Kyle Jones, Terry Jones,
Simon Josefsson, Alexandre Julliard, Arne Jørgensen, Tomoji Kagatani, Brewster Kahle,
Tokuya Kameshima, Lute Kamstra, Stefan Kangas, Ivan Kanis, David Kastrup, David
Kaufman, Henry Kautz, Taichi Kawabata, Taro Kawagishi, Howard Kaye, Michael Kifer,
Richard King, Peter Kleiweg, Karel Klı́č, Shuhei Kobayashi, Pavel Kobyakov, Larry K.
Kolodney, David M. Koppelman, Koseki Yoshinori, Robert Krawitz, Sebastian Kremer,
Ryszard Kubiak, Tak Kunihiro, Igor Kuzmin, David Kågedal, Daniel LaLiberte, Karl
Landstrom, Mario Lang, Aaron Larson, James R. Larus, Gemini Lasswell, Vinicius Jose
Latorre, Werner Lemberg, Frederic Lepied, Peter Liljenberg, Christian Limpach, Lars
Lindberg, Chris Lindblad, Anders Lindgren, Thomas Link, Juri Linkov, Francis Litterio,
Sergey Litvinov, Leo Liu, Emilio C. Lopes, Martin Lorentzson, Dave Love, Eric Ludlam,
Károly Lőrentey, Sascha Lüdecke, Greg McGary, Roland McGrath, Michael McNamara,
Alan Mackenzie, Christopher J. Madsen, Neil M. Mager, Arni Magnusson, Artur Malabarba,
Ken Manheimer, Bill Mann, Brian Marick, Simon Marshall, Bengt Martensson, Charlie
Martin, Yukihiro Matsumoto, Tomohiro Matsuyama, David Maus, Thomas May, Will
Mengarini, David Megginson, Jimmy Aguilar Mena, Stefan Merten, Ben A. Mesander,
Wayne Mesard, Brad Miller, Lawrence Mitchell, Richard Mlynarik, Gerd Möllmann, Dani
Moncayo, Stefan Monnier, Keith Moore, Jan Moringen, Morioka Tomohiko, Glenn Morris,
Don Morrison, Diane Murray, Riccardo Murri, Sen Nagata, Erik Naggum, Gergely Nagy,
4 GNU Emacs Manual

Nobuyoshi Nakada, Thomas Neumann, Mike Newton, Thien-Thi Nguyen, Jurgen Nickelsen,
Dan Nicolaescu, Hrvoje Nikšić, Jeff Norden, Andrew Norman, Theresa O’Connor, Kentaro
Ohkouchi, Christian Ohler, Kenichi Okada, Alexandre Oliva, Bob Olson, Michael Olson,
Takaaki Ota, Mark Oteiza, Pieter E. J. Pareit, Ross Patterson, David Pearson, Juan Pechiar,
Jeff Peck, Damon Anton Permezel, Tom Perrine, William M. Perry, Per Persson, Jens
Petersen, Nicolas Petton, Daniel Pfeiffer, Justus Piater, Richard L. Pieri, Fred Pierresteguy,
François Pinard, Daniel Pittman, Christian Plaunt, Alexander Pohoyda, David Ponce, Noam
Postavsky, Francesco A. Potortı̀, Michael D. Prange, Mukesh Prasad, Steve Purcell, Ken
Raeburn, Marko Rahamaa, Ashwin Ram, Eric S. Raymond, Paul Reilly, Edward M. Reingold,
David Reitter, Alex Rezinsky, Rob Riepel, Lara Rios, Adrian Robert, Nick Roberts, Roland
B. Roberts, John Robinson, Denis B. Roegel, Danny Roozendaal, Sebastian Rose, William
Rosenblatt, Markus Rost, Guillermo J. Rozas, Martin Rudalics, Ivar Rummelhoff, Jason
Rumney, Wolfgang Rupprecht, Benjamin Rutt, Kevin Ryde, Phil Sainty, James B. Salem,
Masahiko Sato, Timo Savola, Jorgen Schäfer, Holger Schauer, William Schelter, Ralph
Schleicher, Gregor Schmid, Michael Schmidt, Ronald S. Schnell, Philippe Schnoebelen, Jan
Schormann, Alex Schroeder, Stefan Schoef, Rainer Schöpf, Raymond Scholz, Eric Schulte,
Andreas Schwab, Randal Schwartz, Oliver Seidel, Manuel Serrano, Paul Sexton, Hovav
Shacham, Stanislav Shalunov, Marc Shapiro, Richard Sharman, Olin Shivers, Tibor Šimko,
Espen Skoglund, Rick Sladkey, Lynn Slater, Chris Smith, David Smith, JD Smith, Paul D.
Smith, Wilson Snyder, William Sommerfeld, Simon South, Andre Spiegel, Michael Staats,
Thomas Steffen, Ulf Stegemann, Reiner Steib, Sam Steingold, Ake Stenhoff, Philipp Stephani,
Peter Stephenson, Ken Stevens, Andy Stewart, Jonathan Stigelman, Martin Stjernholm, Kim
F. Storm, Steve Strassmann, Christopher Suckling, Olaf Sylvester, Naoto Takahashi, Steven
Tamm, Jan Tatarik, Jo~ ao Távora, Luc Teirlinck, Jean-Philippe Theberge, Jens T. Berger
Thielemann, Spencer Thomas, Jim Thompson, Toru Tomabechi, David O’Toole, Markus
Triska, Tom Tromey, Eli Tziperman, Daiki Ueno, Masanobu Umeda, Rajesh Vaidheeswarran,
Neil W. Van Dyke, Didier Verna, Joakim Verona, Ulrik Vieth, Geoffrey Voelker, Johan
Vromans, Inge Wallin, John Paul Wallington, Colin Walters, Barry Warsaw, Christoph
Wedler, Ilja Weis, Zhang Weize, Morten Welinder, Joseph Brian Wells, Rodney Whitby, John
Wiegley, Sascha Wilde, Ed Wilkinson, Mike Williams, Roland Winkler, Bill Wohler, Steven
A. Wood, Dale R. Worley, Francis J. Wright, Felix S. T. Wu, Tom Wurgler, Yamamoto
Mitsuharu, Katsumi Yamaoka, Masatake Yamato, Jonathan Yavner, Ryan Yeske, Ilya
Zakharevich, Milan Zamazal, Victor Zandy, Eli Zaretskii, Jamie Zawinski, Andrew Zhilin,
Shenghuo Zhu, Piotr Zieliński, Ian T. Zimmermann, Reto Zimmermann, Neal Ziring, Teodor
Zlatanov, and Detlev Zundel.
 5

Introduction
You are reading about GNU Emacs, the GNU incarnation of the advanced, self-documenting,
customizable, extensible editor Emacs. (The ‘G’ in GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) is not silent.)
We call Emacs advanced because it can do much more than simple insertion and deletion
of text. It can control subprocesses, indent programs automatically, show multiple files at
once, edit remote files like they were local files, and more. Emacs editing commands operate
in terms of characters, words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages, as well as expressions
and comments in various programming languages.
Self-documenting means that at any time you can use special commands, known as help
commands, to find out what your options are, or to find out what any command does, or to
find all the commands that pertain to a given topic. See Chapter 7 [Help], page 41.
Customizable means that you can easily alter the behavior of Emacs commands in simple
ways. For instance, if you use a programming language in which comments start with ‘<**’
and end with ‘**>’, you can tell the Emacs comment manipulation commands to use those
strings (see Section 23.5 [Comments], page 295). To take another example, you can rebind
the basic cursor motion commands (up, down, left and right) to any keys on the keyboard
that you find comfortable. See Chapter 33 [Customization], page 494.
Extensible means that you can go beyond simple customization and create entirely new
commands. New commands are simply programs written in the Lisp language, which are run
by Emacs’s own Lisp interpreter. Existing commands can even be redefined in the middle
of an editing session, without having to restart Emacs. Most of the editing commands in
Emacs are written in Lisp; the few exceptions could have been written in Lisp but use C
instead for efficiency. Writing an extension is programming, but non-programmers can use
it afterwards. See Section “Preface” in An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp, if
you want to learn Emacs Lisp programming.
6 GNU Emacs Manual

1 The Organization of the Screen

On a graphical display, such as on GNU/Linux using the X Window System, Emacs occupies
a graphical window. On a text terminal, Emacs occupies the entire terminal screen. We
will use the term frame to mean a graphical window or terminal screen occupied by Emacs.
Emacs behaves very similarly on both kinds of frames. It normally starts out with just one
frame, but you can create additional frames if you wish (see Chapter 18 [Frames], page 194).
Each frame consists of several distinct regions. At the top of the frame is a menu bar,
which allows you to access commands via a series of menus. On a graphical display, directly
below the menu bar is a tool bar, a row of icons that perform editing commands when you
click on them. At the very bottom of the frame is an echo area, where informative messages
are displayed and where you enter information when Emacs asks for it.
The main area of the frame, below the tool bar (if one exists) and above the echo area, is
called the window. Henceforth in this manual, we will use the word “window” in this sense.
Graphical display systems commonly use the word “window” with a different meaning; but,
as stated above, we refer to those graphical windows as “frames”.
An Emacs window is where the buffer—the text or other graphics you are editing or
viewing—is displayed. On a graphical display, the window possesses a scroll bar on one
side, which can be used to scroll through the buffer. The last line of the window is a mode
line. This displays various information about what is going on in the buffer, such as whether
there are unsaved changes, the editing modes that are in use, the current line number, and
so forth.
When you start Emacs, there is normally only one window in the frame. However, you
can subdivide this window horizontally or vertically to create multiple windows, each of
which can independently display a buffer (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185).
At any time, one window is the selected window. On a graphical display, the selected
window shows a more prominent cursor (usually solid and blinking); other windows show a
less prominent cursor (usually a hollow box). On a text terminal, there is only one cursor,
which is shown in the selected window. The buffer displayed in the selected window is
called the current buffer, and it is where editing happens. Most Emacs commands implicitly
apply to the current buffer; the text displayed in unselected windows is mostly visible for
reference. If you use multiple frames on a graphical display, selecting a particular frame
selects a window in that frame.

1.1 Point
The cursor in the selected window shows the location where most editing commands take
effect, which is called point1 . Many Emacs commands move point to different places in
the buffer; for example, you can place point by clicking mouse button 1 (normally the left
button) at the desired location.
By default, the cursor in the selected window is drawn as a solid block and appears to
be on a character, but you should think of point as between two characters; it is situated
before the character under the cursor. For example, if your text looks like ‘frob’ with the
1
The term “point” comes from the character ‘.’, which was the command in TECO (the language in
which the original Emacs was written) for accessing the editing position.
Chapter 1: The Organization of the Screen 7

cursor over the ‘b’, then point is between the ‘o’ and the ‘b’. If you insert the character ‘!’
at that position, the result is ‘fro!b’, with point between the ‘!’ and the ‘b’. Thus, the
cursor remains over the ‘b’, as before.
If you are editing several files in Emacs, each in its own buffer, each buffer has its own
value of point. A buffer that is not currently displayed remembers its value of point if you
later display it again. Furthermore, if a buffer is displayed in multiple windows, each of
those windows has its own value of point.
See Section 11.21 [Cursor Display], page 98, for options that control how Emacs displays
the cursor.

1.2 The Echo Area

The line at the very bottom of the frame is the echo area. It is used to display small amounts
of text for various purposes.
The echo area is so-named because one of the things it is used for is echoing, which
means displaying the characters of a multi-character command as you type. Single-character
commands are not echoed. Multi-character commands (see Section 2.2 [Keys], page 11)
are echoed if you pause for more than a second in the middle of a command. Emacs then
echoes all the characters of the command so far, to prompt you for the rest. Once echoing
has started, the rest of the command echoes immediately as you type it. This behavior is
designed to give confident users fast response, while giving hesitant users maximum feedback.
The echo area is also used to display an error message when a command cannot do its
job. Error messages may be accompanied by beeping or by flashing the screen.
Some commands display informative messages in the echo area to tell you what the
command has done, or to provide you with some specific information. These informative
messages, unlike error messages, are not accompanied with a beep or flash. For example,
C-x = (hold down Ctrl and type x, then let go of Ctrl and type =) displays a message
describing the character at point, its position in the buffer, and its current column in the
window. Commands that take a long time often display messages ending in ‘...’ while they
are working (sometimes also indicating how much progress has been made, as a percentage),
and add ‘done’ when they are finished.
Informative echo area messages are saved in a special buffer named *Messages*. (We
have not explained buffers yet; see Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 175, for more information
about them.) If you miss a message that appeared briefly on the screen, you can switch to
the *Messages* buffer to see it again. The *Messages* buffer is limited to a certain number
of lines, specified by the variable message-log-max. (We have not explained variables either;
see Section 33.2 [Variables], page 502, for more information about them.) Beyond this limit,
one line is deleted from the beginning whenever a new message line is added at the end.
See Section 11.24 [Display Custom], page 101, for options that control how Emacs uses
the echo area.
The echo area is also used to display the minibuffer, a special window where you can
input arguments to commands, such as the name of a file to be edited. When the minibuffer
is in use, the text displayed in the echo area begins with a prompt string, and the active
cursor appears within the minibuffer, which is temporarily considered the selected window.
You can always get out of the minibuffer by typing C-g. See Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 27.
8 GNU Emacs Manual

1.3 The Mode Line

At the bottom of each window is a mode line, which describes what is going on in the current
buffer. When there is only one window, the mode line appears right above the echo area; it
is the next-to-last line in the frame. On a graphical display, the mode line is drawn with a
3D box appearance. Emacs also usually draws the mode line of the selected window with a
different color from that of unselected windows, in order to make it stand out.
The text displayed in the mode line has the following format:
cs:ch-fr buf pos line (major minor)
On a text terminal, this text is followed by a series of dashes extending to the right edge of
the window. These dashes are omitted on a graphical display.
The cs string and the colon character after it describe the character set and newline
convention used for the current buffer. Normally, Emacs automatically handles these settings
for you, but it is sometimes useful to have this information.
cs describes the character set of the text in the buffer (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 223). If it is a dash (‘-’), that indicates no special character set handling (with the
possible exception of end-of-line conventions, described in the next paragraph). ‘=’ means
no conversion whatsoever, and is usually used for files containing non-textual data. Other
characters represent various coding systems—for example, ‘1’ represents ISO Latin-1.
On a text terminal, cs is preceded by two additional characters that describe the coding
systems for keyboard input and terminal output. Furthermore, if you are using an input
method, cs is preceded by a string that identifies the input method (see Section 19.3 [Input
Methods], page 220).
The character after cs is usually a colon. If a different string is displayed, that indicates
a nontrivial end-of-line convention for encoding a file. Usually, lines of text are separated by
newline characters in a file, but two other conventions are sometimes used. The MS-DOS
convention uses a carriage return character followed by a linefeed character; when editing
such files, the colon changes to either a backslash (‘\’) or ‘(DOS)’, depending on the operating
system. Another convention, employed by older Macintosh systems, uses a carriage return
character instead of a newline; when editing such files, the colon changes to either a forward
slash (‘/’) or ‘(Mac)’. On some systems, Emacs displays ‘(Unix)’ instead of the colon for
files that use newline as the line separator.
On frames created for emacsclient (see Section 31.6.2 [Invoking emacsclient], page 467),
the next character is ‘@’. This indication is typical for frames of an Emacs process running
as a daemon (see Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 464).
The next element on the mode line is the string indicated by ch. This shows two dashes
(‘--’) if the buffer displayed in the window has the same contents as the corresponding file
on the disk; i.e., if the buffer is unmodified. If the buffer is modified, it shows two stars
(‘**’). For a read-only buffer, it shows ‘%*’ if the buffer is modified, and ‘%%’ otherwise.
The character after ch is normally a dash (‘-’). However, if default-directory (see
Section 15.1 [File Names], page 145) for the current buffer is on a remote machine, ‘@’ is
displayed instead.
fr gives the selected frame name (see Chapter 18 [Frames], page 194). It appears only on
text terminals. The initial frame’s name is ‘F1’.
Chapter 1: The Organization of the Screen 9

buf is the name of the buffer displayed in the window. Usually, this is the same as the
name of a file you are editing. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 175.
pos tells you whether there is additional text above the top of the window, or below the
bottom. If your buffer is small and all of it is visible in the window, pos is ‘All’. Otherwise,
it is ‘Top’ if you are looking at the beginning of the buffer, ‘Bot’ if you are looking at the end
of the buffer, or ‘nn%’, where nn is the percentage of the buffer above the top of the window.
With Size Indication mode, you can display the size of the buffer as well. See Section 11.19
[Optional Mode Line], page 96.
line is the character ‘L’ followed by the line number at point. (You can display the current
column number too, by turning on Column Number mode. See Section 11.19 [Optional
Mode Line], page 96.)
major is the name of the major mode used in the buffer. A major mode is a principal
editing mode for the buffer, such as Text mode, Lisp mode, C mode, and so forth. See
Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241. Some major modes display additional information
after the major mode name. For example, Compilation buffers and Shell buffers display the
status of the subprocess.
minor is a list of some of the enabled minor modes, which are optional editing modes
that provide additional features on top of the major mode. See Section 20.2 [Minor Modes],
page 242.
Some features are listed together with the minor modes whenever they are turned on,
even though they are not really minor modes. ‘Narrow’ means that the buffer being displayed
has editing restricted to only a portion of its text (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80).
‘Def’ means that a keyboard macro is currently being defined (see Chapter 14 [Keyboard
Macros], page 137).
In addition, if Emacs is inside a recursive editing level, square brackets (‘[...]’) appear
around the parentheses that surround the modes. If Emacs is in one recursive editing level
within another, double square brackets appear, and so on. Since recursive editing levels
affect Emacs globally, such square brackets appear in the mode line of every window. See
Section 31.11 [Recursive Edit], page 479.
You can change the appearance of the mode line as well as the format of its contents. See
Section 11.19 [Optional Mode Line], page 96. In addition, the mode line is mouse-sensitive;
clicking on different parts of the mode line performs various commands. See Section 18.5
[Mode Line Mouse], page 198. Also, hovering the mouse pointer above mouse-sensitive
portions of the mode line shows tooltips (see Section 18.19 [Tooltips], page 213) with
information about commands you can invoke by clicking on the mode line.

1.4 The Menu Bar

Each Emacs frame normally has a menu bar at the top which you can use to perform
common operations. There’s no need to list them here, as you can more easily see them
yourself.
On a display that supports a mouse, you can use the mouse to choose a command from
the menu bar. An arrow on the right edge of a menu item means it leads to a subsidiary
menu, or submenu. A ‘...’ at the end of a menu item means that the command will prompt
you for further input before it actually does anything.
10 GNU Emacs Manual

Some of the commands in the menu bar have ordinary key bindings as well; if so, a key
binding is shown after the item itself. To view the full command name and documentation
for a menu item, type C-h k, and then select the menu bar with the mouse in the usual way
(see Section 7.1 [Key Help], page 44).
Instead of using the mouse, you can also invoke the first menu bar item by pressing F10
(to run the command menu-bar-open). You can then navigate the menus with the arrow
keys or with C-b, C-f (left/right), C-p, and C-n (up/down). To activate a selected menu
item, press RET; to cancel menu navigation, press C-g or ESC ESC ESC. (However, note that
when Emacs was built with a GUI toolkit, the menus are drawn and controlled by the
toolkit, and the key sequences to cancel menu navigation might be different from the above
description.)
On a text terminal, you can optionally access the menu-bar menus in the echo area. To
this end, customize the variable tty-menu-open-use-tmm to a non-nil value. Then typing
F10 will run the command tmm-menubar instead of dropping down the menu. (You can also
type M-`, which always invokes tmm-menubar.) tmm-menubar lets you select a menu item
with the keyboard. A provisional choice appears in the echo area. You can use the up and
down arrow keys to move through the menu to different items, and then you can type RET
to select the item. Each menu item is also designated by a letter or digit (usually the initial
of some word in the item’s name). This letter or digit is separated from the item name by
‘==>’. You can type the item’s letter or digit to select the item.
 11

2 Characters, Keys and Commands

This chapter explains the character sets used by Emacs for input commands, and the
fundamental concepts of keys and commands, whereby Emacs interprets your keyboard and
mouse input.

2.1 Kinds of User Input

GNU Emacs is primarily designed for use with the keyboard. While it is possible to use the
mouse to issue editing commands through the menu bar and tool bar, that is usually not as
efficient as using the keyboard.
Keyboard input into Emacs is based on a heavily-extended version of ASCII. Simple
characters, like ‘a’, ‘B’, ‘3’, ‘=’, and the space character (denoted as SPC), are entered by
typing the corresponding key. Control characters, such as RET, TAB, DEL, ESC, F1, Home, and
LEFT, are also entered this way, as are certain characters found on non-English keyboards
(see Chapter 19 [International], page 216).
Emacs also recognizes control characters that are entered using modifier keys. Two
commonly-used modifier keys are Control (usually labeled Ctrl), and Meta (usually labeled
Alt)1 . For example, Control-a is entered by holding down the Ctrl key while pressing a; we
will refer to this as C-a for short. Similarly, Meta-a, or M-a for short, is entered by holding
down the Alt key and pressing a. Modifier keys can also be applied to non-alphanumerical
characters, e.g., C-F1 or M-LEFT.
You can also type Meta characters using two-character sequences starting with ESC. Thus,
you can enter M-a by typing ESC a. You can enter C-M-a (holding down both Ctrl and Alt,
then pressing a) by typing ESC C-a. Unlike Meta, ESC is entered as a separate character.
You don’t hold down ESC while typing the next character; instead, press ESC and release it,
then enter the next character. This feature is useful on certain text terminals where the
Meta key does not function reliably.
Emacs supports 3 additional modifier keys, see Section 33.3.7 [Modifier Keys], page 517.
Emacs has extensive support for using mouse buttons, mouse wheels and other pointing
devices like touchpads and touch screens. See Section 2.3 [Mouse Input], page 12, for details.
On graphical displays, the window manager might block some keyboard inputs, including
M-TAB, M-SPC, C-M-d and C-M-l. If you have this problem, you can either customize your
window manager to not block those keys, or rebind the affected Emacs commands (see
Chapter 33 [Customization], page 494).
Simple characters and control characters, as well as certain non-keyboard inputs such
as mouse clicks, are collectively referred to as input events. For details about how Emacs
internally handles input events, see Section “Input Events” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.

2.2 Keys
Some Emacs commands are invoked by just one input event; for example, C-f moves forward
one character in the buffer. Other commands take two or more input events to invoke, such
as C-x C-f and C-x 4 C-f.
1
We refer to Alt as Meta for historical reasons.
12 GNU Emacs Manual

A key sequence, or key for short, is a sequence of one or more input events that is
meaningful as a unit. If a key sequence invokes a command, we call it a complete key; for
example, C-f, C-x C-f and C-x 4 C-f are all complete keys. If a key sequence isn’t long
enough to invoke a command, we call it a prefix key; from the preceding example, we see
that C-x and C-x 4 are prefix keys. Every key sequence is either a complete key or a prefix
key.
A prefix key combines with the following input event to make a longer key sequence.
For example, C-x is a prefix key, so typing C-x alone does not invoke a command; instead,
Emacs waits for further input (if you pause for longer than a second, it echoes the C-x key
to prompt for that input; see Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 7). C-x combines with the next
input event to make a two-event key sequence, which could itself be a prefix key (such as C-x
4), or a complete key (such as C-x C-f). There is no limit to the length of key sequences,
but in practice they are seldom longer than three or four input events.
You can’t add input events onto a complete key. For example, because C-f is a complete
key, the two-event sequence C-f C-k is two key sequences, not one.
By default, the prefix keys in Emacs are C-c, C-h, C-x, C-x RET, C-x @, C-x a, C-x n,
C-x r, C-x t, C-x v, C-x 4, C-x 5, C-x 6, ESC, and M-g. (F1 and F2 are aliases for C-h and
C-x 6.) This list is not cast in stone; if you customize Emacs, you can make new prefix
keys. You could even eliminate some of the standard ones, though this is not recommended
for most users; for example, if you remove the prefix definition of C-x 4, then C-x 4 C-f
becomes an invalid key sequence. See Section 33.3 [Key Bindings], page 513.
Typing the help character (C-h or F1) after a prefix key displays a list of the commands
starting with that prefix. The sole exception to this rule is ESC: ESC C-h is equivalent to
C-M-h, which does something else entirely. You can, however, use F1 to display a list of
commands starting with ESC.

2.3 Mouse Input

By default, Emacs supports all the normal mouse actions like setting the cursor by clicking
on the left mouse button, and selecting an area by dragging the mouse pointer. All mouse
actions can be used to bind commands in the same way you bind them to keyboard events
(see Section 2.2 [Keys], page 11). This section provides a general overview of using the
mouse in Emacs; see Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 194, and the sections that follow
it, for more details about mouse commands in Emacs.
When you click the left mouse button, Emacs receives a mouse-1 event. To see what
command is bound to that event, you can type C-h c and then press the left mouse button.
Similarly, the middle mouse button is mouse-2 and the right mouse button is mouse-3. If you
have a mouse with a wheel, the wheel events are commonly bound to either wheel-down or
wheel-up, or mouse-4 and mouse-5, but that depends on the operating system configuration.
In general, legacy X systems and terminals (see Section 18.22 [Text-Only Mouse], page 215)
will report mouse-4 and mouse-5, while all other systems will report wheel-down and
wheel-up.
Some mice also have a horizontal scroll wheel, and touchpads usually support scrolling
horizontally as well. These events are reported as wheel-left and wheel-right on all
systems other than terminals and legacy X systems, where they are mouse-6 and mouse-7.
Chapter 2: Characters, Keys and Commands 13

You can also combine keyboard modifiers with mouse events, so you can bind a special
command that triggers when you, for instance, holds down the Meta key and then uses the
middle mouse button. In that case, the event name will be M-mouse-2.
On some systems, you can also bind commands for handling touch screen events. In that
case, the events are called touchscreen-update and touchscreen-end.

2.4 Keys and Commands

This manual is full of passages that tell you what particular keys do. But Emacs does not
assign meanings to keys directly. Instead, Emacs assigns meanings to named commands,
and then gives keys their meanings by binding them to commands.
Every command has a name chosen by a programmer. The name is usually made of a few
English words separated by dashes; for example, next-line or forward-word. Internally,
each command is a special type of Lisp function, and the actions associated with the
command are performed by running the function. See Section “What Is a Function” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
The bindings between keys and commands are recorded in tables called keymaps. See
Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513.
When we say that “C-n moves down vertically one line” we are glossing over a subtle
distinction that is irrelevant in ordinary use, but vital for Emacs customization. The
command next-line does a vertical move downward. C-n has this effect because it is bound
to next-line. If you rebind C-n to the command forward-word, C-n will move forward
one word instead.
In this manual, we will often speak of keys like C-n as commands, even though strictly
speaking the key is bound to a command. Usually, we state the name of the command which
really does the work in parentheses after mentioning the key that runs it. For example, we
will say that “The command C-n (next-line) moves point vertically down”, meaning that
the command next-line moves vertically down, and the key C-n is normally bound to it.
Since we are discussing customization, we should tell you about variables. Often the
description of a command will say, “To change this, set the variable mumble-foo.” A variable
is a name used to store a value. Most of the variables documented in this manual are meant
for customization: some command or other part of Emacs examines the variable and behaves
differently according to the value that you set. You can ignore the information about
variables until you are interested in customizing them. Then read the basic information on
variables (see Section 33.2 [Variables], page 502) and the information about specific variables
will make sense.
14 GNU Emacs Manual

3 Entering and Exiting Emacs

This chapter explains how to enter Emacs, and how to exit it.

3.1 Entering Emacs

The usual way to invoke Emacs is with the shell command emacs. From a terminal window
running a Unix shell on a GUI terminal, you can run Emacs in the background with emacs
&; this way, Emacs won’t tie up the terminal window, so you can use it to run other shell
commands. (For comparable methods of starting Emacs on MS-Windows, see Section H.1
[Windows Startup], page 600.)
When Emacs starts up, the initial frame displays a special buffer named ‘*GNU Emacs*’.
This startup screen contains information about Emacs and links to common tasks that are
useful for beginning users. For instance, activating the ‘Emacs Tutorial’ link opens the
Emacs tutorial; this does the same thing as the command C-h t (help-with-tutorial).
To activate a link, either move point onto it and type RET, or click on it with mouse-1 (the
left mouse button).
Using a command line argument, you can tell Emacs to visit one or more files as soon as
it starts up. For example, emacs foo.txt starts Emacs with a buffer displaying the contents
of the file ‘foo.txt’. This feature exists mainly for compatibility with other editors, which
are designed to be launched from the shell for short editing sessions. If you call Emacs this
way, the initial frame is split into two windows—one showing the specified file, and the other
showing the startup screen. See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185.
Generally, it is unnecessary and wasteful to start Emacs afresh each time you want to
edit a file. The recommended way to use Emacs is to start it just once, just after you log in,
and do all your editing in the same Emacs session. See Chapter 15 [Files], page 145, for
information on visiting more than one file. If you use Emacs this way, the Emacs session
accumulates valuable context, such as the kill ring, registers, undo history, and mark ring
data, which together make editing more convenient. These features are described later in
the manual.
To edit a file from another program while Emacs is running, you can use the emacsclient
helper program to open a file in the existing Emacs session. See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server],
page 464.
Emacs accepts other command line arguments that tell it to load certain Lisp files, where
to put the initial frame, and so forth. See Appendix C [Emacs Invocation], page 568.
If the variable inhibit-startup-screen is non-nil, Emacs does not display the startup
screen. In that case, if one or more files were specified on the command line, Emacs
simply displays those files; otherwise, it displays a buffer named *scratch*, which can be
used to evaluate Emacs Lisp expressions interactively. See Section 24.10 [Lisp Interaction],
page 330. You can set the variable inhibit-startup-screen using the Customize facility
(see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494), or by editing your initialization file (see
Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522).1

1
Setting inhibit-startup-screen in site-start.el doesn’t work, because the startup screen is set up be-
fore reading site-start.el. See Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522, for information about site-start.el.
Chapter 3: Entering and Exiting Emacs 15

You can also force Emacs to display a file or directory at startup by setting the vari-
able initial-buffer-choice to a string naming that file or directory. The value of
initial-buffer-choice may also be a function (of no arguments) that should return a
buffer which is then displayed. If initial-buffer-choice is non-nil, then if you specify
any files on the command line, Emacs still visits them, but does not display them initially.

3.2 Exiting Emacs

C-x C-c Kill Emacs (save-buffers-kill-terminal).
C-z On a text terminal, suspend Emacs; on a graphical display, iconify (or “mini-
mize”) the selected frame (suspend-frame).
Killing Emacs means terminating the Emacs program. To do this, type C-x C-c
(save-buffers-kill-terminal). A two-character key sequence is used to make it harder to
type by accident. If there are any modified file-visiting buffers when you type C-x C-c, Emacs
first offers to save these buffers. If you do not save them all, it asks for confirmation again,
since the unsaved changes will be lost. Emacs also asks for confirmation if any subprocesses
are still running, since killing Emacs will also kill the subprocesses (see Section 31.5 [Shell],
page 453).
C-x C-c behaves specially if you are using Emacs as a server. If you type it from a client
frame, it closes the client connection. See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 464.
Emacs can, optionally, record certain session information when you kill it, such as the
files you were visiting at the time. This information is then available the next time you start
Emacs. See Section 31.10 [Saving Emacs Sessions], page 478.
If the value of the variable confirm-kill-emacs is non-nil, C-x C-c assumes that its
value is a predicate function, and calls that function. If the result of the function call is
non-nil, the session is killed, otherwise Emacs continues to run. One convenient function to
use as the value of confirm-kill-emacs is the function yes-or-no-p. The default value of
confirm-kill-emacs is nil.
If the value of the variable confirm-kill-processes is nil, C-x C-c does not ask for
confirmation before killing subprocesses started by Emacs. The value is t by default.
To further customize what happens when Emacs is exiting, see Section “Killing Emacs”
in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
To kill Emacs without being prompted about saving, type M-x kill-emacs.
C-z runs the command suspend-frame. On a graphical display, this command minimizes
(or iconifies) the selected Emacs frame, hiding it in a way that lets you bring it back later
(exactly how this hiding occurs depends on the window system). On a text terminal, the
C-z command suspends Emacs, stopping the program temporarily and returning control to
the parent process (usually a shell); in most shells, you can resume Emacs after suspending
it with the shell command %emacs.
Text terminals usually listen for certain special characters whose meaning is to kill or
suspend the program you are running. This terminal feature is turned off while you are in
Emacs. The meanings of C-z and C-x C-c as keys in Emacs were inspired by the use of C-z
and C-c on several operating systems as the characters for stopping or killing a program,
but that is their only relationship with the operating system. You can customize these keys
to run any commands of your choice (see Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513).
16 GNU Emacs Manual

4 Basic Editing Commands

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).

4.1 Inserting Text

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 Section 1.1 [Point], page 6.
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 Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 247) 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 Section 21.4
[Indent Convenience], page 249) 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 Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256). The minor
mode called Overwrite mode causes inserted characters to replace (overwrite) existing text,
instead of shoving it to the right. See Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242.
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:
• C-q followed by any non-graphic character (even C-g) inserts that character. For
instance, C-q DEL inserts a literal ‘DEL’ character.
• C-q followed by a sequence of octal digits inserts the character with the specified octal
character code. You can use any number of octal digits; any non-digit terminates
the sequence. If the terminating character is RET, that RET serves only to terminate
the sequence. Any other non-digit terminates the sequence and then acts as normal
input—thus, C-q 1 0 1 B inserts ‘AB’.
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
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 17

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 Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30). 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 Section “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 Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24).
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], page 223).
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 Section 22.5 [Quotation Marks], page 255.

4.2 Changing the Location of Point

To do more than insert characters, you have to know how to move point (see Section 1.1
[Point], page 6). 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.
C-f Move forward one character (forward-char).
RIGHT This command (right-char) behaves like C-f, except when point is in a right-
to-left paragraph (see Section 19.20 [Bidirectional Editing], page 238).
C-b Move backward one character (backward-char).
18 GNU Emacs Manual

LEFT This command (left-char) behaves like C-b, except if the current paragraph
is right-to-left (see Section 19.20 [Bidirectional Editing], page 238).
C-n
DOWN 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.
C-p
UP Move up one screen line (previous-line). This command preserves position
within the line, like C-n.
C-a
Home Move to the beginning of the line (move-beginning-of-line).
C-e
End Move to the end of the line (move-end-of-line).
M-f Move forward one word (forward-word). See Section 22.1 [Words], page 251.
C-RIGHT
M-RIGHT This command (right-word) behaves like M-f, except it moves backward by one
word if the current paragraph is right-to-left. See Section 19.20 [Bidirectional
Editing], page 238.
M-b Move backward one word (backward-word). See Section 22.1 [Words], page 251.
C-LEFT
M-LEFT This command (left-word) behaves like M-b, except it moves forward by one
word if the current paragraph is right-to-left. See Section 19.20 [Bidirectional
Editing], page 238.
M-r 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 Section 4.10
[Arguments], page 24, for more information on numeric arguments.
M-< 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.
M-> Move to the end of the buffer (end-of-buffer). On graphical displays, C-END
does the same.
C-v
PageDown
next Scroll the display one screen forward, and move point onscreen if necessary
(scroll-up-command). See Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 76.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 19

M-v
PageUp
prior Scroll one screen backward, and move point onscreen if necessary (scroll-down-
command). See Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 76.
M-g c 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.
M-g M-g
M-g g 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 Section 16.1
[Select Buffer], page 175, 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 Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35).
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.
M-g TAB 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.
C-x C-n 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.
C-u C-x C-n
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. 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 Section 4.8 [Continuation
Lines], page 22. See Section 33.2 [Variables], page 502, 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.
20 GNU Emacs Manual

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.

4.3 Erasing Text

DEL
BACKSPACE
Delete the character before point, or the region if it is active (delete-backward-
char).
Delete Delete the character after point, or the region if it is active (delete-forward-
char).
C-d Delete the character after point (delete-char).
C-k Kill to the end of the line (kill-line).
M-d Kill forward to the end of the next word (kill-word).
M-DEL
M-BACKSPACE
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 Chapter 8
[Mark], page 51, 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 Section 34.2.8 [DEL
Does Not Delete], page 535, 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 Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51).
C-d (delete-char) deletes the character after point, similar to Delete, but regardless
of whether the region is active.
See Section 9.1.1 [Deletion], page 58, 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 Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58, for more information about C-k and related commands.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 21

4.4 Undoing Changes

C-/
C-x u
C-_ 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 Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131.

4.5 Files
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 Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 27).
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 Chapter 15 [Files], page 145.
22 GNU Emacs Manual

4.6 Help
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 Chapter 7 [Help], page 41, for details.

4.7 Blank Lines

Here are special commands and techniques for inserting and deleting blank lines.
C-o Insert a blank line after the cursor (open-line).
C-x C-o 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 Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24,
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 Section 22.6.3 [Fill Prefix], page 258.
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.

4.8 Continuation Lines

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. 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
Section 4.2 [Moving Point], page 17).
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 Section 11.22 [Line Truncation], page 99.
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,
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 23

you can make Emacs insert a newline automatically when a line gets too long, by using
Auto Fill mode. See Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256.
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 Section 11.23
[Visual Line Mode], page 100.

4.9 Cursor Position Information

Here are commands to get information about the size and position of parts of the buffer,
and to count words and lines.
M-x what-line
Display the line number of point.
M-x line-number-mode
M-x column-number-mode
Toggle automatic display of the current line number or column number. See
Section 11.19 [Optional Mode Line], page 96. If you want to have a line number
displayed before each line, see Section 11.24 [Display Custom], page 101.
M-= Display the number of lines, sentences, words, and characters that are present
in the region (count-words-region). See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51, for
information about the region.
M-x count-words
Display the number of lines, sentences, words, and characters that are present
in the buffer. If the region is active (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51), display the
numbers for the region instead.
C-x = Display the character code of character after point, character position of point,
and column of point (what-cursor-position).
M-x hl-line-mode
Enable or disable highlighting of the current line. See Section 11.21 [Cursor
Display], page 98.
M-x size-indication-mode
Toggle automatic display of the size of the buffer. See Section 11.19 [Optional
Mode Line], page 96.
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 Section 1.3
[Mode Line], page 8). However, if you narrow the buffer, the mode line shows the line
number relative to the accessible portion (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80). 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 Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51, for an explanation of
24 GNU Emacs Manual

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 Section 19.1 [International
Chars], page 216. 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
Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80.
Related, but different feature is display-line-numbers-mode (see Section 11.24 [Display
Custom], page 101).

4.10 Numeric Arguments

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.
Chapter 4: Basic Editing Commands 25

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 Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256, 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 Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58, 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 Chapter 5 [Minibuffer],
page 27), which are entered after invoking the command.
On graphical displays, C-0, C-1, etc. act the same as M-0, M-1, etc.

4.11 Repeating a Command

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
26 GNU Emacs Manual

serves as a repeat count (see Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24). 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
Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131) 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 Section 24.2
[Compilation Mode], page 310).
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.
 27

5 The Minibuffer
The minibuffer is where Emacs commands read complicated arguments, such as file names,
buffer names, Emacs command names, or Lisp expressions. We call it the “minibuffer”
because it’s a special-purpose buffer with a small amount of screen space. You can use the
usual Emacs editing commands in the minibuffer to edit the argument text.

5.1 Using the Minibuffer

When the minibuffer is in use, it appears in the echo area, with a cursor. The minibuffer
starts with a prompt, usually ending with a colon. The prompt states what kind of input is
expected, and how it will be used. The prompt is highlighted using the minibuffer-prompt
face (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82).
The simplest way to enter a minibuffer argument is to type the text, then RET to submit
the argument and exit the minibuffer. Alternatively, you can type C-g to exit the minibuffer
by canceling the command asking for the argument (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 530).
Sometimes, the prompt shows a default argument, inside parentheses before the colon.
This default will be used as the argument if you just type RET. For example, commands that
read buffer names usually show a buffer name as the default; you can type RET to operate
on that default buffer. You can customize how the default argument is shown with the user
option minibuffer-default-prompt-format.
If you enable Minibuffer Electric Default mode, a global minor mode, Emacs hides
the default argument as soon as you modify the contents of the minibuffer (since typing
RET would no longer submit that default). If you ever bring back the original minibuf-
fer text, the prompt again shows the default. To enable this minor mode, type M-x
minibuffer-electric-default-mode.
Since the minibuffer appears in the echo area, it can conflict with other uses of the echo
area. If an error message or an informative message is emitted while the minibuffer is active,
the message is displayed in brackets after the minibuffer text for a few seconds, or until you
type something; then the message disappears. While the minibuffer is in use, Emacs does
not echo keystrokes.
While using the minibuffer, you can switch to a different frame, perhaps to note text
you need to enter (see Section 18.7 [Frame Commands], page 200). By default, the active
minibuffer moves to this new frame. If you set the user option minibuffer-follows-
selected-frame to nil, then the minibuffer stays in the frame where you opened it, and
you must switch back to that frame in order to complete (or abort) the current command.
If you set that option to a value which is neither nil nor t, the minibuffer moves frame
only after a recursive minibuffer has been opened in the current command (see Section
“Recursive Mini” in elisp). This option is mainly to retain (approximately) the behavior
prior to Emacs 28.1. Note that the effect of the command, when you finally finish using the
minibuffer, always takes place in the frame where you first opened it. The sole exception is
that when that frame no longer exists, the action takes place in the currently selected frame.

5.2 Minibuffers for File Names

Commands such as C-x C-f (find-file) use the minibuffer to read a file name argument
(see Section 4.5 [Basic Files], page 21). When the minibuffer is used to read a file name, it
28 GNU Emacs Manual

typically starts out with some initial text ending in a slash. This is the default directory.
For example, it may start out like this:
Find file: /u2/emacs/src/
Here, ‘Find file: ’ is the prompt and ‘/u2/emacs/src/’ is the default directory. If you now
type buffer.c as input, that specifies the file /u2/emacs/src/buffer.c. See Section 15.1
[File Names], page 145, for information about the default directory.
Alternative defaults for the file name you may want are available by typing M-n, see
Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35.
You can specify a file in the parent directory with ..: /a/b/../foo.el is equivalent
to /a/foo.el. Alternatively, you can use M-DEL to kill directory names backwards (see
Section 22.1 [Words], page 251).
To specify a file in a completely different directory, you can kill the entire default with C-a
C-k (see Section 5.3 [Minibuffer Edit], page 29). Alternatively, you can ignore the default,
and enter an absolute file name starting with a slash or a tilde after the default directory.
For example, you can specify /etc/termcap as follows:
Find file: /u2/emacs/src//etc/termcap
A double slash causes Emacs to ignore everything before the second slash in the pair. In the
example above, /u2/emacs/src/ is ignored, so the argument you supplied is /etc/termcap.
The ignored part of the file name is dimmed if the terminal allows it. (To disable this dimming,
turn off File Name Shadow mode with the command M-x file-name-shadow-mode.)
When completing remote file names (see Section 15.15 [Remote Files], page 169), a double
slash behaves slightly differently: it causes Emacs to ignore only the file-name part, leaving
the rest (method, host and username, etc.) intact. Typing three slashes in a row ignores
everything in remote file names. See Section “File name completion” in The Tramp Manual.
Emacs interprets ~/ as your home directory. Thus, ~/foo/bar.txt specifies a file named
bar.txt, inside a directory named foo, which is in turn located in your home directory.
In addition, ~user-id/ means the home directory of a user whose login name is user-id.
Any leading directory name in front of the ~ is ignored: thus, /u2/emacs/~/foo/bar.txt
is equivalent to ~/foo/bar.txt.
On MS-Windows and MS-DOS systems, where a user doesn’t always have a home
directory, Emacs uses several alternatives. For MS-Windows, see Section H.5 [Windows
HOME], page 603; for MS-DOS, see Section “MS-DOS File Names” in the digital version of
the Emacs Manual. On these systems, the ~user-id/ construct is supported only for the
current user, i.e., only if user-id is the current user’s login name.
To prevent Emacs from inserting the default directory when reading file names, change
the variable insert-default-directory to nil. In that case, the minibuffer starts out
empty. Nonetheless, relative file name arguments are still interpreted based on the same
default directory.
You can also enter remote file names in the minibuffer. See Section 15.15 [Remote Files],
page 169.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 29

5.3 Editing in the Minibuffer

The minibuffer is an Emacs buffer, albeit a peculiar one, and the usual Emacs commands
are available for editing the argument text. (The prompt, however, is read-only, and cannot
be changed.)
Since RET in the minibuffer submits the argument, you can’t use it to insert a newline.
You can do that with C-q C-j, which inserts a C-j control character, which is formally
equivalent to a newline character (see Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16). Alternatively,
you can use the C-o (open-line) command (see Section 4.7 [Blank Lines], page 22).
Inside a minibuffer, the keys TAB, SPC, and ? are often bound to completion commands,
which allow you to easily fill in the desired text without typing all of it. See Section 5.4
[Completion], page 30. As with RET, you can use C-q to insert a TAB, SPC, or ‘?’ character.
If you want to make SPC and ? insert normally instead of starting completion, you can put
the following in your init file:
(keymap-unset minibuffer-local-completion-map "SPC")
(keymap-unset minibuffer-local-completion-map "?")
For convenience, C-a (move-beginning-of-line) in a minibuffer moves point to the
beginning of the argument text, not the beginning of the prompt. For example, this allows
you to erase the entire argument with C-a C-k.
When the minibuffer is active, the echo area is treated much like an ordinary Emacs
window. For instance, you can switch to another window (with C-x o), edit text there, then
return to the minibuffer window to finish the argument. You can even kill text in another
window, return to the minibuffer window, and yank the text into the argument. There are
some restrictions on the minibuffer window, however: for instance, you cannot split it. See
Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185.
Normally, the minibuffer window occupies a single screen line. However, if you add two or
more lines’ worth of text into the minibuffer, it expands automatically to accommodate the
text. The variable resize-mini-windows controls the resizing of the minibuffer. The default
value is grow-only, which means the behavior we have just described. If the value is t, the
minibuffer window will also shrink automatically if you remove some lines of text from the
minibuffer, down to a minimum of one screen line. If the value is nil, the minibuffer window
never changes size automatically, but you can use the usual window-resizing commands on
it (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185).
The variable max-mini-window-height controls the maximum height for resizing the
minibuffer window. A floating-point number specifies a fraction of the frame’s height; an
integer specifies the maximum number of lines; nil means do not resize the minibuffer
window automatically. The default value is 0.25.
The C-M-v command in the minibuffer scrolls the help text from commands that display
help text of any sort in another window. You can also scroll the help text with M-PageUp
and M-PageDown (or, equivalently, M-prior and M-next). This is especially useful with long
lists of possible completions. See Section 17.3 [Other Window], page 186.
Emacs normally disallows most commands that use the minibuffer while the minibuffer
is active. To allow such commands in the minibuffer, set the variable enable-recursive-
minibuffers to t. You might need also to enable minibuffer-depth-indicate-mode to
show the current recursion depth in the minibuffer prompt on recursive use of the minibuffer.
30 GNU Emacs Manual

When active, the minibuffer is usually in minibuffer-mode. This is an internal Emacs

mode without any special features.
When not active, the minibuffer is in minibuffer-inactive-mode, and clicking mouse-1
there shows the *Messages* buffer. If you use a dedicated frame for minibuffers, Emacs
also recognizes certain keys there, for example, n to make a new frame.

5.4 Completion
You can often use a feature called completion to help enter arguments. This means that
after you type part of the argument, Emacs can fill in the rest, or some of it, based on what
was typed so far.
When completion is available, certain keys (usually TAB, RET, and SPC) are rebound in
the minibuffer to special completion commands (see Section 5.4.2 [Completion Commands],
page 30). These commands attempt to complete the text in the minibuffer, based on a set
of completion alternatives provided by the command that requested the argument. You can
usually type ? to see a list of completion alternatives.
Although completion is usually done in the minibuffer, the feature is sometimes available
in ordinary buffers too. See Section 23.8 [Symbol Completion], page 302.

5.4.1 Completion Example

A simple example may help here. M-x uses the minibuffer to read the name of a command,
so completion works by matching the minibuffer text against the names of existing Emacs
commands. Suppose you wish to run the command auto-fill-mode. You can do that by
typing M-x auto-fill-mode RET, but it is easier to use completion.
If you type M-x a u TAB, the TAB looks for completion alternatives (in this case, com-
mand names) that start with ‘au’. There are several, including auto-fill-mode and
autoconf-mode, but they all begin with auto, so the ‘au’ in the minibuffer completes to
‘auto’. (More commands may be defined in your Emacs session. For example, if a command
called authorize-me was defined, Emacs could only complete as far as ‘aut’.)
If you type TAB again immediately, it cannot determine the next character; it could be
‘-’, ‘a’, or ‘c’. So it does not add any characters; instead, TAB displays a list of all possible
completions in another window.
Next, type -f. The minibuffer now contains ‘auto-f’, and the only command name that
starts with this is auto-fill-mode. If you now type TAB, completion fills in the rest of the
argument ‘auto-fill-mode’ into the minibuffer.
Hence, typing just a u TAB - f TAB allows you to enter ‘auto-fill-mode’.
TAB also works while point is not at the end of the minibuffer. In that case, it will fill in
text both at point and at the end of the minibuffer. If you type M-x autocm, then press C-b
to move point before the ‘m’, you can type TAB to insert the text ‘onf-’ at point and ‘ode’
at the end of the minibuffer, so that the minibuffer contains ‘autoconf-mode’.

5.4.2 Completion Commands

Here is a list of the completion commands defined in the minibuffer when completion is
allowed.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 31

TAB Complete the text in the minibuffer as much as possible; if unable to complete,
display a list of possible completions (minibuffer-complete).
SPC Complete up to one word from the minibuffer text before point
(minibuffer-complete-word). This command is not available for arguments
that often include spaces, such as file names.
RET Submit the text in the minibuffer as the argument, possibly completing first
(minibuffer-complete-and-exit). See Section 5.4.3 [Completion Exit],
page 32.
? Display a list of completions (minibuffer-completion-help).
TAB (minibuffer-complete) is the most fundamental completion command. It searches
for all possible completions that match the existing minibuffer text, and attempts to complete
as much as it can. See Section 5.4.4 [Completion Styles], page 33, for how completion
alternatives are chosen.
SPC (minibuffer-complete-word) completes like TAB, but only up to the next hyphen
or space. If you have ‘auto-f’ in the minibuffer and type SPC, it finds that the completion
is ‘auto-fill-mode’, but it only inserts ‘ill-’, giving ‘auto-fill-’. Another SPC at this
point completes all the way to ‘auto-fill-mode’.
If TAB or SPC is unable to complete, it displays a list of matching completion alter-
natives (if there are any) in another window. You can display the same list with ?
(minibuffer-completion-help). The following commands can be used with the completion
list:
M-DOWN
M-UP While in the minibuffer, M-DOWN (minibuffer-next-completion and M-UP
(minibuffer-previous-completion) navigate through the completions and
displayed in the completions buffer. When minibuffer-completion-auto-
choose is non-nil (which is the default), using these commands also inserts the
current completion candidate into the minibuffer. If minibuffer-completion-
auto-choose is nil, you can use the M-RET command (minibuffer-choose-
completion) to insert the completion candidates into the minibuffer. By default,
that exits the minibuffer, but with a prefix argument, C-u M-RET inserts the
currently active candidate without exiting the minibuffer.
M-v
PageUp
prior Typing M-v, while in the minibuffer, selects the window showing the completion
list (switch-to-completions). This paves the way for using the commands
below. PageUp, prior and M-g M-c does the same. You can also select the
window in other ways (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185).
RET
mouse-1
mouse-2 While in the completion list buffer, this chooses the completion at point
(choose-completion). With a prefix argument, C-u RET inserts the completion
at point into the minibuffer, but doesn’t exit the minibuffer—thus, you can
change your mind and choose another candidate.
32 GNU Emacs Manual

TAB
RIGHT
n While in the completion list buffer, these keys move point to the following
completion alternative (next-completion).
S-TAB
LEFT
p While in the completion list buffer, these keys move point to the previous
completion alternative (previous-completion).
q While in the completion list buffer, this quits the window showing it and selects
the window showing the minibuffer (quit-window).
z While in the completion list buffer, kill it and delete the window showing it
(kill-current-buffer).

5.4.3 Completion Exit

When a command reads an argument using the minibuffer with completion, it also con-
trols what happens when you type RET (minibuffer-complete-and-exit) to submit the
argument. There are four types of behavior:
• Strict completion accepts only exact completion matches. Typing RET exits the mini-
buffer only if the minibuffer text is an exact match, or completes to one. Otherwise,
Emacs refuses to exit the minibuffer; instead it tries to complete, and if no completion
can be done it momentarily displays ‘[No match]’ after the minibuffer text. (You can
still leave the minibuffer by typing C-g to cancel the command.)
An example of a command that uses this behavior is M-x, since it is meaningless for it
to accept a non-existent command name.
• Cautious completion is like strict completion, except RET exits only if the text is already
an exact match. If the text completes to an exact match, RET performs that completion
but does not exit yet; you must type a second RET to exit.
Cautious completion is used for reading file names for files that must already exist, for
example.
• Permissive completion allows any input; the completion candidates are just suggestions.
Typing RET does not complete, it just submits the argument as you have entered it.
• Permissive completion with confirmation is like permissive completion, with an exception:
if you typed TAB and this completed the text up to some intermediate state (i.e., one that
is not yet an exact completion match), typing RET right afterward does not submit the
argument. Instead, Emacs asks for confirmation by momentarily displaying ‘[Confirm]’
after the text; type RET again to confirm and submit the text. This catches a common
mistake, in which one types RET before realizing that TAB did not complete as far as
desired.
You can tweak the confirmation behavior by customizing the variable
confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer. The default value, after-completion,
gives the behavior we have just described. If you change it to nil, Emacs does not ask
for confirmation, falling back on permissive completion. If you change it to any other
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 33

non-nil value, Emacs asks for confirmation whether or not the preceding command
was TAB.
This behavior is used by most commands that read file names, like C-x C-f, and
commands that read buffer names, like C-x b.

5.4.4 How Completion Alternatives Are Chosen

Completion commands work by narrowing a large list of possible completion alternatives
to a smaller subset that matches what you have typed in the minibuffer. In Section 5.4.1
[Completion Example], page 30, we gave a simple example of such matching. The procedure
of determining what constitutes a match is quite intricate. Emacs attempts to offer plausible
completions under most circumstances.
Emacs performs completion using one or more completion styles—sets of criteria for
matching minibuffer text to completion alternatives. During completion, Emacs tries each
completion style in turn. If a style yields one or more matches, that is used as the list of
completion alternatives. If a style produces no matches, Emacs falls back on the next style.
The list variable completion-styles specifies the completion styles to use. Each list
element is the name of a completion style (a Lisp symbol). The available style symbols are
stored in the variable completion-styles-alist (see Section “Completion Variables” in
The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). The default completion styles are (in order):
basic A matching completion alternative must have the same beginning as the text in
the minibuffer before point. Furthermore, if there is any text in the minibuffer
after point, the rest of the completion alternative must contain that text as a
substring.
partial-completion
This aggressive completion style divides the minibuffer text into words separated
by hyphens or spaces, and completes each word separately. (For example, when
completing command names, ‘em-l-m’ completes to ‘emacs-lisp-mode’.)
Furthermore, a ‘*’ in the minibuffer text is treated as a wildcard—it matches any
string of characters at the corresponding position in the completion alternative.
emacs22 This completion style is similar to basic, except that it ignores the text in the
minibuffer after point. It is so-named because it corresponds to the completion
behavior in Emacs 22.
The following additional completion styles are also defined, and you can add them to
completion-styles if you wish (see Chapter 33 [Customization], page 494):
substring
A matching completion alternative must contain the text in the minibuffer before
point, and the text in the minibuffer after point, as substrings (in that same
order).
Thus, if the text in the minibuffer is ‘foobar’, with point between ‘foo’ and
‘bar’, that matches ‘afoobbarc’, where a, b, and c can be any string including
the empty string.
flex This aggressive completion style, also known as flx or fuzzy or scatter
completion, attempts to complete using in-order substrings. For example, it can
consider ‘foo’ to match ‘frodo’ or ‘fbarbazoo’.
34 GNU Emacs Manual

initials This very aggressive completion style attempts to complete acronyms and
initialisms. For example, when completing command names, it matches ‘lch’ to
‘list-command-history’.
There is also a very simple completion style called emacs21. In this style, if the text in the
minibuffer is ‘foobar’, only matches starting with ‘foobar’ are considered.
You can use different completion styles in different situations, by setting the variable
completion-category-overrides. For example, the default setting says to use only basic
and substring completion for buffer names.

5.4.5 Completion Options

Case is significant when completing case-sensitive arguments, such as command names. For
example, when completing command names, ‘AU’ does not complete to ‘auto-fill-mode’.
Case differences are ignored when completing arguments in which case does not matter.
When completing file names, case differences are ignored if the variable read-file-
name-completion-ignore-case is non-nil. The default value is nil on systems that have
case-sensitive file-names, such as GNU/Linux; it is non-nil on systems that have case-
insensitive file-names, such as Microsoft Windows. When completing buffer names, case
differences are ignored if the variable read-buffer-completion-ignore-case is non-nil;
the default is nil.
When completing file names, Emacs usually omits certain alternatives that are considered
unlikely to be chosen, as determined by the list variable completion-ignored-extensions.
Each element in the list should be a string; any file name ending in such a string is ignored as
a completion alternative. Any element ending in a slash (/) represents a subdirectory name.
The standard value of completion-ignored-extensions has several elements including
".o", ".elc", and "~". For example, if a directory contains ‘foo.c’ and ‘foo.elc’, ‘foo’
completes to ‘foo.c’. However, if all possible completions end in otherwise-ignored strings,
they are not ignored: in the previous example, ‘foo.e’ completes to ‘foo.elc’. Emacs
disregards completion-ignored-extensions when showing completion alternatives in the
completion list.
Shell completion is an extended version of filename completion, see Section 31.5.7 [Shell
Options], page 462.
If completion-auto-help is set to nil, the completion commands never display the
completion list buffer; you must type ? to display the list. If the value is lazy, Emacs only
shows the completion list buffer on the second attempt to complete. In other words, if there
is nothing to complete, the first TAB echoes ‘Next char not unique’; the second TAB shows
the completion list buffer. If the value is always, the completion list buffer is always shown
when completion is attempted.
The display of the completion list buffer after it is shown for the first time is also controlled
by completion-auto-help. If the value is t or lazy, the window showing the completions
pops down when Emacs is able to complete (and may pop up again if Emacs is again unable
to complete after you type some more text); if the value is always, the window pops down
only when you exit the completion. The value visible is a hybrid: it behaves like t when it
decides whether to pop up the window showing the completion list buffer, and like always
when it decides whether to pop it down.
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 35

Emacs can optionally select the window showing the completions when it shows that
window. To enable this behavior, customize the user option completion-auto-select to t,
which changes the behavior of TAB when Emacs pops up the completions: pressing TAB will
switch to the completion list buffer, and you can then move to a candidate by cursor motion
commands and select it with RET. If the value of completion-auto-select is second-tab,
then the first TAB will pop up the completions list buffer, and the second one will switch to
it.
If completion-cycle-threshold is non-nil, completion commands can cycle through
completion alternatives. Normally, if there is more than one completion alternative for
the text in the minibuffer, a completion command completes up to the longest common
substring. If you change completion-cycle-threshold to t, the completion command
instead completes to the first of those completion alternatives; each subsequent invocation
of the completion command replaces that with the next completion alternative, in a cyclic
manner. If you give completion-cycle-threshold a numeric value n, completion commands
switch to this cycling behavior only when there are n or fewer alternatives.
When displaying completions, Emacs will normally pop up a new buffer to display
the completions. The completions will by default be sorted horizontally, using as many
columns as will fit in the window-width, but this can be changed by customizing the
completions-format user option. If its value is vertical, Emacs will sort the completions
vertically instead, and if it’s one-column, Emacs will use just one column.
The completions-sort user option controls the order in which the completions are sorted
in the ‘*Completions*’ buffer. The default is alphabetical, which sorts in alphabetical
order. The value nil disables sorting. The value can also be a function, which will be called
with the list of completions, and should return the list in the desired order.
When completions-max-height is non-nil, it limits the size of the completions window.
It is specified in lines and include mode, header line and a bottom divider, if any. For a more
complex control of the Completion window display properties, you can use display-buffer-
alist (see Section “Action Alists for Buffer Display” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
The variable completions-header-format is a format spec string to control the infor-
mative line shown before the completions list of candidates. If it contains a ‘%s’ construct,
that get replaced by the number of completions shown in the completion list buffer. To
suppress the display of the heading line, customize this variable to nil. The string that is
the value of this variable can have text properties to change the visual appearance of the
heading line; some useful properties face or cursor-intangible (see Section “Properties
with Special Meanings” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
When completions-highlight-face names a face, the current completion candidate,
the one that will be selected by typing RET or clicking the mouse, will be highlighted using
that face. The default value of this variable is completions-highlight; the value is nil
disables this highlighting. This feature uses the special text property cursor-face.

5.5 Minibuffer History

Everything you type in the minibuffer is saved in a minibuffer history list so you can easily
use it again later. This includes completion candidates (such as file names, buffer names,
command names, etc.) and any other kind of minibuffer input. You can use the following
commands to quickly fetch an earlier or alternative response into the minibuffer:
36 GNU Emacs Manual

M-p Move to the previous item in the minibuffer history, an earlier argument
(previous-history-element).
M-n Move to the next item in the minibuffer history (next-history-element).
UP
DOWN Like M-p and M-n, but move to the previous or next line of a multi-line item before
going to the previous history item (previous-line-or-history-element and
next-line-or-history-element) .
M-r regexp RET
Move to an earlier item in the minibuffer history that matches regexp
(previous-matching-history-element).
M-s regexp RET
Move to a later item in the minibuffer history that matches regexp
(next-matching-history-element).
While in the minibuffer, M-p (previous-history-element) moves through the minibuffer
history list, one item at a time. Each M-p fetches an earlier item from the history list into
the minibuffer, replacing its existing contents. Typing M-n (next-history-element) moves
through the minibuffer history list in the opposite direction, fetching later entries into the
minibuffer.
If you type M-n in the minibuffer when there are no later entries in the minibuffer
history (e.g., if you haven’t previously typed M-p), Emacs tries fetching from a list of default
arguments: values that you are likely to enter. You can think of this as moving through the
“future history”.
The “future history” for file names includes several possible alternatives you may find
useful, such as the file name or the URL at point in the current buffer. The defaults put into
the “future history” in this case are controlled by the functions mentioned in the value of the
option file-name-at-point-functions. By default, its value invokes the ffap package
(see Section 31.12.5 [FFAP], page 482), which tries to guess the default file or URL from the
text around point. To disable this guessing, customize the option to a nil value, then the
“future history” of file names will include only the file, if any, visited by the current buffer,
and the default directory.
The arrow keys UP and DOWN work like M-p and M-n, but if the current history item is
longer than a single line, they allow you to move to the previous or next line of the current
history item before going to the previous or next history item.
If you edit the text inserted by the M-p or M-n minibuffer history commands, this does
not change its entry in the history list. However, the edited argument does go at the end of
the history list when you submit it.
You can use M-r (previous-matching-history-element) to search through older ele-
ments in the history list, and M-s (next-matching-history-element) to search through
newer entries. Each of these commands asks for a regular expression as an argument, and
fetches the first matching entry into the minibuffer. See Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114,
for an explanation of regular expressions. A numeric prefix argument n means to fetch the
nth matching entry. These commands are unusual, in that they use the minibuffer to read
the regular expression argument, even though they are invoked from the minibuffer. An
Chapter 5: The Minibuffer 37

upper-case letter in the regular expression makes the search case-sensitive (see Section 12.9
[Lax Search], page 119).
You can also search through the history using an incremental search. See Section 12.1.7
[Isearch Minibuffer], page 111.
Emacs keeps separate history lists for several different kinds of arguments. For example,
there is a list for file names, used by all the commands that read file names. Other history
lists include buffer names, command names (used by M-x), and command arguments (used
by commands like query-replace).
The variable history-length specifies the maximum length of a minibuffer history list;
adding a new element deletes the oldest element if the list gets too long. If the value is t,
there is no maximum length.
The variable history-delete-duplicates specifies whether to delete duplicates in
history. If it is non-nil, adding a new element deletes from the list all other elements that
are equal to it. The default is nil.

5.6 Repeating Minibuffer Commands

Every command that uses the minibuffer once is recorded on a special history list, the
command history, together with the values of its arguments, so that you can repeat the entire
command. In particular, every use of M-x is recorded there, since M-x uses the minibuffer to
read the command name.
C-x ESC ESC
Re-execute a recent minibuffer command from the command history
(repeat-complex-command).
M-x list-command-history
Display the entire command history, showing all the commands C-x ESC ESC
can repeat, most recent first.
C-x ESC ESC re-executes a recent command that used the minibuffer. With no argument,
it repeats the last such command. A numeric argument specifies which command to repeat;
1 means the last one, 2 the previous, and so on.
C-x ESC ESC works by turning the previous command into a Lisp expression and then
entering a minibuffer initialized with the text for that expression. Even if you don’t know
Lisp, it will probably be obvious which command is displayed for repetition. If you type just
RET, that repeats the command unchanged. You can also change the command by editing
the Lisp expression before you execute it. The executed command is added to the front of
the command history unless it is identical to the most recent item.
Once inside the minibuffer for C-x ESC ESC, you can use the usual minibuffer history
commands (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35) to move through the history list.
After finding the desired previous command, you can edit its expression as usual and then
execute it by typing RET.
Incremental search does not, strictly speaking, use the minibuffer. Therefore, although
it behaves like a complex command, it normally does not appear in the history list for
C-x ESC ESC. You can make incremental search commands appear in the history by setting
isearch-resume-in-command-history to a non-nil value. See Section 12.1 [Incremental
Search], page 104.
38 GNU Emacs Manual

The list of previous minibuffer-using commands is stored as a Lisp list in the vari-
able command-history. Each element is a Lisp expression that describes one command
and its arguments. Lisp programs can re-execute a command by calling eval with the
command-history element.

5.7 Entering passwords

Sometimes, you may need to enter a password into Emacs. For instance, when you tell
Emacs to visit a file on another machine via a network protocol such as FTP, you often
need to supply a password to gain access to the machine (see Section 15.15 [Remote Files],
page 169).
Entering a password is similar to using a minibuffer. Emacs displays a prompt in the
echo area (such as ‘Password: ’); after you type the required password, press RET to submit
it. To prevent others from seeing your password, every character you type is displayed as an
asterisk (‘*’) instead of its usual form.
Most of the features and commands associated with the minibuffer cannot be used when
entering a password. There is no history or completion, and you cannot change windows or
perform any other action with Emacs until you have submitted the password.
While you are typing the password, you may press DEL to delete backwards, removing
the last character entered. C-u deletes everything you have typed so far. C-g quits the
password prompt (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 530). C-y inserts the current kill into
the password (see Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58). You may type either RET or ESC to submit
the password. Any other self-inserting character key inserts the associated character into
the password, and all other input is ignored.

5.8 Yes or No Prompts

An Emacs command may require you to answer a yes-or-no question during the course of its
execution. Such queries come in two main varieties.
For the first type of yes-or-no query, the prompt ends with ‘(y or n)’. You answer the
query by typing a single key, either ‘y’ or ‘n’, which immediately exits the minibuffer and
delivers the response. For example, if you type C-x C-w (write-file) to save a buffer, and
enter the name of an existing file, Emacs issues a prompt like this:
File ‘foo.el’ exists; overwrite? (y or n)
The second type of yes-or-no query is typically employed if giving the wrong answer
would have serious consequences; it thus features a longer prompt ending with ‘(yes or
no)’. For example, if you invoke C-x k (kill-buffer) on a file-visiting buffer with unsaved
changes, Emacs activates the minibuffer with a prompt like this:
Buffer foo.el modified; kill anyway? (yes or no)
To answer, you must type ‘yes’ or ‘no’ into the minibuffer, followed by RET.
With both types of yes-or-no query the minibuffer behaves as described in the previous
sections; you can recenter the selected window with C-l, scroll that window (C-v or PageDown
scrolls forward, M-v or PageUp scrolls backward), switch to another window with C-x o,
use the history commands M-p and M-n, etc. Type C-g to dismiss the query, and quit the
minibuffer and the querying command (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 530).
 39

6 Running Commands by Name

Every Emacs command has a name that you can use to run it. For convenience, many
commands also have key bindings. You can run those commands by typing the keys, or run
them by name. Most Emacs commands have no key bindings, so the only way to run them
is by name. (See Section 33.3 [Key Bindings], page 513, for how to set up key bindings.)
By convention, a command name consists of one or more words, separated by hyphens;
for example, auto-fill-mode or manual-entry. Command names mostly use complete
English words to make them easier to remember.
To run a command by name, start with M-x, type the command name, then terminate it
with RET. M-x uses the minibuffer to read the command name. The string ‘M-x’ appears at
the beginning of the minibuffer as a prompt to remind you to enter a command name to be
run. RET exits the minibuffer and runs the command. See Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 27,
for more information on the minibuffer.
You can use completion to enter the command name. For example, to invoke the command
forward-char, you can type
M-x forward-char RET
or
M-x forw TAB c RET
Note that forward-char is the same command that you invoke with the key C-f. The
existence of a key binding does not stop you from running the command by name.
When M-x completes on commands, it ignores the commands that were declared obsolete
in any previous major version of Emacs; for these, you will have to type their full name.
Commands that were marked obsolete in the current version of Emacs are listed. (Obsolete
commands are those for which newer, better alternatives exist, and which are slated for
removal in some future Emacs release.)
In addition, M-x completion can exclude commands that are not relevant to, and generally
cannot work with, the current buffer’s major mode (see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241)
and minor modes (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242). By default, no commands
are excluded, but you can customize the option read-extended-command-predicate to
exclude those irrelevant commands from completion results.
Conversely, Emacs can exclude all commands except those that are particularly relevant
to the current buffer. The M-S-x (that’s “meta shift x”) command works just like M-x, but
instead of listing all (or most) of the commands Emacs knows about, it will only list the
commands that have been marked as “belonging” to the current major mode, or any enabled
minor modes.
To cancel the M-x and not run a command, type C-g instead of entering the command
name. This takes you back to command level.
To pass a numeric argument to the command you are invoking with M-x, specify the
numeric argument before M-x. The argument value appears in the prompt while the command
name is being read, and finally M-x passes the argument to that command. For example, to
pass the numeric argument of 42 to the command forward-char you can type C-u 42 M-x
forward-char RET.
40 GNU Emacs Manual

When the command you run with M-x has a key binding, Emacs mentions this in the echo
area after running the command. For example, if you type M-x forward-word, the message
says that you can run the same command by typing M-f. You can turn off these messages by
setting the variable suggest-key-bindings to nil. The value of suggest-key-bindings
can also be a number, in which case Emacs will show the binding for that many seconds
before removing it from display. The default behavior is to display the binding for 2 seconds.
Additionally, when suggest-key-bindings is non-nil, the completion list of M-x shows
equivalent key bindings for all commands that have them.
Commands that don’t have key bindings, can still be invoked after typing less than
their full name at the ‘M-x’ prompt. Emacs mentions such shorthands in the echo area
if they are significantly shorter than the full command name, and extended-command-
suggest-shorter is non-nil. The setting of suggest-key-bindings affects these hints as
well.
In this manual, when we speak of running a command by name, we often omit the
RET that terminates the name. Thus we might say M-x auto-fill-mode rather than
M-x auto-fill-mode RET. We mention the RET only for emphasis, such as when the com-
mand is followed by arguments.
M-x works by running the command execute-extended-command, which is responsible
for reading the name of another command and invoking it.
 41

7 Help
Emacs provides a wide variety of help commands, all accessible through the prefix key C-h
(or, equivalently, the function key F1). These help commands are described in the following
sections. You can also type C-h C-h to view a list of help commands (help-for-help). You
can scroll the list with SPC and DEL, then type the help command you want. To cancel, type
C-g.
Many help commands display their information in a special help buffer. In this buffer,
you can type SPC and DEL to scroll and type RET to follow hyperlinks. See Section 7.4 [Help
Mode], page 47.
By default, help commands display the help buffer in a separate window without selecting
that window. The variable help-window-select controls this: its default value is nil; if it’s
customized to the value t, the help window is unconditionally selected by help commands,
and if its value is other, the help window is selected only if there are more than two windows
on the selected frame.
Conversely, many commands in the ‘*Help*’ buffer will pop up a new window to display
the results. For instance, clicking on the link to show the source code, or using the i command
to display the manual entry, will (by default) pop up a new window. If help-window-keep-
selected is changed to non-nil, the window displaying the ‘*Help*’ buffer will be reused
instead.
If you are looking for a certain feature, but don’t know what it is called or where to
look, we recommend three methods. First, try an apropos command, then try searching
the manual index, then look in the FAQ and the package keywords, and finally try listing
external packages.
C-h a topics RET
This searches for commands whose names match the argument topics. The
argument can be a keyword, a list of keywords, or a regular expression (see
Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114). See Section 7.3 [Apropos], page 45.
C-h i d m emacs RET i topic RET
This searches for topic in the indices of the Emacs Info manual, displaying the
first match found. Press , to see subsequent matches. You can use a regular
expression as topic.
C-h i d m emacs RET s topic RET
Similar, but searches the text of the manual rather than the indices.
C-h C-f This displays the Emacs FAQ, using Info.
C-h p This displays the available Emacs packages based on keywords. See Section 7.5
[Package Keywords], page 48.
M-x list-packages
This displays a list of external packages. See Chapter 32 [Packages], page 485.
C-h or F1 mean “help” in various other contexts as well. For instance, you can type them
after a prefix key to view a list of the keys that can follow the prefix key. (You can also use
? in this context. A few prefix keys don’t support C-h or ? in this way, because they define
other meanings for those inputs, but they all support F1.)
42 GNU Emacs Manual

Here is a summary of help commands for accessing the built-in documentation. Most of
these are described in more detail in the following sections.
C-h a topics RET
Display a list of commands whose names match topics (apropos-command). See
Section 7.3 [Apropos], page 45.
C-h b Display all active key bindings; minor mode bindings first, then those of the
major mode, then global bindings (describe-bindings). See Section 7.7 [Misc
Help], page 49.
C-h c key Show the name of the command that the key sequence key is bound to
(describe-key-briefly). Here c stands for “character”. For more extensive
information on key, use C-h k. See Section 7.1 [Key Help], page 44.
C-h d topics RET
Display the commands and variables whose documentation matches topics
(apropos-documentation). See Section 7.3 [Apropos], page 45.
C-h e Display the *Messages* buffer (view-echo-area-messages). See Section 7.7
[Misc Help], page 49.
C-h f function RET
Display documentation on the Lisp function named function
(describe-function). Since commands are Lisp functions, this
works for commands too, but you can also use C-h x. See Section 7.2 [Name
Help], page 44.
C-h h Display the HELLO file, which shows examples of various character sets.
C-h i Run Info, the GNU documentation browser (info). The Emacs manual is
available in Info. See Section 7.7 [Misc Help], page 49.
C-h k key Display the name and documentation of the command that key runs
(describe-key). See Section 7.1 [Key Help], page 44.
C-h l Display a description of your last 300 keystrokes (view-lossage). See Section 7.7
[Misc Help], page 49.
C-h m Display documentation of the current major mode and minor modes
(describe-mode). See Section 7.7 [Misc Help], page 49.
C-h n Display news of recent Emacs changes (view-emacs-news). See Section 7.8
[Help Files], page 49.
C-h o symbol
Display documentation of the Lisp symbol named symbol (describe-symbol).
This will show the documentation of all kinds of symbols: functions, variables,
and faces. See Section 7.2 [Name Help], page 44.
C-h p Find packages by topic keyword (finder-by-keyword). See Section 7.5 [Package
Keywords], page 48. This lists packages using a package menu buffer. See
Chapter 32 [Packages], page 485.
Chapter 7: Help 43

C-h P package RET

Display documentation about the specified package (describe-package). See
Section 7.5 [Package Keywords], page 48.
C-h r Display the Emacs manual in Info (info-emacs-manual).
C-h s Display the contents of the current syntax table (describe-syntax). See
Section 7.7 [Misc Help], page 49. The syntax table says which characters are
opening delimiters, which are parts of words, and so on. See Section “Syntax
Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for details.
C-h t Enter the Emacs interactive tutorial (help-with-tutorial).
C-h v var RET
Display the documentation of the Lisp variable var (describe-variable). See
Section 7.2 [Name Help], page 44.
C-h w command RET
Show which keys run the command named command (where-is). See Section 7.1
[Key Help], page 44.
C-h x command RET
Display documentation on the named command (describe-command). See
Section 7.2 [Name Help], page 44.
C-h C coding RET
Describe the coding system coding (describe-coding-system). See
Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223.
C-h C RET Describe the coding systems currently in use.
C-h F command RET
Enter Info and go to the node that documents the Emacs command command
(Info-goto-emacs-command-node). See Section 7.2 [Name Help], page 44.
C-h I method RET
Describe the input method method (describe-input-method). See Section 19.4
[Select Input Method], page 222.
C-h K key Enter Info and go to the node that documents the key sequence key (Info-goto-
emacs-key-command-node). See Section 7.1 [Key Help], page 44.
C-h L language-env RET
Display information on the character sets, coding systems, and input
methods used in language environment language-env (describe-language-
environment). See Section 19.2 [Language Environments], page 218.
C-h S symbol RET
Display the Info documentation on symbol symbol according to the programming
language you are editing (info-lookup-symbol). See Section 7.7 [Misc Help],
page 49.
C-h . Display the help message for a special text area, if point is in one
(display-local-help). (These include, for example, links in *Help* buffers.)
See Section 7.9 [Help Echo], page 50. If you invoke this command with a prefix
44 GNU Emacs Manual

argument, C-u C-h ., and point is on a button or a widget, this command will
pop a new buffer that describes that button/widget.

7.1 Documentation for a Key

The help commands to get information about a key sequence are C-h c (describe-key-
briefly) and C-h k (describe-key).
C-h c key displays in the echo area the name of the command that key is bound to. For
example, C-h c C-f displays ‘forward-char’.
C-h k key is similar but gives more information: it displays a help buffer containing the
command’s documentation string, which describes exactly what the command does.
C-h K key displays the section of the Emacs manual that describes the command corre-
sponding to key.
C-h c, C-h k and C-h K work for any sort of key sequences, including function keys,
menus, and mouse events (except that C-h c ignores mouse movement events). For instance,
after C-h k you can select a menu item from the menu bar, to view the documentation string
of the command it runs.
C-h w command RET lists the keys that are bound to command. It displays the list in the
echo area. If it says the command is not on any key, that means you must use M-x to run it.
C-h w runs the command where-is.
Some modes in Emacs use various buttons (see Section “Buttons” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual) and widgets (see Section “Introduction” in Emacs Widgets) that can
be clicked to perform some action. To find out what function is ultimately invoked by
these buttons, Emacs provides the button-describe and widget-describe commands,
that should be run with point over the button.

7.2 Help by Command or Variable Name

C-h x command RET (describe-command) displays the documentation of the named
command, in a window. For example,
C-h x auto-fill-mode RET
displays the documentation of auto-fill-mode. This is how you would get the documenta-
tion of a command that is not bound to any key (one which you would normally run using
M-x).
C-h f function RET (describe-function) displays the documentation of Lisp function.
This command is intended for Lisp functions that you use in a Lisp program. For example, if
you have just written the expression (make-vector len) and want to check that you are using
make-vector properly, type C-h f make-vector RET. Additionally, since all commands are
Lisp functions, you can also use this command to view the documentation of any command.
If you type C-h f RET, it describes the function called by the innermost Lisp expression
in the buffer around point, provided that function name is a valid, defined Lisp function.
(That name appears as the default while you enter the argument.) For example, if point is
located following the text ‘(make-vector (car x)’, the innermost list containing point is
the one that starts with ‘(make-vector’, so C-h f RET describes the function make-vector.
C-h f is also useful just to verify that you spelled a function name correctly. If the
minibuffer prompt for C-h f shows the function name from the buffer as the default, it
Chapter 7: Help 45

means that name is defined as a Lisp function. Type C-g to cancel the C-h f command if
you don’t really want to view the documentation.
If you request help for an autoloaded function whose autoload form (see Section “Au-
toload” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) doesn’t provide a doc string, the *Help*
buffer won’t have any doc string to display. In that case, if help-enable-symbol-autoload
is non-nil, Emacs will try to load the file in which the function is defined to see whether
there’s a doc string there.
You can get an overview of functions relevant for a particular topic by using the M-x
shortdoc command. This will prompt you for an area of interest, e.g., string, and pop
you to a buffer where many of the functions relevant for handling strings are listed.
C-h v (describe-variable) is like C-h f but describes Lisp variables instead of Lisp
functions. Its default is the Lisp symbol around or before point, if that is the name of a
defined Lisp variable. See Section 33.2 [Variables], page 502.
Help buffers that describe Emacs variables and functions normally have hyperlinks to
the corresponding source code, if you have the source files installed (see Section 31.12
[Hyperlinking], page 480).
To find a command’s documentation in a manual, use C-h F (Info-goto-emacs-command-
node). This knows about various manuals, not just the Emacs manual, and finds the right
one.
C-h o (describe-symbol) is like C-h f and C-h v, but it describes any symbol, be it a
function, a variable, or a face. If the symbol has more than one definition, like it has both
definition as a function and as a variable, this command will show the documentation of all
of them, one after the other.
If the completions-detailed user option is non-nil, some commands provide details
about the possible values when displaying completions. For instance, C-h o TAB will then
include the first line of the doc string, and will also say whether each symbol is a function or
a variable (and so on). Which details are included varies depending on the command used.

7.3 Apropos
The apropos commands answer questions like, “What are the commands for working with
files?” More precisely, you specify your query as an apropos pattern, which is either a word,
a list of words, or a regular expression.
Each of the following apropos commands reads an apropos pattern in the minibuffer,
searches for items that match the pattern, and displays the results in a different window.
C-h a Search for commands (apropos-command). With a prefix argument, search for
noninteractive functions too.
M-x apropos
Search for functions and variables. Both interactive functions (commands) and
noninteractive functions can be found by this.
M-x apropos-user-option
Search for user-customizable variables. With a prefix argument, search for
non-customizable variables too.
46 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x apropos-variable
Search for variables. With a prefix argument, search for customizable variables
only.
M-x apropos-local-variable
Search for buffer-local variables.
M-x apropos-value
Search for variables whose values match the specified pattern. With a prefix
argument, search also for functions with definitions matching the pattern, and
Lisp symbols with properties matching the pattern.
M-x apropos-local-value
Search for buffer-local variables whose values match the specified pattern.
C-h d Search for functions and variables whose documentation strings match the
specified pattern (apropos-documentation).
The simplest kind of apropos pattern is one word. Anything containing that word matches
the pattern. Thus, to find commands that work on files, type C-h a file RET. This displays
a list of all command names that contain ‘file’, including copy-file, find-file, and so
on. Each command name comes with a brief description and a list of keys you can currently
invoke it with. In our example, it would say that you can invoke find-file by typing C-x
C-f.
By default, the window showing the apropos buffer with the results of the query is not
selected, but you can cause it to be selected by customizing the variable help-window-select
to any non-nil value.
For more information about a function definition, variable or symbol property listed in an
apropos buffer, you can click on it with mouse-1 or mouse-2, or move there and type RET.
When you specify more than one word in the apropos pattern, a name must contain
at least two of the words in order to match. Thus, if you are looking for commands to
kill a chunk of text before point, you could try C-h a kill back backward behind before
RET. The real command name kill-backward will match that; if there were a command
kill-text-before, it would also match, since it contains two of the specified words.
For even greater flexibility, you can specify a regular expression (see Section 12.6 [Regexps],
page 114). An apropos pattern is interpreted as a regular expression if it contains any of the
regular expression special characters, ‘^$*+?.\[’.
Following the conventions for naming Emacs commands, here are some words that you’ll
find useful in apropos patterns. By using them in C-h a, you will also get a feel for the
naming conventions.
char, line, word, sentence, paragraph, region, page, sexp, list, defun, rect, buffer,
frame, window, face, file, dir, register, mode, beginning, end, forward, backward,
next, previous, up, down, search, goto, kill, delete, mark, insert, yank, fill, indent,
case, change, set, what, list, find, view, describe, default.
If the variable apropos-do-all is non-nil, most apropos commands behave as if they had
been given a prefix argument. There is one exception: apropos-variable without a prefix
argument will always search for all variables, no matter what the value of apropos-do-all
is.
Chapter 7: Help 47

By default, all apropos commands except apropos-documentation list their results in

alphabetical order. If the variable apropos-sort-by-scores is non-nil, these commands
instead try to guess the relevance of each result, and display the most relevant ones first. The
apropos-documentation command lists its results in order of relevance by default; to list
them in alphabetical order, change the variable apropos-documentation-sort-by-scores
to nil.

7.4 Help Mode Commands

Help buffers have Help mode as their major mode. Help mode provides the same commands
as View mode (see Section 11.6 [View Mode], page 81); for instance, SPC scrolls forward,
and DEL or S-SPC scrolls backward. It also provides a few special commands:
RET Follow a cross reference at point (help-follow).
TAB Move point forward to the next hyperlink (forward-button).
S-TAB Move point back to the previous hyperlink (backward-button).
mouse-1
mouse-2 Follow a hyperlink that you click on.
n
p Move forward and back between pages in the Help buffer.
C-c C-c Show all documentation about the symbol at point (help-follow-symbol).
C-c C-f
r Go forward in history of help commands (help-go-forward).
C-c C-b
l Go back in history of help commands (help-go-back).
s View the source of the current help topic (if any) (help-view-source).
i Look up the current topic in the manual(s) (help-goto-info).
I Look up the current topic in the Emacs Lisp manual (help-goto-lispref-
info).
c Customize the variable or the face (help-customize).
When a function name, variable name, or face name (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82)
appears in the documentation in the help buffer, it is normally an underlined hyperlink.
To view the associated documentation, move point there and type RET (help-follow), or
click on the hyperlink with mouse-1 or mouse-2. Doing so replaces the contents of the help
buffer; to retrace your steps, type C-c C-b or l (help-go-back). While retracing your steps,
you can go forward by using C-c C-f or r (help-go-forward).
To move between hyperlinks in a help buffer, use TAB (forward-button) to move forward
to the next hyperlink and S-TAB (backward-button) to move back to the previous hyperlink.
These commands act cyclically; for instance, typing TAB at the last hyperlink moves back to
the first hyperlink.
By default, many links in the help buffer are displayed surrounded by quote characters. If
the help-clean-buttons user option is non-nil, these quote characters are removed from
the buffer.
48 GNU Emacs Manual

Help buffers produced by some Help commands (like C-h b, which shows a long list
of key bindings) are divided into pages by the ‘^L’ character. In such buffers, the n
(help-goto-next-page) command will take you to the next start of page, and the p
(help-goto-previous-page) command will take you to the previous start of page. This
way you can quickly navigate between the different kinds of documentation in a help buffer.
A help buffer can also contain hyperlinks to Info manuals, source code definitions, and
URLs (web pages). The first two are opened in Emacs, and the third using a web browser
via the browse-url command (see Section 31.12.3 [Browse-URL], page 481).
To view all documentation about any symbol in the text, move point to the symbol and
type C-c C-c (help-follow-symbol). This shows the documentation for all the meanings
of the symbol—as a variable, as a function, and/or as a face.

7.5 Keyword Search for Packages

Most optional features in Emacs are grouped into packages. Emacs contains several hundred
built-in packages, and more can be installed over the network (see Chapter 32 [Packages],
page 485).
To make it easier to find packages related to a topic, most packages are associated with
one or more keywords based on what they do. Type C-h p (finder-by-keyword) to bring
up a list of package keywords, together with a description of what the keywords mean. To
view a list of packages for a given keyword, type RET on that line; this displays the list of
packages in a Package Menu buffer (see Section 32.1 [Package Menu], page 485).
C-h P (describe-package) prompts for the name of a package (see Chapter 32 [Packages],
page 485), and displays a help buffer describing the attributes of the package and the features
that it implements. The buffer lists the keywords that relate to the package in the form
of buttons. Click on a button with mouse-1 or mouse-2 to see the list of other packages
related to that keyword.

7.6 Help for International Language Support

For information on a specific language environment (see Section 19.2 [Language Environ-
ments], page 218), type C-h L (describe-language-environment). This displays a help
buffer describing the languages supported by the language environment, and listing the
associated character sets, coding systems, and input methods, as well as some sample text
for that language environment.
The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays the file etc/HELLO, which demonstrates
various character sets by showing how to say “hello” in many languages.
The command C-h I (describe-input-method) describes an input method—either a
specified input method, or by default the input method currently in use. See Section 19.3
[Input Methods], page 220.
The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) describes coding systems—either a
specified coding system, or the ones currently in use. See Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 223.
Chapter 7: Help 49

7.7 Other Help Commands

C-h i (info) runs the Info program, which browses structured documentation files. C-h 4 i
(info-other-window) does the same, but shows the Info buffer in another window. The
entire Emacs manual is available within Info, along with many other manuals for the GNU
system. Type h after entering Info to run a tutorial on using Info.
With a numeric argument n, C-h i selects the Info buffer ‘*info*<n>’. This is useful if
you want to browse multiple Info manuals simultaneously. If you specify just C-u as the
prefix argument, C-h i prompts for the name of a documentation file, so you can browse a
file which doesn’t have an entry in the top-level Info menu.
The help commands C-h F function RET and C-h K key, described above, enter Info and
go straight to the documentation of function or key.
When editing a program, if you have an Info version of the manual for the programming
language, you can use C-h S (info-lookup-symbol) to find an entry for a symbol (keyword,
function or variable) in the proper manual. The details of how this command works depend
on the major mode.
If something surprising happens, and you are not sure what you typed, use C-h l
(view-lossage). C-h l displays your last input keystrokes and the commands they invoked.
By default, Emacs stores the last 300 keystrokes; if you wish, you can change this number
with the command lossage-size. If you see commands that you are not familiar with, you
can use C-h k or C-h f to find out what they do.
To review recent echo area messages, use C-h e (view-echo-area-messages). This
displays the buffer *Messages*, where those messages are kept.
Each Emacs major mode typically redefines a few keys and makes other changes in how
editing works. C-h m (describe-mode) displays documentation on the current major mode,
which normally describes the commands and features that are changed in this mode, and
also its key bindings.
C-h b (describe-bindings) and C-h s (describe-syntax) show other information
about the current environment within Emacs. C-h b displays a list of all the key bindings
now in effect: first the local bindings of the current minor modes, then the local bindings
defined by the current major mode, and finally the global bindings (see Section 33.3 [Key
Bindings], page 513). C-h s displays the contents of the syntax table, with explanations of
each character’s syntax (see Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
You can get a list of subcommands for a particular prefix key by typing C-h, ?, or F1
(describe-prefix-bindings) after the prefix key. (There are a few prefix keys for which
not all of these keys work—those that provide their own bindings for that key. One of these
prefix keys is ESC, because ESC C-h and ESC ? are actually C-M-h (mark-defun) and M-?
(xref-find-references), respectively. However, ESC F1 works fine.)
Finally, M-x describe-keymap prompts for the name of a keymap, with completion, and
displays a listing of all key bindings in that keymap.

7.8 Help Files

Apart from the built-in documentation and manuals, Emacs contains several other files
describing topics like copying conditions, release notes, instructions for debugging and
50 GNU Emacs Manual

reporting bugs, and so forth. You can use the following commands to view these files. Apart
from C-h g, they all have the form C-h C-char.
C-h C-c Display the rules under which you can copy and redistribute Emacs
(describe-copying).
C-h C-d Display help for debugging Emacs (view-emacs-debugging).
C-h C-e Display information about where to get external packages (view-external-
packages).
C-h C-f Display the Emacs frequently-answered-questions list (view-emacs-FAQ).
C-h g Visit the page (https://www.gnu.org) with information about the GNU Project
(describe-gnu-project).
C-h C-m Display information about ordering printed copies of Emacs manuals
(view-order-manuals).
C-h C-n Display the news, which lists the new features in this version of Emacs
(view-emacs-news).
C-h C-o Display how to order or download the latest version of Emacs and other GNU
software (describe-distribution).
C-h C-p Display the list of known Emacs problems, sometimes with suggested worka-
rounds (view-emacs-problems).
C-h C-t Display the Emacs to-do list (view-emacs-todo).
C-h C-w Display the full details on the complete absence of warranty for GNU Emacs
(describe-no-warranty).

7.9 Help on Active Text and Tooltips

In Emacs, stretches of active text (text that does something special in response to mouse
clicks or RET) often have associated help text. This includes hyperlinks in Emacs buffers, as
well as parts of the mode line. On graphical displays, as well as some text terminals which
support mouse tracking, moving the mouse over the active text displays the help text as a
tooltip. See Section 18.19 [Tooltips], page 213.
On terminals that don’t support mouse-tracking, you can display the help text for active
buffer text at point by typing C-h . (display-local-help). This shows the help text in
the echo area. To display help text automatically whenever it is available at point, set the
variable help-at-pt-display-when-idle to t.
 51

8 The Mark and the Region

Emacs, like many other applications, lets you select some arbitrary part of the buffer text
and invoke commands that operate on such selected text. In Emacs, we call the selected
text the region; its handling is very similar to that of selected text in other programs, but
there are also important differences.
The region is the portion of the buffer between the mark and the current point. You
define a region by setting the mark somewhere (with, for instance, the C-SPC command),
and then moving point to where you want the region to end. (Or you can use the mouse to
define a region.)
The region always extends between point and the mark, no matter which of them comes
earlier in the text; each time you move point, the region changes.
Setting the mark at a position in the text activates it. When the mark is active, we say
also that the region is active; Emacs indicates its extent by highlighting the text within it,
using the region face (see Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 498).
After certain non-motion commands, including any command that changes the text in the
buffer, Emacs automatically deactivates the mark; this turns off the highlighting. You can
also explicitly deactivate the mark at any time, by typing C-g (see Section 34.1 [Quitting],
page 530).
Many commands limit the text on which they operate to the active region. For instance,
the M-% command (which replaces matching text) normally works on the entire accessible
portion of the buffer, but if you have an active region, it’ll work only on that region instead.
The mark is useful even if it is not active. For example, you can move to previous mark
locations using the mark ring. See Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 55. Additionally, some
commands will have an effect even on an inactive region (for example upcase-region). You
can also reactivate the region with commands like C-x C-x.
The above behavior, which is the default in interactive sessions, is known as Transient
Mark mode. Disabling Transient Mark mode switches Emacs to an alternative behavior,
in which the region is usually not highlighted. See Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient Mark],
page 56.
Setting the mark in one buffer has no effect on the marks in other buffers. When you
return to a buffer with an active mark, the mark is at the same place as before. When
multiple windows show the same buffer, they can have different values of point, and thus
different regions, but they all share one common mark position. See Chapter 17 [Windows],
page 185. Ordinarily, only the selected window highlights its region; however, if the variable
highlight-nonselected-windows is non-nil, each window highlights its own region.
There is another kind of region: the rectangular region. See Section 9.5 [Rectangles],
page 67.

8.1 Setting the Mark

Here are some commands for setting the mark:
C-SPC Set the mark at point, and activate it (set-mark-command).
C-@ The same.
52 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x C-x Set the mark at point, and activate it; then move point where the mark used to
be (exchange-point-and-mark).
Drag-mouse-1
Set point and the mark around the text you drag across.
mouse-3 Set the mark at point, then move point to where you click (mouse-save-then-
kill).
Shifted cursor motion keys
Set the mark at point if the mark is inactive, then move point. See Section 8.6
[Shift Selection], page 56.
The most common way to set the mark is with C-SPC (set-mark-command)1 . This sets
the mark where point is, and activates it. You can then move point away, leaving the mark
behind.
For example, suppose you wish to convert part of the buffer to upper case. To accomplish
this, go to one end of the desired text, type C-SPC, and move point until the desired portion
of text is highlighted. Now type C-x C-u (upcase-region). This converts the text in the
region to upper case, and then deactivates the mark.
Whenever the mark is active, you can deactivate it by typing C-g (see Section 34.1
[Quitting], page 530). Most commands that operate on the region also automatically
deactivate the mark, like C-x C-u in the above example.
Instead of setting the mark in order to operate on a region, you can also use it to
remember a position in the buffer (by typing C-SPC C-SPC), and later jump back there (by
typing C-u C-SPC). See Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 55, for details.
The command C-x C-x (exchange-point-and-mark) exchanges the positions of point
and the mark. C-x C-x is useful when you are satisfied with the position of point but want
to move the other end of the region (where the mark is). Using C-x C-x a second time,
if necessary, puts the mark at the new position with point back at its original position.
Normally, if the mark is inactive, this command first reactivates the mark wherever it was
last set, to ensure that the region is left highlighted. However, if you call it with a prefix
argument, it leaves the mark inactive and the region unhighlighted; you can use this to jump
to the mark in a manner similar to C-u C-SPC.
You can also set the mark with the mouse. If you press the left mouse button
(down-mouse-1) and drag the mouse across a range of text, this sets the mark where
you first pressed the mouse button and puts point where you release it. Alternatively,
clicking the right mouse button (mouse-3) sets the mark at point and then moves point
to where you clicked. See Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 194, for a more detailed
description of these mouse commands.
Finally, you can set the mark by holding down the shift key while typing certain cursor
motion commands (such as S-RIGHT, S-C-f, S-C-n, etc.). This is called shift-selection. It
sets the mark at point before moving point, but only if there is no active mark set via a
previous shift-selection or mouse commands. The mark set by mouse commands and by
1
There is no C-SPC character in ASCII; usually, typing C-SPC on a text terminal gives the character C-@.
This key is also bound to set-mark-command, so unless you are unlucky enough to have a text terminal
that behaves differently, you might as well think of C-@ as C-SPC.
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 53

shift-selection behaves slightly differently from the usual mark: any subsequent unshifted
cursor motion command deactivates it automatically. For details, see Section 8.6 [Shift
Selection], page 56.
Many commands that insert text, such as C-y (yank), set the mark at the other end of
the inserted text, without activating it. This lets you easily return to that position (see
Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 55). You can tell that a command does this when it shows
‘Mark set’ in the echo area.
Under X, every time the active region changes, Emacs saves the text in the region to
the primary selection. This lets you insert that text into other X applications with mouse-2
clicks. See Section 9.3.2 [Primary Selection], page 65.

8.2 Commands to Mark Textual Objects

Here are commands for placing point and the mark around a textual object such as a word,
list, paragraph or page:
M-@ Set mark at the end of the next word (mark-word). This does not move point.
C-M-@ Set mark after end of following balanced expression (mark-sexp). This does not
move point.
M-h Move point to the beginning of the current paragraph, and set mark at the end
(mark-paragraph).
C-M-h Move point to the beginning of the current defun, and set mark at the end
(mark-defun).
C-x C-p Move point to the beginning of the current page, and set mark at the end
(mark-page).
C-x h Move point to the beginning of the buffer, and set mark at the end (mark-whole-
buffer).
M-@ (mark-word) sets the mark at the end of the next word (see Section 22.1 [Words],
page 251, for information about words). Repeated invocations of this command extend the
region by advancing the mark one word at a time. As an exception, if the mark is active
and located before point, M-@ moves the mark backwards from its current position one word
at a time.
This command also accepts a numeric argument n, which tells it to advance the mark by
n words. A negative argument −n moves the mark back by n words.
Similarly, C-M-@ (mark-sexp) puts the mark at the end of the next balanced expression
(see Section 23.4.1 [Expressions], page 292). Repeated invocations extend the region to
subsequent expressions, while positive or negative numeric arguments move the mark forward
or backward by the specified number of expressions.
The other commands in the above list set both point and mark, so as to delimit an object
in the buffer. M-h (mark-paragraph) marks paragraphs (see Section 22.3 [Paragraphs],
page 253), C-M-h (mark-defun) marks top-level definitions (see Section 23.2.2 [Moving
by Defuns], page 286), and C-x C-p (mark-page) marks pages (see Section 22.4 [Pages],
page 254). Repeated invocations again play the same role, extending the region to consecutive
objects; similarly, numeric arguments specify how many objects to move the mark by.
54 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x h (mark-whole-buffer) sets up the entire buffer as the region, by putting point at
the beginning and the mark at the end.

8.3 Operating on the Region

Once you have a region, here are some of the ways you can operate on it:
• Kill it with C-w (see Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58).
• Copy it to the kill ring with M-w (see Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 61).
• Convert case with C-x C-l or C-x C-u (see Section 22.7 [Case], page 260).
• Undo changes within it using C-u C-/ (see Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131).
• Replace text within it using M-% (see Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace], page 124).
• Indent it with C-x TAB or C-M-\ (see Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 247).
• Fill it as text with M-x fill-region (see Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256).
• Check the spelling of words within it with M-$ (see Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134).
• Evaluate it as Lisp code with M-x eval-region (see Section 24.9 [Lisp Eval], page 328).
• Save it in a register with C-x r s (see Chapter 10 [Registers], page 71).
• Save it in a buffer or a file (see Section 9.4 [Accumulating Text], page 66).
Some commands have a default behavior when the mark is inactive, but operate on the
region if the mark is active. For example, M-$ (ispell-word) normally checks the spelling of
the word at point, but it checks the text in the region if the mark is active (see Section 13.4
[Spelling], page 134). Normally, such commands use their default behavior if the region is
empty (i.e., if mark and point are at the same position). If you want them to operate on the
empty region, change the variable use-empty-active-region to t.
As described in Section 4.3 [Erasing], page 20, the DEL (backward-delete-char) and
Delete (delete-forward-char) commands also act this way. If the mark is active, they
delete the text in the region. (As an exception, if you supply a numeric argument n, where
n is not one, these commands delete n characters regardless of whether the mark is active).
If you change the variable delete-active-region to nil, then these commands don’t act
differently when the mark is active. If you change the value to kill, these commands kill
the region instead of deleting it (see Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58).
Other commands always operate on the region, and have no default behavior. Such
commands usually have the word region in their names, like C-w (kill-region) and C-x
C-u (upcase-region). If the mark is inactive, they operate on the inactive region—that is, on
the text between point and the position at which the mark was last set (see Section 8.4 [Mark
Ring], page 55). To disable this behavior, change the variable mark-even-if-inactive to
nil. Then these commands will instead signal an error if the mark is inactive.
By default, text insertion occurs normally even if the mark is active—for example, typing
a inserts the character ‘a’, then deactivates the mark. Delete Selection mode, a minor mode,
modifies this behavior: if you enable that mode, then inserting text while the mark is active
causes the text in the region to be deleted first. However, you can tune this behavior by
customizing the delete-selection-temporary-region option. Its default value is nil,
but you can set it to t, in which case only temporarily-active regions will be replaced:
those which are set by dragging the mouse (see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark], page 51) or
by shift-selection (see Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 56), as well as by C-u C-x C-x
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 55

when Transient Mark Mode is disabled. You can further tune the behavior by setting
delete-selection-temporary-region to selection: then temporary regions by C-u C-x
C-x won’t be replaced, only the ones activated by dragging the mouse or shift-selection. To
toggle Delete Selection mode on or off, type M-x delete-selection-mode.

8.4 The Mark Ring

Each buffer remembers previous locations of the mark, in the mark ring. Commands that
set the mark also push the old mark onto this ring. One of the uses of the mark ring is to
remember spots that you may want to go back to.
C-SPC C-SPC
Set the mark, pushing it onto the mark ring, without activating it.
C-u C-SPC Move point to where the mark was, and restore the mark from the ring of former
marks.
The command C-SPC C-SPC is handy when you want to use the mark to remember a
position to which you may wish to return. It pushes the current point onto the mark ring,
without activating the mark (which would cause Emacs to highlight the region). This is
actually two consecutive invocations of C-SPC (set-mark-command); the first C-SPC sets the
mark, and the second C-SPC deactivates it. (When Transient Mark mode is off, C-SPC C-SPC
instead activates Transient Mark mode temporarily; see Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient
Mark], page 56.)
To return to a marked position, use set-mark-command with a prefix argument: C-u
C-SPC. This moves point to where the mark was, and deactivates the mark if it was active.
Each subsequent C-u C-SPC jumps to a prior position stored in the mark ring. The positions
you move through in this way are not lost; they go to the end of the ring.
If you set set-mark-command-repeat-pop to non-nil, then immediately after you type
C-u C-SPC, you can type C-SPC instead of C-u C-SPC to cycle through the mark ring. By
default, set-mark-command-repeat-pop is nil.
Each buffer has its own mark ring. All editing commands use the current buffer’s mark
ring. In particular, C-u C-SPC always stays in the same buffer.
The variable mark-ring-max specifies the maximum number of entries to keep in the
mark ring. This defaults to 16 entries. If that many entries exist and another one is pushed,
the earliest one in the list is discarded. Repeating C-u C-SPC cycles through the positions
currently in the ring.
If you want to move back to the same place over and over, the mark ring may not be
convenient enough. If so, you can record the position in a register for later retrieval (see
Section 10.1 [Saving Positions in Registers], page 71).

8.5 The Global Mark Ring

In addition to the ordinary mark ring that belongs to each buffer, Emacs has a single global
mark ring. Each time you set a mark, this is recorded in the global mark ring in addition to
the current buffer’s own mark ring, if you have switched buffers since the previous mark
setting. Hence, the global mark ring records a sequence of buffers that you have been in,
56 GNU Emacs Manual

and, for each buffer, a place where you set the mark. The length of the global mark ring is
controlled by global-mark-ring-max, and is 16 by default.
The command C-x C-SPC (pop-global-mark) jumps to the buffer and position of the
latest entry in the global ring. It also rotates the ring, so that successive uses of C-x C-SPC
take you to earlier buffers and mark positions.

8.6 Shift Selection

If you hold down the shift key while typing a cursor motion command, this sets the mark
before moving point, so that the region extends from the original position of point to its
new position. This feature is referred to as shift-selection. It is similar to the way text is
selected in other editors.
The mark set via shift-selection behaves a little differently from what we have described
above. Firstly, in addition to the usual ways of deactivating the mark (such as changing the
buffer text or typing C-g), the mark is deactivated by any unshifted cursor motion command.
Secondly, any subsequent shifted cursor motion command avoids setting the mark anew.
Therefore, a series of shifted cursor motion commands will continuously adjust the region.
Shift-selection only works if the shifted cursor motion key is not already bound to a
separate command (see Chapter 33 [Customization], page 494). For example, if you bind
S-C-f to another command, typing S-C-f runs that command instead of performing a
shift-selected version of C-f (forward-char).
A mark set via mouse commands behaves the same as a mark set via shift-selection (see
Section 8.1 [Setting Mark], page 51). For example, if you specify a region by dragging the
mouse, you can continue to extend the region using shifted cursor motion commands. In
either case, any unshifted cursor motion command deactivates the mark.
To turn off shift-selection, set shift-select-mode to nil. Doing so does not disable set-
ting the mark via mouse commands. If you set shift-select-mode to the value permanent,
cursor motion keys that were not shift-translated will not deactivate the mark, so, for
example, the region set by prior commands can be extended by shift-selection, and unshifted
cursor motion keys will extend the region set by shift-selection.

8.7 Disabling Transient Mark Mode

The default behavior of the mark and region, in which setting the mark activates it and
highlights the region, is called Transient Mark mode. This is a minor mode that is enabled
by default in interactive sessions. It can be toggled with M-x transient-mark-mode, or with
the ‘Highlight Active Region’ menu item in the ‘Options’ menu. Turning it off switches
Emacs to an alternative mode of operation:
• Setting the mark, with commands like C-SPC or C-x C-x, does not highlight the region.
Therefore, you can’t tell by looking where the mark is located; you have to remember.
The usual solution to this problem is to set the mark and then use it soon, before
you forget where it is. You can also check where the mark is by using C-x C-x, which
exchanges the positions of the point and the mark (see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark],
page 51).
• Some commands, which ordinarily act on the region when the mark is active, no longer
do so. For example, normally M-% (query-replace) performs replacements within the
Chapter 8: The Mark and the Region 57

region, if the mark is active. When Transient Mark mode is off, it always operates from
point to the end of the buffer. Commands that act this way are identified in their own
documentation.
While Transient Mark mode is off, you can activate it temporarily using C-SPC C-SPC or
C-u C-x C-x.
C-SPC C-SPC
Set the mark at point (like plain C-SPC) and enable Transient Mark mode just
once, until the mark is deactivated. (This is not really a separate command;
you are using the C-SPC command twice.)
C-u C-x C-x
Exchange point and mark, activate the mark and enable Transient Mark mode
temporarily, until the mark is next deactivated. (This is the C-x C-x command,
exchange-point-and-mark, with a prefix argument.)
These commands set or activate the mark, and enable Transient Mark mode only until
the mark is deactivated. One reason you may want to use them is that some commands
operate on the entire buffer instead of the region when Transient Mark mode is off. Enabling
Transient Mark mode momentarily gives you a way to use these commands on the region.
When you specify a region with the mouse (see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark], page 51),
or with shift-selection (see Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 56), this likewise activates
Transient Mark mode temporarily and highlights the region.
58 GNU Emacs Manual

9 Killing and Moving Text

In Emacs, killing means erasing text and copying it into the kill ring. Yanking means
bringing text from the kill ring back into the buffer. (Some applications use the terms
“cutting” and “pasting” for similar operations.) The kill ring is so-named because it can be
visualized as a set of blocks of text arranged in a ring, which you can access in cyclic order.
See Section 9.2.1 [Kill Ring], page 62.
Killing and yanking are the most common way to move or copy text within Emacs. It
is very versatile, because there are commands for killing many different types of syntactic
units.

9.1 Deletion and Killing

Most commands which erase text from the buffer save it in the kill ring (see Section 9.2.1
[Kill Ring], page 62). These are known as kill commands, and their names normally contain
the word ‘kill’ (e.g., kill-line). The kill ring stores several recent kills, not just the last
one, so killing is a very safe operation: you don’t have to worry much about losing text that
you previously killed. The kill ring is shared by all buffers, so text that is killed in one buffer
can be yanked into another buffer.
When you use C-/ (undo) to undo a kill command (see Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131),
that brings the killed text back into the buffer, but does not remove it from the kill ring.
On graphical displays, killing text also copies it to the system clipboard. See Section 9.3
[Cut and Paste], page 64.
Commands that erase text but do not save it in the kill ring are known as delete commands;
their names usually contain the word ‘delete’. These include C-d (delete-char) and DEL
(delete-backward-char), which delete only one character at a time, and those commands
that delete only spaces or newlines. Commands that can erase significant amounts of
nontrivial data generally do a kill operation instead.
You can also use the mouse to kill and yank. See Section 9.3 [Cut and Paste], page 64.

9.1.1 Deletion
Deletion means erasing text and not saving it in the kill ring. For the most part, the Emacs
commands that delete text are those that erase just one character or only whitespace.
DEL
BACKSPACE
Delete the previous character, or the text in the region if it is active
(delete-backward-char).
Delete Delete the next character, or the text in the region if it is active
(delete-forward-char).
C-d Delete the next character (delete-char).
M-\ Delete spaces and tabs around point (delete-horizontal-space).
M-SPC Delete spaces and tabs around point, leaving one space (just-one-space).
C-x C-o Delete blank lines around the current line (delete-blank-lines).
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 59

M-^ Join two lines by deleting the intervening newline, along with any indentation
following it (delete-indentation).
We have already described the basic deletion commands DEL (delete-backward-char),
delete (delete-forward-char), and C-d (delete-char). See Section 4.3 [Erasing], page 20.
With a numeric argument, they delete the specified number of characters. If the numeric
argument is omitted or one, DEL and delete delete all the text in the region if it is active
(see Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 54).
The other delete commands are those that delete only whitespace characters: spaces, tabs
and newlines. M-\ (delete-horizontal-space) deletes all the spaces and tab characters
before and after point. With a prefix argument, this only deletes spaces and tab characters
before point.
just-one-space does likewise but leaves a single space before point, regardless of the
number of spaces that existed previously (even if there were none before). With a numeric
argument n, it leaves n spaces before point if n is positive; if n is negative, it deletes newlines
in addition to spaces and tabs, leaving −n spaces before point.
The command cycle-spacing (M-SPC) acts like a more flexible version of just-one-
space. It performs different space cleanup actions defined by cycle-spacing-actions, in
a cyclic manner, if you call it repeatedly in succession.
C-x C-o (delete-blank-lines) deletes all blank lines after the current line. If the
current line is blank, it deletes all blank lines preceding the current line as well (leaving one
blank line, the current line). On a solitary blank line, it deletes that line.
M-^ (delete-indentation) joins the current line and the previous line, by deleting
a newline and all surrounding spaces, usually leaving a single space. See Chapter 21
[Indentation], page 247.
The command delete-duplicate-lines searches the region for identical lines, and
removes all but one copy of each. Normally it keeps the first instance of each repeated line,
but with a C-u prefix argument it keeps the last. With a C-u C-u prefix argument, it only
searches for adjacent identical lines. This is a more efficient mode of operation, useful when
the lines have already been sorted. With a C-u C-u C-u prefix argument, it retains repeated
blank lines.

9.1.2 Killing by Lines

C-k Kill rest of line or one or more lines (kill-line).
C-S-backspace
Kill an entire line at once (kill-whole-line)
The simplest kill command is C-k (kill-line). If used at the end of a line, it kills the
line-ending newline character, merging the next line into the current one (thus, a blank line
is entirely removed). Otherwise, C-k kills all the text from point up to the end of the line; if
point was originally at the beginning of the line, this leaves the line blank.
Spaces and tabs at the end of the line are ignored when deciding which case applies. As
long as point is after the last non-whitespace character in the line, you can be sure that
C-k will kill the newline. To kill an entire non-blank line, go to the beginning and type C-k
twice.
60 GNU Emacs Manual

In this context, “line” means a logical text line, not a screen line (see Section 4.8
[Continuation Lines], page 22).
When C-k is given a positive argument n, it kills n lines and the newlines that follow
them (text on the current line before point is not killed). With a negative argument −n,
it kills n lines preceding the current line, together with the text on the current line before
point. C-k with an argument of zero kills the text before point on the current line.
If the variable kill-whole-line is non-nil, C-k at the very beginning of a line kills the
entire line including the following newline. This variable is normally nil.
C-S-backspace (kill-whole-line) kills a whole line including its newline, regardless of
the position of point within the line. Note that many text terminals will prevent you from
typing the key sequence C-S-backspace.

9.1.3 Other Kill Commands

C-w Kill the region (kill-region).
M-w Copy the region into the kill ring (kill-ring-save).
M-d Kill the next word (kill-word). See Section 22.1 [Words], page 251.
M-DEL Kill one word backwards (backward-kill-word).
C-x DEL Kill back to beginning of sentence (backward-kill-sentence). See Section 22.2
[Sentences], page 252.
M-k Kill to the end of the sentence (kill-sentence).
C-M-k Kill the following balanced expression (kill-sexp). See Section 23.4.1 [Expres-
sions], page 292.
M-z char Kill through the next occurrence of char (zap-to-char).
M-x zap-up-to-char char
Kill up to, but not including, the next occurrence of char.
One of the commonly-used kill commands is C-w (kill-region), which kills the text in
the region (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51). Similarly, M-w (kill-ring-save) copies the
text in the region into the kill ring without removing it from the buffer. If the mark is
inactive when you type C-w or M-w, the command acts on the text between point and where
you last set the mark (see Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 54).
Emacs also provides commands to kill specific syntactic units: words, with M-DEL and M-d
(see Section 22.1 [Words], page 251); balanced expressions, with C-M-k (see Section 23.4.1
[Expressions], page 292); and sentences, with C-x DEL and M-k (see Section 22.2 [Sentences],
page 252).
The command M-z (zap-to-char) combines killing with searching: it reads a character
and kills from point up to (and including) the next occurrence of that character in the buffer.
A numeric argument acts as a repeat count; a negative argument means to search backward
and kill text before point. A history of previously used characters is maintained and can be
accessed via the M-p/M-n keystrokes. This is mainly useful if the character to be used has to
be entered via a complicated input method. A similar command zap-up-to-char kills from
point up to, but not including the next occurrence of a character, with numeric argument
acting as a repeat count.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 61

9.1.4 Options for Killing

Some specialized buffers contain read-only text, which cannot be modified and therefore
cannot be killed. The kill commands work specially in a read-only buffer: they move over
text and copy it to the kill ring, without actually deleting it from the buffer. Normally,
they also beep and display an error message when this happens. But if you set the variable
kill-read-only-ok to a non-nil value, they just print a message in the echo area to explain
why the text has not been erased.
Before saving the kill to the kill ring, you can transform the string using kill-transform-
function. It’s called with the string to be killed, and it should return the string you want
to be saved. It can also return nil, in which case the string won’t be saved to the kill ring.
For instance, if you never want to save a pure white space string to the kill ring, you can say:
(setq kill-transform-function
(lambda (string)
(and (not (string-blank-p string))
string)))
If you change the variable kill-do-not-save-duplicates to a non-nil value, identical
subsequent kills yield a single kill-ring entry, without duplication.

9.2 Yanking
Yanking means reinserting text previously killed. The usual way to move or copy text is to
kill it and then yank it elsewhere.

C-y Yank the last kill into the buffer, at point (yank).

M-y Either replace the text just yanked with an earlier batch of killed text
(yank-pop), or allow to select from the list of previously-killed batches of text.
See Section 9.2.2 [Earlier Kills], page 62.

C-M-w Cause the following command, if it is a kill command, to append to the previous
kill (append-next-kill). See Section 9.2.3 [Appending Kills], page 63.

The basic yanking command is C-y (yank). It inserts the most recent kill, leaving the
cursor at the end of the inserted text. It also sets the mark at the beginning of the inserted
text, without activating the mark; this lets you jump easily to that position, if you wish,
with C-u C-SPC (see Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 55).
With a plain prefix argument (C-u C-y), the command instead leaves the cursor in front
of the inserted text, and sets the mark at the end. Using any other prefix argument specifies
an earlier kill; e.g., C-u 4 C-y reinserts the fourth most recent kill. See Section 9.2.2 [Earlier
Kills], page 62.
On graphical displays and on capable text-mode displays, C-y first checks if another
application has placed any text in the system clipboard more recently than the last Emacs
kill. If so, it inserts the clipboard’s text instead. Thus, Emacs effectively treats “cut” or
“copy” clipboard operations performed in other applications like Emacs kills, except that
they are not recorded in the kill ring. See Section 9.3 [Cut and Paste], page 64, for details.
62 GNU Emacs Manual

9.2.1 The Kill Ring

The kill ring is a list of blocks of text that were previously killed. There is only one kill ring,
shared by all buffers, so you can kill text in one buffer and yank it in another buffer. This is
the usual way to move text from one buffer to another. (There are several other methods:
for instance, you could store the text in a register; see Chapter 10 [Registers], page 71. See
Section 9.4 [Accumulating Text], page 66, for some other ways to move text around.)
The maximum number of entries in the kill ring is controlled by the variable kill-ring-
max. The default is 120. If you make a new kill when this limit has been reached, Emacs
makes room by deleting the oldest entry in the kill ring.
The actual contents of the kill ring are stored in a variable named kill-ring; you can
view the entire contents of the kill ring with C-h v kill-ring.

9.2.2 Yanking Earlier Kills

As explained in Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 61, you can use a numeric argument to C-y
to yank text that is no longer the most recent kill. This is useful if you remember which
kill ring entry you want. If you don’t, you can use the M-y (yank-pop) command to cycle
through the possibilities or to select one of the earlier kills.
If the previous command was a yank command, M-y takes the text that was yanked and
replaces it with the text from an earlier kill. So, to recover the text of the next-to-the-last
kill, first use C-y to yank the last kill, and then use M-y to replace it with the previous kill.
This works only after a C-y or another M-y. (If M-y is invoked after some other command, it
works differently, see below.)
You can understand this operation mode of M-y in terms of a last-yank pointer which
points at an entry in the kill ring. Each time you kill, the last-yank pointer moves to the
newly made entry at the front of the ring. C-y yanks the entry which the last-yank pointer
points to. M-y after a C-y or another M-y moves the last-yank pointer to the previous entry,
and the text in the buffer changes to match. Enough M-y commands one after another
can move the pointer to any entry in the ring, so you can get any entry into the buffer.
Eventually the pointer reaches the end of the ring; the next M-y loops back around to the
first entry again.
M-y moves the last-yank pointer around the ring, but it does not change the order of the
entries in the ring, which always runs from the most recent kill at the front to the oldest
one still remembered.
When used after C-y or M-y, M-y can take a numeric argument, which tells it how many
entries to advance the last-yank pointer by. A negative argument moves the pointer toward
the front of the ring; from the front of the ring, it moves around to the last entry and
continues forward from there.
Once the text you are looking for is brought into the buffer, you can stop doing M-y
commands and the last yanked text will stay there. It’s just a copy of the kill ring entry, so
editing it in the buffer does not change what’s in the ring. As long as no new killing is done,
the last-yank pointer remains at the same place in the kill ring, so repeating C-y will yank
another copy of the same previous kill.
When you call C-y with a numeric argument, that also sets the last-yank pointer to the
entry that it yanks.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 63

You can also invoke M-y after a command that is not a yank command. In that case,
M-y prompts you in the minibuffer for one of the previous kills. You can use the minibuffer
history commands (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35) to navigate or search
through the entries in the kill ring until you find the one you want to reinsert. Or you can
use completion commands (see Section 5.4.2 [Completion Commands], page 30) to complete
on an entry from the list of entries in the kill ring or pop up the *Completions* buffer with
the candidate entries from which you can choose. After selecting the kill-ring entry, you
can optionally edit it in the minibuffer. Finally, type RET to exit the minibuffer and insert
the text of the selected kill-ring entry. Like in case of M-y after another yank command,
the last-yank pointer is left pointing at the text you just yanked, whether it is one of the
previous kills or an entry from the kill-ring that you edited before inserting it. (In the latter
case, the edited entry is added to the front of the kill-ring.) So here, too, typing C-y will
yank another copy of the text just inserted.
When invoked with a plain prefix argument (C-u M-y) after a command that is not a
yank command, M-y leaves the cursor in front of the inserted text, and sets the mark at the
end, like C-y does.

9.2.3 Appending Kills

Normally, each kill command pushes a new entry onto the kill ring. However, two or more
kill commands in a row combine their text into a single entry, so that a single C-y yanks all
the text as a unit, just as it was before it was killed.
Thus, if you want to yank text as a unit, you need not kill all of it with one command;
you can keep killing line after line, or word after word, until you have killed it all, and you
can still get it all back at once.
Commands that kill forward from point add onto the end of the previous killed text.
Commands that kill backward from point add text onto the beginning. This way, any
sequence of mixed forward and backward kill commands puts all the killed text into one
entry without rearrangement. Numeric arguments do not break the sequence of appending
kills. For example, suppose the buffer contains this text:
This is a line ?of sample text.
with point shown by ?. If you type M-d M-DEL M-d M-DEL, killing alternately forward
and backward, you end up with ‘a line of sample’ as one entry in the kill ring, and
‘This is text.’ in the buffer. (Note the double space between ‘is’ and ‘text’, which you
can clean up with M-SPC or M-q.)
Another way to kill the same text is to move back two words with M-b M-b, then kill all
four words forward with C-u M-d. This produces exactly the same results in the buffer and
in the kill ring. M-f M-f C-u M-DEL kills the same text, all going backward; once again, the
result is the same. The text in the kill ring entry always has the same order that it had in
the buffer before you killed it.
If a kill command is separated from the last kill command by other commands (not just
numeric arguments), it starts a new entry on the kill ring. But you can force it to combine
with the last killed text, by typing C-M-w (append-next-kill) right beforehand. The C-M-w
tells its following command, if it is a kill command, to treat the kill as part of the sequence
of previous kills. As usual, the kill is appended to the previous killed text if the command
64 GNU Emacs Manual

kills forward, and prepended if the command kills backward. In this way, you can kill several
separated pieces of text and accumulate them to be yanked back in one place.
A kill command following M-w (kill-ring-save) does not append to the text that M-w
copied into the kill ring.

9.3 “Cut and Paste” Operations on Graphical Displays

In most graphical desktop environments, you can transfer data (usually text) between
different applications using a system facility called the clipboard. On X, two other similar
facilities are available: the primary selection and the secondary selection. When Emacs is
run on a graphical display, its kill and yank commands integrate with these facilities, so
that you can easily transfer text between Emacs and other graphical applications.
By default, Emacs uses UTF-8 as the coding system for inter-program text transfers. If
you find that the pasted text is not what you expected, you can specify another coding system
by typing C-x RET x or C-x RET X. You can also request a different data type by customizing
x-select-request-type. See Section 19.10 [Communication Coding], page 229.

9.3.1 Using the Clipboard

The clipboard is the facility that most graphical applications use for “cutting and pasting”.
When the clipboard exists, the kill and yank commands in Emacs make use of it.
When you kill some text with a command such as C-w (kill-region), or copy it to
the kill ring with a command such as M-w (kill-ring-save), that text is also put in the
clipboard.
When an Emacs kill command puts text in the clipboard, the existing clipboard contents
are normally lost. Optionally, Emacs can save the existing clipboard contents to the kill ring,
preventing you from losing the old clipboard data. If save-interprogram-paste-before-
kill has been set to a number, then the data is copied over if it’s smaller (in characters)
than this number. If this variable is any other non-nil value, the data is always copied
over—at the risk of high memory consumption if that data turns out to be large.
Yank commands, such as C-y (yank), also use the clipboard. If another application
“owns” the clipboard—i.e., if you cut or copied text there more recently than your last kill
command in Emacs—then Emacs yanks from the clipboard instead of the kill ring.
Normally, rotating the kill ring with M-y (yank-pop) does not alter the clipboard. However,
if you change yank-pop-change-selection to t, then M-y saves the new yank to the
clipboard.
To prevent kill and yank commands from accessing the clipboard, change the variable
select-enable-clipboard to nil.
Programs can put other things than plain text on the clipboard. For instance, a web
browser will usually let you choose “Copy Image” on images, and this image will be put on
the clipboard. On capable platforms, Emacs can yank these objects with the yank-media
command—but only in modes that have support for it (see Section “Yanking Media” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
Many X desktop environments support a feature called the clipboard manager. If you
exit Emacs while it is the current “owner” of the clipboard data, and there is a clipboard
manager running, Emacs transfers the clipboard data to the clipboard manager so that it is
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 65

not lost. In some circumstances, this may cause a delay when exiting Emacs; if you wish
to prevent Emacs from transferring data to the clipboard manager, change the variable
x-select-enable-clipboard-manager to nil.
Since strings containing NUL bytes are usually truncated when passed through the
clipboard, Emacs replaces such characters with “\0” before transferring them to the system’s
clipboard.
Prior to Emacs 24, the kill and yank commands used the primary selection (see
Section 9.3.2 [Primary Selection], page 65), not the clipboard. If you prefer this behavior,
change select-enable-clipboard to nil, select-enable-primary to t, and mouse-drag-
copy-region to t. In this case, you can use the following commands to act explicitly on
the clipboard: clipboard-kill-region kills the region and saves it to the clipboard;
clipboard-kill-ring-save copies the region to the kill ring and saves it to the clipboard;
and clipboard-yank yanks the contents of the clipboard at point.

9.3.2 Cut and Paste with Other Window Applications

Under the X Window System, PGTK and Haiku, there exists a primary selection containing
the last stretch of text selected in an X application (usually by dragging the mouse). Typically,
this text can be inserted into other X applications by mouse-2 clicks. The primary selection
is separate from the clipboard. Its contents are more fragile; they are overwritten each time
you select text with the mouse, whereas the clipboard is only overwritten by explicit cut or
copy commands.
Under X, whenever the region is active (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51), the text in the
region is saved in the primary selection. This applies regardless of whether the region was
made by dragging or clicking the mouse (see Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 194), or
by keyboard commands (e.g., by typing C-SPC and moving point; see Section 8.1 [Setting
Mark], page 51).
If you change the variable select-active-regions to only, Emacs saves only temporar-
ily active regions to the primary selection, i.e., those made with the mouse or with shift
selection (see Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 56). If you change select-active-regions
to nil, Emacs avoids saving active regions to the primary selection entirely.
To insert the primary selection into an Emacs buffer, click mouse-2 (mouse-yank-
primary) where you want to insert it. See Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 194. You
can also use the normal Emacs yank command (C-y) to insert this text if select-enable-
primary is set (see Section 9.3.1 [Clipboard], page 64).
By default, Emacs keeps the region active even after text is selected in another pro-
gram; this is contrary to typical X behavior. To make Emacs deactivate the region after
another program places data in the primary selection, enable the global minor mode
lost-selection-mode.
MS-Windows provides no primary selection, but Emacs emulates it within a single Emacs
session by storing the selected text internally. Therefore, all the features and commands
related to the primary selection work on Windows as they do on X, for cutting and pasting
within the same session, but not across Emacs sessions or with other applications.
66 GNU Emacs Manual

9.3.3 Secondary Selection

In addition to the primary selection, the X Window System provides a second similar facility
known as the secondary selection. Nowadays, few X applications make use of the secondary
selection, but you can access it using the following Emacs commands:
M-Drag-mouse-1
Set the secondary selection, with one end at the place where you press down
the button, and the other end at the place where you release it (mouse-set-
secondary). The selected text is highlighted, using the secondary-selection
face, as you drag. The window scrolls automatically if you drag the mouse off
the top or bottom of the window, just like mouse-set-region (see Section 18.1
[Mouse Commands], page 194).
This command does not alter the kill ring.
M-mouse-1
Set one endpoint for the secondary selection (mouse-start-secondary); use
M-mouse-3 to set the other end and complete the selection. This command
cancels any existing secondary selection, when it starts a new one.
M-mouse-3
Set the secondary selection (mouse-secondary-save-then-kill), with one end
at the position you click M-mouse-3, and the other at the position specified
previously with M-mouse-1. This also puts the selected text in the kill ring. A
second M-mouse-3 at the same place kills the text selected by the secondary
selection just made.
M-mouse-2
Insert the secondary selection where you click, placing point at the end of the
yanked text (mouse-yank-secondary).
Double or triple clicking of M-mouse-1 operates on words and lines, much like mouse-1.
If mouse-yank-at-point is non-nil, M-mouse-2 yanks at point. Then it does not matter
precisely where you click, or even which of the frame’s windows you click on. See Section 18.1
[Mouse Commands], page 194. This user option also effects interactive search: if it is non-nil,
yanking with the mouse anywhere in the frame will add the text to the search string.

9.4 Accumulating Text

Usually we copy or move text by killing it and yanking it, but there are other convenient
methods for copying one block of text in many places, or for copying many scattered blocks
of text into one place. Here we describe the commands to accumulate scattered pieces of
text into a buffer or into a file.
M-x append-to-buffer
Append region to the contents of a specified buffer.
M-x prepend-to-buffer
Prepend region to the contents of a specified buffer.
M-x copy-to-buffer
Copy region into a specified buffer, deleting that buffer’s old contents.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 67

M-x insert-buffer
Insert the contents of a specified buffer into current buffer at point.
M-x append-to-file
Append region to the contents of a specified file, at the end.
To accumulate text into a buffer, use M-x append-to-buffer. This reads a buffer name,
then inserts a copy of the region into the buffer specified. If you specify a nonexistent buffer,
append-to-buffer creates the buffer. The text is inserted wherever point is in that buffer.
If you have been using the buffer for editing, the copied text goes into the middle of the
text of the buffer, starting from wherever point happens to be at that moment.
Point in that buffer is left at the end of the copied text, so successive uses of append-to-
buffer accumulate the text in the specified buffer in the same order as they were copied.
Strictly speaking, append-to-buffer does not always append to the text already in the
buffer—it appends only if point in that buffer is at the end. However, if append-to-buffer
is the only command you use to alter a buffer, then point is always at the end.
M-x prepend-to-buffer is just like append-to-buffer except that point in the other
buffer is left before the copied text, so successive uses of this command add text in reverse
order. M-x copy-to-buffer is similar, except that any existing text in the other buffer is
deleted, so the buffer is left containing just the text newly copied into it.
The command C-x x i (insert-buffer) can be used to retrieve the accumulated text
from another buffer. This prompts for the name of a buffer, and inserts a copy of all the text
in that buffer into the current buffer at point, leaving point at the beginning of the inserted
text. It also adds the position of the end of the inserted text to the mark ring, without
activating the mark. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 175, for background information on
buffers.
Instead of accumulating text in a buffer, you can append text directly into a file with
M-x append-to-file. This prompts for a filename, and adds the text of the region to the
end of the specified file. The file is changed immediately on disk.
You should use append-to-file only with files that are not being visited in Emacs.
Using it on a file that you are editing in Emacs would change the file behind Emacs’s back,
which can lead to losing some of your editing.
Another way to move text around is to store it in a register. See Chapter 10 [Registers],
page 71.

9.5 Rectangles
Rectangle commands operate on rectangular areas of the text: all the characters between a
certain pair of columns, in a certain range of lines. Emacs has commands to kill rectangles,
yank killed rectangles, clear them out, fill them with blanks or text, or delete them. Rectangle
commands are useful with text in multicolumn formats, and for changing text into or out of
such formats.
To specify a rectangle for a command to work on, set the mark at one corner and point
at the opposite corner. The rectangle thus specified is called the region-rectangle. If point
and the mark are in the same column, the region-rectangle is empty. If they are in the same
line, the region-rectangle is one line high.
68 GNU Emacs Manual

The region-rectangle is controlled in much the same way as the region is controlled. But
remember that a given combination of point and mark values can be interpreted either as a
region or as a rectangle, depending on the command that uses them.
A rectangular region can also be marked using the mouse: click and drag C-M-mouse-1
from one corner of the rectangle to the opposite.
C-x r k Kill the text of the region-rectangle, saving its contents as the last killed rectangle
(kill-rectangle).
C-x r M-w Save the text of the region-rectangle as the last killed rectangle
(copy-rectangle-as-kill).
C-x r d Delete the text of the region-rectangle (delete-rectangle).
C-x r y Yank the last killed rectangle with its upper left corner at point
(yank-rectangle).
C-x r o Insert blank space to fill the space of the region-rectangle (open-rectangle).
This pushes the previous contents of the region-rectangle to the right.
C-x r N Insert line numbers along the left edge of the region-rectangle
(rectangle-number-lines). This pushes the previous contents of the
region-rectangle to the right.
C-x r c Clear the region-rectangle by replacing all of its contents with spaces
(clear-rectangle).
M-x delete-whitespace-rectangle
Delete whitespace in each of the lines on the specified rectangle, starting from
the left edge column of the rectangle.
C-x r t string RET
Replace rectangle contents with string on each line (string-rectangle).
M-x string-insert-rectangle RET string RET
Insert string on each line of the rectangle.
C-x SPC Toggle Rectangle Mark mode (rectangle-mark-mode). When this mode is
active, the region-rectangle is highlighted and can be shrunk/grown, and the
standard kill and yank commands operate on it.
The rectangle operations fall into two classes: commands to erase or insert rectangles,
and commands to make blank rectangles.
There are two ways to erase the text in a rectangle: C-x r d (delete-rectangle) to
delete the text outright, or C-x r k (kill-rectangle) to remove the text and save it as
the last killed rectangle. In both cases, erasing the region-rectangle is like erasing the
specified text on each line of the rectangle; if there is any following text on the line, it moves
backwards to fill the gap.
Killing a rectangle is not killing in the usual sense; the rectangle is not stored in the
kill ring, but in a special place that only records the most recent rectangle killed. This
is because yanking a rectangle is so different from yanking linear text that different yank
commands have to be used. Yank-popping is not defined for rectangles.
Chapter 9: Killing and Moving Text 69

C-x r M-w (copy-rectangle-as-kill) is the equivalent of M-w for rectangles: it records

the rectangle as the last killed rectangle, without deleting the text from the buffer.
To yank the last killed rectangle, type C-x r y (yank-rectangle). The rectangle’s first
line is inserted at point, the rectangle’s second line is inserted at the same horizontal position
one line vertically below, and so on. The number of lines affected is determined by the
height of the saved rectangle.
For example, you can convert two single-column lists into a double-column list by killing
one of the single-column lists as a rectangle, and then yanking it beside the other list.
You can also copy rectangles into and out of registers with C-x r r r and C-x r i r. See
Section 10.3 [Rectangle Registers], page 72.
There are two commands you can use for making blank rectangles: C-x r c
(clear-rectangle) blanks out existing text in the region-rectangle, and C-x r o
(open-rectangle) inserts a blank rectangle.
M-x delete-whitespace-rectangle deletes horizontal whitespace starting from a par-
ticular column. This applies to each of the lines in the rectangle, and the column is specified
by the left edge of the rectangle. The right edge of the rectangle does not make any difference
to this command.
The command C-x r N (rectangle-number-lines) inserts line numbers along the left
edge of the region-rectangle. Normally, the numbering begins from 1 (for the first line of the
rectangle). With a prefix argument, the command prompts for a number to begin from, and
for a format string with which to print the numbers (see Section “Formatting Strings” in
The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
The command C-x r t (string-rectangle) replaces the contents of a region-rectangle
with a string on each line. The string’s width need not be the same as the width of the
rectangle. If the string’s width is less, the text after the rectangle shifts left; if the string is
wider than the rectangle, the text after the rectangle shifts right.
The command M-x string-insert-rectangle is similar to string-rectangle, but
inserts the string on each line, shifting the original text to the right.
The command C-x SPC (rectangle-mark-mode) toggles whether the region-rectangle or
the standard region is highlighted (first activating the region if necessary). When this mode
is enabled, commands that resize the region (C-f, C-n etc.) do so in a rectangular fashion,
and killing and yanking operate on the rectangle. See Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58. The
mode persists only as long as the region is active.
The region-rectangle works only when the mark is active. In particular, when Transient
Mark mode is off (see Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient Mark], page 56), in addition to typing
C-x SPC you will need to activate the mark.
Unlike the standard region, the region-rectangle can have its corners extended past the
end of buffer, or inside stretches of white space that point normally cannot enter, like in the
middle of a TAB character.
When the region is active (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51) and in rectangle-mark-mode,
C-x C-x runs the command rectangle-exchange-point-and-mark, which cycles between
the four corners of the region-rectangle. This comes in handy if you want to modify the
dimensions of the region-rectangle before invoking an operation on the marked text.
70 GNU Emacs Manual

9.6 CUA Bindings

The command M-x cua-mode sets up key bindings that are compatible with the Common
User Access (CUA) system used in many other applications.
When CUA mode is enabled, the keys C-x, C-c, C-v, and C-z invoke commands that
cut (kill), copy, paste (yank), and undo respectively. The C-x and C-c keys perform cut
and copy only if the region is active. Otherwise, they still act as prefix keys, so that
standard Emacs commands like C-x C-c still work. Note that this means the variable
mark-even-if-inactive has no effect for C-x and C-c (see Section 8.3 [Using Region],
page 54).
To enter an Emacs command like C-x C-f while the mark is active, use one of the following
methods: either hold Shift together with the prefix key, e.g., S-C-x C-f, or quickly type
the prefix key twice, e.g., C-x C-x C-f.
To disable the overriding of standard Emacs binding by CUA mode, while retaining the
other features of CUA mode described below, set the variable cua-enable-cua-keys to
nil.
CUA mode by default activates Delete-Selection mode (see Section 18.1 [Mouse Com-
mands], page 194) so that typed text replaces the active region. To use CUA without this
behavior, set the variable cua-delete-selection to nil.
CUA mode provides enhanced rectangle support with visible rectangle highlighting. Use
C-RET to start a rectangle, extend it using the movement commands, and cut or copy it
using C-x or C-c. RET moves the cursor to the next (clockwise) corner of the rectangle, so
you can easily expand it in any direction. Normal text you type is inserted to the left or
right of each line in the rectangle (on the same side as the cursor).
You can use this rectangle support without activating CUA by calling the cua-rectangle-
mark-mode command. There’s also the standard command rectangle-mark-mode, see
Section 9.5 [Rectangles], page 67.
With CUA you can easily copy text and rectangles into and out of registers by providing
a one-digit numeric prefix to the kill, copy, and yank commands, e.g., C-1 C-c copies the
region into register 1, and C-2 C-v yanks the contents of register 2.
CUA mode also has a global mark feature which allows easy moving and copying of text
between buffers. Use C-S-SPC to toggle the global mark on and off. When the global mark
is on, all text that you kill or copy is automatically inserted at the global mark, and text
you type is inserted at the global mark rather than at the current position.
For example, to copy words from various buffers into a word list in a given buffer, set the
global mark in the target buffer, then navigate to each of the words you want in the list,
mark it (e.g., with S-M-f), copy it to the list with C-c or M-w, and insert a newline after the
word in the target list by pressing RET.
 71

10 Registers

Emacs registers are compartments where you can save text, rectangles, positions, and other
things for later use. Once you save text or a rectangle in a register, you can copy it into the
buffer once or many times; once you save a position in a register, you can jump back to that
position once or many times.
Each register has a name that consists of a single character, which we will denote by r; r
can be a letter (such as ‘a’) or a number (such as ‘1’); case matters, so register ‘a’ is not the
same as register ‘A’. You can also set a register in non-alphanumeric characters, for instance
‘*’ or ‘C-d’. Note, it’s not possible to set a register in ‘C-g’ or ‘ESC’, because these keys are
reserved for quitting (see Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 530).
A register can store a position, a piece of text, a rectangle, a number, a window or frame
configuration, a buffer name, or a file name, but only one thing at any given time. Whatever
you store in a register remains there until you store something else in that register. To see
what register r contains, use M-x view-register:

M-x view-register RET r

Display a description of what register r contains.

All of the commands that prompt for a register will display a preview window that lists
the existing registers (if there are any) after a short delay. To change the length of the delay,
customize register-preview-delay. To prevent this display, set that option to nil. You
can explicitly request a preview window by pressing C-h or F1.
Bookmarks record files and positions in them, so you can return to those positions when
you look at the file again. Bookmarks are similar in spirit to registers, so they are also
documented in this chapter.

10.1 Saving Positions in Registers

C-x r SPC r
Record the position of point and the current buffer in register r (point-to-
register).
C-x r j r Jump to the position and buffer saved in register r (jump-to-register).

Typing C-x r SPC (point-to-register), followed by a character r, saves both the

position of point and the current buffer in register r. The register retains this information
until you store something else in it.
The command C-x r j r switches to the buffer recorded in register r, pushes a mark, and
moves point to the recorded position. (The mark is not pushed if point was already at the
recorded position, or in successive calls to the command.) The contents of the register are
not changed, so you can jump to the saved position any number of times.
If you use C-x r j to go to a saved position, but the buffer it was saved from has been
killed, C-x r j tries to create the buffer again by visiting the same file. Of course, this works
only for buffers that were visiting files.
72 GNU Emacs Manual

10.2 Saving Text in Registers

When you want to insert a copy of the same piece of text several times, it may be inconvenient
to yank it from the kill ring, since each subsequent kill moves that entry further down the
ring. An alternative is to store the text in a register and later retrieve it.
C-x r s r Copy region into register r (copy-to-register).
C-x r i r Insert text from register r (insert-register).
M-x append-to-register RET r
Append region to text in register r.
When register r contains text, you can use C-x r + (increment-register) to
append to that register. Note that command C-x r + behaves differently if r
contains a number. See Section 10.5 [Number Registers], page 73.
M-x prepend-to-register RET r
Prepend region to text in register r.
C-x r s r stores a copy of the text of the region into the register named r. If the mark is
inactive, Emacs first reactivates the mark where it was last set. The mark is deactivated at
the end of this command. See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51. C-u C-x r s r, the same command
with a prefix argument, copies the text into register r and deletes the text from the buffer
as well; you can think of this as moving the region text into the register.
M-x append-to-register RET r appends the copy of the text in the region to the text
already stored in the register named r. If invoked with a prefix argument, it deletes the
region after appending it to the register. The command prepend-to-register is similar,
except that it prepends the region text to the text in the register instead of appending it.
When you are collecting text using append-to-register and prepend-to-register,
you may want to separate individual collected pieces using a separator. In that case, configure
a register-separator and store the separator text in to that register. For example, to get
double newlines as text separator during the collection process, you can use the following
setting.
(setq register-separator ?+)
(set-register register-separator "\n\n")
C-x r i r inserts in the buffer the text from register r. Normally it leaves point after the
text and sets the mark before, without activating it. With a prefix argument, it instead puts
point before the text and the mark after.

10.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers

A register can contain a rectangle instead of linear text. See Section 9.5 [Rectangles], page 67,
for basic information on how to specify a rectangle in the buffer.
C-x r r r Copy the region-rectangle into register r (copy-rectangle-to-register). With
prefix argument, delete it as well.
C-x r i r Insert the rectangle stored in register r (if it contains a rectangle)
(insert-register).
Chapter 10: Registers 73

The C-x r i r (insert-register) command, previously documented in Section 10.2

[Text Registers], page 72, inserts a rectangle rather than a text string, if the register contains
a rectangle.

10.4 Saving Window and Frame Configurations in Registers

You can save the window configuration of the selected frame in a register, or even the
configuration of all windows in all frames, and restore the configuration later. See Section 17.7
[Window Convenience], page 191, for information about window configurations.
C-x r w r Save the state of the selected frame’s windows in register r
(window-configuration-to-register).
C-x r f r Save the state of all frames, including all their windows (a.k.a. frameset), in
register r (frameset-to-register).
Use C-x r j r to restore a window or frame configuration. This is the same command
used to restore a cursor position. When you restore a frame configuration, any existing
frames not included in the configuration become invisible. If you wish to delete these frames
instead, use C-u C-x r j r.

10.5 Keeping Numbers in Registers

There are commands to store a number in a register, to insert the number in the buffer
in decimal, and to increment it. These commands can be useful in keyboard macros (see
Chapter 14 [Keyboard Macros], page 137).
C-u number C-x r n r
Store number into register r (number-to-register).
C-u number C-x r + r
If r contains a number, increment the number in that register by number. Note
that command C-x r + (increment-register) behaves differently if r contains
text. See Section 10.2 [Text Registers], page 72.
C-x r i r Insert the number from register r into the buffer.
C-x r i is the same command used to insert any other sort of register contents into the
buffer. C-x r + with no numeric argument increments the register value by 1; C-x r n with
no numeric argument stores zero in the register.

10.6 Keeping File and Buffer Names in Registers

If you visit certain file names frequently, you can visit them more conveniently if you put
their names in registers. Here’s the Lisp code used to put a file name into register r:
(set-register r '(file . name))
74 GNU Emacs Manual

For example,
(set-register ?z '(file . "/gd/gnu/emacs/19.0/src/ChangeLog"))
puts the file name shown in register ‘z’.
To visit the file whose name is in register r, type C-x r j r. (This is the same command
used to jump to a position or restore a frame configuration.)
Similarly, if there are certain buffers you visit frequently, you can put their names in
registers. For instance, if you visit the ‘*Messages*’ buffer often, you can use the following
snippet to put that buffer into the ‘m’ register:
(set-register ?m '(buffer . "*Messages*"))
To switch to the buffer whose name is in register r, type C-x r j r.

10.7 Keyboard Macro Registers

If you need to execute a keyboard macro (see Chapter 14 [Keyboard Macros], page 137)
frequently, it is more convenient to put it in a register or save it (see Section 14.5 [Save
Keyboard Macro], page 142). C-x C-k x r (kmacro-to-register) stores the last keyboard
macro in register r.
To execute the keyboard macro in register r, type C-x r j r. (This is the same command
used to jump to a position or restore a frameset.)

10.8 Bookmarks
Bookmarks are somewhat like registers in that they record positions you can jump to. Unlike
registers, they have long names, and they persist automatically from one Emacs session to
the next. The prototypical use of bookmarks is to record where you were reading in various
files.
C-x r m RET
Set the bookmark for the visited file, at point.
C-x r m bookmark RET
Set the bookmark named bookmark at point (bookmark-set).
C-x r M bookmark RET
Like C-x r m, but don’t overwrite an existing bookmark.
C-x r b bookmark RET
Jump to the bookmark named bookmark (bookmark-jump).
C-x r l List all bookmarks (list-bookmarks).
M-x bookmark-save
Save all the current bookmark values in the default bookmark file.
To record the current position in the visited file, use the command C-x r m, which sets a
bookmark using the visited file name as the default for the bookmark name. If you name
each bookmark after the file it points to, then you can conveniently revisit any of those files
with C-x r b, and move to the position of the bookmark at the same time.
The command C-x r M (bookmark-set-no-overwrite) works like C-x r m, but it signals
an error if the specified bookmark already exists, instead of overwriting it.
Chapter 10: Registers 75

To display a list of all your bookmarks in a separate buffer, type C-x r l

(list-bookmarks). If you switch to that buffer, you can use it to edit your bookmark
definitions or annotate the bookmarks. Type C-h m in the bookmark buffer for more
information about its special editing commands.
When you kill Emacs, Emacs saves your bookmarks, if you have changed any bookmark
values. You can also save the bookmarks at any time with the M-x bookmark-save command.
Bookmarks are saved to the file ~/.emacs.d/bookmarks (for compatibility with older versions
of Emacs, if you have a file named ~/.emacs.bmk, that is used instead). The bookmark
commands load your default bookmark file automatically. This saving and loading is how
bookmarks persist from one Emacs session to the next.
If you set the variable bookmark-save-flag to 1, each command that sets a bookmark
will also save your bookmarks; this way, you don’t lose any bookmark values even if Emacs
crashes. The value, if a number, says how many bookmark modifications should go by
between saving. If you set this variable to nil, Emacs only saves bookmarks if you explicitly
use M-x bookmark-save.
The variable bookmark-default-file specifies the file in which to save bookmarks by
default.
If you set the variable bookmark-use-annotations to t, setting a bookmark will query
for an annotation. If a bookmark has an annotation, it is automatically shown in a separate
window when you jump to the bookmark.
Bookmark position values are saved with surrounding context, so that bookmark-jump can
find the proper position even if the file is modified slightly. The variable bookmark-search-
size says how many characters of context to record on each side of the bookmark’s position.
(In buffers that are visiting encrypted files, no context is saved in the bookmarks file no
matter the value of this variable.)
Here are some additional commands for working with bookmarks:
M-x bookmark-load RET filename RET
Load a file named filename that contains a list of bookmark values. You can use
this command, as well as bookmark-write, to work with other files of bookmark
values in addition to your default bookmark file.
M-x bookmark-write RET filename RET
Save all the current bookmark values in the file filename.
M-x bookmark-delete RET bookmark RET
Delete the bookmark named bookmark.
M-x bookmark-insert-location RET bookmark RET
Insert in the buffer the name of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.
M-x bookmark-insert RET bookmark RET
Insert in the buffer the contents of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.
76 GNU Emacs Manual

11 Controlling the Display

Since only part of a large buffer fits in the window, Emacs has to show only a part of it.
This chapter describes commands and variables that let you specify which part of the text
you want to see, and how the text is displayed.

11.1 Scrolling
If a window is too small to display all the text in its buffer, it displays only a portion of it.
Scrolling commands change which portion of the buffer is displayed.
Scrolling forward or up advances the portion of the buffer displayed in the window;
equivalently, it moves the buffer text upwards relative to the window. Scrolling backward or
down displays an earlier portion of the buffer, and moves the text downwards relative to the
window.
In Emacs, scrolling up or down refers to the direction that the text moves in the window,
not the direction that the window moves relative to the text. This terminology was adopted
by Emacs before the modern meaning of “scrolling up” and “scrolling down” became
widespread. Hence, the strange result that PageDown scrolls up in the Emacs sense.
The portion of a buffer displayed in a window always contains point. If you move point
past the bottom or top of the window, scrolling occurs automatically to bring it back
onscreen (see Section 11.3 [Auto Scrolling], page 78). You can also scroll explicitly with
these commands:
C-v
PageDown
next Scroll forward by nearly a full window (scroll-up-command).
M-v
PageUp
prior Scroll backward (scroll-down-command).
C-v (scroll-up-command) scrolls forward by nearly the whole window height. The effect
is to take the two lines at the bottom of the window and put them at the top, followed by
lines that were not previously visible. If point was in the text that scrolled off the top, it
ends up on the window’s new topmost line. The PageDown (or next) key is equivalent to
C-v.
M-v (scroll-down-command) scrolls backward in a similar way. The PageUp (or prior)
key is equivalent to M-v.
The number of lines of overlap left by these scroll commands is controlled by the variable
next-screen-context-lines, whose default value is 2. You can supply the commands with
a numeric prefix argument, n, to scroll by n lines; Emacs attempts to leave point unchanged,
so that the text and point move up or down together. C-v with a negative argument is like
M-v and vice versa.
By default, these commands signal an error (by beeping or flashing the screen) if no more
scrolling is possible, because the window has reached the beginning or end of the buffer. If
you change the variable scroll-error-top-bottom to t, these commands move point to
the farthest possible position. If point is already there, the commands signal an error.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 77

Some users like scroll commands to keep point at the same screen position, so that
scrolling back to the same screen conveniently returns point to its original position. You
can enable this behavior via the variable scroll-preserve-screen-position. If the value
is t, Emacs adjusts point to keep the cursor at the same screen position whenever a scroll
command moves it off-window, rather than moving it to the topmost or bottommost line.
With any other non-nil value, Emacs adjusts point this way even if the scroll command
leaves point in the window. This variable affects all the scroll commands documented in
this section, as well as scrolling with the mouse wheel (see Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands],
page 194); in general, it affects any command that has a non-nil scroll-command property.
See Section “Property Lists” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. The same property also
causes Emacs not to exit incremental search when one of these commands is invoked and
isearch-allow-scroll is non-nil (see Section 12.1.6 [Not Exiting Isearch], page 109).
Sometimes, particularly when you hold down keys such as C-v and M-v, activating
keyboard auto-repeat, Emacs fails to keep up with the rapid rate of scrolling requested; the
display doesn’t update and Emacs can become unresponsive to input for quite a long time.
You can counter this sluggishness by setting the variable fast-but-imprecise-scrolling
to a non-nil value. This instructs the scrolling commands not to fontify (see Section 11.13
[Font Lock], page 88) any unfontified text they scroll over, instead to assume it has the
default face. This can cause Emacs to scroll to somewhat wrong buffer positions when the
faces in use are not all the same size, even with single (i.e., without auto-repeat) scrolling
operations.
As an alternative to setting fast-but-imprecise-scrolling you might prefer to enable
jit-lock deferred fontification (see Section 11.13 [Font Lock], page 88). To do this, customize
jit-lock-defer-time to a small positive number such as 0.25, or even 0.1 if you type
quickly. This gives you less jerky scrolling when you hold down C-v, but the window
contents after any action which scrolls into a fresh portion of the buffer will be momentarily
unfontified.
Finally, a third alternative to these variables is redisplay-skip-fontification-on-
input. If this variable is non-nil, skip some fontifications if there’s input pending. This
usually does not affect the display because redisplay is completely skipped anyway if input
was pending, but it can make scrolling smoother by avoiding unnecessary fontification.
The commands M-x scroll-up and M-x scroll-down behave similarly to scroll-up-
command and scroll-down-command, except they do not obey scroll-error-top-bottom.
Prior to Emacs 24, these were the default commands for scrolling up and down. The
commands M-x scroll-up-line and M-x scroll-down-line scroll the current window by
one line at a time. If you intend to use any of these commands, you might want to give
them key bindings (see Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 516).

11.2 Recentering
C-l Scroll the selected window so the current line is the center-most text line; on
subsequent consecutive invocations, make the current line the top line, the
bottom line, and so on in cyclic order. Possibly redisplay the screen too
(recenter-top-bottom).
C-M-S-l Scroll the other window; this is equivalent to C-l acting on the other window.
78 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x recenter
Scroll the selected window so the current line is the center-most text line.
Possibly redisplay the screen too.
C-M-l Scroll heuristically to bring useful information onto the screen
(reposition-window).
The C-l (recenter-top-bottom) command recenters the selected window, scrolling it so
that the current screen line is exactly in the center of the window, or as close to the center
as possible.
Typing C-l twice in a row (C-l C-l) scrolls the window so that point is on the topmost
screen line. Typing a third C-l scrolls the window so that point is on the bottom-most
screen line. Each successive C-l cycles through these three positions.
You can change the cycling order by customizing the list variable recenter-positions.
Each list element should be the symbol top, middle, or bottom, or a number; an integer
means to move the line to the specified screen line, while a floating-point number between
0.0 and 1.0 specifies a percentage of the screen space from the top of the window. The
default, (middle top bottom), is the cycling order described above. Furthermore, if you
change the variable scroll-margin to a non-zero value n, C-l always leaves at least n screen
lines between point and the top or bottom of the window (see Section 11.3 [Auto Scrolling],
page 78).
You can also give C-l a prefix argument. A plain prefix argument, C-u C-l, simply
recenters the line showing point. A positive argument n moves line showing point n lines
down from the top of the window. An argument of zero moves point’s line to the top of the
window. A negative argument −n moves point’s line n lines from the bottom of the window.
When given an argument, C-l does not clear the screen or cycle through different screen
positions.
If the variable recenter-redisplay has a non-nil value, each invocation of C-l also
clears and redisplays the screen; the special value tty (the default) says to do this on
text-terminal frames only. Redisplaying is useful in case the screen becomes garbled for any
reason (see Section 34.2.2 [Screen Garbled], page 532).
The more primitive command M-x recenter behaves like recenter-top-bottom, but
does not cycle among screen positions.
C-M-l (reposition-window) scrolls the current window heuristically in a way designed
to get useful information onto the screen. For example, in a Lisp file, this command tries to
get the entire current defun onto the screen if possible.

11.3 Automatic Scrolling

Emacs performs automatic scrolling when point moves out of the visible portion of the text.
Normally, automatic scrolling centers point vertically in the window, but there are several
ways to alter this behavior.
If you set scroll-conservatively to a small number n, then moving point just a little
off the screen (no more than n lines) causes Emacs to scroll just enough to bring point back
on screen; if doing so fails to make point visible, Emacs scrolls just far enough to center
point in the window. If you set scroll-conservatively to a large number (larger than
100), automatic scrolling never centers point, no matter how far point moves; Emacs always
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 79

scrolls text just enough to bring point into view, either at the top or bottom of the window
depending on the scroll direction. By default, scroll-conservatively is 0, which means
to always center point in the window. This said, in minibuffer windows, scrolling is always
conservative by default because scroll-minibuffer-conservatively is non-nil, which
takes precedence over scroll-conservatively.
Another way to control automatic scrolling is to customize the variable scroll-step.
Its value determines the number of lines by which to automatically scroll, when point moves
off the screen. If scrolling by that number of lines fails to bring point back into view, point
is centered instead. The default value is zero, which (by default) causes point to always be
centered after scrolling.
A third way to control automatic scrolling is to customize the variables scroll-up-
aggressively and scroll-down-aggressively, which directly specify the vertical position
of point after scrolling. The value of scroll-up-aggressively should be either nil (the
default), or a floating point number f between 0 and 1. The latter means that when point
goes below the bottom window edge (i.e., scrolling forward), Emacs scrolls the window so
that point is f parts of the window height from the bottom window edge. Thus, larger f
means more aggressive scrolling: more new text is brought into view. The default value,
nil, is equivalent to 0.5.
Likewise, scroll-down-aggressively is used when point goes above the top window
edge (i.e., scrolling backward). The value specifies how far point should be from the top
margin of the window after scrolling. Thus, as with scroll-up-aggressively, a larger
value is more aggressive.
Note that the variables scroll-conservatively, scroll-step, and scroll-up-
aggressively / scroll-down-aggressively control automatic scrolling in contradictory
ways. Therefore, you should pick no more than one of these methods to customize
automatic scrolling. In case you customize multiple variables, the order of priority is:
scroll-conservatively, then scroll-step, and finally scroll-up-aggressively /
scroll-down-aggressively.
The variable scroll-margin restricts how close point can come to the top or bottom of
a window (even if aggressive scrolling specifies a fraction f that is larger than the window
portion between the top and the bottom margins). Its value is a number of screen lines; if
point comes within that many lines of the top or bottom of the window, Emacs performs
automatic scrolling. By default, scroll-margin is 0. The effective margin size is limited to
a quarter of the window height by default, but this limit can be increased up to half (or
decreased down to zero) by customizing maximum-scroll-margin.

11.4 Horizontal Scrolling

Horizontal scrolling means shifting all the lines sideways within a window, so that some of the
text near the left margin is not displayed. When the text in a window is scrolled horizontally,
text lines are truncated rather than continued (see Section 11.22 [Line Truncation], page 99).
If a window shows truncated lines, Emacs performs automatic horizontal scrolling whenever
point moves off the left or right edge of the screen. By default, all the lines in the window
are scrolled horizontally together, but if you set the variable auto-hscroll-mode to the
special value of current-line, only the line showing the cursor will be scrolled. To disable
automatic horizontal scrolling entirely, set the variable auto-hscroll-mode to nil. Note
80 GNU Emacs Manual

that when the automatic horizontal scrolling is turned off, if point moves off the edge of the
screen, the cursor disappears to indicate that. (On text terminals, the cursor is left at the
edge instead.)
The variable hscroll-margin controls how close point can get to the window’s left and
right edges before automatic scrolling occurs. It is measured in columns. For example, if the
value is 5, then moving point within 5 columns of an edge causes horizontal scrolling away
from that edge.
The variable hscroll-step determines how many columns to scroll the window when
point gets too close to the edge. Zero, the default value, means to center point horizontally
within the window. A positive integer value specifies the number of columns to scroll by. A
floating-point number (whose value should be between 0 and 1) specifies the fraction of the
window’s width to scroll by.
You can also perform explicit horizontal scrolling with the following commands:
C-x < Scroll text in current window to the left (scroll-left).
C-x > Scroll to the right (scroll-right).
C-x < (scroll-left) scrolls text in the selected window to the left by the full width of
the window, less two columns. (In other words, the text in the window moves left relative to
the window.) With a numeric argument n, it scrolls by n columns.
If the text is scrolled to the left, and point moves off the left edge of the window, the
cursor will freeze at the left edge of the window, until point moves back to the displayed
portion of the text. This is independent of the current setting of auto-hscroll-mode, which,
for text scrolled to the left, only affects the behavior at the right edge of the window.
C-x > (scroll-right) scrolls similarly to the right. The window cannot be scrolled any
farther to the right once it is displayed normally, with each line starting at the window’s left
margin; attempting to do so has no effect. This means that you don’t have to calculate the
argument precisely for C-x >; any sufficiently large argument will restore the normal display.
If you use those commands to scroll a window horizontally, that sets a lower bound
for automatic horizontal scrolling. Automatic scrolling will continue to scroll the window,
but never farther to the right than the amount you previously set by scroll-left. When
auto-hscroll-mode is set to current-line, all the lines other than the one showing the
cursor will be scrolled by that minimal amount.

11.5 Narrowing
Narrowing means focusing in on some portion of the buffer, making the rest temporarily
inaccessible. The portion which you can still get to is called the accessible portion. Canceling
the narrowing, which makes the entire buffer once again accessible, is called widening. The
bounds of narrowing in effect in a buffer are called the buffer’s restriction.
Narrowing can make it easier to concentrate on a single subroutine or paragraph by
eliminating clutter. It can also be used to limit the range of operation of a replace command
or repeating keyboard macro.
C-x n n Narrow down to between point and mark (narrow-to-region).
C-x n w Widen to make the entire buffer accessible again (widen).
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 81

C-x n p Narrow down to the current page (narrow-to-page).

C-x n d Narrow down to the current defun (narrow-to-defun).
When you have narrowed down to a part of the buffer, that part appears to be all there
is. You can’t see the rest, you can’t move into it (motion commands won’t go outside the
accessible part), you can’t change it in any way. However, it is not gone, and if you save
the file all the inaccessible text will be saved. The word ‘Narrow’ appears in the mode line
whenever narrowing is in effect.
The primary narrowing command is C-x n n (narrow-to-region). It sets the current
buffer’s restrictions so that the text in the current region remains accessible, but all text
before the region or after the region is inaccessible. Point and mark do not change.
Alternatively, use C-x n p (narrow-to-page) to narrow down to the current page. See
Section 22.4 [Pages], page 254, for the definition of a page. C-x n d (narrow-to-defun)
narrows down to the defun containing point (see Section 23.2 [Defuns], page 286).
The way to cancel narrowing is to widen with C-x n w (widen). This makes all text in
the buffer accessible again.
You can get information on what part of the buffer you are narrowed down to using the
C-x = command. See Section 4.9 [Position Info], page 23.
Because narrowing can easily confuse users who do not understand it, narrow-to-region
is normally a disabled command. Attempting to use this command asks for confirmation
and gives you the option of enabling it; if you enable the command, confirmation will no
longer be required for it. See Section 33.3.11 [Disabling], page 521.

11.6 View Mode

View mode is a minor mode that lets you scan a buffer by sequential screenfuls. It provides
commands for scrolling through the buffer conveniently but not for changing it. Apart from
the usual Emacs cursor motion commands, you can type SPC to scroll forward one windowful,
S-SPC or DEL to scroll backward, and s to start an incremental search.
Typing q (View-quit) disables View mode, and switches back to the buffer and position
before View mode was enabled. Typing e (View-exit) disables View mode, keeping the
current buffer and position.
M-x view-buffer prompts for an existing Emacs buffer, switches to it, and enables View
mode. M-x view-file prompts for a file and visits it with View mode enabled.

11.7 Follow Mode

Follow mode is a minor mode that makes two windows, both showing the same buffer, scroll
as a single tall virtual window. To use Follow mode, go to a frame with just one window,
split it into two side-by-side windows using C-x 3, and then type M-x follow-mode. From
then on, you can edit the buffer in either of the two windows, or scroll either one; the other
window follows it.
In Follow mode, if you move point outside the portion visible in one window and into the
portion visible in the other window, that selects the other window—again, treating the two
as if they were parts of one large window.
To turn off Follow mode, type M-x follow-mode a second time.
82 GNU Emacs Manual

11.8 Text Faces

Emacs can display text in several different styles, called faces. Each face can specify various
face attributes, such as the font, height, weight, slant, foreground and background color, and
underlining or overlining. Most major modes assign faces to the text automatically, via Font
Lock mode. See Section 11.13 [Font Lock], page 88, for more information about how these
faces are assigned.
To see what faces are currently defined, and what they look like, type M-x
list-faces-display. With a prefix argument, this prompts for a regular expression, and
displays only faces with names matching that regular expression (see Section 12.6 [Regexps],
page 114).
It’s possible for a given face to look different in different frames. For instance, some text
terminals do not support all face attributes, particularly font, height, and width, and some
support a limited range of colors. In addition, most Emacs faces are defined so that their
attributes are different on light and dark frame backgrounds, for reasons of legibility. By
default, Emacs automatically chooses which set of face attributes to display on each frame,
based on the frame’s current background color. However, you can override this by giving
the variable frame-background-mode a non-nil value. A value of dark makes Emacs treat
all frames as if they have a dark background, whereas a value of light makes it treat all
frames as if they have a light background.
You can customize a face to alter its attributes, and save those customizations for future
Emacs sessions. See Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 498, for details.
The default face is the default for displaying text, and all of its attributes are specified.
Its background color is also used as the frame’s background color. See Section 11.9 [Colors],
page 82.
Another special face is the cursor face. On graphical displays, the background color of
this face is used to draw the text cursor. None of the other attributes of this face have any
effect; the foreground color for text under the cursor is taken from the background color of
the underlying text. On text terminals, the appearance of the text cursor is determined by
the terminal, not by the cursor face.
You can also use X resources to specify attributes of any particular face. See Section D.1
[Resources], page 584.
Emacs can display variable-width fonts, but some Emacs commands, particularly in-
dentation commands, do not account for variable character display widths. Therefore, we
recommend not using variable-width fonts for most faces, particularly those assigned by
Font Lock mode.

11.9 Colors for Faces

Faces can have various foreground and background colors. When you specify a color for
a face—for instance, when customizing the face (see Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization],
page 498)—you can use either a color name or an RGB triplet.

11.9.1 Color Names

A color name is a pre-defined name, such as ‘dark orange’ or ‘medium sea green’. To view
a list of color names, type M-x list-colors-display. To control the order in which colors
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 83

are shown, customize list-colors-sort. If you run this command on a graphical display,
it shows the full range of color names known to Emacs (these are the standard X11 color
names, defined in X’s rgb.txt file). If you run the command on a text terminal, it shows
only a small subset of colors that can be safely displayed on such terminals. However, Emacs
understands X11 color names even on text terminals; if a face is given a color specified by
an X11 color name, it is displayed using the closest-matching terminal color.

11.9.2 RGB Triplets

An RGB triplet is a string of the form ‘#RRGGBB’. Each of the primary color components is
represented by a hexadecimal number between ‘00’ (intensity 0) and ‘FF’ (the maximum
intensity). It is also possible to use one, three, or four hex digits for each component, so ‘red’
can be represented as ‘#F00’, ‘#fff000000’, or ‘#ffff00000000’. The components must
have the same number of digits. For hexadecimal values A to F, either upper or lower case
are acceptable.
The M-x list-colors-display command also shows the equivalent RGB triplet for each
named color. For instance, ‘medium sea green’ is equivalent to ‘#3CB371’.
You can change the foreground and background colors of a face with M-x
set-face-foreground and M-x set-face-background. These commands prompt in the
minibuffer for a face name and a color, with completion, and then set that face to use the
specified color. They affect the face colors on all frames, but their effects do not persist for
future Emacs sessions, unlike using the customization buffer or X resources. You can also
use frame parameters to set foreground and background colors for a specific frame; See
Section 18.11 [Frame Parameters], page 205.

11.10 Standard Faces

Here are the standard faces for specifying text appearance. You can apply them to specific
text when you want the effects they produce.
default This face is used for ordinary text that doesn’t specify any face. Its background
color is used as the frame’s background color.
bold This face uses a bold variant of the default font.
italic This face uses an italic variant of the default font.
bold-italic
This face uses a bold italic variant of the default font.
underline
This face underlines text.
fixed-pitch
This face forces use of a fixed-width font. It’s reasonable to customize this face
to use a different fixed-width font, if you like, but you should not make it a
variable-width font.
fixed-pitch-serif
This face is like fixed-pitch, except the font has serifs and looks more like
traditional typewriting.
84 GNU Emacs Manual

variable-pitch
This face forces use of a variable-width (i.e., proportional) font. The font size
picked for this face matches the font picked for the default (usually fixed-width)
font.
variable-pitch-text
This is like the variable-pitch face (from which it inherits), but is slightly
larger. A proportional font of the same height as a monospace font usually
appears visually smaller, and can therefore be harder to read. When display-
ing longer texts, this face can be a good choice over the (slightly smaller)
variable-pitch face.
shadow This face is used for making the text less noticeable than the surrounding
ordinary text. Usually this can be achieved by using shades of gray in contrast
with either black or white default foreground color.
Here’s an incomplete list of faces used to highlight parts of the text temporarily for
specific purposes. (Many other modes define their own faces for this purpose.)
highlight
This face is used for text highlighting in various contexts, such as when the
mouse cursor is moved over a hyperlink.
isearch This face is used to highlight the current Isearch match (see Section 12.1
[Incremental Search], page 104).
query-replace
This face is used to highlight the current Query Replace match (see Section 12.10
[Replace], page 121).
lazy-highlight
This face is used to highlight lazy matches for Isearch and Query Replace
(matches other than the current one).
region This face is used for displaying an active region (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51).
When Emacs is built with GTK+ support, its colors are taken from the current
GTK+ theme.
secondary-selection
This face is used for displaying a secondary X selection (see Section 9.3.3
[Secondary Selection], page 66).
trailing-whitespace
The face for highlighting excess spaces and tabs at the end of a line when
show-trailing-whitespace is non-nil (see Section 11.17 [Useless Whitespace],
page 94).
escape-glyph
The face for displaying control characters and escape sequences (see Section 11.20
[Text Display], page 97).
homoglyph
The face for displaying lookalike characters, i.e., characters that look like but are
not the characters being represented (see Section 11.20 [Text Display], page 97).
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 85

nobreak-space
The face for displaying no-break space characters (see Section 11.20 [Text
Display], page 97).
nobreak-hyphen
The face for displaying no-break hyphen characters (see Section 11.20 [Text
Display], page 97).
The following faces control the appearance of parts of the Emacs frame:
mode-line
This is the base face used for the mode lines, as well as header lines and for menu
bars when toolkit menus are not used. By default, it’s drawn with shadows for
a raised effect on graphical displays, and drawn as the inverse of the default
face on non-windowed terminals.
The mode-line-active and mode-line-inactive faces (which are the ones
used on the mode lines) inherit from this face.
mode-line-active
Like mode-line, but used for the mode line of the currently selected window.
This face inherits from mode-line, so changes in that face affect mode lines in
all windows.
mode-line-inactive
Like mode-line, but used for mode lines of the windows other than the selected
one (if mode-line-in-non-selected-windows is non-nil). This face inherits
from mode-line, so changes in that face affect mode lines in all windows.
mode-line-highlight
Like highlight, but used for mouse-sensitive portions of text on mode lines.
Such portions of text typically pop up tooltips (see Section 18.19 [Tooltips],
page 213) when the mouse pointer hovers above them.
mode-line-buffer-id
This face is used for buffer identification parts in the mode line.
header-line
Similar to mode-line for a window’s header line, which appears at the top of
a window just as the mode line appears at the bottom. Most windows do not
have a header line—only some special modes, such Info mode, create one.
header-line-highlight
Similar to highlight and mode-line-highlight, but used for mouse-sensitive
portions of text on header lines. This is a separate face because the header-line
face might be customized in a way that does not interact well with highlight.
tab-line Similar to mode-line for a window’s tab line, which appears at the top of a
window with tabs representing window buffers. See Section 17.8 [Tab Line],
page 192.
vertical-border
This face is used for the vertical divider between windows on text terminals.
86 GNU Emacs Manual

minibuffer-prompt
This face is used for the prompt strings displayed in the minibuffer. By de-
fault, Emacs automatically adds this face to the value of minibuffer-prompt-
properties, which is a list of text properties (see Section “Text Properties”
in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) used to display the prompt text. (This
variable takes effect when you enter the minibuffer.)
fringe The face for the fringes to the left and right of windows on graphic displays.
(The fringes are the narrow portions of the Emacs frame between the text area
and the window’s right and left borders.) See Section 11.15 [Fringes], page 92.
cursor The :background attribute of this face specifies the color of the text cursor.
See Section 11.21 [Cursor Display], page 98.
tooltip This face is used for tooltip text. By default, if Emacs is built with GTK+ support,
tooltips are drawn via GTK+ and this face has no effect. See Section 18.19
[Tooltips], page 213.
mouse This face determines the color of the mouse pointer.
The following faces likewise control the appearance of parts of the Emacs frame, but only
on text terminals, or when Emacs is built on X with no toolkit support. (For all other cases,
the appearance of the respective frame elements is determined by system-wide settings.)
scroll-bar
This face determines the visual appearance of the scroll bar. See Section 18.12
[Scroll Bars], page 206.
tool-bar This face determines the color of tool bar icons. See Section 18.16 [Tool Bars],
page 209.
tab-bar This face determines the color of tab bar icons. See Section 18.17 [Tab Bars],
page 209.
menu This face determines the colors and font of Emacs’s menus. See Section 18.15
[Menu Bars], page 209.
tty-menu-enabled-face
This face is used to display enabled menu items on text-mode terminals.
tty-menu-disabled-face
This face is used to display disabled menu items on text-mode terminals.
tty-menu-selected-face
This face is used to display on text-mode terminals the menu item that would
be selected if you click a mouse or press RET.

11.11 Icons
Emacs sometimes displays clickable buttons (or other informative icons), and you can
customize how these look on display.
The main customization point here is the icon-preference user option. By using this,
you can tell Emacs your overall preferences for icons. This is a list of icon types, and the
first icon type that’s supported will be used. The supported types are:
image Use an image for the icon.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 87

emoji Use a colorful emoji for the icon.

symbol Use a monochrome symbol for the icon.
text Use a simple text for the icon.
In addition, each individual icon can be customized with M-x customize-icon, and
themes can further alter the looks of the icons.
To get a quick description of an icon, use the M-x describe-icon command.

11.12 Text Scale

To increase the font size of the default face in the current buffer, type C-x C-+ or C-x C-=.
To decrease it, type C-x C--. To restore the default (global) font size, type C-x C-0. These
keys are all bound to the same command, text-scale-adjust, which looks at the last key
typed to determine which action to take and adjusts the font size accordingly by changing
the height of the default face.
Most faces don’t have an explicit setting of the :height attribute, and thus inherit the
height from the default face. Those faces are also scaled by the above commands.
Faces other than default that have an explicit setting of the :height attribute are not
affected by these font size changes. The header-line face is an exception: it will be scaled
even if it has an explicit setting of the :height attribute.
Similarly, scrolling the mouse wheel with the Ctrl modifier pressed, when the mouse
pointer is above buffer text, will increase or decrease the font size of the affected faces,
depending on the direction of the scrolling.
The final key of these commands may be repeated without the leading C-x and without the
modifiers. For instance, C-x C-= C-= C-= and C-x C-= = = increase the face height by three
steps. Each step scales the text height by a factor of 1.2; to change this factor, customize
the variable text-scale-mode-step. A numeric argument of 0 to the text-scale-adjust
command restores the default height, the same as typing C-x C-0.
Similarly, to change the sizes of the fonts globally, type C-x C-M-+, C-x C-M-=, C-x
C-M-- or C-x C-M-0, or scroll the mouse wheel with both the Ctrl and Meta modifiers
pressed. To enable frame resizing when the font size is changed globally, customize the vari-
able global-text-scale-adjust-resizes-frames (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization],
page 494).
The commands text-scale-increase and text-scale-decrease increase or decrease
the size of the font in the current buffer, just like C-x C-+ and C-x C-- respectively. You
may find it convenient to bind to these commands, rather than text-scale-adjust.
The command text-scale-set scales the size of the font in the current buffer to an
absolute level specified by its prefix argument.
The above commands automatically enable the minor mode text-scale-mode if the
current font scaling is other than 1, and disable it otherwise.
The command text-scale-pinch increases or decreases the text scale based on the
distance between fingers on a touchpad when a pinch gesture is performed by placing two
fingers on a touchpad and moving them towards or apart from each other. This is only
available on some systems with supported hardware.
88 GNU Emacs Manual

The command mouse-wheel-text-scale also changes the text scale. Normally, it is run
when you press Ctrl while moving the mouse wheel. The text scale is increased when the
wheel is moved downwards, and it is decreased when the wheel is moved upwards.

11.13 Font Lock mode

Font Lock mode is a minor mode, always local to a particular buffer, which assigns faces to
(or fontifies) the text in the buffer. Each buffer’s major mode tells Font Lock mode which
text to fontify; for instance, programming language modes fontify syntactically relevant
constructs like comments, strings, and function names.
Font Lock mode is enabled by default in major modes that support it. To toggle it in
the current buffer, type M-x font-lock-mode. A positive numeric argument unconditionally
enables Font Lock mode, and a negative or zero argument disables it.
Type M-x global-font-lock-mode to toggle Font Lock mode in all buffers. To impose
this setting for future Emacs sessions, customize the variable global-font-lock-mode (see
Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494), or add the following line to your init file:
(global-font-lock-mode 0)
If you have disabled Global Font Lock mode, you can still enable Font Lock for specific
major modes by adding the function font-lock-mode to the mode hooks (see Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 504). For example, to enable Font Lock mode for editing C files, you can do
this:
(add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'font-lock-mode)
Font Lock mode uses several specifically named faces to do its job, including font-lock-
string-face, font-lock-comment-face, and others. The easiest way to find them all is to
use M-x customize-group RET font-lock-faces RET. You can then use that customization
buffer to customize the appearance of these faces. See Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization],
page 498.
Fontifying very large buffers can take a long time. To avoid large delays when a file is
visited, Emacs initially fontifies only the visible portion of a buffer. As you scroll through
the buffer, each portion that becomes visible is fontified as soon as it is displayed; this
type of Font Lock is called Just-In-Time (or JIT) Lock. You can control how JIT Lock
behaves, including telling it to perform fontification while idle, by customizing variables in
the customization group ‘jit-lock’. See Section 33.1.6 [Specific Customization], page 499.
The information that major modes use for determining which parts of buffer text to
fontify and what faces to use can be based on several different ways of analyzing the text:
• Search for keywords and other textual patterns based on regular expressions (see
Section 12.5 [Regular Expression Search], page 113).
• Find syntactically distinct parts of text based on built-in syntax tables (see Section
“Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
• Use syntax tree produced by a full-blown parser, via a special-purpose library, such
as the tree-sitter library (see Section “Parsing Program Source” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual), or an external program.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 89

11.13.1 Traditional Font Lock

“Traditional” methods of providing font-lock information are based on regular-expression
search and on syntactic analysis using syntax tables built into Emacs. This subsection
describes the use and customization of font-lock for major modes which use these traditional
methods.
You can control the amount of fontification applied by Font Lock mode by customizing
the variable font-lock-maximum-decoration, for major modes that support this feature.
The value of this variable should be a number (with 1 representing a minimal amount of
fontification; some modes support levels as high as 3); or t, meaning “as high as possible” (the
default). To be effective for a given file buffer, the customization of font-lock-maximum-
decoration should be done before the file is visited; if you already have the file visited in
a buffer when you customize this variable, kill the buffer and visit the file again after the
customization.
You can also specify different numbers for particular major modes; for example, to use
level 1 for C/C++ modes, and the default level otherwise, use the value
'((c-mode . 1) (c++-mode . 1)))
Comment and string fontification (or “syntactic” fontification) relies on analysis of the
syntactic structure of the buffer text. For the sake of speed, some modes, including Lisp
mode, rely on a special convention: an open-parenthesis or open-brace in the leftmost
column always defines the beginning of a defun, and is thus always outside any string or
comment. Therefore, you should avoid placing an open-parenthesis or open-brace in the
leftmost column, if it is inside a string or comment. See Section 23.2.1 [Left Margin Paren],
page 286, for details.
Font Lock highlighting patterns already exist for most modes, but you may want to
fontify additional patterns. You can use the function font-lock-add-keywords, to add
your own highlighting patterns for a particular mode. For example, to highlight ‘FIXME:’
words in C comments, use this:
(add-hook 'c-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(font-lock-add-keywords nil
'(("\\<\\(FIXME\\):" 1
font-lock-warning-face t)))))
To remove keywords from the font-lock highlighting patterns, use the function font-lock-
remove-keywords. See Section “Search-based Fontification” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual. Alternatively, you can selectively disable highlighting due to some keywords by
customizing the font-lock-ignore option, see Section “Customizing Keywords” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

11.13.2 Parser-based Font Lock

If your Emacs was built with the tree-sitter library, it can use the results of parsing the
buffer text by that library for the purposes of fontification. This is usually faster and more
accurate than the “traditional” methods described in the previous subsection, since the
tree-sitter library provides full-blown parsers for programming languages and other kinds
of formatted text which it supports. Major modes which utilize the tree-sitter library are
90 GNU Emacs Manual

named foo-ts-mode, with the ‘-ts-’ part indicating the use of the library. This subsection
documents the Font Lock support based on the tree-sitter library.
You can control the amount of fontification applied by Font Lock mode of major modes
based on tree-sitter by customizing the variable treesit-font-lock-level. Its value is a
number between 1 and 4:
Level 1 This level usually fontifies only comments and function names in function
definitions.
Level 2 This level adds fontification of keywords, strings, and data types.
Level 3 This is the default level; it adds fontification of assignments, numbers, etc.
Level 4 This level adds everything else that can be fontified: operators, delimiters,
brackets, other punctuation, function names in function calls, property look ups,
variables, etc.
What exactly constitutes each of the syntactical categories mentioned above depends on
the major mode and the parser grammar used by tree-sitter for the major-mode’s language.
However, in general the categories follow the conventions of the programming language
or the file format supported by the major mode. The buffer-local value of the variable
treesit-font-lock-feature-list holds the fontification features supported by a tree-sitter
based major mode, where each sub-list shows the features provided by the corresponding
fontification level.
Once you change the value of treesit-font-lock-level via M-x customize-variable
(see Section 33.1.6 [Specific Customization], page 499), it takes effect immediately in all the
existing buffers and for files you visit in the future in the same session.

11.14 Interactive Highlighting

Highlight Changes mode is a minor mode that highlights the parts of the buffer that were
changed most recently, by giving that text a different face. To enable or disable Highlight
Changes mode, use M-x highlight-changes-mode.
Hi Lock mode is a minor mode that highlights text that matches regular expressions you
specify. For example, you can use it to highlight all the references to a certain variable in
a program source file, highlight certain parts in a voluminous output of some program, or
highlight certain names in an article. To enable or disable Hi Lock mode, use the command
M-x hi-lock-mode. To enable Hi Lock mode for all buffers, use M-x global-hi-lock-mode
or place (global-hi-lock-mode 1) in your .emacs file.
Hi Lock mode works like Font Lock mode (see Section 11.13 [Font Lock], page 88), except
that you specify explicitly the regular expressions to highlight. You can control them with
the following commands. (The key bindings below that begin with C-x w are deprecated in
favor of the global M-s h bindings, and will be removed in some future Emacs version.)
M-s h r regexp RET face RET
C-x w h regexp RET face RET
Highlight text that matches regexp using face face (highlight-regexp). The
highlighting will remain as long as the buffer is loaded. For example, to highlight
all occurrences of the word “whim” using the default face (a yellow background),
type M-s h r whim RET RET. Any face can be used for highlighting, Hi Lock
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 91

provides several of its own and these are pre-loaded into a list of default values.
While being prompted for a face use M-n and M-p to cycle through them. A prefix
numeric argument limits the highlighting to the corresponding subexpression.
Setting the option hi-lock-auto-select-face to a non-nil value causes this
command (and other Hi Lock commands that read faces) to automatically
choose the next face from the default list without prompting.
You can use this command multiple times, specifying various regular expressions
to highlight in different ways.
M-s h u regexp RET
C-x w r regexp RET
Unhighlight regexp (unhighlight-regexp). If you invoke this from the menu,
you select the expression to unhighlight from a list. If you invoke this from the
keyboard, you use the minibuffer. It will show the most recently added regular
expression; use M-n to show the next older expression and M-p to select the next
newer expression. (You can also type the expression by hand, with completion.)
When the expression you want to unhighlight appears in the minibuffer, press
RET to exit the minibuffer and unhighlight it.
M-s h l regexp RET face RET
C-x w l regexp RET face RET
Highlight entire lines containing a match for regexp, using face face
(highlight-lines-matching-regexp).
M-s h p phrase RET face RET
C-x w p phrase RET face RET
Highlight matches of phrase, using face face (highlight-phrase). phrase can
be any regexp, but spaces will be replaced by matches to whitespace and initial
lower-case letters will become case insensitive.
M-s h .
C-x w . Highlight the symbol found near point, using the next available face
(highlight-symbol-at-point).
M-s h w
C-x w b Insert all the current highlighting regexp/face pairs into the buffer at point,
with comment delimiters to prevent them from changing your program. (This
key binding runs the hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns command.)
These patterns are extracted from the comments, if appropriate, if you invoke
M-x hi-lock-find-patterns, or if you visit the file while Hi Lock mode is
enabled (since that runs hi-lock-find-patterns).
M-s h f
C-x w i Extract regexp/face pairs from comments in the current buffer (hi-lock-find-
patterns). Thus, you can enter patterns interactively with highlight-regexp,
store them into the file with hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns, edit them
(perhaps including different faces for different parenthesized parts of the match),
and finally use this command (hi-lock-find-patterns) to have Hi Lock high-
light the edited patterns.
92 GNU Emacs Manual

The variable hi-lock-file-patterns-policy controls whether Hi Lock mode

should automatically extract and highlight patterns found in a file when it
is visited. Its value can be nil (never highlight), ask (query the user), or a
function. If it is a function, hi-lock-find-patterns calls it with the patterns
as argument; if the function returns non-nil, the patterns are used. The default
is ask. Note that patterns are always highlighted if you call hi-lock-find-
patterns directly, regardless of the value of this variable.
Also, hi-lock-find-patterns does nothing if the current major mode’s symbol
is a member of the list hi-lock-exclude-modes.

11.15 Window Fringes

On graphical displays, each Emacs window normally has narrow fringes on the left and
right edges. The fringes are used to display symbols that provide information about the
text in the window. You can type M-x fringe-mode to toggle display of the fringes or to
modify their width. This command affects fringes in all frames; to modify fringes on the
selected frame only, use M-x set-fringe-style. You can make your changes to the fringes
permanent by customizing the variable fringe-mode.
The most common use of the fringes is to indicate a continuation line (see Section 4.8
[Continuation Lines], page 22). When one line of text is split into multiple screen lines, the
left fringe shows a curving arrow for each screen line except the first, indicating that this is
not the real beginning. The right fringe shows a curving arrow for each screen line except
the last, indicating that this is not the real end. If the line’s direction is right-to-left (see
Section 19.20 [Bidirectional Editing], page 238), the meanings of the curving arrows in the
fringes are swapped.
The fringes indicate line truncation (see Section 11.22 [Line Truncation], page 99) with
short horizontal arrows meaning there’s more text on this line which is scrolled horizontally
out of view. Clicking the mouse on one of the arrows scrolls the display horizontally in the
direction of the arrow.
The fringes can also indicate other things, such as buffer boundaries (see Section 11.16
[Displaying Boundaries], page 93), unused lines near the end of the window (see [indicate-
empty-lines], page 94), and where a program you are debugging is executing (see Section 24.6
[Debuggers], page 315).
The fringe is also used for drawing the cursor, if the current line is exactly as wide
as the window and point is at the end of the line. To disable this, change the variable
overflow-newline-into-fringe to nil; this causes Emacs to continue or truncate lines
that are exactly as wide as the window.
If you customize fringe-mode to remove the fringes on one or both sides of the window
display, the features that display on the fringe are not available. Indicators of line continuation
and truncation are an exception: when fringes are not available, Emacs uses the leftmost
and rightmost character cells to indicate continuation and truncation with special ASCII
characters, see Section 4.8 [Continuation Lines], page 22, and Section 11.22 [Line Truncation],
page 99. This reduces the width available for displaying text on each line, because the
character cells used for truncation and continuation indicators are reserved for that purpose.
Since buffer text can include bidirectional text, and thus both left-to-right and right-to-left
paragraphs (see Section 19.20 [Bidirectional Editing], page 238), removing only one of the
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 93

fringes still reserves two character cells, one on each side of the window, for truncation
and continuation indicators, because these indicators are displayed on opposite sides of the
window in right-to-left paragraphs.

11.16 Displaying Boundaries

Emacs can display an indication of the fill-column position (see Section 22.6.2 [Fill
Commands], page 257). The fill-column indicator is a useful functionality especially in
prog-mode and its descendants (see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241) to indicate the
position of a specific column that has some special meaning for formatting the source code
of a program. This assumes the buffer uses a fixed-pitch font, where all the characters (with
the possible exception of double-width characters) have the same width on display. If the
buffer uses variable-pitch fonts, the fill-column indicators on different lines might appear
unaligned.
To activate the fill-column indication display, use the minor modes display-fill-
column-indicator-mode and global-display-fill-column-indicator-mode, which en-
able the indicator locally or globally, respectively.
Alternatively, you can set the two buffer-local variables display-fill-column-
indicator and display-fill-column-indicator-character to activate the indicator
and control the character used for the indication. Note that both variables must be non-nil
for the indication to be displayed. (Turning on the minor mode sets both these variables.)
There are 2 buffer local variables and a face to customize this mode:

display-fill-column-indicator-column
Specifies the column number where the indicator should be set. It can take
positive numerical values for the column, or the special value t, which means
that the value of the variable fill-column will be used.
Any other value disables the indicator. The default value is t.
display-fill-column-indicator-character
Specifies the character used for the indicator. This character can be any valid
character including Unicode ones if the font supports them. The value nil
disables the indicator. When the mode is enabled through the functions
display-fill-column-indicator-mode or global-display-fill-column-
indicator-mode, they will use the character specified by this variable, if it is
non-nil; otherwise Emacs will use the character U+2502 box drawings light
vertical, falling back to ‘|’ if U+2502 cannot be displayed.
fill-column-indicator
Specifies the face used to display the indicator. It inherits its default values
from the face shadow, but without background color. To change the indicator
color, you need only set the foreground color of this face.

On graphical displays, Emacs can indicate the buffer boundaries in the fringes. If you
enable this feature, the first line and the last line are marked with angle images in the fringes.
This can be combined with up and down arrow images which say whether it is possible to
scroll the window.
94 GNU Emacs Manual

The buffer-local variable indicate-buffer-boundaries controls how the buffer bound-

aries and window scrolling is indicated in the fringes. If the value is left or right, both
angle and arrow bitmaps are displayed in the left or right fringe, respectively.
If value is an alist (see Section “Association Lists” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual),
each element (indicator . position) specifies the position of one of the indicators. The
indicator must be one of top, bottom, up, down, or t which specifies the default position
for the indicators not present in the alist. The position is one of left, right, or nil which
specifies not to show this indicator.
For example, ((top . left) (t . right)) places the top angle bitmap in left fringe, the
bottom angle bitmap in right fringe, and both arrow bitmaps in right fringe. To show just
the angle bitmaps in the left fringe, but no arrow bitmaps, use ((top . left) (bottom .
left)).

11.17 Useless Whitespace

It is easy to leave unnecessary spaces at the end of a line, or empty lines at the end of
a buffer, without realizing it. In most cases, this trailing whitespace has no effect, but
sometimes it can be a nuisance.
You can make trailing whitespace at the end of a line visible by setting the buffer-local
variable show-trailing-whitespace to t. Then Emacs displays trailing whitespace, using
the face trailing-whitespace.
This feature does not apply when point is at the end of the line containing the whitespace.
Strictly speaking, that is trailing whitespace nonetheless, but displaying it specially in that
case looks ugly while you are typing in new text. In this special case, the location of point
is enough to show you that the spaces are present.
Type M-x delete-trailing-whitespace to delete all trailing whitespace. This command
deletes all extra spaces at the end of each line in the buffer, and all empty lines at the end
of the buffer; to ignore the latter, change the variable delete-trailing-lines to nil. If
the region is active, the command instead deletes extra spaces at the end of each line in the
region.
On graphical displays, Emacs can indicate unused lines at the end of the window with
a small image in the left fringe (see Section 11.15 [Fringes], page 92). The image appears
for screen lines that do not correspond to any buffer text, so blank lines at the end of
the buffer stand out because they lack this image. To enable this feature, set the buffer-
local variable indicate-empty-lines to a non-nil value. You can enable or disable this
feature for all new buffers by setting the default value of this variable, e.g., (setq-default
indicate-empty-lines t).
Whitespace mode is a buffer-local minor mode that lets you visualize many kinds of
whitespace in the buffer, by either drawing the whitespace characters with a special face
or displaying them as special glyphs. To toggle this mode, type M-x whitespace-mode.
The kinds of whitespace visualized are determined by the list variable whitespace-style.
Individual elements in that list can be toggled on or off in the current buffer by typing
M-x whitespace-toggle-options. Here is a partial list of possible elements (see the
variable’s documentation for the full list):
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 95

face Enable all visualizations which use special faces. This element has a special
meaning: if it is absent from the list, none of the other visualizations take effect
except space-mark, tab-mark, and newline-mark.
trailing Highlight trailing whitespace.
tabs Highlight tab characters.
spaces Highlight space and non-breaking space characters.
lines Highlight lines longer than 80 columns. To change the column limit, customize
the variable whitespace-line-column.
newline Highlight newlines.
missing-newline-at-eof
Highlight the final character if the buffer doesn’t end with a newline character.
empty Highlight empty lines at the beginning and/or end of the buffer.
big-indent
Highlight too-deep indentation. By default any sequence of at least 4 consecutive
tab characters or 32 consecutive space characters is highlighted. To change that,
customize the regular expression whitespace-big-indent-regexp.
space-mark
Draw space and non-breaking characters with a special glyph.
tab-mark Draw tab characters with a special glyph.
newline-mark
Draw newline characters with a special glyph.
Global Whitespace mode is a global minor mode that lets you visualize whitespace in all
buffers. To toggle individual features, use M-x global-whitespace-toggle-options.

11.18 Selective Display

Emacs has the ability to hide lines indented more than a given number of columns. You can
use this to get an overview of a part of a program.
To hide lines in the current buffer, type C-x $ (set-selective-display) with a numeric
argument n. Then lines with at least n columns of indentation disappear from the screen.
The only indication of their presence is that three dots (‘...’) appear at the end of each
visible line that is followed by one or more hidden ones.
The commands C-n and C-p move across the hidden lines as if they were not there.
The hidden lines are still present in the buffer, and most editing commands see them
as usual, so you may find point in the middle of the hidden text. When this happens, the
cursor appears at the end of the previous line, after the three dots. If point is at the end of
the visible line, before the newline that ends it, the cursor appears before the three dots.
To make all lines visible again, type C-x $ with no argument.
If you set the variable selective-display-ellipses to nil, the three dots do not
appear at the end of a line that precedes hidden lines. Then there is no visible indication of
the hidden lines. This variable becomes local automatically when set.
96 GNU Emacs Manual

See also Section 22.9 [Outline Mode], page 262, for another way to hide part of the text
in a buffer.

11.19 Optional Mode Line Features

The buffer percentage pos indicates the percentage of the buffer above the top of the window.
You can additionally display the size of the buffer by typing M-x size-indication-mode to
turn on Size Indication mode. The size will be displayed immediately following the buffer
percentage like this:
pos of size
Here size is the human readable representation of the number of characters in the buffer,
which means that ‘k’ for 10^3, ‘M’ for 10^6, ‘G’ for 10^9, etc., are used to abbreviate.
The current line number of point appears in the mode line when Line Number mode is
enabled. Use the command M-x line-number-mode to turn this mode on and off; normally
it is on. The line number appears after the buffer percentage pos, with the letter ‘L’ to
indicate what it is.
Similarly, you can display the current column number by turning on Column Number
mode with M-x column-number-mode. The column number is indicated by the letter ‘C’.
However, when both of these modes are enabled, the line and column numbers are displayed
in parentheses, the line number first, rather than with ‘L’ and ‘C’. For example: ‘(561,2)’.
See Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242, for more information about minor modes and
about how to use these commands.
In Column Number mode, the displayed column number counts from zero starting at the
left margin of the window. If you would prefer for the displayed column number to count
from one, you may set column-number-indicator-zero-based to nil.
If you have narrowed the buffer (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80), the displayed
line number is relative to the accessible portion of the buffer. Thus, it isn’t suitable as an
argument to goto-line. (The command what-line shows the line number relative to the
whole file.) You can use goto-line-relative command to move point to the line relative
to the accessible portion of the narrowed buffer.
If the buffer is very large (larger than the value of line-number-display-limit), Emacs
won’t compute the line number, because that would be too slow; therefore, the line number
won’t appear on the mode-line. To remove this limit, set line-number-display-limit to
nil.
Line-number computation can also be slow if the lines in the buffer are too long. For this
reason, Emacs doesn’t display line numbers if the average width, in characters, of lines near
point is larger than the value of line-number-display-limit-width. The default value is
200 characters.
Emacs can optionally display the time and system load in all mode lines. To enable
this feature, type M-x display-time or customize the option display-time-mode. The
information added to the mode line looks like this:
hh:mmPM l.ll
Here hh and mm are the hour and minute, followed always by ‘AM’ or ‘PM’. l.ll is the average
number, collected for the last few minutes, of processes in the whole system that were either
running or ready to run (i.e., were waiting for an available processor). (Some fields may
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 97

be missing if your operating system cannot support them.) If you prefer time display in
24-hour format, set the variable display-time-24hr-format to t.
The word ‘Mail’ appears after the load level if there is mail for you that you have
not read yet. On graphical displays, you can use an icon instead of ‘Mail’ by customiz-
ing display-time-use-mail-icon; this may save some space on the mode line. You
can customize display-time-mail-face to make the mail indicator prominent. Use
display-time-mail-file to specify the mail file to check, or set display-time-mail-
directory to specify the directory to check for incoming mail (any nonempty regular file in
the directory is considered to be newly arrived mail).
When running Emacs on a laptop computer, you can display the battery charge on
the mode-line, by using the command display-battery-mode or customizing the variable
display-battery-mode. The variable battery-mode-line-format determines the way the
battery charge is displayed; the exact mode-line message depends on the operating system,
and it usually shows the current battery charge as a percentage of the total charge. The
functions in battery-update-functions are run after updating the mode line, and can be
used to trigger actions based on the battery status.
On graphical displays, the mode line is drawn as a 3D box. If you don’t like this effect,
you can disable it by customizing the mode-line face and setting its box attribute to nil.
See Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 498.
By default, the mode line of nonselected windows is displayed in a different face, called
mode-line-inactive. Only the selected window is displayed in the mode-line face. This
helps show which window is selected. When the minibuffer is selected, since it has no mode
line, the window from which you activated the minibuffer has its mode line displayed using
mode-line; as a result, ordinary entry to the minibuffer does not change any mode lines.
You can disable use of mode-line-inactive by setting variable mode-line-in-non-
selected-windows to nil; then all mode lines are displayed in the mode-line face.
You can customize the mode line display for each of the end-of-line formats by setting
each of the variables eol-mnemonic-unix, eol-mnemonic-dos, eol-mnemonic-mac, and
eol-mnemonic-undecided to the strings you prefer.

11.20 How Text Is Displayed

Most characters are printing characters: when they appear in a buffer, they are displayed
literally on the screen. Printing characters include ASCII numbers, letters, and punctuation
characters, as well as many non-ASCII characters.
The ASCII character set contains non-printing control characters. Two of these are
displayed specially: the newline character (Unicode code point U+000A) is displayed by
starting a new line, while the tab character (U+0009) is displayed as a space that extends
to the next tab stop column (normally every 8 columns). The number of spaces per tab is
controlled by the buffer-local variable tab-width, which must have an integer value between
1 and 1000, inclusive. Note that the way the tab character in the buffer is displayed has
nothing to do with the definition of TAB as a command.
Other ASCII control characters, whose codes are below U+0020 (octal 40, decimal 32),
are displayed as a caret (‘^’) followed by the non-control version of the character, with the
escape-glyph face. For instance, the ‘control-A’ character, U+0001, is displayed as ‘^A’.
98 GNU Emacs Manual

The raw bytes with codes U+0080 (octal 200) through U+009F (octal 237) are displayed
as octal escape sequences, with the escape-glyph face. For instance, character code U+0098
(octal 230) is displayed as ‘\230’. If you change the buffer-local variable ctl-arrow to nil,
the ASCII control characters are also displayed as octal escape sequences instead of caret
escape sequences. (You can also request that raw bytes be shown in hex, see Section 11.24
[Display Custom], page 101.)
Some non-ASCII characters have the same appearance as an ASCII space or hyphen
(minus) character. Such characters can cause problems if they are entered into a buffer
without your realization, e.g., by yanking; for instance, source code compilers typically do not
treat non-ASCII spaces as whitespace characters. To deal with this problem, Emacs displays
such characters specially: it displays U+00A0 no-break space and other characters from the
Unicode horizontal space class with the nobreak-space face, and it displays U+00AD soft
hyphen, U+2010 hyphen, and U+2011 non-breaking hyphen with the nobreak-hyphen
face. To disable this, change the variable nobreak-char-display to nil. If you give this
variable a non-nil and non-t value, Emacs instead displays such characters as a highlighted
backslash followed by a space or hyphen.
You can customize the way any particular character code is displayed by means of a
display table. See Section “Display Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
On graphical displays, some characters may have no glyphs in any of the fonts available
to Emacs. These glyphless characters are normally displayed as boxes containing the
hexadecimal character code. Similarly, on text terminals, characters that cannot be displayed
using the terminal encoding (see Section 19.13 [Terminal Coding], page 231) are normally
displayed as question signs. You can control the display method by customizing the variable
glyphless-char-display-control. You can also customize the glyphless-char face to
make these characters more prominent on display. See Section “Glyphless Character Display”
in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for details.
The glyphless-display-mode minor mode can be used to toggle the display of glyphless
characters in the current buffer. The glyphless characters will be displayed as boxes with
acronyms of their names inside.
Emacs tries to determine if the curved quotes ‘ and ’ can be displayed on the current
display. By default, if this seems to be so, then Emacs will translate the ASCII quotes
(‘`’ and ‘'’), when they appear in messages and help texts, to these curved quotes. You can
influence or inhibit this translation by customizing the user option text-quoting-style
(see Section “Keys in Documentation” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
If the curved quotes ‘, ’, “, and ” are known to look just like ASCII characters, they are
shown with the homoglyph face. Curved quotes that are known not to be displayable are
shown as their ASCII approximations ‘`’, ‘'’, and ‘"’ with the homoglyph face.

11.21 Displaying the Cursor

On a text terminal, the cursor’s appearance is controlled by the terminal, largely out of the
control of Emacs. Some terminals offer two different cursors: a visible static cursor, and a
very visible blinking cursor. By default, Emacs uses the very visible cursor, and switches
to it when you start or resume Emacs. If the variable visible-cursor is nil when Emacs
starts or resumes, it uses the normal cursor.
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 99

On a graphical display, many more properties of the text cursor can be altered. To
customize its color, change the :background attribute of the face named cursor (see
Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 498). (The other attributes of this face have no
effect; the text shown under the cursor is drawn using the frame’s background color.) To
change its shape, customize the buffer-local variable cursor-type; possible values are box
(the default), (box . size) (box cursor becoming a hollow box under masked images larger
than size pixels in either dimension), hollow (a hollow box), bar (a vertical bar), (bar .
n) (a vertical bar n pixels wide), hbar (a horizontal bar), (hbar . n) (a horizontal bar n
pixels tall), or nil (no cursor at all).
By default, the cursor stops blinking after 10 blinks, if Emacs does not get any input
during that time; any input event restarts the count. You can customize the variable
blink-cursor-blinks to control that: its value says how many times to blink without input
before stopping. Setting that variable to a zero or negative value will make the cursor blink
forever. To disable cursor blinking altogether, change the variable blink-cursor-mode to
nil (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494), or add the line
(blink-cursor-mode 0)
to your init file. Alternatively, you can change how the cursor looks when it blinks off by
customizing the list variable blink-cursor-alist. Each element in the list should have the
form (on-type . off-type); this means that if the cursor is displayed as on-type when it
blinks on (where on-type is one of the cursor types described above), then it is displayed as
off-type when it blinks off.
Some characters, such as tab characters, are extra wide. When the cursor is positioned
over such a character, it is normally drawn with the default character width. You can make
the cursor stretch to cover wide characters, by changing the variable x-stretch-cursor to
a non-nil value.
The cursor normally appears in non-selected windows as a non-blinking hollow box.
(For a bar cursor, it instead appears as a thinner bar.) To turn off cursors in non-selected
windows, change the variable cursor-in-non-selected-windows to nil.
To make the cursor even more visible, you can use HL Line mode, a minor mode that
highlights the line containing point. Use M-x hl-line-mode to enable or disable it in the
current buffer. M-x global-hl-line-mode enables or disables the same mode globally.

11.22 Line Truncation

As an alternative to continuation (see Section 4.8 [Continuation Lines], page 22), Emacs can
display long lines by truncation. This means that all the characters that do not fit in the
width of the screen or window do not appear at all. On graphical displays, a small straight
arrow in the fringe indicates truncation at either end of the line. On text terminals, this is
indicated with ‘$’ signs in the rightmost and/or leftmost columns.
Horizontal scrolling automatically causes line truncation (see Section 11.4 [Horizontal
Scrolling], page 79). You can explicitly enable line truncation for a particular buffer with the
command C-x x t (toggle-truncate-lines). This works by locally changing the variable
truncate-lines. If that variable is non-nil, long lines are truncated; if it is nil, they
are continued onto multiple screen lines. Setting the variable truncate-lines in any way
makes it local to the current buffer; until that time, the default value, which is normally
nil, is in effect.
100 GNU Emacs Manual

Since line truncation and word wrap (described in the next section) are contradictory,
toggle-truncate-lines disables word wrap when it turns on line truncation.
If a split window becomes too narrow, Emacs may automatically enable line truncation.
See Section 17.2 [Split Window], page 185, for the variable truncate-partial-width-
windows which controls this.

11.23 Visual Line Mode

Another alternative to ordinary line continuation is to use word wrap. Here, each long logical
line is divided into two or more screen lines, like in ordinary line continuation. However,
Emacs attempts to wrap the line at word boundaries near the right window edge. (If the
line’s direction is right-to-left, it is wrapped at the left window edge instead.) This makes
the text easier to read, as wrapping does not occur in the middle of words.
Word wrap is enabled by Visual Line mode, an optional minor mode. To turn on Visual
Line mode in the current buffer, type M-x visual-line-mode; repeating this command turns
it off. You can also turn on Visual Line mode using the menu bar: in the Options menu,
select the ‘Line Wrapping in this Buffer’ submenu, followed by the ‘Word Wrap (Visual
Line mode)’ menu item. While Visual Line mode is enabled, the mode line shows the string
‘wrap’ in the mode display. The command M-x global-visual-line-mode toggles Visual
Line mode in all buffers.
Since word wrap and line truncation (described in the previous section) are contradictory,
turning on visual-line-mode disables line truncation.
In Visual Line mode, some editing commands work on screen lines instead of logical
lines: C-a (beginning-of-visual-line) moves to the beginning of the screen line, C-e
(end-of-visual-line) moves to the end of the screen line, and C-k (kill-visual-line)
kills text to the end of the screen line.
To move by logical lines, use the commands M-x next-logical-line and M-x
previous-logical-line. These move point to the next logical line and the previous
logical line respectively, regardless of whether Visual Line mode is enabled. If you use
these commands frequently, it may be convenient to assign key bindings to them. See
Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 516.
By default, word-wrapped lines do not display fringe indicators. Visual Line mode is
often used to edit files that contain many long logical lines, so having a fringe indicator for
each wrapped line would be visually distracting. You can change this by customizing the
variable visual-line-fringe-indicators.
By default, Emacs only breaks lines after whitespace characters like SPC and TAB, but does
not break after whitespace characters like EN QUAD. Emacs provides a minor mode called
word-wrap-whitespace-mode that switches on word wrapping in the current mode, and
sets up which characters to wrap lines on based on the word-wrap-whitespace-characters
user option. There’s also a globalized version of that mode called global-word-wrap-
whitespace-mode.
Only breaking after whitespace character produces incorrect results when CJK and
Latin text are mixed together (because CJK characters don’t use whitespace to separate
words). You can customize the option word-wrap-by-category to allow Emacs to break
lines after any character with ‘|’ category (see Section “Categories” in the Emacs Lisp
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 101

Reference Manual), which provides better support for CJK characters. Also, if this variable
is set using Customize, Emacs automatically loads kinsoku.el. When kinsoku.el is
loaded, Emacs respects kinsoku rules when breaking lines. That means characters with the
‘>’ category don’t appear at the beginning of a line (e.g., U+FF0C fullwidth comma),
and characters with the ‘<’ category don’t appear at the end of a line (e.g., U+300A left
double angle bracket). You can view the category set of a character using the commands
char-category-set and category-set-mnemonics, or by typing C-u C-x = with point on
the character and looking at the “category” section in the report. You can add categories to
a character using the command modify-category-entry.

11.24 Customization of Display

This section describes variables that control miscellaneous aspects of the appearance of the
Emacs screen. Beginning users can skip it.
If you want to have Emacs display line numbers for every line in the buffer, customize the
buffer-local variable display-line-numbers; it is nil by default. This variable can have
several different values to support various modes of line-number display:
t Display (an absolute) line number before each non-continuation screen line that
displays buffer text. If the line is a continuation line, or if the entire screen line
displays a display or an overlay string, that line will not be numbered.
relative Display relative line numbers before non-continuation lines which show buffer
text. The line numbers are relative to the line showing point, so the numbers
grow both up and down as lines become farther from the current line.
visual This value causes Emacs to count lines visually: only lines actually shown on
the display will be counted (disregarding any lines in invisible parts of text), and
lines which wrap to consume more than one screen line will be numbered that
many times. The displayed numbers are relative, as with relative value above.
This is handy in modes that fold text, such as Outline mode (see Section 22.9
[Outline Mode], page 262), and when you need to move by exact number of
screen lines.
anything else
Any other non-nil value is treated as t.
The command M-x display-line-numbers-mode provides a convenient way to turn
on display of line numbers. This mode has a globalized variant, global-display-line-
numbers-mode. The user option display-line-numbers-type controls which sub-mode of
line-number display, described above, these modes will activate.
Note that line numbers are not displayed in the minibuffer and in the tooltips, even if you
turn on display-line-numbers-mode globally.
When Emacs displays relative line numbers, you can control the number displayed
before the current line, the line showing point. By default, Emacs displays the absolute
number of the current line there, even though all the other line numbers are relative. If
you customize the variable display-line-numbers-current-absolute to a nil value, the
number displayed for the current line will be zero. This is handy if you don’t care about the
number of the current line, and want to leave more horizontal space for text in large buffers.
102 GNU Emacs Manual

In a narrowed buffer (see Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80) lines are normally num-
bered starting at the beginning of the narrowing. However, if you customize the variable
display-line-numbers-widen to a non-nil value, line numbers will disregard any narrow-
ing and will start at the first character of the buffer.
If the value of display-line-numbers-offset is non-zero, it is added to each absolute
line number, and lines are counted from the beginning of the buffer, as if display-line-
numbers-widen were non-nil. It has no effect when set to zero, or when line numbers are
not absolute.
In selective display mode (see Section 11.18 [Selective Display], page 95), and other
modes that hide many lines from display (such as Outline and Org modes), you may
wish to customize the variables display-line-numbers-width-start and display-line-
numbers-grow-only, or set display-line-numbers-width to a large enough value, to avoid
occasional miscalculations of space reserved for the line numbers.
The line numbers are displayed in a special face line-number. The current line num-
ber is displayed in a different face, line-number-current-line, so you can make the
current line’s number have a distinct appearance, which will help locating the line show-
ing point. Additional faces line-number-major-tick and line-number-minor-tick can
be used to highlight the line numbers of lines which are a multiple of certain numbers.
Customize display-line-numbers-major-tick and display-line-numbers-minor-tick
respectively to set those numbers.
If the variable visible-bell is non-nil, Emacs attempts to make the whole screen blink
when it would normally make an audible bell sound. This variable has no effect if your
terminal does not have a way to make the screen blink.
The variable echo-keystrokes controls the echoing of multi-character keys; its value is
the number of seconds of pause required to cause echoing to start, or zero, meaning don’t
echo at all. The value takes effect when there is something to echo. See Section 1.2 [Echo
Area], page 7.
On graphical displays, Emacs displays the mouse pointer as an hourglass if Emacs is
busy. To disable this feature, set the variable display-hourglass to nil. The variable
hourglass-delay determines the number of seconds of busy time before the hourglass is
shown; the default is 1.
If the mouse pointer lies inside an Emacs frame, Emacs makes it invisible each time you
type a character to insert text, to prevent it from obscuring the text. (To be precise, the
hiding occurs when you type a self-inserting character. See Section 4.1 [Inserting Text],
page 16.) Moving the mouse pointer makes it visible again. To disable this feature, set the
variable make-pointer-invisible to nil.
On graphical displays, the variable underline-minimum-offset determines the minimum
distance between the baseline and underline, in pixels, for underlined text. By default,
the value is 1; increasing it may improve the legibility of underlined text for certain fonts.
(However, Emacs will never draw the underline below the current line area.) The variable
x-underline-at-descent-line determines how to draw underlined text. The default is
nil, which means to draw it at the baseline level of the font; if you change it to t, Emacs
draws the underline at the same height as the font’s descent line. (If non-default line spacing
was specified for the underlined text, see Section “Line Height” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual, Emacs draws the underline below the additional spacing.)
Chapter 11: Controlling the Display 103

The variable overline-margin specifies the vertical position of an overline above the
text, including the height of the overline itself, in pixels; the default is 2.
On some text terminals, bold face and inverse video together result in text that is hard
to read. Call the function tty-suppress-bold-inverse-default-colors with a non-nil
argument to suppress the effect of bold-face in this case.
Raw bytes are displayed in octal format by default, for example a byte with a decimal
value of 128 is displayed as \200. To change display to the hexadecimal format of \x80, set
the variable display-raw-bytes-as-hex to t. Care may be needed when interpreting a raw
byte when copying text from a terminal containing an Emacs session, or when a terminal’s
escape-glyph face looks like the default face. For example, by default Emacs displays the
four characters ‘\’, ‘2’, ‘0’, ‘0’ with the same characters it displays a byte with decimal value
128. The problem can be worse with hex displays, where the raw byte 128 followed by the
character ‘7’ is displayed as \x807, which Emacs Lisp reads as the single character U+0807
SAMARITAN LETTER IT; this confusion does not occur with the corresponding octal
display \2007 because octal escapes contain at most three digits.
104 GNU Emacs Manual

12 Searching and Replacement

Like other editors, Emacs has commands to search for occurrences of a string. Emacs also
has commands to replace occurrences of a string with a different string. There are also
commands that do the same thing, but search for patterns instead of fixed strings.
You can also search multiple files under the control of xref (see Section 25.4.1.3 [Identifier
Search], page 359) or through the Dired A command (see Section 27.7 [Operating on Files],
page 385), or ask the grep program to do it (see Section 24.4 [Grep Searching], page 313).

12.1 Incremental Search

The principal search command in Emacs is incremental: it begins searching as soon as you
type the first character of the search string. As you type in the search string, Emacs shows
you where the string (as you have typed it so far) would be found. When you have typed
enough characters to identify the place you want, you can stop. Depending on what you
plan to do next, you may or may not need to terminate the search explicitly with RET.
C-s Incremental search forward (isearch-forward).
C-r Incremental search backward (isearch-backward).
You can also invoke incremental search from the menu bar’s ‘Edit->Search’ menu.

12.1.1 Basics of Incremental Search

C-s Begin incremental search (isearch-forward).
C-r Begin reverse incremental search (isearch-backward).
C-s (isearch-forward) starts a forward incremental search. It reads characters from
the keyboard, and moves point just past the end of the next occurrence of those characters
in the buffer.
For instance, if you type C-s and then F, that puts the cursor after the first ‘F’ that
occurs in the buffer after the starting point. If you then type O, the cursor moves to just
after the first ‘FO’; the ‘F’ in that ‘FO’ might not be the first ‘F’ previously found. After
another O, the cursor moves to just after the first ‘FOO’.
At each step, Emacs highlights the current match—the buffer text that matches the
search string—using the isearch face (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82). See Section 12.12
[Search Customizations], page 128, for various options that customize this highlighting. The
current search string is also displayed in the echo area.
If you make a mistake typing the search string, type DEL (isearch-delete-char). Each
DEL cancels the last input item entered during the search. Emacs records a new input item
whenever you type a command that changes the search string, the position of point, the
success or failure of the search, the direction of the search, the position of the other end of
the current search result, or the “wrappedness” of the search. See Section 12.1.4 [Error in
Isearch], page 107, for more about dealing with unsuccessful search.
When you are satisfied with the place you have reached, type RET (isearch-exit). This
stops searching, leaving the cursor where the search brought it. Also, any command not
specially meaningful in searches stops the searching and is then executed. Thus, typing
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 105

C-a exits the search and then moves to the beginning of the line; typing one of the arrow
keys exits the search and performs the respective movement command; etc. RET is necessary
only if the next command you want to type is a printing character, DEL, RET, or another
character that is special within searches (C-q, C-w, C-r, C-s, C-y, M-y, M-r, M-c, M-e, and
some others described below). You can fine-tune the commands that exit the search; see
Section 12.1.6 [Not Exiting Isearch], page 109.
As a special exception, entering RET when the search string is empty launches nonincre-
mental search (see Section 12.2 [Nonincremental Search], page 111). (This can be customized;
see Section 12.12 [Search Customizations], page 128.)
To abandon the search and return to the place where you started, type ESC ESC ESC
(isearch-cancel) or C-g C-g (isearch-abort).
When you exit the incremental search, it adds the original value of point to the mark ring,
without activating the mark; you can thus use C-u C-SPC or C-x C-x to return to where you
were before beginning the search. See Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 55. (Emacs only does
this if the mark was not already active; if the mark was active when you started the search,
both C-u C-SPC and C-x C-x will go to the mark.)
To search backwards, use C-r (isearch-backward) instead of C-s to start the search. A
backward search finds matches that end before the starting point, just as a forward search
finds matches that begin after it.

12.1.2 Repeating Incremental Search

Suppose you search forward for ‘FOO’ and find a match, but not the one you expected to
find: the ‘FOO’ you were aiming for occurs later in the buffer. In this event, type another
C-s (isearch-repeat-forward) to move to the next occurrence of the search string, or C-r
(isearch-repeat-backward) to move to the previous occurrence. You can repeat these
commands any number of times. Alternatively, you can supply a numeric prefix argument
of n to C-s and C-r to find the nth next or previous occurrence. If you overshoot, you can
cancel some C-s commands with DEL. Similarly, each C-r (isearch-repeat-backward) in
a backward incremental search repeats the backward search.
If you pause for a little while during incremental search, Emacs highlights all the other
possible matches for the search string that are present on the screen. This helps you
anticipate where you can get to by typing C-s or C-r to repeat the search. The other
matches are highlighted differently from the current match, using the customizable face
lazy-highlight (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82). If you don’t like this feature, you can
disable it by setting isearch-lazy-highlight to nil. For other customizations related to
highlighting matches, see Section 12.12 [Search Customizations], page 128.
After exiting a search, you can search for the same string again by typing just C-s C-s.
The first C-s is the key that invokes incremental search, and the second C-s means to search
again for the last search string. Similarly, C-r C-r searches backward for the last search
string. In determining the last search string, it doesn’t matter whether that string was
searched for with C-s or C-r.
If you are searching forward but you realize you were looking for something before the
starting point, type C-r to switch to a backward search, leaving the search string unchanged.
Similarly, C-s in a backward search switches to a forward search.
106 GNU Emacs Manual

When you change the direction of a search, the first command you type will, by default,
remain on the same match, and the cursor will move to the other end of the match. To move
to another match immediately, customize the variable isearch-repeat-on-direction-
change to t.
If a search is failing and you ask to repeat it by typing another C-s, it starts again from
the beginning of the buffer. Repeating a failing reverse search with C-r starts again from the
end. This is called wrapping around, and ‘Wrapped’ appears in the search prompt once this
has happened. If you keep on going past the original starting point of the search, it changes
to ‘Overwrapped’, which means that you are revisiting matches that you have already seen.
You can control what happens when there are no more matches by customizing the
isearch-wrap-pause user option. If it is t (the default), signal an error. (Repeating the
search will wrap around.) If no, issue a ding and wrap immediately after reaching the last
match. If no-ding, wrap immediately, but don’t ding. With the values no and no-ding
the search will try to wrap around also on typing a character. Finally, if nil, never wrap,
but just stop at the last match.
To reuse earlier search strings, use the search ring. The commands M-p (isearch-ring-
retreat) and M-n (isearch-ring-advance) move through the ring to pick a search string
to reuse. These commands leave the selected search ring element in the minibuffer, where
you can edit it. Type C-s/C-r or RET to accept the string and start searching for it. The
number of most recently used search strings saved in the search ring is specified by the
variable search-ring-max, 16 by default.
To edit the current search string in the minibuffer without replacing it with items from
the search ring, type M-e (isearch-edit-string) or click mouse-1 in the minibuffer. Type
RET, C-s or C-r to finish editing the string and search for it. Type C-f or RIGHT to add
to the search string characters following point from the buffer from which you started the
search.

12.1.3 Isearch Yanking

In many cases, you will want to use text at or near point as your search string. The
commands described in this subsection let you do that conveniently.
C-w (isearch-yank-word-or-char) appends the next character or word at point to the
search string. This is an easy way to search for another occurrence of the text at point.
(The decision of whether to copy a character or a word is heuristic.) With a prefix numeric
argument of n, append the next n characters or words.
C-M-w (isearch-yank-symbol-or-char) appends the next character or symbol at point
to the search string. This is an easy way to search for another occurrence of the symbol at
point. (The decision of whether to copy a character or a symbol is heuristic.) With a prefix
numeric argument of n, append the next n characters or symbols.
M-s C-e (isearch-yank-line) appends the rest of the current line to the search string.
If point is already at the end of a line, it appends the next line. With a prefix argument n,
it appends the next n lines.
Similarly, C-M-z (isearch-yank-until-char) appends to the search string everything
from point until the next occurrence of a specified character (not including that character).
This is especially useful for keyboard macros, for example in programming languages or
markup languages in which that character marks a token boundary. With a prefix numeric
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 107

argument of n, the command appends everything from point to the nth occurrence of the
specified character.
Within incremental search, C-y (isearch-yank-kill) appends the current kill to the
search string. M-y (isearch-yank-pop), if called after C-y during incremental search,
replaces that appended text with an earlier kill, similar to the usual M-y (yank-pop) command.
Clicking mouse-2 in the echo area appends the current X selection (see Section 9.3.2 [Primary
Selection], page 65) to the search string (isearch-yank-x-selection).
C-M-d (isearch-del-char) deletes the last character from the search string, and C-M-y
(isearch-yank-char) appends the character after point to the search string. An alternative
method to add the character after point is to enter the minibuffer with M-e (see Section 12.1.2
[Repeat Isearch], page 105) and type C-f or RIGHT at the end of the search string in the
minibuffer. Each C-f or RIGHT you type adds another character following point to the search
string.
Normally, when the search is case-insensitive, text yanked into the search string is
converted to lower case, so that the search remains case-insensitive (see Section 12.9 [Lax
Search], page 119). However, if the value of the variable search-upper-case (see Section 12.9
[Lax Search], page 119) is other than not-yanks, that disables this down-casing.
To begin a new incremental search with the text near point yanked into the initial search
string, type M-s M-. that runs the command isearch-forward-thing-at-point. If the
region was active, then it yanks the text from the region into the search string. Otherwise,
it tries to yank a URL, a symbol or an expression found near point. What to yank is defined
by the user option isearch-forward-thing-at-point.

12.1.4 Errors in Incremental Search

If your string is not found at all, the echo area says ‘Failing I-Search’, and the cursor
moves past the place where Emacs found as much of your string as it could. Thus, if you
search for ‘FOOT’, and there is no ‘FOOT’, you might see the cursor after the ‘FOO’ in ‘FOOL’.
In the echo area, the part of the search string that failed to match is highlighted using the
face isearch-fail.
At this point, there are several things you can do. If your string was mistyped, use DEL
to cancel a previous input item (see Section 12.1.1 [Basic Isearch], page 104), C-M-d to erase
one character at a time, or M-e to edit it. If you like the place you have found, you can
type RET to remain there. Or you can type C-g, which removes from the search string the
characters that could not be found (the ‘T’ in ‘FOOT’), leaving those that were found (the
‘FOO’ in ‘FOOT’). A second C-g at that point cancels the search entirely, returning point to
where it was when the search started.
The quit command, C-g, does special things during searches; just what it does depends on
the status of the search. If the search has found what you specified and is waiting for input,
C-g cancels the entire search, moving the cursor back to where you started the search. If C-g
is typed when there are characters in the search string that have not been found—because
Emacs is still searching for them, or because it has failed to find them—then the search
string characters which have not been found are discarded from the search string. With
them gone, the search is now successful and waiting for more input, so a second C-g will
cancel the entire search.
108 GNU Emacs Manual

12.1.5 Special Input for Incremental Search

In addition to characters described in the previous subsections, some of the other characters
you type during incremental search have special effects. They are described here.
To toggle lax space matching (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119), type M-s SPC.
To toggle case sensitivity of the search, type M-c or M-s c. See Section 12.9 [Lax Search],
page 119. If the search string includes upper-case letters, the search is case-sensitive by
default.
To toggle whether or not the search will consider similar and equivalent characters as a
match, type M-s '. See Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119. If the search string includes
accented characters, that disables character folding during that search.
To toggle whether or not invisible text is searched, type M-s i (isearch-toggle-
invisible). See [Outline Search], page 265.
To toggle between non-regexp and regexp incremental search, type M-r or M-s r
(isearch-toggle-regexp). See Section 12.5 [Regexp Search], page 113.
To toggle symbol mode, type M-s _. See Section 12.4 [Symbol Search], page 112.
To search for a newline character, type C-j as part of the search string.
To search for non-ASCII characters, use one of the following methods during incremental
search:
• Type C-q (isearch-quote-char), followed by a non-graphic character or a sequence
of octal digits. This adds a character to the search string, similar to inserting into
a buffer using C-q (see Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16). For example, C-q C-s
during incremental search adds the ‘control-S’ character to the search string.
• Use an input method (see Section 19.3 [Input Methods], page 220). If an input method is
enabled in the current buffer when you start the search, the same method will be active in
the minibuffer when you type the search string. While typing the search string, you can
toggle the input method with C-\ (isearch-toggle-input-method). You can also turn
on a non-default input method with C-^ (isearch-toggle-specified-input-method),
which prompts for the name of the input method. When an input method is active
during incremental search, the search prompt includes the input method mnemonic,
like this:
I-search [im]:
where im is the mnemonic of the active input method. Any input method you enable
during incremental search remains enabled in the current buffer afterwards. Finally,
you can temporarily enable a transient input method (see [transient input method],
page 223) with C-x \ (isearch-transient-input-method) to insert a single character
to the search string using an input method, and automatically disable the input method
afterwards.
• Type C-x 8 RET (isearch-char-by-name), followed by a Unicode name or code-point
in hex. This adds the specified character into the search string, similar to the usual
insert-char command (see Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16).
You can also include Emoji sequences in the search string. Type C-x 8 e RET
(isearch-emoji-by-name), followed by the Unicode name of an Emoji (for example,
smiling face or heart with arrow). This adds the specified Emoji to the search string.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 109

If you don’t know the name of the Emoji you want to search for, you can use C-x 8
e l (emoji-list) and C-x 8 e d (emoji-describe) (see Section 19.3 [Input Methods],
page 220).
Typing M-s o in incremental search invokes isearch-occur, which runs occur with the
current search string. See Section 12.11 [Other Repeating Search], page 126.
Typing M-% (isearch-query-replace) in incremental search invokes query-replace
or query-replace-regexp (depending on search mode) with the current search string
used as the string to replace. A negative prefix argument means to replace backward.
See Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace], page 124. Typing C-M-% (isearch-query-replace-
regexp) invokes query-replace-regexp with the current search string used as the regexp
to replace.
Typing M-TAB in incremental search invokes isearch-complete, which attempts to
complete the search string using the search ring (the previous search strings you used) as a
list of completion alternatives. See Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30. In many operating
systems, the M-TAB key sequence is captured by the window manager; you then need to
rebind isearch-complete to another key sequence if you want to use it (see Section 33.3.5
[Rebinding], page 515).
You can exit the search while leaving the matches highlighted by typing M-s h r
(isearch-highlight-regexp). This runs highlight-regexp (see Section 11.14 [Highlight
Interactively], page 90), passing it the regexp derived from the search string and prompting
you for the face to use for highlighting. To highlight whole lines containing matches (rather
than just the matches), type M-s h l (isearch-highlight-lines-matching-regexp). In
either case, to remove the highlighting, type M-s h u (unhighlight-regexp).
When incremental search is active, you can type C-h C-h (isearch-help-map) to access
interactive help options, including a list of special key bindings. These key bindings are part
of the keymap isearch-mode-map (see Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513).
When incremental search is active, typing M-s M-> will go to the last occurrence of the
search string, and M-s M-< will go to the first occurrence. With a prefix numeric argument
of n, these commands will go to the nth occurrence of the search string counting from the
beginning or end of the buffer, respectively.

12.1.6 Not Exiting Incremental Search

This subsection describes how to control whether typing a command not specifically mean-
ingful in searches exits the search before executing the command. It also describes three
categories of commands which you can type without exiting the current incremental search,
even though they are not themselves part of incremental search.
Normally, typing a command that is not bound by the incremental search exits the search
before executing the command. Thus, the command operates on the buffer from which you
invoked the search. However, if you customize the variable search-exit-option to append,
the characters which you type that are not interpreted by the incremental search are simply
appended to the search string. This is so you could include in the search string control
characters, such as C-a, that would normally exit the search and invoke the command bound
to them on the buffer.
110 GNU Emacs Manual

Prefix Arguments
In incremental search, when you type a command that specifies a prefix argument
(see Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24), by default it will apply either to the
next action in the search or to the command that exits the search. In other
words, entering a prefix argument will not by itself terminate the search.
In previous versions of Emacs, entering a prefix argument always terminated the
search. You can revert to this behavior by setting the variable isearch-allow-
prefix to nil.
When isearch-allow-scroll is non-nil (see below), prefix arguments always
have the default behavior described above, i.e., they don’t terminate the search,
even if isearch-allow-prefix is nil.

Scrolling Commands
Normally, scrolling commands exit incremental search. But if you change the
variable isearch-allow-scroll to a non-nil value, that enables the use of
the scroll-bar, as well as keyboard scrolling commands like C-v, M-v, and C-l
(see Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 76), which have a non-nil scroll-command
property, without exiting the search. This applies only to calling these commands
via their bound key sequences—typing M-x will still exit the search. You can give
prefix arguments to these commands in the usual way. This feature normally
won’t let you scroll the current match out of visibility; but if you customize
isearch-allow-scroll to the special value unlimited, that restriction is lifted.
The isearch-allow-scroll feature also affects some other commands, such
as C-x 2 (split-window-below) and C-x ^ (enlarge-window), which don’t
exactly scroll but do affect where the text appears on the screen. In fact, it
affects any command that has a non-nil isearch-scroll property. So you can
control which commands are affected by changing these properties.
For example, to make C-h l usable within an incremental search in all future
Emacs sessions, use C-h c to find what command it runs (see Section 7.1 [Key
Help], page 44), which is view-lossage. Then you can put the following line in
your init file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522):
(put 'view-lossage 'isearch-scroll t)
This feature can be applied to any command that doesn’t permanently change
point, the buffer contents, the match data, the current buffer, or the selected
window and frame. The command must not itself attempt an incremental search.
This feature is disabled if isearch-allow-scroll is nil (which it is by default).
Likewise, if you change the variable isearch-allow-motion to a non-nil value,
this enables the use of the keyboard motion commands M-<, M->, C-v and M-v,
to move respectively to the first occurrence of the current search string in the
buffer, the last one, the first one after the current window, and the last one
before the current window. The search direction does not change when these
motion commands are used, unless you change the variable isearch-motion-
changes-direction to a non-nil value, in which case the search direction is
forward after M-< and C-v, and backward after M-> and M-v.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 111

Motion Commands
When isearch-yank-on-move is customized to shift, you can extend the search
string by holding down the shift key while typing cursor motion commands. It
will yank text that ends at the new position after moving point in the current
buffer.
When isearch-yank-on-move is t, you can extend the search string without
using the shift key for cursor motion commands, but it applies only for certain
motion command that have the isearch-move property on their symbols.

12.1.7 Searching the Minibuffer

If you start an incremental search while the minibuffer is active, Emacs searches the contents
of the minibuffer. Unlike searching an ordinary buffer, the search string is not shown in the
echo area, because that is used to display the minibuffer.
If an incremental search fails in the minibuffer, it tries searching the minibuffer history.
See Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35. You can visualize the minibuffer and its
history as a series of pages, with the earliest history element on the first page and the current
minibuffer on the last page. A forward search, C-s, searches forward to later pages; a reverse
search, C-r, searches backwards to earlier pages. Like in ordinary buffer search, a failing
search can wrap around, going from the last page to the first page or vice versa.
When the current match is on a history element, that history element is pulled into the
minibuffer. If you exit the incremental search normally (e.g., by typing RET), it remains
in the minibuffer afterwards. Canceling the search, with C-g, restores the contents of the
minibuffer when you began the search.

12.2 Nonincremental Search

Emacs also has conventional nonincremental search commands, which require you to type
the entire search string before searching begins.
C-s RET string RET
Search for string.
C-r RET string RET
Search backward for string.
To start a nonincremental search, first type C-s RET. This enters the minibuffer to read
the search string; terminate the string with RET, and then the search takes place. If the
string is not found, the search command signals an error.
When you type C-s RET, the C-s invokes incremental search as usual. That command
is specially programmed to invoke the command for nonincremental search, if the string
you specify is empty. (Such an empty argument would otherwise be useless.) C-r RET does
likewise, invoking the nonincremental backward-searching command.
Nonincremental search can also be invoked from the menu bar’s ‘Edit->Search’ menu.
You can also use two simpler commands, M-x search-forward and M-x
search-backward. These commands look for the literal strings you specify, and don’t
support any of the lax-search features (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119) except case
folding.
112 GNU Emacs Manual

12.3 Word Search

A word search finds a sequence of words without regard to the type of punctuation between
them. For instance, if you enter a search string that consists of two words separated by a
single space, the search matches any sequence of those two words separated by one or more
spaces, newlines, or other punctuation characters. This is particularly useful for searching
text documents, because you don’t have to worry whether the words you are looking for
are separated by newlines or spaces. Note that major modes for programming languages or
other specialized modes can modify the definition of a word to suit their syntactic needs.
M-s w If incremental search is active, toggle word search mode (isearch-toggle-word);
otherwise, begin an incremental forward word search (isearch-forward-word).
M-s w RET words RET
Search for words, using a forward nonincremental word search.
M-s w C-r RET words RET
Search backward for words, using a nonincremental word search.
M-s M-w Search the Web for the text in region.
To begin a forward incremental word search, type M-s w. If incremental search is not al-
ready active, this runs the command isearch-forward-word. If incremental search is already
active (whether a forward or backward search), M-s w runs the command isearch-toggle-
word, which switches to a word search while keeping the direction of the search and the
current search string unchanged. You can toggle word search back off by typing M-s w again.
To begin a nonincremental word search, type M-s w RET for a forward search, or M-s
w C-r RET for a backward search. These run the commands word-search-forward and
word-search-backward respectively.
Incremental and nonincremental word searches differ slightly in the way they find a
match. In a nonincremental word search, each word in the search string must exactly match
a whole word. In an incremental word search, the matching is more lax: while you are
typing the search string, its first and last words need not match whole words. This is so
that the matching can proceed incrementally as you type. This additional laxity does not
apply to the lazy highlight (see Section 12.1 [Incremental Search], page 104), which always
matches whole words. While you are typing the search string, ‘Pending’ appears in the
search prompt until you use a search repeating key like C-s.
The word search commands don’t perform character folding, and toggling lax whitespace
matching (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119) has no effect on them.
To search the Web for the text in region, type M-s M-w. This command performs an
Internet search for the words in region using the search engine whose URL is specified by the
variable eww-search-prefix (see Section “Basics” in The Emacs Web Wowser Manual). If
the region is not active, or doesn’t contain any words, this command prompts the user for a
URL or keywords to search.

12.4 Symbol Search

A symbol search is much like an ordinary search, except that the boundaries of the search
must match the boundaries of a symbol. The meaning of symbol in this context depends
on the major mode, and usually refers to a source code token, such as a Lisp symbol in
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 113

Emacs Lisp mode. For instance, if you perform an incremental symbol search for the Lisp
symbol forward-word, it would not match isearch-forward-word. This feature is thus
mainly useful for searching source code.
M-s _ If incremental search is active, toggle symbol search mode (isearch-toggle-
symbol); otherwise, begin an incremental forward symbol search
(isearch-forward-symbol).
M-s . Start a symbol incremental search forward with the symbol found near point
added to the search string initially.
M-s _ RET symbol RET
Search forward for symbol, nonincrementally.
M-s _ C-r RET symbol RET
Search backward for symbol, nonincrementally.
To begin a forward incremental symbol search, type M-s _ (or M-s . if the symbol to
search is near point). If incremental search is not already active, M-s _ runs the command
isearch-forward-symbol and M-s . runs the command isearch-forward-symbol-at-
point. With a numeric prefix argument of n, M-s . will search for the nthe next occurrence
of the symbol at point; negative values of n search backwards. If incremental search is
already active, M-s _ switches to a symbol search, preserving the direction of the search
and the current search string; you can disable symbol search by typing M-s _ again. In
incremental symbol search, while you are typing the search string, only the beginning of the
search string is required to match the beginning of a symbol, and ‘Pending’ appears in the
search prompt until you use a search repeating key like C-s.
To begin a nonincremental symbol search, type M-s _ RET for a forward search, or M-s _
C-r RET or a backward search. In nonincremental symbol searches, the beginning and end
of the search string are required to match the beginning and end of a symbol, respectively.
The symbol search commands don’t perform character folding, and toggling lax whitespace
matching (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119) has no effect on them.

12.5 Regular Expression Search

A regular expression (or regexp for short) is a pattern that denotes a class of alternative
strings to match. Emacs provides both incremental and nonincremental ways to search for a
match for a regexp. The syntax of regular expressions is explained in the next section.
C-M-s Begin incremental regexp search (isearch-forward-regexp).
C-M-r Begin reverse incremental regexp search (isearch-backward-regexp).
Incremental search for a regexp is done by typing C-M-s (isearch-forward-regexp),
by invoking C-s with a prefix argument (whose value does not matter), or by typing M-r
within a forward incremental search. This command reads a search string incrementally just
like C-s, but it treats the search string as a regexp rather than looking for an exact match
against the text in the buffer. Each time you add text to the search string, you make the
regexp longer, and the new regexp is searched for. To search backward for a regexp, use
C-M-r (isearch-backward-regexp), C-r with a prefix argument, or M-r within a backward
incremental search.
114 GNU Emacs Manual

All of the special key sequences in an ordinary incremental search (see Section 12.1.5
[Special Isearch], page 108) do similar things in an incremental regexp search. For instance,
typing C-s immediately after starting the search retrieves the last incremental search
regexp used and searches forward for it. Incremental regexp and non-regexp searches have
independent defaults. They also have separate search rings, which you can access with M-p
and M-n. The maximum number of search regexps saved in the search ring is determined by
the value of regexp-search-ring-max, 16 by default.
Unlike ordinary incremental search, incremental regexp search does not use lax space
matching by default. To toggle this feature use M-s SPC (isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace).
Then any SPC typed in incremental regexp search will match any sequence of one or more
whitespace characters. The variable search-whitespace-regexp specifies the regexp for
the lax space matching. See Section 12.1.5 [Special Isearch], page 108.
Also unlike ordinary incremental search, incremental regexp search cannot use character
folding (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119). (If you toggle character folding during
incremental regexp search with M-s ', the search becomes a non-regexp search and the
search pattern you typed is interpreted as a literal string.)
In some cases, adding characters to the regexp in an incremental regexp search can make
the cursor move back and start again. For example, if you have searched for ‘foo’ and you
add ‘\|bar’, the cursor backs up in case the first ‘bar’ precedes the first ‘foo’. (The prompt
will change to say “Pending” to notify the user that this recalculation has happened.) See
Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114.
Forward and backward regexp search are not symmetrical, because regexp matching in
Emacs always operates forward, starting with the beginning of the regexp. Thus, forward
regexp search scans forward, trying a forward match at each possible starting position.
Backward regexp search scans backward, trying a forward match at each possible starting
position. These search methods are not mirror images.
Nonincremental search for a regexp is done with the commands re-search-forward
and re-search-backward. You can invoke these with M-x, or by way of incremental regexp
search with C-M-s RET and C-M-r RET. When you invoke these commands with M-x, they
search for the exact regexp you specify, and thus don’t support any lax-search features (see
Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119) except case folding.
If you use the incremental regexp search commands with a prefix argument, they perform
ordinary string search, like isearch-forward and isearch-backward. See Section 12.1
[Incremental Search], page 104.

12.6 Syntax of Regular Expressions

This section (and this manual in general) describes regular expression features that users
typically use. See Section “Regular Expressions” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for
additional features used mainly in Lisp programs.
Regular expressions have a syntax in which a few characters are special constructs and
the rest are ordinary. An ordinary character matches that same character and nothing else.
The special characters are ‘$^.*+?[\’. The character ‘]’ is special if it ends a character
alternative (see below). The character ‘-’ is special inside a character alternative. Any other
character appearing in a regular expression is ordinary, unless a ‘\’ precedes it. (When you
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 115

use regular expressions in a Lisp program, each ‘\’ must be doubled, see the example near
the end of this section.)
For example, ‘f’ is not a special character, so it is ordinary, and therefore ‘f’ is a regular
expression that matches the string ‘f’ and no other string. (It does not match the string
‘ff’.) Likewise, ‘o’ is a regular expression that matches only ‘o’. (When case distinctions are
being ignored, these regexps also match ‘F’ and ‘O’, but we consider this a generalization of
“the same string”, rather than an exception.)
Any two regular expressions a and b can be concatenated. The result is a regular
expression which matches a string if a matches some amount of the beginning of that
string and b matches the rest of the string. As a trivial example, concatenating the regular
expressions ‘f’ and ‘o’ gives the regular expression ‘fo’, which matches only the string ‘fo’.
To do something less trivial, you need to use one of the special characters. Here is a list of
them.
. (Period) is a special character that matches any single character except a newline. For
example, the regular expressions ‘a.b’ matches any three-character string that
begins with ‘a’ and ends with ‘b’.
* is not a construct by itself; it is a postfix operator that means to match the
preceding regular expression repetitively any number of times, as many times as
possible. Thus, ‘o*’ matches any number of ‘o’s, including no ‘o’s.
‘*’ always applies to the smallest possible preceding expression. Thus, ‘fo*’ has
a repeating ‘o’, not a repeating ‘fo’. It matches ‘f’, ‘fo’, ‘foo’, and so on.
The matcher processes a ‘*’ construct by matching, immediately, as many
repetitions as can be found. Then it continues with the rest of the pattern. If
that fails, backtracking occurs, discarding some of the matches of the ‘*’-modified
construct in case that makes it possible to match the rest of the pattern. For
example, in matching ‘ca*ar’ against the string ‘caaar’, the ‘a*’ first tries to
match all three ‘a’s; but the rest of the pattern is ‘ar’ and there is only ‘r’ left
to match, so this try fails. The next alternative is for ‘a*’ to match only two
‘a’s. With this choice, the rest of the regexp matches successfully.
+ is a postfix operator, similar to ‘*’ except that it must match the preceding
expression at least once. Thus, ‘ca+r’ matches the strings ‘car’ and ‘caaaar’
but not the string ‘cr’, whereas ‘ca*r’ matches all three strings.
? is a postfix operator, similar to ‘*’ except that it can match the preceding
expression either once or not at all. Thus, ‘ca?r’ matches ‘car’ or ‘cr’, and
nothing else.
*?, +?, ?? are non-greedy variants of the operators above. The normal operators ‘*’, ‘+’,
‘?’ match as much as they can, as long as the overall regexp can still match.
With a following ‘?’, they will match as little as possible.
Thus, both ‘ab*’ and ‘ab*?’ can match the string ‘a’ and the string ‘abbbb’; but
if you try to match them both against the text ‘abbb’, ‘ab*’ will match it all
(the longest valid match), while ‘ab*?’ will match just ‘a’ (the shortest valid
match).
Non-greedy operators match the shortest possible string starting at a given
starting point; in a forward search, though, the earliest possible starting point
116 GNU Emacs Manual

for match is always the one chosen. Thus, if you search for ‘a.*?$’ against the
text ‘abbab’ followed by a newline, it matches the whole string. Since it can
match starting at the first ‘a’, it does.
[ ... ] is a set of alternative characters, or a character set, beginning with ‘[’ and
terminated by ‘]’.
In the simplest case, the characters between the two brackets are what this set
can match. Thus, ‘[ad]’ matches either one ‘a’ or one ‘d’, and ‘[ad]*’ matches
any string composed of just ‘a’s and ‘d’s (including the empty string). It follows
that ‘c[ad]*r’ matches ‘cr’, ‘car’, ‘cdr’, ‘caddaar’, etc.
You can also include character ranges in a character set, by writing the starting
and ending characters with a ‘-’ between them. Thus, ‘[a-z]’ matches any lower-
case ASCII letter. Ranges may be intermixed freely with individual characters,
as in ‘[a-z$%.]’, which matches any lower-case ASCII letter or ‘$’, ‘%’ or period.
As another example, ‘[α-ωί]’ matches all lower-case Greek letters.
You can also include certain special character classes in a character set. A ‘[:’
and balancing ‘:]’ enclose a character class inside a set of alternative characters.
For instance, ‘[[:alnum:]]’ matches any letter or digit. See Section “Char
Classes” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for a list of character classes.
To include a ‘]’ in a character set, you must make it the first character. For
example, ‘[]a]’ matches ‘]’ or ‘a’. To include a ‘-’, write ‘-’ as the last character
of the set, tho you can also put it first or after a range. Thus, ‘[]-]’ matches
both ‘]’ and ‘-’.
To include ‘^’ in a set, put it anywhere but at the beginning of the set. (At the
beginning, it complements the set—see below.)
When you use a range in case-insensitive search, you should write both ends of
the range in upper case, or both in lower case, or both should be non-letters.
The behavior of a mixed-case range such as ‘A-z’ is somewhat ill-defined, and it
may change in future Emacs versions.
[^ ... ] ‘[^’ begins a complemented character set, which matches any character except
the ones specified. Thus, ‘[^a-z0-9A-Z]’ matches all characters except ASCII
letters and digits.
‘^’ is not special in a character set unless it is the first character. The character
following the ‘^’ is treated as if it were first (in other words, ‘-’ and ‘]’ are not
special there).
A complemented character set can match a newline, unless newline is mentioned
as one of the characters not to match. This is in contrast to the handling of
regexps in programs such as grep.
^ is a special character that matches the empty string, but only at the beginning
of a line in the text being matched. Otherwise it fails to match anything. Thus,
‘^foo’ matches a ‘foo’ that occurs at the beginning of a line.
For historical compatibility reasons, ‘^’ can be used with this meaning only at
the beginning of the regular expression, or after ‘\(’ or ‘\|’.
$ is similar to ‘^’ but matches only at the end of a line. Thus, ‘x+$’ matches a
string of one ‘x’ or more at the end of a line.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 117

For historical compatibility reasons, ‘$’ can be used with this meaning only at
the end of the regular expression, or before ‘\)’ or ‘\|’.
\ has two functions: it quotes the special characters (including ‘\’), and it intro-
duces additional special constructs.
Because ‘\’ quotes special characters, ‘\$’ is a regular expression that matches
only ‘$’, and ‘\[’ is a regular expression that matches only ‘[’, and so on.
See the following section for the special constructs that begin with ‘\’.
Note: for historical compatibility, special characters are treated as ordinary ones if they
are in contexts where their special meanings make no sense. For example, ‘*foo’ treats ‘*’ as
ordinary since there is no preceding expression on which the ‘*’ can act. It is poor practice
to depend on this behavior; it is better to quote the special character anyway, regardless of
where it appears.
As a ‘\’ is not special inside a set of alternative characters, it can never remove the
special meaning of ‘-’, ‘^’ or ‘]’. You should not quote these characters when they have no
special meaning. This would not clarify anything, since backslashes can legitimately precede
these characters where they have special meaning, as in ‘[^\]’ ("[^\\]" for Lisp string
syntax), which matches any single character except a backslash.

12.7 Backslash in Regular Expressions

For the most part, ‘\’ followed by any character matches only that character. However,
there are several exceptions: two-character sequences starting with ‘\’ that have special
meanings. The second character in the sequence is always an ordinary character when used
on its own. Here is a table of ‘\’ constructs.
\| specifies an alternative. Two regular expressions a and b with ‘\|’ in between
form an expression that matches some text if either a matches it or b matches
it. It works by trying to match a, and if that fails, by trying to match b.
Thus, ‘foo\|bar’ matches either ‘foo’ or ‘bar’ but no other string.
‘\|’ applies to the largest possible surrounding expressions. Only a surrounding
‘\( ... \)’ grouping can limit the grouping power of ‘\|’.
Full backtracking capability exists to handle multiple uses of ‘\|’.
\( ... \) is a grouping construct that serves three purposes:
1. To enclose a set of ‘\|’ alternatives for other operations. Thus,
‘\(foo\|bar\)x’ matches either ‘foox’ or ‘barx’.
2. To enclose a complicated expression for the postfix operators ‘*’, ‘+’ and ‘?’
to operate on. Thus, ‘ba\(na\)*’ matches ‘bananana’, etc., with any (zero
or more) number of ‘na’ strings.
3. To record a matched substring for future reference.
This last application is not a consequence of the idea of a parenthetical grouping;
it is a separate feature that is assigned as a second meaning to the same
‘\( ... \)’ construct. In practice there is usually no conflict between the two
meanings; when there is a conflict, you can use a shy group, described below.
118 GNU Emacs Manual

\(?: ... \)
specifies a shy group that does not record the matched substring; you can’t
refer back to it with ‘\d’ (see below). This is useful in mechanically combining
regular expressions, so that you can add groups for syntactic purposes without
interfering with the numbering of the groups that are meant to be referred to.
\d matches the same text that matched the dth occurrence of a ‘\( ... \)’ con-
struct. This is called a back reference.
After the end of a ‘\( ... \)’ construct, the matcher remembers the beginning
and end of the text matched by that construct. Then, later on in the regular
expression, you can use ‘\’ followed by the digit d to mean “match the same
text matched the dth ‘\( ... \)’ construct”.
The strings matching the first nine ‘\( ... \)’ constructs appearing in a reg-
ular expression are assigned numbers 1 through 9 in the order that the open-
parentheses appear in the regular expression. So you can use ‘\1’ through ‘\9’
to refer to the text matched by the corresponding ‘\( ... \)’ constructs.
For example, ‘\(.*\)\1’ matches any newline-free string that is composed of
two identical halves. The ‘\(.*\)’ matches the first half, which may be anything,
but the ‘\1’ that follows must match the same exact text.
If a particular ‘\( ... \)’ construct matches more than once (which can easily
happen if it is followed by ‘*’), only the last match is recorded.
\{m\} is a postfix operator specifying m repetitions—that is, the preceding regular
expression must match exactly m times in a row. For example, ‘x\{4\}’ matches
the string ‘xxxx’ and nothing else.
\{m,n\} is a postfix operator specifying between m and n repetitions—that is, the
preceding regular expression must match at least m times, but no more than n
times. If n is omitted, then there is no upper limit, but the preceding regular
expression must match at least m times.
‘\{0,1\}’ is equivalent to ‘?’.
‘\{0,\}’ is equivalent to ‘*’.
‘\{1,\}’ is equivalent to ‘+’.
\` matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of the string or buffer (or
its accessible portion) being matched against.
\' matches the empty string, but only at the end of the string or buffer (or its
accessible portion) being matched against.
\= matches the empty string, but only at point.
\b matches the empty string, but only at the beginning or end of a word. Thus,
‘\bfoo\b’ matches any occurrence of ‘foo’ as a separate word. ‘\bballs?\b’
matches ‘ball’ or ‘balls’ as a separate word.
‘\b’ matches at the beginning or end of the buffer regardless of what text appears
next to it.
\B matches the empty string, but not at the beginning or end of a word.
\< matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a word. ‘\<’ matches at
the beginning of the buffer only if a word-constituent character follows.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 119

\> matches the empty string, but only at the end of a word. ‘\>’ matches at the
end of the buffer only if the contents end with a word-constituent character.
\w matches any word-constituent character. The syntax table determines which
characters these are. See Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.
\W matches any character that is not a word-constituent.
\_< matches the empty string, but only at the beginning of a symbol. A symbol is a
sequence of one or more symbol-constituent characters. A symbol-constituent
character is a character whose syntax is either ‘w’ or ‘_’. ‘\_<’ matches at the
beginning of the buffer only if a symbol-constituent character follows. As with
words, the syntax table determines which characters are symbol-constituent.
\_> matches the empty string, but only at the end of a symbol. ‘\_>’ matches at the
end of the buffer only if the contents end with a symbol-constituent character.
\sc matches any character whose syntax is c. Here c is a character that designates a
particular syntax class: thus, ‘w’ for word constituent, ‘-’ or ‘ ’ for whitespace, ‘.’
for ordinary punctuation, etc. See Section “Syntax Class Table” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual.
\Sc matches any character whose syntax is not c.
\cc matches any character that belongs to the category c. For example, ‘\cc’ matches
Chinese characters, ‘\cg’ matches Greek characters, etc. For the description of
the known categories, type M-x describe-categories RET.
\Cc matches any character that does not belong to category c.
The constructs that pertain to words and syntax are controlled by the setting of the
syntax table. See Section “Syntax Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

12.8 Regular Expression Example

Here is an example of a regexp—similar to the regexp that Emacs uses, by default, to recognize
the end of a sentence, not including the following space (i.e., the variable sentence-end-
base):
[.?!][]\"')}]*
This contains two parts in succession: a character set matching period, ‘?’, or ‘!’, and a
character set matching close-brackets, quotes, or parentheses, repeated zero or more times.

12.9 Lax Matching During Searching

Normally, you’d want search commands to disregard certain minor differences between the
search string you type and the text being searched. For example, sequences of whitespace
characters of different length are usually perceived as equivalent; letter-case differences
usually don’t matter; etc. This is known as character equivalence.
This section describes the Emacs lax search features, and how to tailor them to your
needs.
120 GNU Emacs Manual

By default, search commands perform lax space matching: each space, or sequence
of spaces, matches any sequence of one or more whitespace characters in the text. More
precisely, Emacs matches each sequence of space characters in the search string to a regular
expression specified by the user option search-whitespace-regexp. The default value
of this option considers any sequence of spaces and tab characters as whitespace. Hence,
‘foo bar’ matches ‘foo bar’, ‘foo bar’, ‘foo bar’, and so on (but not ‘foobar’). If you
want to make spaces match sequences of newlines as well as spaces and tabs, customize the
option to make its value be the regular expression ‘[ \t\n]+’. (The default behavior of the
incremental regexp search is different; see Section 12.5 [Regexp Search], page 113.)
If you want whitespace characters to match exactly, you can turn lax space matching
off by typing M-s SPC (isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace) within an incremental search.
Another M-s SPC turns lax space matching back on. To disable lax whitespace matching
for all searches, change search-whitespace-regexp to nil; then each space in the search
string matches exactly one space.
Searches in Emacs by default ignore the case of the text they are searching through, if
you specify the search string in lower case. Thus, if you specify searching for ‘foo’, then
‘Foo’ and ‘fOO’ also match. Regexps, and in particular character sets, behave likewise: ‘[ab]’
matches ‘a’ or ‘A’ or ‘b’ or ‘B’. This feature is known as case folding, and it is supported in
both incremental and non-incremental search modes.
An upper-case letter anywhere in the search string makes the search case-sensitive. Thus,
searching for ‘Foo’ does not find ‘foo’ or ‘FOO’. This applies to regular expression search as
well as to literal string search. The effect ceases if you delete the upper-case letter from the
search string. The variable search-upper-case controls this: if it is non-nil, an upper-case
character in the search string makes the search case-sensitive; setting it to nil disables this
effect of upper-case characters. The default value of this variable is not-yanks, which makes
search case-sensitive if there are upper-case letters in the search string, and also causes text
yanked into the search string (see Section 12.1.3 [Isearch Yank], page 106) to be down-cased,
so that such searches are case-insensitive by default.
If you set the variable case-fold-search to nil, then all letters must match exactly,
including case. This is a per-buffer variable; altering the variable normally affects only the
current buffer, unless you change its default value. See Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 505. This
variable applies to nonincremental searches also, including those performed by the replace
commands (see Section 12.10 [Replace], page 121) and the minibuffer history matching
commands (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35).
Typing M-c or M-s c (isearch-toggle-case-fold) within an incremental search toggles
the case sensitivity of that search. The effect does not extend beyond the current incremental
search, but it does override the effect of adding or removing an upper-case letter in the
current search.
Several related variables control case-sensitivity of searching and matching for specific
commands or activities. For instance, tags-case-fold-search controls case sensitivity for
find-tag. To find these variables, do M-x apropos-variable RET case-fold-search RET.
Case folding disregards case distinctions among characters, making upper-case characters
match lower-case variants, and vice versa. A generalization of case folding is character
folding, which disregards wider classes of distinctions among similar characters. For instance,
under character folding the letter a matches all of its accented cousins like ä and á, i.e.,
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 121

the match disregards the diacritics that distinguish these variants. In addition, a matches
other characters that resemble it, or have it as part of their graphical representation, such
as U+00AA feminine ordinal indicator and U+24D0 circled latin small letter a
(which looks like a small a inside a circle). Similarly, the ASCII double-quote character "
matches all the other variants of double quotes defined by the Unicode standard. Finally,
character folding can make a sequence of one or more characters match another sequence of
a different length: for example, the sequence of two characters ff matches U+FB00 latin
small ligature ff and the sequence (a) matches U+249C parenthesized latin small
letter a. Character sequences that are not identical, but match under character folding
are known as equivalent character sequences.
Generally, search commands in Emacs do not by default perform character folding in
order to match equivalent character sequences. You can enable this behavior by customizing
the variable search-default-mode to char-fold-to-regexp. See Section 12.12 [Search
Customizations], page 128. Within an incremental search, typing M-s ' (isearch-toggle-
char-fold) toggles character folding, but only for that search. (Replace commands have a
different default, controlled by a separate option; see Section 12.10.3 [Replacement and Lax
Matches], page 123.)
By default, typing an explicit variant of a character, such as ä, as part of the search string
doesn’t match its base character, such as a. But if you customize the variable char-fold-
symmetric to t, then search commands treat equivalent characters the same and use of
any of a set of equivalent characters in a search string finds any of them in the text being
searched, so typing an accented character ä matches the letter a as well as all the other
variants like á.
You can add new foldings using the customizable variable char-fold-include, or re-
move the existing ones using the customizable variable char-fold-exclude. You can also
customize char-fold-override to t to disable all the character equivalences except those
you add yourself using char-fold-include.

12.10 Replacement Commands

Emacs provides several commands for performing search-and-replace operations. In addition
to the simple M-x replace-string command, there is M-% (query-replace), which presents
each occurrence of the search pattern and asks you whether to replace it.
The replace commands normally operate on the text from point to the end of the buffer.
When the region is active, they operate on it instead (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51).
The basic replace commands replace one search string (or regexp) with one replacement
string. It is possible to perform several replacements in parallel, using the command
expand-region-abbrevs (see Section 26.3 [Expanding Abbrevs], page 372).

12.10.1 Unconditional Replacement

M-x replace-string RET string RET newstring RET
Replace every occurrence of string with newstring.
To replace every instance of ‘foo’ after point with ‘bar’, use the command M-x
replace-string with the two arguments ‘foo’ and ‘bar’. Replacement happens only in the
text after point, so if you want to cover the whole buffer you must go to the beginning first.
122 GNU Emacs Manual

All occurrences up to the end of the buffer are replaced; to limit replacement to part of the
buffer, activate the region around that part. When the region is active, replacement is
limited to the region (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51).
When replace-string exits, it leaves point at the last occurrence replaced. It adds
the prior position of point (where the replace-string command was issued) to the mark
ring, without activating the mark; use C-u C-SPC to move back there. See Section 8.4 [Mark
Ring], page 55.
A prefix argument restricts replacement to matches that are surrounded by word bound-
aries.
See Section 12.10.3 [Replacement and Lax Matches], page 123, for details about case-
sensitivity and character folding in replace commands.

12.10.2 Regexp Replacement

The M-x replace-string command replaces exact matches for a single string. The similar
command M-x replace-regexp replaces any match for a specified regular expression pattern
(see Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114).
M-x replace-regexp RET regexp RET newstring RET
Replace every match for regexp with newstring.
In replace-regexp, the newstring need not be constant: it can refer to all or part of
what is matched by the regexp. ‘\&’ in newstring stands for the entire match being replaced.
‘\d’ in newstring, where d is a digit starting from 1, stands for whatever matched the dth
parenthesized grouping in regexp. (This is called a “back reference”.) ‘\#’ refers to the
count of replacements already made in this command, as a decimal number. In the first
replacement, ‘\#’ stands for ‘0’; in the second, for ‘1’; and so on. For example,
M-x replace-regexp RET c[ad]+r RET \&-safe RET
replaces (for example) ‘cadr’ with ‘cadr-safe’ and ‘cddr’ with ‘cddr-safe’.
M-x replace-regexp RET \(c[ad]+r\)-safe RET \1 RET
performs the inverse transformation. To include a ‘\’ in the text to replace with, you must
enter ‘\\’.
If you want to enter part of the replacement string by hand each time, use ‘\?’ in the
replacement string. Each replacement will ask you to edit the replacement string in the
minibuffer, putting point where the ‘\?’ was.
The remainder of this subsection is intended for specialized tasks and requires knowledge
of Lisp. Most readers can skip it.
You can use Lisp expressions to calculate parts of the replacement string. To do this,
write ‘\,’ followed by the expression in the replacement string. Each replacement calculates
the value of the expression and converts it to text without quoting (if it’s a string, this
means using the string’s contents), and uses it in the replacement string in place of the
expression itself. If the expression is a symbol, one space in the replacement string after the
symbol name goes with the symbol name, so the value replaces them both.
Inside such an expression, you can use some special sequences. ‘\&’ and ‘\d’ refer here,
as usual, to the entire match as a string, and to a submatch as a string. d may be multiple
digits, and the value of ‘\d’ is nil if the d’th parenthesized grouping did not match. You
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 123

can also use ‘\#&’ and ‘\#d’ to refer to those matches as numbers (this is valid when the
match or submatch has the form of a numeral). ‘\#’ here too stands for the number of
already-completed replacements.
For example, we can exchange ‘x’ and ‘y’ this way:
M-x replace-regexp RET \(x\)\|y RET
\,(if \1 "y" "x") RET
For computing replacement strings for ‘\,’, the format function is often useful (see
Section “Formatting Strings” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). For example, to add
consecutively numbered strings like ‘ABC00042’ to columns 73 to 80 (unless they are already
occupied), you can use
M-x replace-regexp RET ^.\{0,72\}$ RET
\,(format "%-72sABC%05d" \& \#) RET

12.10.3 Replace Commands and Lax Matches

This subsection describes the behavior of replace commands with respect to lax matches (see
Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119) and how to customize it. In general, replace commands
mostly default to stricter matching than their search counterparts.
Unlike incremental search, the replacement commands do not use lax space matching
(see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119) by default. To enable lax space matching for
replacement, change the variable replace-lax-whitespace to non-nil. (This only affects
how Emacs finds the text to replace, not the replacement text.)
A companion variable replace-regexp-lax-whitespace controls whether
query-replace-regexp uses lax whitespace matching when searching for patterns.
If the first argument of a replace command is all lower case, the command ignores case
while searching for occurrences to replace—provided case-fold-search is non-nil and
search-upper-case is also non-nil. If search-upper-case (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search],
page 119) is nil, whether searching ignores case is determined by case-fold-search alone,
regardless of letter-case of the command’s first argument. If case-fold-search is set to
nil, case is always significant in all searches.
In addition, when the second argument of a replace command is all or partly lower case,
replacement commands try to preserve the case pattern of each occurrence. Thus, the
command
M-x replace-string RET foo RET bar RET
replaces a lower case ‘foo’ with a lower case ‘bar’, an all-caps ‘FOO’ with ‘BAR’, and a
capitalized ‘Foo’ with ‘Bar’. (These three alternatives—lower case, all caps, and capitalized,
are the only ones that replace-string can distinguish.)
If upper-case letters are used in the replacement string, they remain upper case every
time that text is inserted. If upper-case letters are used in the first argument, the second
argument is always substituted exactly as given, with no case conversion. Likewise, if
either case-replace or case-fold-search is set to nil, replacement is done without case
conversion.
The replacement commands by default do not use character folding (see Section 12.9
[Lax Search], page 119) when looking for the text to replace. To enable character folding for
matching in query-replace and replace-string, set the variable replace-char-fold to
124 GNU Emacs Manual

a non-nil value. (This setting does not affect the replacement text, only how Emacs finds
the text to replace. It also doesn’t affect replace-regexp.)

12.10.4 Query Replace

M-% string RET newstring RET
Replace some occurrences of string with newstring.
C-M-% regexp RET newstring RET
Replace some matches for regexp with newstring.
If you want to change only some of the occurrences of ‘foo’ to ‘bar’, not all of them,
use M-% (query-replace). This command finds occurrences of ‘foo’ one by one, displays
each occurrence and asks you whether to replace it. Aside from querying, query-replace
works just like replace-string (see Section 12.10.1 [Unconditional Replace], page 121).
In particular, it preserves case provided case-replace is non-nil, as it normally is (see
Section 12.10.3 [Replacement and Lax Matches], page 123). A numeric argument means to
consider only occurrences that are bounded by word-delimiter characters. A negative prefix
argument replaces backward.
C-M-% performs regexp search and replace (query-replace-regexp). It works like
replace-regexp except that it queries like query-replace.
You can reuse earlier replacements with these commands. When query-replace or
query-replace-regexp prompts for the search string, use M-p and M-n to show previous
replacements in the form ‘from -> to’, where from is the search pattern, to is its replacement,
and the separator between them is determined by the value of the variable query-replace-
from-to-separator. Type RET to select the desired replacement. If the value of this variable
is nil, replacements are not added to the command history, and cannot be reused.
These commands highlight the current match using the face query-replace. You can dis-
able this highlight by setting the variable query-replace-highlight to nil. They highlight
other matches using lazy-highlight just like incremental search (see Section 12.1 [Incre-
mental Search], page 104); this can be disabled by setting query-replace-lazy-highlight
to nil. By default, query-replace-regexp will show the substituted replacement string for
the current match in the minibuffer. If you want to keep special sequences ‘\&’ and ‘\n’ unex-
panded, customize query-replace-show-replacement variable. Like search-highlight-
submatches highlights subexpressions in incremental search (see Section 12.12 [Search
Customizations], page 128), the variable query-replace-highlight-submatches defines
whether to highlight subexpressions in the regexp replacement commands.
The variable query-replace-skip-read-only, if set non-nil, will cause replacement
commands to ignore matches in read-only text. The default is not to ignore them.
The characters you can type when you are shown a match for the string or regexp are:
SPC
y to replace the occurrence with newstring.
DEL
Delete
BACKSPACE
n to skip to the next occurrence without replacing this one.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 125

, (Comma)
to replace this occurrence and display the result. You are then asked for another
input character to say what to do next. Since the replacement has already
been made, DEL and SPC are equivalent in this situation; both move to the next
occurrence.
You can type C-r at this point (see below) to alter the replaced text. You
can also undo the replacement with the undo command (e.g., type C-x u; see
Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131); this exits the query-replace, so if you want to
do further replacement you must use C-x ESC ESC RET to restart (see Section 5.6
[Repetition], page 37).
RET
q to exit without doing any more replacements.
. (Period) to replace this occurrence and then exit without searching for more occurrences.
! to replace all remaining occurrences without asking again.
^ to go back to the position of the previous occurrence (or what used to be an
occurrence), in case you changed it by mistake or want to reexamine it.
u to undo the last replacement and go back to where that replacement was made.
U to undo all the replacements and go back to where the first replacement was
made.
C-r to enter a recursive editing level, in case the occurrence needs to be edited
rather than just replaced with newstring. When you are done, exit the recursive
editing level with C-M-c to proceed to the next occurrence. See Section 31.11
[Recursive Edit], page 479.
C-w to delete the occurrence, and then enter a recursive editing level as in C-r.
Use the recursive edit to insert text to replace the deleted occurrence of string.
When done, exit the recursive editing level with C-M-c to proceed to the next
occurrence.
e to edit the replacement string in the minibuffer. When you exit the minibuffer by
typing RET, the minibuffer contents replace the current occurrence of the pattern.
They also become the new replacement string for any further occurrences.
E is like e, but the next replacement will be done with exact case. I.e., if you
have a query-replace from ‘foo’ to ‘bar’, a text like ‘Foo’ will be normally
be replaced with ‘Bar’. Use this command to do the current replacement with
exact case.
C-l to redisplay the screen. Then you must type another character to specify what
to do with this occurrence.
Y (Upper-case)
to replace all remaining occurrences in all remaining buffers in multi-buffer
replacements (like the Dired Q command that performs query replace on selected
files). It answers this question and all subsequent questions in the series with
“yes”, without further user interaction.
126 GNU Emacs Manual

N (Upper-case)
to skip to the next buffer in multi-buffer replacements without replacing remain-
ing occurrences in the current buffer. It answers this question “no”, gives up
on the questions for the current buffer, and continues to the next buffer in the
sequence.
C-h
?
F1 to display a message summarizing these options. Then you must type another
character to specify what to do with this occurrence.
Aside from this, any other character exits the query-replace, and is then reread as part
of a key sequence. Thus, if you type C-k, it exits the query-replace and then kills to end
of line. In particular, C-g simply exits the query-replace.
To restart a query-replace once it is exited, use C-x ESC ESC, which repeats the
query-replace because it used the minibuffer to read its arguments. See Section 5.6
[Repetition], page 37.
The option search-invisible determines how query-replace treats invisible text. See
[Outline Search], page 265.
See Section 27.7 [Operating on Files], page 385, for the Dired Q command which performs
query replace on selected files. See also Section 27.10 [Transforming File Names], page 391,
for Dired commands to rename, copy, or link files by replacing regexp matches in file names.

12.11 Other Search-and-Loop Commands

Here are some other commands that find matches for regular expressions. They all ignore
case in matching, if the pattern contains no upper-case letters and case-fold-search is
non-nil. Aside from multi-occur and multi-occur-in-matching-buffers, which always
search the whole buffer, all of the commands operate on the text from point to the end of
the buffer, or on the region if it is active.
M-x multi-isearch-buffers
Prompt for one or more buffer names, ending with RET; then, begin a multi-
buffer incremental search in those buffers. (If the search fails in one buffer, the
next C-s tries searching the next specified buffer, and so forth.) With a prefix
argument, prompt for a regexp and begin a multi-buffer incremental search in
buffers matching that regexp.
M-x multi-isearch-buffers-regexp
This command is just like multi-isearch-buffers, except it performs an
incremental regexp search.
M-x multi-isearch-files
Prompt for one or more file names, ending with RET; then, begin a multi-file
incremental search in those files. (If the search fails in one file, the next C-s
tries searching the next specified file, and so forth.) With a prefix argument,
prompt for a regexp and begin a multi-file incremental search in files matching
that regexp.
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 127

M-x multi-isearch-files-regexp
This command is just like multi-isearch-files, except it performs an incre-
mental regexp search.
In some modes that set the buffer-local variable multi-isearch-next-buffer-
function (e.g., in Change Log mode) a multi-file incremental search is activated
automatically.
M-x occur
M-s o Prompt for a regexp, and display a list showing each line in the buffer that
contains a match for it. If you type M-n at the prompt, you can reuse search
strings from previous incremental searches. The text that matched is highlighted
using the match face. A numeric argument n specifies that n lines of context
are to be displayed before and after each matching line.
The default number of context lines is specified by the variable
list-matching-lines-default-context-lines. When list-matching-
lines-jump-to-current-line is non-nil the current line is shown highlighted
with face list-matching-lines-current-line-face and the point is set at
the first match after such line.
You can also run M-s o when an incremental search is active; this uses the
current search string.
Note that matches for the regexp you type are extended to include complete
lines, and a match that starts before the previous match ends is not considered
a match.
The *Occur* buffer uses the Occur mode as its major mode. You can use
the n and p keys to move to the next or previous match; with prefix numeric
argument, these commands move that many matches. Digit keys are bound
to digit-argument, so 5 n moves to the fifth next match (you don’t have to
type C-u). SPC and DEL scroll the *Occur* buffer up and down. Clicking
on a match or moving point there and typing RET visits the corresponding
position in the original buffer that was searched. o and C-o display the match
in another window; C-o does not select that window. Alternatively, you can
use the M-g M-n (next-error) command to visit the occurrences one by one
(see Section 24.2 [Compilation Mode], page 310). Finally, q quits the window
showing the *Occur* buffer and buries the buffer.
Typing e in the *Occur* buffer makes the buffer writable and enters the Occur
Edit mode, in which you can edit the matching lines and have those edits
reflected in the text in the originating buffer. Type C-c C-c to leave the Occur
Edit mode and return to the Occur mode.
The command M-x list-matching-lines is a synonym for M-x occur.
M-x multi-occur
This command is just like occur, except it is able to search through multiple
buffers. It asks you to specify the buffer names one by one.
M-x multi-occur-in-matching-buffers
This command is similar to multi-occur, except the buffers to search are
specified by a regular expression that matches visited file names. With a prefix
argument, it uses the regular expression to match buffer names instead.
128 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x how-many
Prompt for a regexp, and print the number of matches for it in the buffer after
point. If the region is active, this operates on the region instead.
M-x flush-lines
Prompt for a regexp, and delete each line that contains a match for it, operating
on the text after point. When the command finishes, it prints the number of
deleted matching lines.
This command deletes the current line if it contains a match starting after
point. If the region is active, it operates on the region instead; if a line partially
contained in the region contains a match entirely contained in the region, it is
deleted.
If a match is split across lines, flush-lines deletes all those lines. It deletes
the lines before starting to look for the next match; hence, it ignores a match
starting on the same line at which another match ended.
M-x keep-lines
Prompt for a regexp, and delete each line that does not contain a match for it,
operating on the text after point. If point is not at the beginning of a line, this
command always keeps the current line. If the region is active, the command
operates on the region instead; it never deletes lines that are only partially
contained in the region (a newline that ends a line counts as part of that line).
If a match is split across lines, this command keeps all those lines.
M-x kill-matching-lines
Like flush-lines, but also add the matching lines to the kill ring. The command
adds the matching lines to the kill ring as a single string, including the newlines
that separated the lines.
M-x copy-matching-lines
Like kill-matching-lines, but the matching lines are not removed from the
buffer.

12.12 Tailoring Search to Your Needs

This section describes miscellaneous search-related customizations not described elsewhere.
The default search mode for the incremental search is specified by the variable
search-default-mode. It can be nil, t, or a function. If it is nil, the default mode is to do
literal searches without character folding, but with case folding and lax-whitespace matches
as determined by case-fold-search and search-whitespace-regexp, respectively (see
Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119). If the value is t, incremental search defaults to
regexp searches. The default value specifies a function that only performs case folding and
lax-whitespace matching.
The current match of an on-going incremental search is highlighted using the isearch
face. This highlighting can be disabled by setting the variable search-highlight to nil.
When searching for regular expressions (with C-M-s, for instance), subexpressions re-
ceive special highlighting depending on the search-highlight-submatches variable. If
this variable’s value is nil, no special highlighting is done, but if the value is non-nil,
Chapter 12: Searching and Replacement 129

text that matches ‘\( ... \)’ constructs (a.k.a. “subexpressions”) in the regular expression
will be highlighted with distinct faces. By default, two distinct faces are defined, named
isearch-group-1 and isearch-group-2. With these two faces, odd-numbered subexpres-
sions will be highlighted using the isearch-group-1 face and even-numbered subexpres-
sions will be highlighted using the isearch-group-2 face. For instance, when searching
for ‘foo-\([0-9]+\)\([a-z]+\)’, the part matched by ‘[0-9]+’ will be highlighted with
the isearch-group-1 face, and the part matched by ‘[a-z]+’ will be highlighted using
isearch-group-2. If you define additional faces using the same numbering scheme, i.e.
isearch-group-3, isearch-group-4, . . . , then the face isearch-group-M will be used to
highlight the M ’th, N+M’th, 2N+M’th, . . . subexpressions, where N is the total number of
faces of the form isearch-group-M.
The other matches for the search string that are visible on display are highlighted using
the lazy-highlight face. Setting the variable isearch-lazy-highlight to nil disables
this highlighting. Here are some other variables that customize the lazy highlighting:
lazy-highlight-initial-delay
Time in seconds to wait before highlighting visible matches. Applies only if the
search string is less than lazy-highlight-no-delay-length characters long.
lazy-highlight-no-delay-length
For search strings at least as long as the value of this variable, lazy highlighting
of matches starts immediately.
lazy-highlight-interval
Time in seconds between highlighting successive matches.
lazy-highlight-max-at-a-time
The maximum number of matches to highlight before checking for input. A
large number can take some time to highlight, so if you want to continue
searching and type C-s or C-r during that time, Emacs will not respond until it
finishes highlighting all those matches. Thus, smaller values make Emacs more
responsive.
isearch-lazy-count
Show the current match number and the total number of matches in the search
prompt.
lazy-count-prefix-format
lazy-count-suffix-format
These two variables determine the format of showing the current and the total
number of matches for isearch-lazy-count.
Normally, entering RET within incremental search when the search string is empty launches
a nonincremental search. (Actually, it lets you edit the search string, and the next RET does
the search.) However, if you customize the variable search-nonincremental-instead to
nil, typing RET will always exit the incremental search, even if the search string is empty.
By default, incremental search and query-replace commands match invisible text, but
hide any such matches as soon as the current match moves off the invisible text. If you
customize the variable isearch-hide-immediately to nil, any invisible text where matches
were found stays on display until the search or the replace command exits.
130 GNU Emacs Manual

Searching incrementally on slow terminals, such as displays connected to remote machines

over slow connection, could be annoying due to the need to redraw large portions of the
display as the search proceeds. Emacs provides a special display mode for slow terminals,
whereby search pops up a separate small window and displays the text surrounding the
match in that window. Small windows display faster, so the annoying effect of slow speed
is alleviated. The variable search-slow-speed determines the baud rate threshold below
which Emacs will use this display mode. The variable search-slow-window-lines controls
the number of lines in the window Emacs pops up for displaying the search results; the default
is 1 line. Normally, this window will pop up at the bottom of the window that displays the
buffer where you start searching, but if the value of search-slow-window-lines is negative,
that means to put the window at the top and give it the number of lines that is the absolute
value of search-slow-window-lines.
 131

13 Commands for Fixing Typos

In this chapter we describe commands that are useful when you catch a mistake while editing.
The most fundamental of these commands is the undo command C-/ (also bound to C-x
u and C-_). This undoes a single command, or a part of a command (as in the case of
query-replace), or several consecutive character insertions. Consecutive repetitions of C-/
undo earlier and earlier changes, back to the limit of the undo information available.
Aside from the commands described here, you can erase text using deletion commands
such as DEL (delete-backward-char). These were described earlier in this manual. See
Section 4.3 [Erasing], page 20.

13.1 Undo
The undo command reverses recent changes in the buffer’s text. Each buffer records
changes individually, and the undo command always applies to the current buffer. You
can undo all the changes in a buffer for as far back as the buffer’s records go. Usually,
each editing command makes a separate entry in the undo records, but some commands
such as query-replace divide their changes into multiple entries for flexibility in undoing.
Consecutive character insertion commands are usually grouped together into a single undo
record, to make undoing less tedious.
C-/
C-x u
C-_ Undo one entry in the current buffer’s undo records (undo).
To begin to undo, type C-/ (or its aliases, C-_ or C-x u)1 . This undoes the most recent
change in the buffer, and moves point back to where it was before that change. Consecutive
repetitions of C-/ (or its aliases) undo earlier and earlier changes in the current buffer. If all
the recorded changes have already been undone, the undo command signals an error.
Any command other than an undo command breaks the sequence of undo commands.
Starting from that moment, the entire sequence of undo commands that you have just
performed are themselves placed into the undo record. Therefore, to re-apply changes
you have undone, type C-f or any other command that harmlessly breaks the sequence of
undoing; then type C-/ one or more times to undo some of the undo commands.
Alternatively, if you want to resume undoing, without redoing previous undo commands,
use M-x undo-only. This is like undo, but will not redo changes you have just undone. To
complement it, M-x undo-redo will undo previous undo commands (and will not record
itself as an undoable command).
If you notice that a buffer has been modified accidentally, the easiest way to recover is to
type C-/ repeatedly until the stars disappear from the front of the mode line (see Section 1.3
[Mode Line], page 8). Whenever an undo command makes the stars disappear from the
mode line, it means that the buffer contents are the same as they were when the file was
last read in or saved. If you do not remember whether you changed the buffer deliberately,
type C-/ once. When you see the last change you made undone, you will see whether it was
1
Aside from C-/, the undo command is also bound to C-x u because that is more straightforward for
beginners to remember: ‘u’ stands for “undo”. It is also bound to C-_ because typing C-/ on some text
terminals actually enters C-_.
132 GNU Emacs Manual

an intentional change. If it was an accident, leave it undone. If it was deliberate, redo the
change as described above.
Alternatively, you can discard all the changes since the buffer was last visited or saved
with M-x revert-buffer (see Section 15.4 [Reverting], page 157).
When there is an active region, any use of undo performs selective undo: it undoes the
most recent change within the region, instead of the entire buffer. However, when Transient
Mark mode is off (see Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient Mark], page 56), C-/ always operates
on the entire buffer, ignoring the region. In this case, you can perform selective undo by
supplying a prefix argument to the undo command: C-u C-/. To undo further changes in
the same region, repeat the undo command (no prefix argument is needed).
Some specialized buffers do not make undo records. Buffers whose names start with
spaces never do; these buffers are used internally by Emacs to hold text that users don’t
normally look at or edit.
When the undo information for a buffer becomes too large, Emacs discards the old-
est records from time to time (during garbage collection). You can specify how much
undo information to keep by setting the variables undo-limit, undo-strong-limit, and
undo-outer-limit. Their values are expressed in bytes.
The variable undo-limit sets a soft limit: Emacs keeps undo data for enough commands
to reach this size, and perhaps exceed it, but does not keep data for any earlier commands
beyond that. Its default value is 160000. The variable undo-strong-limit sets a stricter
limit: any previous command (though not the most recent one) that pushes the size past
this amount is forgotten. The default value of undo-strong-limit is 240000.
Regardless of the values of those variables, the most recent change is never discarded
unless it gets bigger than undo-outer-limit (normally 24,000,000). At that point, Emacs
discards the undo data and warns you about it. This is the only situation in which you cannot
undo the last command. If this happens, you can increase the value of undo-outer-limit
to make it even less likely to happen in the future. But if you didn’t expect the command
to create such large undo data, then it is probably a bug and you should report it. See
Section 34.3 [Reporting Bugs], page 536.

13.2 Transposing Text

C-t Transpose two characters (transpose-chars).
M-t Transpose two words (transpose-words).
C-M-t Transpose two balanced expressions (transpose-sexps).
C-x C-t Transpose two lines (transpose-lines).
M-x transpose-sentences
Transpose two sentences (transpose-sentences).
M-x transpose-paragraphs
Transpose two paragraphs (transpose-paragraphs).
M-x transpose-regions
Transpose two regions.
Chapter 13: Commands for Fixing Typos 133

The common error of transposing two characters can be fixed, when they are adjacent,
with the C-t command (transpose-chars). Normally, C-t transposes the two characters
on either side of point. When given at the end of a line, rather than transposing the last
character of the line with the newline, which would be useless, C-t transposes the last two
characters on the line. So, if you catch your transposition error right away, you can fix it
with just a C-t. If you don’t catch it so fast, you must move the cursor back between the
two transposed characters before you type C-t. If you transposed a space with the last
character of the word before it, the word motion commands (M-f, M-b, etc.) are a good way
of getting there. Otherwise, a reverse search (C-r) is often the best way. See Chapter 12
[Search], page 104.
M-t transposes the word before point with the word after point (transpose-words). It
moves point forward over a word, dragging the word preceding or containing point forward as
well. The punctuation characters between the words do not move. For example, ‘FOO, BAR’
transposes into ‘BAR, FOO’ rather than ‘BAR FOO,’. When point is at the end of the line, it
will transpose the word before point with the first word on the next line.
C-M-t (transpose-sexps) is a similar command for transposing two expressions (see
Section 23.4.1 [Expressions], page 292), and C-x C-t (transpose-lines) exchanges lines.
M-x transpose-sentences and M-x transpose-paragraphs transpose sentences and para-
graphs, respectively. These commands work like M-t except as regards the units of text they
transpose.
A numeric argument to a transpose command serves as a repeat count: it tells the
transpose command to move the character (or word or expression or line) before or containing
point across several other characters (or words or expressions or lines). For example,
C-u 3 C-t moves the character before point forward across three other characters. It would
change ‘f?oobar’ into ‘oobf?ar’. This is equivalent to repeating C-t three times. C-u - 4
M-t moves the word before point backward across four words. C-u - C-M-t would cancel
the effect of plain C-M-t.
A numeric argument of zero is assigned a special meaning (because otherwise a command
with a repeat count of zero would do nothing): to transpose the character (or word or
expression or line) ending after point with the one ending after the mark.
M-x transpose-regions transposes the text between point and mark with the text
between the last two marks pushed to the mark ring (see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark], page 51).
With a numeric prefix argument, it transposes the text between point and mark with the
text between two successive marks that many entries back in the mark ring. This command
is best used for transposing multiple characters (or words or sentences or paragraphs) in one
go.

13.3 Case Conversion

M-- M-l Convert last word to lower case. Note Meta-- is Meta-minus.
M-- M-u Convert last word to all upper case.
M-- M-c Convert last word to lower case with capital initial.
A very common error is to type words in the wrong case. Because of this, the word
case-conversion commands M-l, M-u, and M-c have a special feature when used with a
negative argument: they do not move the cursor. As soon as you see you have mistyped
134 GNU Emacs Manual

the last word, you can simply case-convert it and go on typing. See Section 22.7 [Case],
page 260.

13.4 Checking and Correcting Spelling

This section describes the commands to check the spelling of a single word or of a portion of
a buffer. These commands only work if a spelling checker program, one of Hunspell, Aspell,
Ispell or Enchant, is installed. These programs are not part of Emacs, but one of them is
usually installed on GNU/Linux and other free operating systems.
If you have only one of the spelling checker programs installed, Emacs will find it
when you invoke for the first time one of the commands described here. If you have more
than one of them installed, you can control which one is used by customizing the variable
ispell-program-name.
M-$ Check and correct spelling of the word at point (ispell-word). If the region is
active, do it for all words in the region instead.
M-x ispell
Check and correct spelling of all words in the buffer. If the region is active, do
it for all words in the region instead.
M-x ispell-buffer
Check and correct spelling in the buffer.
M-x ispell-region
Check and correct spelling in the region.
M-x ispell-message
Check and correct spelling in a draft mail message, excluding cited material.
M-x ispell-comments-and-strings
Check and correct spelling of comments and strings in the buffer or region.
M-x ispell-comment-or-string-at-point
Check the comment or string at point.
M-x ispell-change-dictionary RET dict RET
Restart the spell-checker process, using dict as the dictionary.
M-x ispell-kill-ispell
Kill the spell-checker subprocess.
M-TAB
ESC TAB
C-M-i Complete the word before point based on the spelling dictionary
(ispell-complete-word).
M-x flyspell-mode
Enable Flyspell mode, which highlights all misspelled words.
M-x flyspell-prog-mode
Enable Flyspell mode for comments and strings only.
Chapter 13: Commands for Fixing Typos 135

To check the spelling of the word around or before point, and optionally correct it as well,
type M-$ (ispell-word). If a region is active, M-$ checks the spelling of all words within the
region. See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51. (When Transient Mark mode is off, M-$ always acts
on the word around or before point, ignoring the region; see Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient
Mark], page 56.)
Similarly, the command M-x ispell performs spell-checking in the region if one
is active, or in the entire buffer otherwise. The commands M-x ispell-buffer
and M-x ispell-region explicitly perform spell-checking on the entire buffer or
the region respectively. To check spelling in an email message you are writing, use
M-x ispell-message; that command checks the whole buffer, except for material that
is indented or appears to be cited from other messages. See Chapter 29 [Sending Mail],
page 418. When dealing with source code, you can use M-x ispell-comments-and-strings
or M-x ispell-comment-or-string-at-point to check only comments or string literals.
When one of these commands encounters what appears to be an incorrect word, it asks
you what to do. It usually displays a list of numbered near-misses—words that are close
to the incorrect word. Then you must type a single-character response. Here are the valid
responses:
digit Replace the word, just this time, with one of the displayed near-misses. Each
near-miss is listed with a digit; type that digit to select it.
SPC Skip this word—continue to consider it incorrect, but don’t change it here.
r new RET Replace the word, just this time, with new. (The replacement string will be
rescanned for more spelling errors.)
R new RET Replace the word with new, and do a query-replace so you can replace it
elsewhere in the buffer if you wish. (The replacements will be rescanned for
more spelling errors.)
a Accept the incorrect word—treat it as correct, but only in this editing session.
A Accept the incorrect word—treat it as correct, but only in this editing session
and for this buffer.
i Insert this word in your private dictionary file so that it will be considered
correct from now on, even in future sessions.
m Like i, but you can also specify dictionary completion information.
u Insert the lower-case version of this word in your private dictionary file.
l word RET
Look in the dictionary for words that match word. These words become the
new list of near-misses; you can select one of them as the replacement by typing
a digit. You can use ‘*’ in word as a wildcard.
C-g
X Quit interactive spell-checking, leaving point at the word that was being checked.
You can restart checking again afterward with C-u M-$.
x Quit interactive spell-checking and move point back to where it was when you
started spell-checking.
136 GNU Emacs Manual

q Quit interactive spell-checking and kill the spell-checker subprocess.

? Show the list of options.
In Text mode and related modes, M-TAB (ispell-complete-word) performs in-buffer
completion based on spelling correction. Insert the beginning of a word, and then type
M-TAB; this shows a list of completions. (If your window manager intercepts M-TAB, type
ESC TAB or C-M-i.) Each completion is listed with a digit or character; type that digit or
character to choose it.
Once started, the spell-checker subprocess continues to run, waiting for something to
do, so that subsequent spell-checking commands complete more quickly. If you want to get
rid of the process, use M-x ispell-kill-ispell. This is not usually necessary, since the
process uses no processor time except when you do spelling correction.
Spell-checkers look up spelling in two dictionaries: the standard dictionary and your
personal dictionary. The standard dictionary is specified by the variable ispell-local-
dictionary or, if that is nil, by the variable ispell-dictionary. If both are nil, the spell-
ing program’s default dictionary is used. The command M-x ispell-change-dictionary
sets the standard dictionary for the buffer and then restarts the subprocess, so that it will
use a different standard dictionary. Your personal dictionary is specified by the variable
ispell-personal-dictionary. If that is nil, the spelling program looks for a personal
dictionary in a default location, which is specific to each spell-checker.
A separate dictionary is used for word completion. The variable ispell-complete-
word-dict specifies the file name of this dictionary. The completion dictionary must be
different because it cannot use the information about roots and affixes of the words, which
spell-checking uses to detect variations of words. For some languages, there is a spell-checking
dictionary but no word completion dictionary.
Flyspell mode is a minor mode that performs automatic spell-checking of the text you
type as you type it. When it finds a word that it does not recognize, it highlights that word.
Type M-x flyspell-mode to toggle Flyspell mode in the current buffer. To enable Flyspell
mode in all text mode buffers, add flyspell-mode to text-mode-hook. See Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 504. Note that, as Flyspell mode needs to check each word across which you
move, it will slow down cursor motion and scrolling commands. It also doesn’t automatically
check the text you didn’t type or move across; use flyspell-region or flyspell-buffer
for that.
When Flyspell mode highlights a word as misspelled, you can click on it with mouse-2
(flyspell-correct-word) to display a menu of possible corrections and actions. If you want
this menu on mouse-3 instead, enable context-menu-mode. In addition, C-. or ESC TAB
(flyspell-auto-correct-word) will propose various successive corrections for the word at
point, and C-c $ (flyspell-correct-word-before-point) will pop up a menu of possible
corrections. Of course, you can always correct the misspelled word by editing it manually in
any way you like.
Flyspell Prog mode works just like ordinary Flyspell mode, except that it only checks
words in comments and string constants. This feature is useful for editing programs. Type
M-x flyspell-prog-mode to enable or disable this mode in the current buffer. To enable
this mode in all programming mode buffers, add flyspell-prog-mode to prog-mode-hook
(see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504).
 137

14 Keyboard Macros
In this chapter we describe how to record a sequence of editing commands so you can repeat
it conveniently later.
A keyboard macro is a command defined by an Emacs user to stand for another sequence
of keys. For example, if you discover that you are about to type C-n M-d C-d forty times, you
can speed your work by defining a keyboard macro to do C-n M-d C-d, and then executing
it 39 more times.
You define a keyboard macro by executing and recording the commands which are its
definition. Put differently, as you define a keyboard macro, the definition is being executed
for the first time. This way, you can see the effects of your commands, so that you don’t
have to figure them out in your head. When you close the definition, the keyboard macro is
defined and also has been, in effect, executed once. You can then do the whole thing over
again by invoking the macro.
Keyboard macros differ from ordinary Emacs commands in that they are written in the
Emacs command language rather than in Lisp. This makes it easier for the novice to write
them, and makes them more convenient as temporary hacks. However, the Emacs command
language is not powerful enough as a programming language to be useful for writing anything
intelligent or general. For such things, Lisp must be used.

14.1 Basic Use

F3 Start defining a keyboard macro (kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter).
F4 If a keyboard macro is being defined, end the definition; otherwise, execute the
most recent keyboard macro (kmacro-end-or-call-macro).
C-u F3 Re-execute last keyboard macro, then append keys to its definition.
C-u C-u F3
Append keys to the last keyboard macro without re-executing it.
C-x C-k r Run the last keyboard macro on each line that begins in the region
(apply-macro-to-region-lines).
C-x ( Start defining a keyboard macro (old style) (kmacro-start-macro); with a
prefix argument, append keys to the last macro.
C-x ) End a macro definition (old style) (kmacro-end-macro); prefix argument serves
as the repeat count for executing the macro.
C-x e Execute the most recently defined keyboard macro (kmacro-end-and-call-
macro); prefix argument serves as repeat count.
To start defining a keyboard macro, type F3. From then on, your keys continue to be
executed, but also become part of the definition of the macro. ‘Def’ appears in the mode
line to remind you of what is going on. When you are finished, type F4 (kmacro-end-or-
call-macro) to terminate the definition. For example,
F3 M-f foo F4
defines a macro to move forward a word and then insert ‘foo’. Note that F3 and F4 do not
become part of the macro.
138 GNU Emacs Manual

After defining the macro, you can call it with F4. For the above example, this has the
same effect as typing M-f foo again. (Note the two roles of the F4 command: it ends the
macro if you are in the process of defining one, or calls the last macro otherwise.) You can
also supply F4 with a numeric prefix argument ‘n’, which means to invoke the macro ‘n’
times. An argument of zero repeats the macro indefinitely, until it gets an error or you type
C-g (or, on MS-DOS, C-Break).
The above example demonstrates a handy trick that you can employ with keyboard
macros: if you wish to repeat an operation at regularly spaced places in the text, include a
motion command as part of the macro. In this case, repeating the macro inserts the string
‘foo’ after each successive word.
After terminating the definition of a keyboard macro, you can append more keystrokes
to its definition by typing C-u F3. This is equivalent to plain F3 followed by retyping the
whole definition so far. As a consequence, it re-executes the macro as previously defined. If
you change the variable kmacro-execute-before-append to nil, the existing macro will
not be re-executed before appending to it (the default is t). You can also add to the end of
the definition of the last keyboard macro without re-executing it by typing C-u C-u F3.
When a command reads an argument with the minibuffer, your minibuffer input becomes
part of the macro along with the command. So when you replay the macro, the command
gets the same argument as when you entered the macro. For example,
F3 C-a C-k C-x b foo RET C-y C-x b RET F4
defines a macro that kills the current line, yanks it into the buffer ‘foo’, then returns to the
original buffer.
Most keyboard commands work as usual in a keyboard macro definition, with some
exceptions. Typing C-g (keyboard-quit) quits the keyboard macro definition. Typing
C-M-c (exit-recursive-edit) can be unreliable: it works as you’d expect if exiting a
recursive edit that started within the macro, but if it exits a recursive edit that started
before you invoked the keyboard macro, it also necessarily exits the keyboard macro too.
Mouse events are also unreliable, even though you can use them in a keyboard macro: when
the macro replays the mouse event, it uses the original mouse position of that event, the
position that the mouse had while you were defining the macro. The effect of this may be
hard to predict.
The command C-x C-k r (apply-macro-to-region-lines) repeats the last defined
keyboard macro on each line that begins in the region. It does this line by line, by moving
point to the beginning of the line and then executing the macro.
In addition to the F3 and F4 commands described above, Emacs also supports an older
set of key bindings for defining and executing keyboard macros. To begin a macro definition,
type C-x ( (kmacro-start-macro); as with F3, a prefix argument appends this definition to
the last keyboard macro. To end a macro definition, type C-x ) (kmacro-end-macro). To
execute the most recent macro, type C-x e (kmacro-end-and-call-macro). If you enter C-x
e while defining a macro, the macro is terminated and executed immediately. Immediately
after typing C-x e, you can type e repeatedly to immediately repeat the macro one or more
times. You can also give C-x e a repeat argument, just like F4 (when it is used to execute a
macro).
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 139

C-x ) can be given a repeat count as an argument. This means to repeat the macro right
after defining it. The macro definition itself counts as the first repetition, since it is executed
as you define it, so C-u 4 C-x ) executes the macro immediately 3 additional times.
While executing a long-running keyboard macro, it can sometimes be useful to trigger a
redisplay (to show how far we’ve gotten). The C-x C-k d command can be used for this. As
a not very useful example, C-x ( M-f C-x C-k d C-x ) will create a macro that will redisplay
once per iteration when saying C-u 42 C-x e.

14.2 The Keyboard Macro Ring

All defined keyboard macros are recorded in the keyboard macro ring. There is only one
keyboard macro ring, shared by all buffers.
C-x C-k C-k
Execute the keyboard macro at the head of the ring (kmacro-end-or-call-
macro-repeat).
C-x C-k C-n
Rotate the keyboard macro ring to the next macro (defined earlier)
(kmacro-cycle-ring-next).
C-x C-k C-p
Rotate the keyboard macro ring to the previous macro (defined later)
(kmacro-cycle-ring-previous).
All commands which operate on the keyboard macro ring use the same C-x C-k prefix.
Most of these commands can be executed and repeated immediately after each other without
repeating the C-x C-k prefix. For example,
C-x C-k C-p C-p C-k C-k C-k C-n C-n C-k C-p C-k C-d
will rotate the keyboard macro ring to the second-previous macro, execute the resulting
head macro three times, rotate back to the original head macro, execute that once, rotate to
the previous macro, execute that, and finally delete it from the macro ring.
The command C-x C-k C-k (kmacro-end-or-call-macro-repeat) executes the key-
board macro at the head of the macro ring. You can repeat the macro immediately by
typing another C-k, or you can rotate the macro ring immediately by typing C-n or C-p.
When a keyboard macro is being defined, C-x C-k C-k behaves like F4 except that,
immediately afterward, you can use most key bindings of this section without the C-x C-k
prefix. For instance, another C-k will re-execute the macro.
The commands C-x C-k C-n (kmacro-cycle-ring-next) and C-x C-k C-p
(kmacro-cycle-ring-previous) rotate the macro ring, bringing the next or previous
keyboard macro to the head of the macro ring. The definition of the new head macro is
displayed in the echo area. You can continue to rotate the macro ring immediately by
repeating just C-n and C-p until the desired macro is at the head of the ring. To execute
the new macro ring head immediately, just type C-k.
Note that Emacs treats the head of the macro ring as the last defined keyboard macro.
For instance, F4 will execute that macro, and C-x C-k n will give it a name.
The maximum number of macros stored in the keyboard macro ring is determined by
the customizable variable kmacro-ring-max.
140 GNU Emacs Manual

14.3 The Keyboard Macro Counter

Each keyboard macro has an associated counter, which is initialized to 0 when you start
defining the macro. This current counter allows you to insert a number into the buffer
that depends on the number of times the macro has been called. The counter is normally
incremented each time its value is inserted into the buffer.
In addition to the current counter, keyboard macros also maintain the previous counter,
which records the value the current counter had last time it was incremented or set. Note
that incrementing the current counter by zero, e.g., with C-u 0 C-x C-k C-i, also records
the value of the current counter as the previous counter value.
F3 In a keyboard macro definition, insert the keyboard macro counter value in the
buffer (kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter).
C-x C-k C-i
Insert the keyboard macro counter value in the buffer (kmacro-insert-
counter).
C-x C-k C-c
Set the keyboard macro counter (kmacro-set-counter).
C-x C-k C-a
Add the prefix arg to the keyboard macro counter (kmacro-add-counter).
C-x C-k C-f
Specify the format for inserting the keyboard macro counter (kmacro-set-
format).
When you are defining a keyboard macro, the command F3 (kmacro-start-macro-or-
insert-counter) inserts the current value of the keyboard macro’s counter into the buffer,
and increments the counter by 1. (If you are not defining a macro, F3 begins a macro
definition instead. See Section 14.1 [Basic Keyboard Macro], page 137.) You can use a
numeric prefix argument to specify a different increment. If you just specify a C-u prefix,
that inserts the previous counter value, and doesn’t change the current value.
As an example, let us show how the keyboard macro counter can be used to build a
numbered list. Consider the following key sequence:
F3 C-a F3 . SPC F4
As part of this keyboard macro definition, the string ‘0. ’ was inserted into the beginning
of the current line. If you now move somewhere else in the buffer and type F4 to invoke
the macro, the string ‘1. ’ is inserted at the beginning of that line. Subsequent invocations
insert ‘2. ’, ‘3. ’, and so forth.
The command C-x C-k C-i (kmacro-insert-counter) does the same thing as F3, but it
can be used outside a keyboard macro definition. When no keyboard macro is being defined
or executed, it inserts and increments the counter of the macro at the head of the keyboard
macro ring.
The command C-x C-k C-c (kmacro-set-counter) sets the current macro counter to
the value of the numeric argument. If you use it inside the macro, it operates on each
repetition of the macro. If you specify just C-u as the prefix, while executing the macro,
that resets the counter to the value it had at the beginning of the current repetition of the
macro (undoing any increments so far in this repetition).
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 141

The command C-x C-k C-a (kmacro-add-counter) adds the prefix argument to the
current macro counter. With just C-u as argument, it resets the counter to the last value
inserted by any keyboard macro. (Normally, when you use this, the last insertion will be in
the same macro and it will be the same counter.)
The command C-x C-k C-f (kmacro-set-format) prompts for the format to use when
inserting the macro counter. The default format is ‘%d’, which means to insert the number
in decimal without any padding. You can exit with empty minibuffer to reset the format to
this default. You can specify any format string that the format function accepts and that
makes sense with a single integer extra argument (see Section “Formatting Strings” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). Do not put the format string inside double quotes when
you insert it in the minibuffer.
If you use this command while no keyboard macro is being defined or executed, the new
format affects all subsequent macro definitions. Existing macros continue to use the format
in effect when they were defined. If you set the format while defining a keyboard macro, this
affects the macro being defined from that point on, but it does not affect subsequent macros.
Execution of the macro will, at each step, use the format in effect at that step during its
definition. Changes to the macro format during execution of a macro, like the corresponding
changes during its definition, have no effect on subsequent macros.
The format set by C-x C-k C-f does not affect insertion of numbers stored in registers.
If you use a register as a counter, incrementing it on each repetition of the macro, that
accomplishes the same thing as a keyboard macro counter. See Section 10.5 [Number
Registers], page 73. For most purposes, it is simpler to use a keyboard macro counter.

14.4 Executing Macros with Variations

In a keyboard macro, you can create an effect similar to that of query-replace, in that the
macro asks you each time around whether to make a change.
C-x q When this point is reached during macro execution, ask for confirmation
(kbd-macro-query).
While defining the macro, type C-x q at the point where you want the query to occur.
During macro definition, the C-x q does nothing, but when you run the macro later, C-x q
asks you interactively whether to continue.
The valid responses when C-x q asks are:
SPC (or y) Continue executing the keyboard macro.
DEL (or n) Skip the remainder of this repetition of the macro, and start right away with
the next repetition.
RET (or q) Skip the remainder of this repetition and cancel further repetitions.
C-r Enter a recursive editing level, in which you can perform editing which is not
part of the macro. When you exit the recursive edit using C-M-c, you are asked
again how to continue with the keyboard macro. If you type a SPC at this time,
the rest of the macro definition is executed. It is up to you to leave point and
the text in a state such that the rest of the macro will do what you want.
142 GNU Emacs Manual

C-u C-x q, which is C-x q with a prefix argument, performs a completely different function.
It enters a recursive edit reading input from the keyboard, both when you type it during
the definition of the macro, and when it is executed from the macro. During definition, the
editing you do inside the recursive edit does not become part of the macro. During macro
execution, the recursive edit gives you a chance to do some particularized editing on each
repetition. See Section 31.11 [Recursive Edit], page 479.

14.5 Naming and Saving Keyboard Macros

C-x C-k n Give a command name (for the duration of the Emacs session) to the most
recently defined keyboard macro (kmacro-name-last-macro).
C-x C-k b Bind the most recently defined keyboard macro to a key sequence (for the
duration of the session) (kmacro-bind-to-key).
M-x insert-kbd-macro
Insert in the buffer a keyboard macro’s definition, as Lisp code.
If you wish to save a keyboard macro for later use, you can give it a name using C-x
C-k n (kmacro-name-last-macro). This reads a name as an argument using the minibuffer
and defines that name to execute the last keyboard macro, in its current form. (If you
later add to the definition of this macro, that does not alter the name’s definition as a
macro.) The macro name is a Lisp symbol, and defining it in this way makes it a valid
command name for calling with M-x or for binding a key to with keymap-global-set (see
Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513). If you specify a name that has a prior definition other
than a keyboard macro, an error message is shown and nothing is changed.
You can also bind the last keyboard macro (in its current form) to a key, using C-x C-k
b (kmacro-bind-to-key) followed by the key sequence you want to bind. You can bind to
any key sequence in the global keymap, but since most key sequences already have other
bindings, you should select the key sequence carefully. If you try to bind to a key sequence
with an existing binding (in any keymap), this command asks you for confirmation before
replacing the existing binding.
To avoid problems caused by overriding existing bindings, the key sequences C-x C-k 0
through C-x C-k 9 and C-x C-k A through C-x C-k Z are reserved for your own keyboard
macro bindings. In fact, to bind to one of these key sequences, you only need to type the
digit or letter rather than the whole key sequences. For example,
C-x C-k b 4
will bind the last keyboard macro to the key sequence C-x C-k 4.
Once a macro has a command name, you can save its definition in a file. Then it can be
used in another editing session. First, visit the file you want to save the definition in. Then
use this command:
M-x insert-kbd-macro RET macroname RET
This inserts some Lisp code that, when executed later, will define the same macro with the
same definition it has now. (You don’t need to understand Lisp code to do this, because
insert-kbd-macro writes the Lisp code for you.) Then save the file. You can load the file
later with load-file (see Section 24.8 [Lisp Libraries], page 326). If the file you save in is
Chapter 14: Keyboard Macros 143

your init file ~/.emacs (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522) then the macro will be defined
each time you run Emacs.
If you give insert-kbd-macro a prefix argument, it makes additional Lisp code to record
the keys (if any) that you have bound to macroname, so that the macro will be reassigned
the same keys when you load the file.

14.6 Editing a Keyboard Macro

C-x C-k C-e
Edit the last defined keyboard macro (kmacro-edit-macro).
C-x C-k e name RET
Edit a previously defined keyboard macro name (edit-kbd-macro).
C-x C-k l Edit the last 300 keystrokes as a keyboard macro (kmacro-edit-lossage).
You can edit the last keyboard macro by typing C-x C-k C-e or C-x C-k RET
(kmacro-edit-macro). This formats the macro definition in a buffer and enters a
specialized major mode for editing it. Type C-h m once in that buffer to display details of
how to edit the macro. When you are finished editing, type C-c C-c.
You can edit a named keyboard macro or a macro bound to a key by typing C-x C-k e
(edit-kbd-macro). Follow that with the keyboard input that you would use to invoke the
macro—C-x e or M-x name or some other key sequence.
You can edit the last 300 keystrokes as a macro by typing C-x C-k l (kmacro-edit-
lossage).

14.7 Stepwise Editing a Keyboard Macro

You can interactively replay and edit the last keyboard macro, one command at a time, by
typing C-x C-k SPC (kmacro-step-edit-macro). Unless you quit the macro using q or C-g,
the edited macro replaces the last macro on the macro ring.
This macro editing feature shows the last macro in the minibuffer together with the first
(or next) command to be executed, and prompts you for an action. You can enter ? to get a
summary of your options. These actions are available:
• SPC and y execute the current command, and advance to the next command in the
keyboard macro.
• n, d, and DEL skip and delete the current command.
• f skips the current command in this execution of the keyboard macro, but doesn’t
delete it from the macro.
• TAB executes the current command, as well as all similar commands immediately
following the current command; for example, TAB may be used to insert a sequence of
characters (corresponding to a sequence of self-insert-command commands).
• c continues execution (without further editing) until the end of the keyboard macro. If
execution terminates normally, the edited macro replaces the original keyboard macro.
• C-k skips and deletes the rest of the keyboard macro, terminates step-editing, and
replaces the original keyboard macro with the edited macro.
144 GNU Emacs Manual

• q and C-g cancels the step-editing of the keyboard macro; discarding any changes made
to the keyboard macro.
• i key... C-j reads and executes a series of key sequences (not including the final C-j),
and inserts them before the current command in the keyboard macro, without advancing
over the current command.
• I key... reads one key sequence, executes it, and inserts it before the current command
in the keyboard macro, without advancing over the current command.
• r key... C-j reads and executes a series of key sequences (not including the final C-j),
and replaces the current command in the keyboard macro with them, advancing over
the inserted key sequences.
• R key... reads one key sequence, executes it, and replaces the current command in the
keyboard macro with that key sequence, advancing over the inserted key sequence.
• a key... C-j executes the current command, then reads and executes a series of key
sequences (not including the final C-j), and inserts them after the current command in
the keyboard macro; it then advances over the current command and the inserted key
sequences.
• A key... C-j executes the rest of the commands in the keyboard macro, then reads
and executes a series of key sequences (not including the final C-j), and appends them
at the end of the keyboard macro; it then terminates the step-editing and replaces the
original keyboard macro with the edited macro.
 145

15 File Handling
The operating system stores data permanently in named files, so most of the text you edit
with Emacs comes from a file and is ultimately stored in a file.
To edit a file, you must tell Emacs to read the file and prepare a buffer containing a copy
of the file’s text. This is called visiting the file. Editing commands apply directly to text
in the buffer; that is, to the copy inside Emacs. Your changes appear in the file itself only
when you save the buffer back into the file.
In addition to visiting and saving files, Emacs can delete, copy, rename, and append to
files, keep multiple versions of them, and operate on file directories.

15.1 File Names

Many Emacs commands that operate on a file require you to specify the file name, using the
minibuffer (see Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 27).
While in the minibuffer, you can use the usual completion and history commands
(see Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 27). Note that file name completion ignores file names
whose extensions appear in the variable completion-ignored-extensions (see Section 5.4.5
[Completion Options], page 34). Note also that most commands use permissive completion
with confirmation for reading file names: you are allowed to submit a nonexistent file name,
but if you type RET immediately after completing up to a nonexistent file name, Emacs prints
‘[Confirm]’ and you must type a second RET to confirm. See Section 5.4.3 [Completion
Exit], page 32, for details.
Minibuffer history commands offer some special features for reading file names, see
Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35.
Each buffer has a default directory, stored in the buffer-local variable default-directory.
Whenever Emacs reads a file name using the minibuffer, it usually inserts the default directory
into the minibuffer as the initial contents. You can inhibit this insertion by changing the
variable insert-default-directory to nil (see Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 27).
Regardless, Emacs always assumes that any relative file name is relative to the default
directory, e.g., entering a file name without a directory specifies a file in the default directory.
When you visit a file, Emacs sets default-directory in the visiting buffer to the
directory of its file. When you create a new buffer that is not visiting a file, via a command
like C-x b, its default directory is usually copied from the buffer that was current at the
time (see Section 16.1 [Select Buffer], page 175). You can use the command M-x pwd to see
the value of default-directory in the current buffer. The command M-x cd prompts for
a directory’s name, and sets the buffer’s default-directory to that directory (doing this
does not change the buffer’s file name, if any).
As an example, when you visit the file /u/rms/gnu/gnu.tasks, the default directory is set
to /u/rms/gnu/. If you invoke a command that reads a file name, entering just ‘foo’ in the
minibuffer, with a directory omitted, specifies the file /u/rms/gnu/foo; entering ‘../.login’
specifies /u/rms/.login; and entering ‘new/foo’ specifies /u/rms/gnu/new/foo.
When typing a file name into the minibuffer, you can make use of a couple of shortcuts:
a double slash ignores everything before the second slash in the pair, and ‘~/’ is your home
directory. See Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 27.
146 GNU Emacs Manual

The character ‘$’ is used to substitute an environment variable into a file name. The
name of the environment variable consists of all the alphanumeric characters after the ‘$’;
alternatively, it can be enclosed in braces after the ‘$’. For example, if you have used the
shell command export FOO=rms/hacks to set up an environment variable named FOO, then
both /u/$FOO/test.c and /u/${FOO}/test.c are abbreviations for /u/rms/hacks/test.c.
If the environment variable is not defined, no substitution occurs, so that the character ‘$’
stands for itself. Note that environment variables set outside Emacs affect Emacs only if
they are applied before Emacs is started.
To access a file with ‘$’ in its name, if the ‘$’ causes expansion, type ‘$$’. This pair
is converted to a single ‘$’ at the same time that variable substitution is performed for a
single ‘$’. Alternatively, quote the whole file name with ‘/:’ (see Section 15.16 [Quoted File
Names], page 170). File names which begin with a literal ‘~’ should also be quoted with ‘/:’.
You can include non-ASCII characters in file names. See Section 19.11 [File Name Coding],
page 230.

15.2 Visiting Files

C-x C-f Visit a file (find-file).
C-x C-r Visit a file for viewing, without allowing changes to it (find-file-read-only).
C-x C-v Visit a different file instead of the one visited last (find-alternate-file).
C-x 4 f Visit a file, in another window (find-file-other-window). Don’t alter what
is displayed in the selected window.
C-x 5 f Visit a file, in a new frame (find-file-other-frame). Don’t alter what is
displayed in the selected frame.
M-x find-file-literally
Visit a file with no conversion of the contents.
Visiting a file means reading its contents into an Emacs buffer so you can edit them.
Emacs makes a new buffer for each file that you visit.
To visit a file, type C-x C-f (find-file) and use the minibuffer to enter the name of
the desired file. While in the minibuffer, you can abort the command by typing C-g. See
Section 15.1 [File Names], page 145, for details about entering file names into minibuffers.
If the specified file exists but the system does not allow you to read it, an error message
is displayed in the echo area (on GNU and Unix systems you might be able to visit such a
file using the ‘su’ or ‘sudo’ methods; see Section 15.15 [Remote Files], page 169). Otherwise,
you can tell that C-x C-f has completed successfully by the appearance of new text on the
screen, and by the buffer name shown in the mode line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8).
Emacs normally constructs the buffer name from the file name, omitting the directory name.
For example, a file named /usr/rms/emacs.tex is visited in a buffer named ‘emacs.tex’.
If there is already a buffer with that name, Emacs constructs a unique name; the normal
method is to add a suffix based on the directory name (e.g., ‘<rms>’, ‘<tmp>’, and so on),
but you can select other methods. See Section 16.7.1 [Uniquify], page 182.
To create a new file, just visit it using the same command, C-x C-f. Emacs displays
‘(New file)’ in the echo area, but in other respects behaves as if you had visited an existing
empty file.
Chapter 15: File Handling 147

After visiting a file, the changes you make with editing commands are made in the Emacs
buffer. They do not take effect in the visited file, until you save the buffer (see Section 15.3
[Saving], page 149). If a buffer contains changes that have not been saved, we say the buffer
is modified. This implies that some changes will be lost if the buffer is not saved. The mode
line displays two stars near the left margin to indicate that the buffer is modified.
If you visit a file that is already in Emacs, C-x C-f switches to the existing buffer instead
of making another copy. Before doing so, it checks whether the file has changed since you
last visited or saved it. If the file has changed, Emacs offers to reread it.
If you try to visit a file larger than large-file-warning-threshold (the default is
10000000, which is about 10 megabytes), Emacs asks you for confirmation first. You can
answer y to proceed with visiting the file or l to visit the file literally (see below). Visiting
large files literally speeds up navigation and editing of such files, because various potentially-
expensive features are turned off. Note, however, that Emacs cannot visit files that are
larger than the maximum Emacs buffer size, which is limited by the amount of memory
Emacs can allocate and by the integers that Emacs can represent (see Chapter 16 [Buffers],
page 175). If you try, Emacs displays an error message saying that the maximum buffer size
has been exceeded.
If you try to visit a file whose major mode (see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241)
uses the tree-sitter parsing library, Emacs will display a warning if the file’s size in bytes is
larger than the value of the variable treesit-max-buffer-size. The default value is 40
megabytes for 64-bit Emacs and 15 megabytes for 32-bit Emacs. This avoids the danger of
having Emacs run out of memory by preventing the activation of major modes based on
tree-sitter in such large buffers, because a typical tree-sitter parser needs about 10 times as
much memory as the text it parses.
If the file name you specify contains shell-style wildcard characters, Emacs visits all the files
that match it. (On case-insensitive filesystems, Emacs matches the wildcards disregarding the
letter case.) Wildcards include ‘?’, ‘*’, and ‘[...]’ sequences. To enter the wild card ‘?’ in a
file name in the minibuffer, you need to type C-q ?. See Section 15.16 [Quoted File Names],
page 170, for information on how to visit a file whose name actually contains wildcard
characters. You can disable the wildcard feature by customizing find-file-wildcards.
If you’re asking to visit a file that’s already visited in a buffer, but the file has changed
externally, Emacs normally asks you whether you want to re-read the file from disk. But if
you set query-about-changed-file to nil, Emacs won’t query you, but will instead just
display the buffer’s contents before the changes, and show an echo-area message telling you
how to revert the buffer from the file.
If you visit the wrong file unintentionally by typing its name incorrectly, type C-x C-v
(find-alternate-file) to visit the file you really wanted. C-x C-v is similar to C-x C-f,
but it kills the current buffer (after first offering to save it if it is modified). When C-x C-v
reads the file name to visit, it inserts the entire default file name in the buffer, with point
just after the directory part; this is convenient if you made a slight error in typing the name.
If you visit a file that is actually a directory, Emacs invokes Dired, the Emacs directory
browser. See Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378. You can disable this behavior by setting the
variable find-file-run-dired to nil; in that case, it is an error to try to visit a directory.
148 GNU Emacs Manual

Files which are actually collections of other files, or file archives, are visited in special
modes which invoke a Dired-like environment to allow operations on archive members. See
Section 15.14 [File Archives], page 168, for more about these features.
If you visit a file that the operating system won’t let you modify, or that is marked
read-only, Emacs makes the buffer read-only too, so that you won’t go ahead and make
changes that you’ll have trouble saving afterward. You can make the buffer writable with
C-x C-q (read-only-mode). See Section 16.3 [Misc Buffer], page 177.
If you want to visit a file as read-only in order to protect yourself from entering changes
accidentally, visit it with the command C-x C-r (find-file-read-only) instead of C-x
C-f.
C-x 4 f (find-file-other-window) is like C-x C-f except that the buffer containing
the specified file is selected in another window. The window that was selected before C-x
4 f continues to show the same buffer it was already showing. If this command is used
when only one window is being displayed, that window is split in two, with one window
showing the same buffer as before, and the other one showing the newly requested file. See
Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185.
C-x 5 f (find-file-other-frame) is similar, but opens a new frame, or selects any
existing frame showing the specified file. See Chapter 18 [Frames], page 194.
On graphical displays, there are two additional methods for visiting files. Firstly, when
Emacs is built with a suitable GUI toolkit, commands invoked with the mouse (by clicking on
the menu bar or tool bar) use the toolkit’s standard file selection dialog instead of prompting
for the file name in the minibuffer. On GNU/Linux and Unix platforms, Emacs does this
when built with GTK+, LessTif, and Motif toolkits; on MS-Windows and Mac, the GUI
version does that by default. For information on how to customize this, see Section 18.18
[Dialog Boxes], page 212.
Secondly, Emacs supports drag and drop: dropping a file into an ordinary Emacs window
visits the file using that window. As an exception, dropping a file into a window displaying a
Dired buffer moves or copies the file into the displayed directory. For details, see Section 18.14
[Drag and Drop], page 208, and Section 27.19 [Misc Dired Features], page 397.
On text-mode terminals and on graphical displays when Emacs was built without a GUI
toolkit, you can visit files via the menu-bar ‘File’ menu, which has the ‘Visit New File’
and the ‘Open File’ items.
Each time you visit a file, Emacs automatically scans its contents to detect what character
encoding and end-of-line convention it uses, and converts these to Emacs’s internal encoding
and end-of-line convention within the buffer. When you save the buffer, Emacs performs
the inverse conversion, writing the file to disk with its original encoding and end-of-line
convention. See Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223.
If you wish to edit a file as a sequence of ASCII characters with no special encoding or
conversion, use the M-x find-file-literally command. This visits a file, like C-x C-f,
but does not do format conversion (see Section “Format Conversion” in the Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual), character code conversion (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223),
or automatic uncompression (see Section 15.13 [Compressed Files], page 168), and does
not add a final newline because of require-final-newline (see Section 15.3.3 [Customize
Save], page 154). If you have already visited the same file in the usual (non-literal) manner,
this command asks you whether to visit it literally instead.
Chapter 15: File Handling 149

Files are sometimes (loosely) tied to other files, and you could call these files sibling
files. For instance, when editing C files, if you have a file called ‘"foo.c"’, you often
also have a file called ‘"foo.h"’, and that could be its sibling file. Or you may have
different versions of a file, for instance ‘"src/emacs/emacs-27/lisp/allout.el"’ and
‘"src/emacs/emacs-28/lisp/allout.el"’ might be considered siblings. Emacs provides
the find-sibling-file command to jump between sibling files, but it’s impossible to guess
at which files a user might want to be considered siblings, so Emacs lets you configure this
freely by altering the find-sibling-rules user option. This is a list of match/expansion
elements.
For instance, to do the ‘".c"’ to ‘".h"’ mapping, you could say:
(setq find-sibling-rules
'(("\\([^/]+\\)\\.c\\'" "\\1.h")))
(ff-find-related-file offers similar functionality especially geared towards C files, see
Section 23.12.4 [Other C Commands], page 307.)
Or, if you want to consider all files under ‘"src/emacs/DIR/file-name"’ to be siblings
of other dirs, you could say:
(setq find-sibling-rules
'(("src/emacs/[^/]+/\\(.*\\)\\'" "src/emacs/.*/\\1")))
As you can see, this is a list of (MATCH EXPANSION...) elements. The match is a
regular expression that matches the visited file name, and each expansion may refer to match
groups by using ‘\\1’ and so on. The resulting expansion string is then applied to the file
system to see if any files match this expansion (interpreted as a regexp).
Two special hook variables allow extensions to modify the operation of visiting files.
Visiting a file that does not exist runs the functions in find-file-not-found-functions;
this variable holds a list of functions, which are called one by one (with no arguments) until
one of them returns non-nil. This is not a normal hook, and the name ends in ‘-functions’
rather than ‘-hook’ to indicate that fact.
Successful visiting of any file, whether existing or not, calls the functions in find-file-
hook, with no arguments. This variable is a normal hook. In the case of a nonexistent file,
the find-file-not-found-functions are run first. See Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.
There are several ways to specify automatically the major mode for editing the file (see
Section 20.3 [Choosing Modes], page 244), and to specify local variables defined for that file
(see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507).

15.3 Saving Files

Saving a buffer in Emacs means writing its contents back into the file that was visited in
the buffer.

15.3.1 Commands for Saving Files

These are the commands that relate to saving and writing files.
C-x C-s Save the current buffer to its file (save-buffer).
C-x s Save any or all buffers to their files (save-some-buffers).
150 GNU Emacs Manual

M-~ Forget that the current buffer has been changed (not-modified). With prefix
argument (C-u), mark the current buffer as changed.
C-x C-w Save the current buffer with a specified file name (write-file).
M-x set-visited-file-name
Change the file name under which the current buffer will be saved.
M-x rename-visited-file
The same as M-x set-visited-file-name, but also rename the file the buffer
is visiting (if any).
When you wish to save the file and make your changes permanent, type C-x C-s
(save-buffer). After saving is finished, C-x C-s displays a message like this:
Wrote /u/rms/gnu/gnu.tasks
If the current buffer is not modified (no changes have been made in it since the buffer was
created or last saved), saving is not really done, because it would have no effect. Instead,
C-x C-s displays a message like this in the echo area:
(No changes need to be saved)
With a prefix argument, C-u C-x C-s, Emacs also marks the buffer to be backed up when
the next save is done. See Section 15.3.2 [Backup], page 151.
The command C-x s (save-some-buffers) offers to save any or all modified buffers. It
asks you what to do with each buffer. The possible responses are analogous to those of
query-replace:
y
SPC Save this buffer and ask about the rest of the buffers.
n
DEL Don’t save this buffer, but ask about the rest of the buffers.
! Save this buffer and all the rest with no more questions.
q
RET Terminate save-some-buffers without any more saving.
. Save this buffer, then exit save-some-buffers without even asking about other
buffers.
C-r View the buffer that you are currently being asked about. When you exit View
mode, you get back to save-some-buffers, which asks the question again.
C-f Exit save-some-buffers and visit the buffer that you are currently being asked
about.
d Diff the buffer against its corresponding file, so you can see what changes
you would be saving. This calls the command diff-buffer-with-file (see
Section 15.9 [Comparing Files], page 163).
C-h Display a help message about these options.
Chapter 15: File Handling 151

You can customize the value of save-some-buffers-default-predicate to control which

buffers Emacs will ask about.
C-x C-c, the key sequence to exit Emacs, invokes save-some-buffers and therefore asks
the same questions.
If you have changed a buffer but do not wish to save the changes, you should take some
action to prevent it. Otherwise, each time you use C-x s or C-x C-c, you are liable to save
this buffer by mistake. One thing you can do is type M-~ (not-modified), which clears out
the indication that the buffer is modified. If you do this, none of the save commands will
believe that the buffer needs to be saved. (‘~’ is often used as a mathematical symbol for
“not”; thus M-~ is “not”, metafied.) Alternatively, you can cancel all the changes made since
the file was visited or saved, by reading the text from the file again. This is called reverting.
See Section 15.4 [Reverting], page 157. (You could also undo all the changes by repeating
the undo command C-x u until you have undone all the changes; but reverting is easier.)
M-x set-visited-file-name alters the name of the file that the current buffer is visiting.
It reads the new file name using the minibuffer. Then it marks the buffer as visiting that
file name, and changes the buffer name correspondingly. set-visited-file-name does not
save the buffer in the newly visited file; it just alters the records inside Emacs in case you
do save later. It also marks the buffer as modified so that C-x C-s in that buffer will save.
If you wish to mark the buffer as visiting a different file and save it right away, use
C-x C-w (write-file). This is equivalent to set-visited-file-name followed by C-x C-s,
except that C-x C-w asks for confirmation if the file exists. C-x C-s used on a buffer that is
not visiting a file has the same effect as C-x C-w; that is, it reads a file name, marks the
buffer as visiting that file, and saves it there. The default file name in a buffer that is not
visiting a file is made by combining the buffer name with the buffer’s default directory (see
Section 15.1 [File Names], page 145).
If the new file name implies a major mode, then C-x C-w switches to that major mode,
in most cases. The command set-visited-file-name also does this. See Section 20.3
[Choosing Modes], page 244.
If Emacs is about to save a file and sees that the date of the latest version on disk does not
match what Emacs last read or wrote, Emacs notifies you of this fact, because it probably
indicates a problem caused by simultaneous editing and requires your immediate attention.
See Section 15.3.4 [Simultaneous Editing], page 155.

15.3.2 Backup Files

On most operating systems, rewriting a file automatically destroys all record of what the
file used to contain. Thus, saving a file from Emacs throws away the old contents of the
file—or it would, except that Emacs carefully copies the old contents to another file, called
the backup file, before actually saving.
Emacs makes a backup for a file only the first time the file is saved from a buffer. No
matter how many times you subsequently save the file, its backup remains unchanged.
However, if you kill the buffer and then visit the file again, a new backup file will be made.
For most files, the variable make-backup-files determines whether to make backup files.
On most operating systems, its default value is t, so that Emacs does write backup files.
For files managed by a version control system (see Section 25.1 [Version Control], page 332),
the variable vc-make-backup-files determines whether to make backup files. By default it
152 GNU Emacs Manual

is nil, since backup files are redundant when you store all the previous versions in a version
control system. See Section “General VC Options” in Specialized Emacs Features.
At your option, Emacs can keep either a single backup for each file, or make a series
of numbered backup files for each file that you edit. See Section 15.3.2.1 [Backup Names],
page 152.
The default value of the backup-enable-predicate variable prevents backup files being
written for files in the directories used for temporary files, specified by temporary-file-
directory or small-temporary-file-directory.
You can explicitly tell Emacs to make another backup file from a buffer, even though
that buffer has been saved before. If you save the buffer with C-u C-x C-s, the version thus
saved will be made into a backup file if you save the buffer again. C-u C-u C-x C-s saves
the buffer, but first makes the previous file contents into a new backup file. C-u C-u C-u
C-x C-s does both things: it makes a backup from the previous contents, and arranges to
make another from the newly saved contents if you save again.
You can customize the variable backup-directory-alist to specify that files matching
certain patterns should be backed up in specific directories. A typical use is to add an
element ("." . dir) to make all backups in the directory with absolute name dir. Emacs
modifies the backup file names to avoid clashes between files with the same names originating
in different directories. Alternatively, adding, ("." . ".~") would make backups in the
invisible subdirectory .~ of the original file’s directory. Emacs creates the directory, if
necessary, to make the backup.

15.3.2.1 Single or Numbered Backups

When Emacs makes a backup file, its name is normally constructed by appending ‘~’ to the
file name being edited; thus, the backup file for eval.c would be eval.c~.
If access control stops Emacs from writing backup files under the usual names, it writes
the backup file as ~/.emacs.d/%backup%~. Only one such file can exist, so only the most
recently made such backup is available.
Emacs can also make numbered backup files. Numbered backup file names contain
‘.~’, the number, and another ‘~’ after the original file name. Thus, the backup files of
eval.c would be called eval.c.~1~, eval.c.~2~, and so on, all the way through names
like eval.c.~259~ and beyond.
The variable version-control determines whether to make single backup files or multiple
numbered backup files. Its possible values are:
nil Make numbered backups for files that have numbered backups already. Otherwise,
make single backups. This is the default.
t Make numbered backups.
never Never make numbered backups; always make single backups.
The usual way to set this variable is globally, through your init file or the customization
buffer. However, you can set version-control locally in an individual buffer to control the
making of backups for that buffer’s file (see Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 505). Some modes,
such as Rmail mode, set this variable. You can also have Emacs set version-control
locally whenever you visit a given file (see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507).
Chapter 15: File Handling 153

If you set the environment variable VERSION_CONTROL, to tell various GNU utilities what
to do with backup files, Emacs also obeys the environment variable by setting the Lisp
variable version-control accordingly at startup. If the environment variable’s value is ‘t’
or ‘numbered’, then version-control becomes t; if the value is ‘nil’ or ‘existing’, then
version-control becomes nil; if it is ‘never’ or ‘simple’, then version-control becomes
never.
If you set the variable make-backup-file-name-function to a suitable Lisp function,
you can override the usual way Emacs constructs backup file names.

15.3.2.2 Automatic Deletion of Backups

To prevent excessive consumption of disk space, Emacs can delete numbered backup versions
automatically. Generally Emacs keeps the first few backups and the latest few backups,
deleting any in between. This happens every time a new backup is made.
The two variables kept-old-versions and kept-new-versions control this deletion.
Their values are, respectively, the number of oldest (lowest-numbered) backups to keep
and the number of newest (highest-numbered) ones to keep, each time a new backup is
made. The backups in the middle (excluding those oldest and newest) are the excess middle
versions—those backups are deleted. These variables’ values are used when it is time to
delete excess versions, just after a new backup version is made; the newly made backup is
included in the count in kept-new-versions. By default, both variables are 2.
If delete-old-versions is t, Emacs deletes the excess backup files silently. If it is nil,
the default, Emacs asks you whether it should delete the excess backup versions. If it has
any other value, then Emacs never automatically deletes backups.
Dired’s . (Period) command can also be used to delete old versions. See Section 27.4
[Flagging Many Files], page 381.

15.3.2.3 Copying vs. Renaming

Backup files can be made by copying the old file or by renaming it. This makes a difference
when the old file has multiple names (hard links). If the old file is renamed into the backup
file, then the alternate names become names for the backup file. If the old file is copied
instead, then the alternate names remain names for the file that you are editing, and the
contents accessed by those names will be the new contents.
The method of making a backup file may also affect the file’s owner and group. If copying
is used, these do not change. If renaming is used, you become the file’s owner, and the file’s
group becomes the default (different operating systems have different defaults for the group).
The choice of renaming or copying is made as follows:
• If the variable backup-by-copying is non-nil (the default is nil), use copying.
• Otherwise, if the variable backup-by-copying-when-linked is non-nil (the default is
nil), and the file has multiple names, use copying.
• Otherwise, if the variable backup-by-copying-when-mismatch is non-nil (the default
is t), and renaming would change the file’s owner or group, use copying.
If you change backup-by-copying-when-mismatch to nil, Emacs checks the numeric
user-id of the file’s owner and the numeric group-id of the file’s group. If either is
no greater than backup-by-copying-when-privileged-mismatch, then it behaves as
though backup-by-copying-when-mismatch is non-nil anyway.
154 GNU Emacs Manual

• Otherwise, renaming is the default choice.

When a file is managed with a version control system (see Section 25.1 [Version Control],
page 332), Emacs does not normally make backups in the usual way for that file. But
committing (a.k.a. checking in, see Section 25.1.1.3 [VCS Concepts], page 334) new versions
of files is similar in some ways to making backups. One unfortunate similarity is that these
operations typically break hard links, disconnecting the file name you visited from any
alternate names for the same file. This has nothing to do with Emacs—the version control
system does it.

15.3.3 Customizing Saving of Files

If the value of the variable require-final-newline is t, saving or writing a file silently
puts a newline at the end if there isn’t already one there. If the value is visit, Emacs adds
a newline at the end of any file that doesn’t have one, just after it visits the file. (This marks
the buffer as modified, and you can undo it.) If the value is visit-save, Emacs adds such
newlines both on visiting and on saving. If the value is nil, Emacs leaves the end of the file
unchanged; any other non-nil value means Emacs asks you whether to add a newline. The
default is nil.

Some major modes are designed for specific kinds of files that are always supposed to
end in newlines. Such major modes set the variable require-final-newline to the value
of mode-require-final-newline, which defaults to t. By setting the latter variable, you
can control how these modes handle final newlines.

If this option is non-nil and you’re visiting a file via a symbolic link, Emacs will break
the symbolic link upon saving the buffer, and will write the buffer to a file with the same
name as the symbolic link, if the value of file-precious-flag is non-nil (see Section
“Saving Buffers” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). If you want Emacs to save the buffer
to the file the symbolic link points to (thereby preserving the link) in these cases, customize
the variable file-preserve-symlinks-on-save to t.

Normally, when a program writes a file, the operating system briefly caches the file’s data
in main memory before committing the data to disk. This can greatly improve performance;
for example, when running on laptops, it can avoid a disk spin-up each time a file is written.
However, it risks data loss if the operating system crashes before committing the cache to
disk.

To lessen this risk, Emacs can invoke the fsync system call after saving a file. Using
fsync does not eliminate the risk of data loss, partly because many systems do not implement
fsync properly, and partly because Emacs’s file-saving procedure typically relies also on
directory updates that might not survive a crash even if fsync works properly.

The write-region-inhibit-fsync variable controls whether Emacs invokes fsync after

saving a file. The variable’s default value is nil when Emacs is interactive, and t when
Emacs runs in batch mode (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570).

Emacs never uses fsync when writing auto-save files, as these files might lose data
anyway.
Chapter 15: File Handling 155

15.3.4 Protection against Simultaneous Editing

Simultaneous editing occurs when two users visit the same file, both make changes, and
then both save them. If nobody is informed that this is happening, whichever user saves
first would later find that their changes were lost.
On some systems, Emacs notices immediately when the second user starts to change the
file, and issues an immediate warning. On all systems, Emacs checks when you save the file,
and warns if you are about to overwrite another user’s changes. You can prevent loss of the
other user’s work by taking the proper corrective action instead of saving the file.
When you make the first modification in an Emacs buffer that is visiting a file, Emacs
records that the file is locked by you. (It does this by creating a specially-named symbolic
link1 with special contents in the same directory. See Section “File Locks” in elisp, for
more details.) Emacs removes the lock when you save the changes. The idea is that the file
is locked whenever an Emacs buffer visiting it has unsaved changes.
You can prevent the creation of lock files by setting the variable create-lockfiles to
nil. Caution: by doing so you will lose the benefits that this feature provides. You can also
control where lock files are written by using the lock-file-name-transforms variable.
If you begin to modify the buffer while the visited file is locked by someone else, this
constitutes a collision. When Emacs detects a collision, it asks you what to do, by calling
the Lisp function ask-user-about-lock. You can redefine this function for the sake of
customization. The standard definition of this function asks you a question and accepts
three possible answers:
s Steal the lock. Whoever was already changing the file loses the lock, and you
gain the lock.
p Proceed. Go ahead and edit the file despite its being locked by someone else.
q Quit. This causes an error (file-locked), and the buffer contents remain
unchanged—the modification you were trying to make does not actually take
place.
If Emacs or the operating system crashes, this may leave behind lock files which are stale,
so you may occasionally get warnings about spurious collisions. When you determine that
the collision is spurious, just use p to tell Emacs to go ahead anyway.
Note that locking works on the basis of a file name; if a file has multiple names, Emacs
does not prevent two users from editing it simultaneously under different names.
A lock file cannot be written in some circumstances, e.g., if Emacs lacks the system
permissions or cannot create lock files for some other reason. In these cases, Emacs can
still detect the collision when you try to save a file, by checking the file’s last-modification
date. If the file has changed since the last time Emacs visited or saved it, that implies that
changes have been made in some other way, and will be lost if Emacs proceeds with saving.
Emacs then displays a warning message and asks for confirmation before saving; answer yes
to save, and no or C-g cancel the save.
If you are notified that simultaneous editing has already taken place, one way to com-
pare the buffer to its file is the M-x diff-buffer-with-file command. See Section 15.9
[Comparing Files], page 163.
1
If your file system does not support symbolic links, a regular file is used.
156 GNU Emacs Manual

You can prevent the creation of remote lock files by setting the variable remote-file-
name-inhibit-locks to t.
The minor mode lock-file-mode, called interactively, toggles the local value of
create-lockfiles in the current buffer.

15.3.5 Shadowing Files

You can arrange to keep identical shadow copies of certain files in more than one place—
possibly on different machines. To do this, first you must set up a shadow file group, which
is a set of identically-named files shared between a list of sites. The file group is permanent
and applies to further Emacs sessions as well as the current one. Once the group is set up,
every time you exit Emacs, it will copy the file you edited to the other files in its group. You
can also do the copying without exiting Emacs, by typing M-x shadow-copy-files.
A shadow cluster is a group of hosts that share directories, so that copying to or from
one of them is sufficient to update the file on all of them. Each shadow cluster has a name,
and specifies the network address of a primary host (the one we copy files to), and a regular
expression that matches the host names of all the other hosts in the cluster. You can define
a shadow cluster with M-x shadow-define-cluster.
M-x shadow-initialize
Set up file shadowing.
M-x shadow-define-literal-group
Declare a single file to be shared between sites.
M-x shadow-define-regexp-group
Make all files that match each of a group of files be shared between hosts.
M-x shadow-define-cluster RET name RET
Define a shadow file cluster name.
M-x shadow-copy-files
Copy all pending shadow files.
M-x shadow-cancel
Cancel the instruction to shadow some files.
To set up a shadow file group, use M-x shadow-define-literal-group or
M-x shadow-define-regexp-group. See their documentation strings for further
information.
Before copying a file to its shadows, Emacs asks for confirmation. You can answer “no”
to bypass copying of this file, this time. If you want to cancel the shadowing permanently
for a certain file, use M-x shadow-cancel to eliminate or change the shadow file group.
File Shadowing is not available on MS Windows.

15.3.6 Updating Time Stamps Automatically

You can arrange to put a time stamp in a file, so that it is updated automatically each time
you edit and save the file. The time stamp must be in the first eight lines of the file, and
you should insert it like this:
Time-stamp: <>
Chapter 15: File Handling 157

or like this:
Time-stamp: " "
Then add the function time-stamp to the hook before-save-hook (see Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 504). When you save the file, this function then automatically updates the
time stamp with the current date and time. You can also use the command M-x time-stamp
to update the time stamp manually. By default the time stamp is formatted according to
your locale setting (see Section C.4 [Environment], page 573) and time zone (see Section
“Time of Day” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). For customizations, see the Custom
group time-stamp.

15.4 Reverting a Buffer

If you have made extensive changes to a file-visiting buffer and then change your mind, you
can revert the changes and go back to the saved version of the file. To do this, type C-x x g.
Since reverting unintentionally could lose a lot of work, Emacs asks for confirmation first if
the buffer is modified.
The revert-buffer command tries to position point in such a way that, if the file was
edited only slightly, you will be at approximately the same part of the text as before. But if
you have made major changes, point may end up in a totally different location.
Reverting marks the buffer as not modified. However, it adds the reverted changes as a
single modification to the buffer’s undo history (see Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131). Thus,
after reverting, you can type C-/ or its aliases to bring the reverted changes back, if you
happen to change your mind.
To revert a buffer more conservatively, you can use the command revert-buffer-with-
fine-grain. This command acts like revert-buffer, but it tries to be as non-destructive
as possible, making an effort to preserve all markers, properties and overlays in the buffer.
Since reverting this way can be very slow when you have made a large number of changes,
you can modify the variable revert-buffer-with-fine-grain-max-seconds to specify a
maximum amount of seconds that replacing the buffer contents this way should take. Note
that it is not ensured that the whole execution of revert-buffer-with-fine-grain won’t
take longer than this.
Some kinds of buffers that are not associated with files, such as Dired buffers, can also be
reverted. For them, reverting means recalculating their contents. Buffers created explicitly
with C-x b cannot be reverted; revert-buffer reports an error if you try.
When you edit a file that changes automatically and frequently—for example, a log of
output from a process that continues to run—it may be useful for Emacs to revert the file
without querying you. To request this behavior, set the variable revert-without-query
to a list of regular expressions. When a file name matches one of these regular expressions,
find-file and revert-buffer will revert it automatically if it has changed—provided the
buffer itself is not modified. (If you have edited the text, it would be wrong to discard your
changes.)
The C-x x g keystroke is bound to the revert-buffer-quick command. This is like
the revert-buffer command, but prompts less. Unlike revert-buffer, it will not prompt
if the current buffer visits a file, and the buffer is not modified. It also respects the
revert-buffer-quick-short-answers user option. If this option is non-nil, use a shorter
y/n query instead of a longer yes/no query.
158 GNU Emacs Manual

You can also tell Emacs to revert buffers automatically when their visited files change on
disk; see Section 15.5 [Auto Revert], page 158.

15.5 Auto Revert: Keeping buffers automatically up-to-date

A buffer can get out of sync with respect to its visited file on disk if that file is changed
by another program. To keep it up to date, you can enable Auto Revert mode by typing
M-x auto-revert-mode. This automatically reverts the buffer when its visited file changes
on disk. To do the same for all file buffers, type M-x global-auto-revert-mode to enable
Global Auto Revert mode.
Auto Revert will not revert a buffer if it has unsaved changes, or if its file on disk is
deleted or renamed.
One use of Auto Revert mode is to “tail” a file such as a system log, so that changes
made to that file by other programs are continuously displayed. To do this, just move the
point to the end of the buffer, and it will stay there as the file contents change. However, if
you are sure that the file will only change by growing at the end, use Auto Revert Tail mode
instead (auto-revert-tail-mode). It is more efficient for this. Auto Revert Tail mode also
works for remote files.
When a buffer is auto-reverted, a message is generated. This can be suppressed by setting
auto-revert-verbose to nil.
The Auto Revert modes do not check or revert remote files, because that is usually too
slow. This behavior can be changed by setting the variable auto-revert-remote-files to
non-nil.
By default, Auto Revert mode works using file notifications, whereby changes in the
filesystem are reported to Emacs by the OS. You can disable use of file notifications by
customizing the variable auto-revert-use-notify to a nil value, then Emacs will check
for file changes by polling every five seconds. You can change the polling interval through
the variable auto-revert-interval.
Not all systems support file notifications; where they are not supported, auto-revert-
use-notify will be nil by default.
By default, Auto Revert mode will poll files for changes periodically even when file
notifications are used. Polling is unnecessary in many cases, and turning it off may save
power by relying on notifications only. To do so, set the variable auto-revert-avoid-
polling to non-nil. However, notification is ineffective on certain file systems; mainly
network file system on Unix-like machines, where files can be altered from other machines.
For such file systems, polling may be necessary. To force polling when auto-revert-avoid-
polling is non-nil, set auto-revert-notify-exclude-dir-regexp to match files that
should be excluded from using notification.
In Dired buffers (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378), Auto Revert mode refreshes the
buffer when a file is created or deleted in the buffer’s directory.
See Section 25.1.8 [VC Undo], page 345, for commands to revert to earlier versions of
files under version control. See Section 25.1.2 [VC Mode Line], page 336, for Auto Revert
peculiarities when visiting files under version control.
Chapter 15: File Handling 159

15.6 Auto-Saving: Protection Against Disasters

From time to time, Emacs automatically saves each visited file in a separate file, without
altering the file you actually use. This is called auto-saving. It prevents you from losing
more than a limited amount of work if the system crashes.
When Emacs determines that it is time for auto-saving, it considers each buffer, and
each is auto-saved if auto-saving is enabled for it and it has been changed since the last time
it was auto-saved. When the auto-save-no-message variable is set to nil (the default),
the message ‘Auto-saving...’ is displayed in the echo area during auto-saving, if any files
are actually auto-saved; to disable these messages, customize the variable to a non-nil
value. Errors occurring during auto-saving are caught so that they do not interfere with the
execution of commands you have been typing.

15.6.1 Auto-Save Files

Auto-saving does not normally save in the files that you visited, because it can be very
undesirable to save a change that you did not want to make permanent. Instead, auto-saving
is done in a different file called the auto-save file, and the visited file is changed only when
you request saving explicitly (such as with C-x C-s).
Normally, the auto-save file name is made by appending ‘#’ to the front and rear of the
visited file name. Thus, a buffer visiting file foo.c is auto-saved in a file #foo.c#. Most
buffers that are not visiting files are auto-saved only if you request it explicitly; when they
are auto-saved, the auto-save file name is made by appending ‘#’ to the front and rear of
buffer name, then adding digits and letters at the end for uniqueness. For example, the
*mail* buffer in which you compose messages to be sent might be auto-saved in a file
named #*mail*#704juu. Auto-save file names are made this way unless you reprogram
parts of Emacs to do something different (the functions make-auto-save-file-name and
auto-save-file-name-p). The file name to be used for auto-saving in a buffer is calculated
when auto-saving is turned on in that buffer.
The variable auto-save-file-name-transforms allows a degree of control over the
auto-save file name. It lets you specify a series of regular expressions and replacements to
transform the auto save file name. The default value puts the auto-save files for remote files
(see Section 15.15 [Remote Files], page 169) into the temporary file directory on the local
machine.
When you delete a substantial part of the text in a large buffer, auto save turns off
temporarily in that buffer. This is because if you deleted the text unintentionally, you might
find the auto-save file more useful if it contains the deleted text. To reenable auto-saving
after this happens, save the buffer with C-x C-s, or use C-u 1 M-x auto-save-mode.
If you want auto-saving to be done in the visited file rather than in a separate auto-save
file, enable the global minor mode auto-save-visited-mode. In this mode, auto-saving
is identical to explicit saving. Note that this mode is orthogonal to the auto-save mode
described above; you can enable both at the same time. However, if auto-save mode is
active in some buffer and the obsolete auto-save-visited-file-name variable is set to a
non-nil value, that buffer won’t be affected by auto-save-visited-mode.
You can use the variable auto-save-visited-interval to customize the interval
between auto-save operations in auto-save-visited-mode; by default it’s five seconds.
160 GNU Emacs Manual

auto-save-interval and auto-save-timeout have no effect on auto-save-visited-mode.

See Section 15.6.2 [Auto Save Control], page 160, for details on these variables.
A buffer’s auto-save file is deleted when you save the buffer in its visited file. (You can
inhibit this by setting the variable delete-auto-save-files to nil.) Changing the visited
file name with C-x C-w or set-visited-file-name renames any auto-save file to go with
the new visited name.
Killing a buffer, by default, doesn’t remove the buffer’s auto-save file. If kill-buffer-
delete-auto-save-files is non-nil, killing a buffer that has an auto-save file will make
Emacs prompt the user for whether the auto-save file should be deleted. (This is inhibited if
delete-auto-save-files is nil.)

15.6.2 Controlling Auto-Saving

Each time you visit a file, auto-saving is turned on for that file’s buffer if the variable
auto-save-default is non-nil (but not in batch mode; see Section C.2 [Initial Options],
page 570). The default for this variable is t, so auto-saving is the usual practice for file-
visiting buffers. To toggle auto-saving in the current buffer, type M-x auto-save-mode. Auto
Save mode acts as a buffer-local minor mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242).
Emacs auto-saves periodically based on how many characters you have typed since the
last auto-save. The variable auto-save-interval specifies how many characters there are
between auto-saves. By default, it is 300. Emacs doesn’t accept values that are too small:
if you customize auto-save-interval to a value less than 20, Emacs will behave as if the
value is 20.
Auto-saving also takes place when you stop typing for a while. By default, it does this
after 30 seconds of idleness (at this time, Emacs may also perform garbage collection; see
Section “Garbage Collection” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). To change this interval,
customize the variable auto-save-timeout. The actual time period is longer if the current
buffer is long; this is a heuristic which aims to keep out of your way when you are editing
long buffers, in which auto-save takes an appreciable amount of time. Auto-saving during
idle periods accomplishes two things: first, it makes sure all your work is saved if you go
away from the terminal for a while; second, it may avoid some auto-saving while you are
actually typing.
When auto-save-visited-mode is enabled, Emacs will auto-save file-visiting buffers
after five seconds of idle time. You can customize the variable auto-save-visited-interval
to change the idle time interval.
Emacs also does auto-saving whenever it gets a fatal error. This includes killing the
Emacs job with a shell command such as ‘kill %emacs’, or disconnecting a phone line or
network connection.
You can perform an auto-save explicitly with the command M-x do-auto-save.

15.6.3 Recovering Data from Auto-Saves

You can use the contents of an auto-save file to recover from a loss of data with the command
M-x recover-file RET file RET. This visits file and then (after your confirmation) restores
the contents from its auto-save file #file#. You can then save with C-x C-s to put the
recovered text into file itself. For example, to recover file foo.c from its auto-save file
#foo.c#, do:
Chapter 15: File Handling 161

M-x recover-file RET foo.c RET

yes RET
C-x C-s
Before asking for confirmation, M-x recover-file displays a directory listing describing
the specified file and the auto-save file, so you can compare their sizes and dates. If the
auto-save file is older, M-x recover-file does not offer to read it.
If Emacs or the computer crashes, you can recover all the files you were editing from
their auto save files with the command M-x recover-session. This first shows you a list of
recorded interrupted sessions. Move point to the one you choose, and type C-c C-c.
Then recover-session asks about each of the files that were being edited during that
session, asking whether to recover that file. If you answer y, it calls recover-file, which
works in its normal fashion. It shows the dates of the original file and its auto-save file, and
asks once again whether to recover that file.
When recover-session is done, the files you’ve chosen to recover are present in Emacs
buffers. You should then save them. Only this—saving them—updates the files themselves.
Emacs records information about interrupted sessions in files named .saves-pid-
hostname~ in the directory ~/.emacs.d/auto-save-list/. This directory is determined
by the variable auto-save-list-file-prefix. If you set auto-save-list-file-prefix
to nil, sessions are not recorded for recovery.

15.7 File Name Aliases

Symbolic links and hard links both make it possible for several file names to refer to the
same file. Hard links are alternate names that refer directly to the file; all the names are
equally valid, and no one of them is preferred. By contrast, a symbolic link is a kind of
defined alias: when foo is a symbolic link to bar, you can use either name to refer to the
file, but bar is the real name, while foo is just an alias. More complex cases occur when
symbolic links point to directories.
Normally, if you visit a file which Emacs is already visiting under a different name, Emacs
displays a message in the echo area and uses the existing buffer visiting that file. This
can happen on systems that support hard or symbolic links, or if you use a long file name
on a system that truncates long file names, or on a case-insensitive file system. You can
suppress the message by setting the variable find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings
to a non-nil value. You can disable this feature entirely by setting the variable find-file-
existing-other-name to nil: then if you visit the same file under two different names, you
get a separate buffer for each file name.
If the variable find-file-visit-truename is non-nil, then the file name recorded for a
buffer is the file’s truename (made by replacing all symbolic links with their target names),
rather than the name you specify. Setting find-file-visit-truename also implies the
effect of find-file-existing-other-name.
Sometimes, a directory is ordinarily accessed through a symbolic link, and you may want
Emacs to preferentially show its linked name. To do this, customize directory-abbrev-
alist. Each element in this list should have the form (from . to), which means to replace
from with to whenever from appears in a directory name. The from string is a regular
expression (see Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114). It is matched against directory names
162 GNU Emacs Manual

anchored at the first character, and should start with ‘\`’ (to support directory names with
embedded newlines, which would defeat ‘^’). The to string should be an ordinary absolute
directory name pointing to the same directory. Do not use ‘~’ to stand for a home directory
in the to string; Emacs performs these substitutions separately. Here’s an example, from a
system on which /home/fsf is normally accessed through a symbolic link named /fsf:
(("\\`/home/fsf" . "/fsf"))

15.8 File Directories

The file system groups files into directories. A directory listing is a list of all the files
in a directory. Emacs provides commands to create and delete directories, and to make
directory listings in brief format (file names only) and verbose format (sizes, dates, and
other attributes included). Emacs also includes a directory browser feature called Dired,
which you can invoke with C-x d; see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378.
C-x C-d dir-or-pattern RET
Display a brief directory listing (list-directory).
C-u C-x C-d dir-or-pattern RET
Display a verbose directory listing.
M-x make-directory RET dirname RET
Create a new directory named dirname.
M-x delete-directory RET dirname RET
Delete the directory named dirname. If it isn’t empty, you will be asked whether
you want to delete it recursively.
The command to display a directory listing is C-x C-d (list-directory). It reads using
the minibuffer a file name which is either a directory to be listed or a wildcard-containing
pattern for the files to be listed. For example,
C-x C-d /u2/emacs/etc RET
lists all the files in directory /u2/emacs/etc. Here is an example of specifying a file name
pattern:
C-x C-d /u2/emacs/src/*.c RET
Normally, C-x C-d displays a brief directory listing containing just file names. A numeric
argument (regardless of value) tells it to make a verbose listing including sizes, dates, and
owners (like ‘ls -l’).
The text of a directory listing is mostly obtained by running ls in an inferior process. Two
Emacs variables control the switches passed to ls: list-directory-brief-switches is a
string giving the switches to use in brief listings ("-CF" by default), and list-directory-
verbose-switches is a string giving the switches to use in a verbose listing ("-l" by
default).
In verbose directory listings, Emacs adds information about the amount of free space on
the disk that contains the directory.
The command M-x delete-directory prompts for a directory’s name using the minibuf-
fer, and deletes the directory if it is empty. If the directory is not empty, you will be asked
whether you want to delete it recursively. On systems that have a “Trash” (or “Recycle
Chapter 15: File Handling 163

Bin”) feature, you can make this command move the specified directory to the Trash instead
of deleting it outright, by changing the variable delete-by-moving-to-trash to t. See
Section 15.12 [Misc File Ops], page 167, for more information about using the Trash.

15.9 Comparing Files

The command M-x diff prompts for two file names, using the minibuffer, and displays
the differences between the two files in a buffer named *diff*. This works by running
the diff program, using options taken from the variable diff-switches. The value of
diff-switches should be a string; the default is "-u" to specify a unified context diff.
See Section “Diff” in Comparing and Merging Files, for more information about the diff
program.
The output of the diff command is shown using a major mode called Diff mode. See
Section 15.10 [Diff Mode], page 164.
A (much more sophisticated) alternative is M-x ediff (see Section “Ediff” in The Ediff
Manual).
The command M-x diff-backup compares a specified file with its most recent backup.
If you specify the name of a backup file, diff-backup compares it with the source file that
it is a backup of. In all other respects, this behaves like M-x diff.
The command M-x diff-buffer-with-file compares a specified buffer with its corre-
sponding file. This shows you what changes you would make to the file if you save the
buffer.
The command M-x diff-buffers compares the contents of two specified buffers.
The command M-x compare-windows compares the text in the current window with that
in the window that was the selected window before you selected the current one. (For more
information about windows in Emacs, see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185.) Comparison
starts at point in each window, after pushing each initial point value on the mark ring (see
Section 8.4 [Mark Ring], page 55) in its respective buffer. Then it moves point forward in
each window, one character at a time, until it reaches characters that don’t match. Then
the command exits.
If point in the two windows is followed by non-matching text when the command starts,
M-x compare-windows tries heuristically to advance up to matching text in the two windows,
and then exits. So if you use M-x compare-windows repeatedly (see Section 4.11 [Repeating],
page 25), each time it either skips one matching range or finds the start of another.
With a numeric argument, compare-windows ignores changes in whitespace. If the
variable compare-ignore-case is non-nil, the comparison ignores differences in case as
well. If the variable compare-ignore-whitespace is non-nil, compare-windows by default
ignores changes in whitespace, but a prefix argument turns that off for that single invocation
of the command.
You can use M-x smerge-mode to turn on Smerge mode, a minor mode for editing output
from the diff3 program. This is typically the result of a failed merge from a version control
system update outside VC, due to conflicting changes to a file. Smerge mode provides
commands to resolve conflicts by selecting specific changes.
See Section “Emerge” in Specialized Emacs Features, for the Emerge facility, which
provides a powerful interface for merging files.
164 GNU Emacs Manual

15.10 Diff Mode

Diff mode is a major mode used for the output of M-x diff and other similar commands.
This kind of output is called a patch, because it can be passed to the patch command
to automatically apply the specified changes. To select Diff mode manually, type M-x
diff-mode.
The changes specified in a patch are grouped into hunks, which are contiguous chunks of
text that contain one or more changed lines. Hunks usually also include unchanged lines to
provide context for the changes. Each hunk is preceded by a hunk header, which specifies
the old and new line numbers where the hunk’s changes occur. Diff mode highlights each
hunk header, to distinguish it from the actual contents of the hunk.
The first hunk in a patch is preceded by a file header, which shows the names of the new
and the old versions of the file, and their time stamps. If a patch shows changes for more
than one file, each file has such a header before the first hunk of that file’s changes.
You can edit a Diff mode buffer like any other buffer. (If it is read-only, you need to
make it writable first; see Section 16.3 [Misc Buffer], page 177.) Whenever you edit a hunk,
Diff mode attempts to automatically correct the line numbers in the hunk headers, to ensure
that the patch remains correct, and could still be applied by patch. To disable automatic
line number correction, change the variable diff-update-on-the-fly to nil.
Diff mode arranges for hunks to be treated as compiler error messages by M-g M-n
and other commands that handle error messages (see Section 24.2 [Compilation Mode],
page 310). Thus, you can use the compilation-mode commands to visit the corresponding
source locations.
In addition, Diff mode provides the following commands to navigate, manipulate and
apply parts of patches:
M-n Move to the next hunk-start (diff-hunk-next). With prefix argument n, move
forward to the nth next hunk.
By default, Diff mode refines hunks as Emacs displays them, highlighting their
changes with better granularity. Alternatively, if you set diff-refine to the
symbol navigation, Diff mode only refines the hunk you move to with this
command or with diff-hunk-prev.
M-p Move to the previous hunk-start (diff-hunk-prev). With prefix argument n,
move back to the nth previous hunk. Like M-n, this command refines the hunk
you move to if you set diff-refine to the symbol navigation.
M-} Move to the next file-start, in a multi-file patch (diff-file-next). With prefix
argument n, move forward to the start of the nth next file.
M-{ Move to the previous file-start, in a multi-file patch (diff-file-prev). With
prefix argument n, move back to the start of the nth previous file.
M-k Kill the hunk at point (diff-hunk-kill).
M-K In a multi-file patch, kill the current file part. (diff-file-kill).
C-c C-a Apply this hunk to its target file (diff-apply-hunk). With a prefix argument
of C-u, revert this hunk, i.e. apply the reverse of the hunk, which changes the
“new” version into the “old” version. If diff-jump-to-old-file is non-nil,
apply the hunk to the “old” version of the file instead.
Chapter 15: File Handling 165

C-c C-b Highlight the changes of the hunk at point with a finer granularity
(diff-refine-hunk). This allows you to see exactly which parts of each
changed line were actually changed.
By default, Diff mode refines hunks as Emacs displays them, so you may find
this command useful if you customize diff-refine to a non-default value.
C-c C-c Go to the source file and line corresponding to this hunk (diff-goto-source).
By default, this jumps to the “new” version of the file, the one shown first on
the file header. With a prefix argument, jump to the “old” version instead. If
diff-jump-to-old-file is non-nil, this command by default jumps to the
“old” file, and the meaning of the prefix argument is reversed. If the prefix
argument is a number greater than 8 (e.g., if you type C-u C-u C-c C-c), then
this command also sets diff-jump-to-old-file for the next invocation. If the
source file is under version control (see Section 25.1 [Version Control], page 332),
this jumps to the work file by default. With a prefix argument, jump to the
“old” revision of the file (see Section 25.1.6 [Old Revisions], page 340), when
point is on the old line, or otherwise jump to the “new” revision.
C-c C-e Start an Ediff session with the patch (diff-ediff-patch). See Section “Ediff”
in The Ediff Manual.
C-c C-n Restrict the view to the current hunk (diff-restrict-view). See Section 11.5
[Narrowing], page 80. With a prefix argument, restrict the view to the current
file of a multiple-file patch. To widen again, use C-x n w (widen).
C-c C-r Reverse the direction of comparison for the entire buffer (diff-reverse-
direction). With a prefix argument, reverse the direction only inside the
current region (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51). Reversing the direction means
changing the hunks and the file-start headers to produce a patch that would
change the “new” version into the “old” one.
C-c C-s Split the hunk at point (diff-split-hunk) into two separate hunks. This inserts
a hunk header and modifies the header of the current hunk. This command is
useful for manually editing patches, and only works with the unified diff format
produced by the -u or --unified options to the diff program. If you need to
split a hunk in the context diff format produced by the -c or --context options
to diff, first convert the buffer to the unified diff format with C-c C-u.
C-c C-d Convert the entire buffer to the context diff format (diff-unified->context).
With a prefix argument, convert only the hunks within the region.
C-c C-u Convert the entire buffer to unified diff format (diff-context->unified). With
a prefix argument, convert unified format to context format. When the mark is
active, convert only the hunks within the region.
C-c C-l Re-generate the current hunk (diff-refresh-hunk).
C-c C-w Re-generate the current hunk, disregarding changes in whitespace
(diff-ignore-whitespace-hunk).
C-x 4 A Generate a ChangeLog entry, like C-x 4 a does (see Section 25.3 [Change Log],
page 354), for each one of the hunks (diff-add-change-log-entries-other-
window). This creates a skeleton of the log of changes that you can later fill
166 GNU Emacs Manual

with the actual descriptions of the changes. C-x 4 a itself in Diff mode operates
on behalf of the current hunk’s file, but gets the function name from the patch
itself. This is useful for making log entries for functions that are deleted by the
patch.
Patches sometimes include trailing whitespace on modified lines, as an unintentional and
undesired change. There are two ways to deal with this problem. Firstly, if you enable
Whitespace mode in a Diff buffer (see Section 11.17 [Useless Whitespace], page 94), it
automatically highlights trailing whitespace in modified lines. Secondly, you can use the
command M-x diff-delete-trailing-whitespace, which searches for trailing whitespace
in the lines modified by the patch, and removes that whitespace in both the patch and the
patched source file(s). This command does not save the modifications that it makes, so you
can decide whether to save the changes (the list of modified files is displayed in the echo
area). With a prefix argument, it tries to modify the original (“old”) source files rather than
the patched (“new”) source files.
If diff-font-lock-syntax is non-nil, fragments of source in hunks are highlighted
according to the appropriate major mode.

15.11 Copying, Naming and Renaming Files

Emacs has several commands for copying, naming, and renaming files. All of them read two
file names, old (or target) and new, using the minibuffer, and then copy or adjust a file’s
name accordingly; they do not accept wildcard file names.
In all these commands, if the argument new is just a directory name (see Section
“Directory Names” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual), the real new name is in that
directory, with the same non-directory component as old. For example, the command
M-x rename-file RET ~/foo RET /tmp/ RET renames ~/foo to /tmp/foo. On GNU and
other POSIX-like systems, directory names end in ‘/’.
All these commands ask for confirmation when the new file name already exists.
M-x copy-file copies the contents of the file old to the file new.
M-x copy-directory copies directories, similar to the cp -r shell command. If new is
a directory name, it creates a copy of the old directory and puts it in new. Otherwise it
copies all the contents of old into a new directory named new. If copy-directory-create-
symlink is non-nil and old is a symbolic link, this command will copy the symbolic link. If
nil, this command will follow the link and copy the contents instead. (This is the default.)
M-x rename-file renames file old as new. If the file name new already exists, you must
confirm with yes or renaming is not done; this is because renaming causes the old meaning
of the name new to be lost. If old and new are on different file systems, the file old is copied
and deleted.
M-x add-name-to-file adds an additional name to an existing file without removing
the old name. The new name is created as a hard link to the existing file. The new name
must belong on the same file system that the file is on. On MS-Windows, this command
works only if the file resides in an NTFS file system. On MS-DOS, and some remote system
types, it works by copying the file.
M-x make-symbolic-link creates a symbolic link named new, which points at target.
The effect is that future attempts to open file new will refer to whatever file is named target
Chapter 15: File Handling 167

at the time the opening is done, or will get an error if the name target is nonexistent at that
time. This command does not expand the argument target, so that it allows you to specify
a relative name as the target of the link. However, this command does expand leading ‘~’ in
target so that you can easily specify home directories, and strips leading ‘/:’ so that you
can specify relative names beginning with literal ‘~’ or ‘/:’. See Section 15.16 [Quoted File
Names], page 170. On MS-Windows, this command works only on MS Windows Vista and
later. When new is remote, it works depending on the system type.

15.12 Miscellaneous File Operations

Emacs has commands for performing many other operations on files. All operate on one file;
they do not accept wildcard file names.
M-x delete-file prompts for a file and deletes it. If you are deleting many files in one
directory, it may be more convenient to use Dired rather than delete-file. See Section 27.3
[Dired Deletion], page 380.
M-x move-file-to-trash moves a file into the system Trash (or Recycle Bin). This
is a facility available on most operating systems; files that are moved into the Trash
can be brought back later if you change your mind. (The way to restore trashed files is
system-dependent.)
By default, Emacs deletion commands do not use the Trash. To use the Trash (when
it is available) for common deletion commands, change the variable delete-by-moving-
to-trash to t. This affects the commands M-x delete-file and M-x delete-directory
(see Section 15.8 [Directories], page 162), as well as the deletion commands in Dired (see
Section 27.3 [Dired Deletion], page 380). Supplying a prefix argument to M-x delete-file
or M-x delete-directory makes them delete outright, instead of using the Trash, regardless
of delete-by-moving-to-trash.
If you have delete-by-moving-to-trash set, and you want to delete files manually in
Emacs from the Trash directory, using commands like D (dired-do-delete) doesn’t work
well in the Trash directory (it’ll just give the file a new name, but won’t delete anything).
If you want to be able to do this, you should create a .dir-locals.el file containing
something like the following in the Trash directory:
((dired-mode . ((delete-by-moving-to-trash . nil))))
Note, however, if you use the system “empty trash” command, it’s liable to also delete
this .dir-locals.el file, so this should only be done if you delete files from the Trash
directory manually.
M-x insert-file (also C-x i) inserts a copy of the contents of the specified file into the
current buffer at point, leaving point unchanged before the contents. The position after the
inserted contents is added to the mark ring, without activating the mark (see Section 8.4
[Mark Ring], page 55).
M-x insert-file-literally is like M-x insert-file, except the file is inserted literally:
it is treated as a sequence of ASCII characters with no special encoding or conversion, similar
to the M-x find-file-literally command (see Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146).
M-x write-region is the inverse of M-x insert-file; it copies the contents of the region
into the specified file. M-x append-to-file adds the text of the region to the end of the
168 GNU Emacs Manual

specified file. See Section 9.4 [Accumulating Text], page 66. The variable write-region-
inhibit-fsync applies to these commands, as well as saving files; see Section 15.3.3
[Customize Save], page 154.
M-x set-file-modes reads a file name followed by a file mode, and applies that file mode
to the specified file. File modes, also called file permissions, determine whether a file can be
read, written to, or executed, and by whom. This command reads file modes using the same
symbolic or octal format accepted by the chmod command; for instance, ‘u+x’ means to add
execution permission for the user who owns the file. It has no effect on operating systems
that do not support file modes. chmod is a convenience alias for this function.

15.13 Accessing Compressed Files

Emacs automatically uncompresses compressed files when you visit them, and automatically
recompresses them if you alter them and save them. Emacs recognizes compressed files by
their file names. File names ending in ‘.gz’ indicate a file compressed with gzip. Other
endings indicate other compression programs.
Automatic uncompression and compression apply to all the operations in which Emacs
uses the contents of a file. This includes visiting it, saving it, inserting its contents into a
buffer, loading it, and byte compiling it.
To disable this feature, type the command M-x auto-compression-mode. You can disable
it permanently by customizing the variable auto-compression-mode.

15.14 File Archives

A file whose name ends in ‘.tar’ is normally an archive made by the tar program. Emacs
views these files in a special mode called Tar mode which provides a Dired-like list of the
contents (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378). You can move around through the list just as
you would in Dired, and visit the subfiles contained in the archive. However, not all Dired
commands are available in Tar mode.
If Auto Compression mode is enabled (see Section 15.13 [Compressed Files], page 168),
then Tar mode is used also for compressed archives—files with extensions ‘.tgz’, .tar.Z
and .tar.gz.
The keys e, f and RET all extract a component file into its own buffer. You can edit
it there, and if you save the buffer, the edited version will replace the version in the Tar
buffer. Clicking with the mouse on the file name in the Tar buffer does likewise. v extracts
a file into a buffer in View mode (see Section 11.6 [View Mode], page 81). o extracts the
file and displays it in another window, so you could edit the file and operate on the archive
simultaneously.
The I key adds a new (regular) file to the archive. The file is initially empty, but can
readily be edited using the commands above. The command inserts the new file before the
current one, so that using it on the topmost line of the Tar buffer makes the new file the
first one in the archive, and using it at the end of the buffer makes it the last one.
d marks a file for deletion when you later use x, and u unmarks a file, as in Dired. C
copies a file from the archive to disk and R renames a file within the archive. g reverts the
buffer from the archive on disk. The keys M, G, and O change the file’s permission bits, group,
and owner, respectively.
Chapter 15: File Handling 169

Saving the Tar buffer writes a new version of the archive to disk with the changes you
made to the components.
You don’t need the tar program to use Tar mode—Emacs reads the archives directly.
However, accessing compressed archives requires the appropriate uncompression program.
A separate but similar Archive mode is used for arc, jar, lzh, zip, rar, 7z, and zoo
archives, as well as exe files that are self-extracting executables.
The key bindings of Archive mode are similar to those in Tar mode, with the addition
of the m key which marks a file for subsequent operations, and M-DEL which unmarks all
the marked files. Also, the a key toggles the display of detailed file information, for those
archive types where it won’t fit in a single line. Operations such as renaming a subfile, or
changing its mode or owner, are supported only for some of the archive formats.
Unlike Tar mode, Archive mode runs the archiving programs to unpack and repack
archives. However, you don’t need these programs to look at the archive table of contents,
only to extract or manipulate the subfiles in the archive. Details of the program names and
their options can be set in the ‘Archive’ Customize group (see Section 33.1.1 [Customization
Groups], page 494).

15.15 Remote Files

You can refer to files on other machines using a special file name syntax:
/method:host:filename
/method:user@host:filename
/method:user@host#port:filename
To carry out this request, Emacs uses a remote-login program such as ssh. You must always
specify in the file name which method to use—for example, /ssh:user@host:filename uses
ssh. When you specify the pseudo method ‘-’ in the file name, Emacs chooses the method
as follows:
1. If the host name starts with ‘ftp.’ (with dot), Emacs uses FTP.
2. If the user name is ‘ftp’ or ‘anonymous’, Emacs uses FTP.
3. If the variable tramp-default-method is set to ‘ftp’, Emacs uses FTP.
4. If ssh-agent is running, Emacs uses scp.
5. Otherwise, Emacs uses ssh.

You can entirely turn off the remote file name feature by setting the variable tramp-mode to
nil. You can turn off the feature in individual cases by quoting the file name with ‘/:’ (see
Section 15.16 [Quoted File Names], page 170).
Remote file access through FTP is handled by the Ange-FTP package, which is docu-
mented in the following. Remote file access through the other methods is handled by the
Tramp package, which has its own manual. See The Tramp Manual.
When the Ange-FTP package is used, Emacs logs in through FTP using the name user,
if that is specified in the remote file name. If user is unspecified, Emacs logs in using your
user name on the local system; but if you set the variable ange-ftp-default-user to a
string, that string is used instead. When logging in, Emacs may also ask for a password.
170 GNU Emacs Manual

For performance reasons, Emacs does not make backup files for files accessed via FTP by
default. To make it do so, change the variable ange-ftp-make-backup-files to a non-nil
value.
By default, auto-save files for remote files are made in the temporary file directory on
the local machine, as specified by the variable auto-save-file-name-transforms. See
Section 15.6.1 [Auto Save Files], page 159.
To visit files accessible by anonymous FTP, you use special user names ‘anonymous’
or ‘ftp’. Passwords for these user names are handled specially. The variable ange-ftp-
generate-anonymous-password controls what happens: if the value of this variable is a
string, then that string is used as the password; if non-nil (the default), then the value of
user-mail-address is used; if nil, then Emacs prompts you for a password as usual (see
Section 5.7 [Passwords], page 38).
Sometimes you may be unable to access files on a remote machine because a firewall in
between blocks the connection for security reasons. If you can log in on a gateway machine
from which the target files are accessible, and whose FTP server supports gatewaying
features, you can still use remote file names; all you have to do is specify the name of
the gateway machine by setting the variable ange-ftp-gateway-host, and set ange-ftp-
smart-gateway to t. Otherwise you may be able to make remote file names work, but the
procedure is complex. You can read the instructions by typing M-x finder-commentary
RET ange-ftp RET.

15.16 Quoted File Names

You can quote an absolute file name to prevent special characters and syntax in it from
having their special effects. The way to do this is to add ‘/:’ at the beginning.
For example, you can quote a local file name which appears remote, to prevent it from
being treated as a remote file name. Thus, if you have a directory named /foo: and a file
named bar in it, you can refer to that file in Emacs as ‘/:/foo:/bar’.
If you want to quote only special characters in the local part of a remote file name, you
can quote just the local part. ‘/ssh:baz:/:/foo:/bar’ refers to the file bar of directory
/foo: on the host baz.
‘/:’ can also prevent ‘~’ from being treated as a special character for a user’s home
directory. For example, /:/tmp/~hack refers to a file whose name is ~hack in directory
/tmp.
Quoting with ‘/:’ is also a way to enter in the minibuffer a file name that contains ‘$’.
In order for this to work, the ‘/:’ must be at the beginning of the minibuffer contents. (You
can also double each ‘$’; see [File Names with $], page 145.)
You can also quote wildcard characters with ‘/:’, for visiting. For example,
/:/tmp/foo*bar visits the file /tmp/foo*bar.
Another method of getting the same result is to enter /tmp/foo[*]bar, which is a
wildcard specification that matches only /tmp/foo*bar. However, in many cases there is no
need to quote the wildcard characters because even unquoted they give the right result. For
example, if the only file name in /tmp that starts with ‘foo’ and ends with ‘bar’ is foo*bar,
then specifying /tmp/foo*bar will visit only /tmp/foo*bar.
Chapter 15: File Handling 171

15.17 File Name Cache

You can use the file name cache to make it easy to locate a file by name, without having to
remember exactly where it is located. When typing a file name in the minibuffer, C-TAB
(file-cache-minibuffer-complete) completes it using the file name cache. If you repeat
C-TAB, that cycles through the possible completions of what you had originally typed.
(However, note that the C-TAB character cannot be typed on most text terminals.)
The file name cache does not fill up automatically. Instead, you load file names into the
cache using these commands:
M-x file-cache-add-directory RET directory RET
Add each file name in directory to the file name cache.
M-x file-cache-add-directory-using-find RET directory RET
Add each file name in directory and all of its nested subdirectories to the file
name cache.
M-x file-cache-add-directory-using-locate RET directory RET
Add each file name in directory and all of its nested subdirectories to the file
name cache, using locate to find them all.
M-x file-cache-add-directory-list RET variable RET
Add each file name in each directory listed in variable to the file name cache.
variable should be a Lisp variable whose value is a list of directories, like
load-path.
M-x file-cache-clear-cache RET
Clear the cache; that is, remove all file names from it.
The file name cache is not persistent: it is kept and maintained only for the duration of
the Emacs session. You can view the contents of the cache with the file-cache-display
command.

15.18 Convenience Features for Finding Files

In this section, we introduce some convenient facilities for finding recently-opened files,
reading file names from a buffer.
If you enable Recentf mode, with M-x recentf-mode, Emacs maintains a list of recently
opened files. To open a file from this list, use the M-x recentf-open command. When this
mode is enabled, the ‘File’ menu will include a submenu that you can use to visit one
of these files. M-x recentf-save-list saves the current recentf-list to a file, and M-x
recentf-edit-list edits it.
The M-x ffap command generalizes find-file with more powerful heuristic defaults (see
Section 31.12.5 [FFAP], page 482), often based on the text at point. Partial Completion mode
offers other features extending find-file, which can be used with ffap. See Section 5.4.5
[Completion Options], page 34.

15.19 Viewing Image Files

Visiting image files automatically selects Image mode. In this major mode, you can type
C-c C-c (image-toggle-display) to toggle between displaying the file as an image in the
172 GNU Emacs Manual

Emacs buffer, and displaying its underlying text (or raw byte) representation. Additionally
you can type C-c C-x (image-toggle-hex-display) to toggle between displaying the file
as an image in the Emacs buffer, and displaying it in hex representation. Displaying the file
as an image works only if Emacs is compiled with support for displaying such images.
If the displayed image is wider or taller than the window in which it is displayed, the usual
point motion keys (C-f, C-p, and so forth) cause different parts of the image to be displayed.
However, by default images are resized automatically to fit the window, so this is only
necessary if you customize the default behavior by using the options image-auto-resize
and image-auto-resize-on-window-resize.
To resize the image manually you can use the command image-transform-fit-to-
window bound to s w that fits the image to both the window height and width. To scale
the image to a percentage of its original size, use the command image-transform-set-
percent bound to s p. To scale the image specifying a scale factor, use the command
image-transform-set-scale bound to s s. To reset all transformations to the initial state,
use image-transform-reset-to-initial bound to s 0, or image-transform-reset-to-
original bound to s o.
You can press n (image-next-file) and p (image-previous-file) to visit the next
image file and the previous image file in the same directory, respectively. These commands
will consult the “parent” dired buffer to determine what the next/previous image file is.
These commands also work when opening a file from archive files (like zip or tar files), and
will then instead consult the archive mode buffer. If neither an archive nor a dired “parent”
buffer can be found, a dired buffer is opened.
When looking through images, it’s sometimes convenient to be able to mark the files for
later processing (for instance, if you want to select a group of images to copy somewhere
else). The m (image-mode-mark-file) command will mark the current file in any Dired
buffer(s) that display the current file’s directory. If no such buffer is open, the directory
is opened in a new buffer. To unmark files, use the u (image-mode-mark-file) command.
Finally, if you just want to copy the current buffers file name to the kill ring, you can use
the w (image-mode-copy-file-name-as-kill) command.
If the image can be animated, the command RET (image-toggle-animation) starts or
stops the animation. Animation plays once, unless the option image-animate-loop is non-
nil. With f (image-next-frame) and b (image-previous-frame) you can step through the
individual frames. Both commands accept a numeric prefix to step through several frames
at once. You can go to a specific frame with F (image-goto-frame). Frames are indexed
from 1. Typing a + (image-increase-speed) increases the speed of the animation, a -
(image-decrease-speed) decreases it, and a r (image-reverse-speed) reverses it. The
command a 0 (image-reset-speed) resets the speed to the original value.
In addition to the above key bindings, which are specific to Image mode, images shown
in any Emacs buffer have special key bindings when point is at or inside the image:
i+ Increase the image size (image-increase-size) by 20%. Prefix numeric argu-
ment controls the increment; the value of n means to multiply the size by the
factor of 1 + n / 10, so C-u 5 i + means to increase the size by 50%.
i- Decrease the image size (image-increase-size) by 20%. Prefix numeric argu-
ment controls the decrement; the value of n means to multiply the size by the
factor of 1 - n / 10, so C-u 3 i - means to decrease the size by 30%.
Chapter 15: File Handling 173

ir Rotate the image by 90 degrees clockwise (image-rotate). With the prefix

argument, rotate by 90 degrees counter-clockwise instead. Note that this
command is not available for sliced images.
ih Flip the image horizontally (image-flip-horizontally). This presents the
image as if reflected in a vertical mirror. Note that this command is not available
for sliced images.
iv Flip the image vertically (image-flip-vertically). This presents the image
as if reflected in a horizontal mirror. Note that this command is not available
for sliced images.
io Save the image to a file (image-save). This command prompts you for the
name of the file to save the image.
ic Crop the image (image-crop). This command is available only if your system
has an external program installed that can be used for cropping and cutting of
images; the user option image-crop-crop-command determines what program
to use, and defaults to the ImageMagick’s convert program. The command
displays the image with a rectangular frame superimposed on it, and lets you
use the mouse to move and resize the frame. Type m to cause mouse movements
to move the frame instead of resizing it; type s to move a square frame instead.
When you are satisfied with the position and size of the cropping frame, type
RET to actually crop the part under the frame; or type q to exit without cropping.
You can then save the cropped image using i o or M-x image-save.
ix Cut a rectangle from the image (image-cut). This works the same as
image-crop (and also requires an external program, defined by the variable
image-crop-cut-command, to perform the image cut), but instead of cropping
the image, it removes the part inside the frame and fills that part with the color
specified by image-cut-color. With prefix argument, the command prompts
for the color to use.
The size and rotation commands are “repeating”, which means that you can continue
adjusting the image without using the i prefix.
If Emacs was compiled with support for the ImageMagick library, it can use ImageMagick
to render a wide variety of images. The variable imagemagick-enabled-types lists the
image types that Emacs may render using ImageMagick; each element in the list should
be an internal ImageMagick name for an image type, as a symbol or an equivalent string
(e.g., BMP for .bmp images). To enable ImageMagick for all possible image types, change
imagemagick-enabled-types to t. The variable imagemagick-types-inhibit lists the
image types which should never be rendered using ImageMagick, regardless of the value
of imagemagick-enabled-types (the default list includes types like C and HTML, which
ImageMagick can render as an image but Emacs should not). To disable ImageMagick
entirely, change imagemagick-types-inhibit to t.
If Emacs doesn’t have native support for the image format in question, and image-use-
external-converter is non-nil, Emacs will try to determine whether there are external
utilities that can be used to transform the image in question to PNG before displaying.
GraphicsMagick, ImageMagick and ffmpeg are currently supported for image conversions.
174 GNU Emacs Manual

In addition, you may wish to add special handlers for certain image formats. These can
be added with the image-converter-add-handler function. For instance, to allow viewing
Krita files as simple images, you could say something like:
(image-converter-add-handler
"kra"
(lambda (file data-p)
(if data-p
(error "Can't decode non-files")
(call-process "unzip" nil t nil
"-qq" "-c" "-x" file "mergedimage.png"))))
The function takes two parameters, where the first is a file name suffix, and the second is
a function to do the “conversion”. This function takes two parameters, where the first is the
file name or a string with the data, and the second says whether the first parameter is data
or not, and should output an image in image-convert-to-format format in the current
buffer.
The Image-Dired package can also be used to view images as thumbnails. See Section 27.18
[Image-Dired], page 395.

15.20 Filesets
If you regularly edit a certain group of files, you can define them as a fileset. This lets you
perform certain operations, such as visiting, query-replace, and shell commands on all the
files at once. To make use of filesets, you must first add the expression (filesets-init) to
your init file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522). This adds a ‘Filesets’ sub-menu to
the menu bar’s ‘File’ menu.
The simplest way to define a fileset is by adding files to it one at a time. To add a file
to fileset name, visit the file and type M-x filesets-add-buffer RET name RET. If there is
no fileset name, this creates a new one, which initially contains only the current file. The
command M-x filesets-remove-buffer removes the current file from a fileset.
You can also edit the list of filesets directly, with M-x filesets-edit (or by choosing
‘Edit Filesets’ from the ‘Filesets’ menu). The editing is performed in a Customize buffer
(see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494). Normally, a fileset is a simple list of files,
but you can also define a fileset as a regular expression matching file names. Some examples
of these more complicated filesets are shown in the Customize buffer. Remember to select
‘Save for future sessions’ if you want to use the same filesets in future Emacs sessions.
You can use the command M-x filesets-open to visit all the files in a fileset, and M-x
filesets-close to close them. Use M-x filesets-run-cmd to run a shell command on all
the files in a fileset. These commands are also available from the ‘Filesets’ menu, where
each existing fileset is represented by a submenu.
See Section 25.1 [Version Control], page 332, for a different concept of filesets: groups of
files bundled together for version control operations. Filesets of that type are unnamed, and
do not persist across Emacs sessions.
 175

16 Using Multiple Buffers

The text you are editing in Emacs resides in an object called a buffer. Each time you visit a
file, a buffer is used to hold the file’s text. Each time you invoke Dired, a buffer is used to
hold the directory listing. If you send a message with C-x m, a buffer is used to hold the text
of the message. When you ask for a command’s documentation, that appears in a buffer
named *Help*.
Buffers exist as long as they are in use, and are deleted (“killed”) when no longer needed,
either by you (see Section 16.4 [Kill Buffer], page 178) or by Emacs (e.g., when you exit
Emacs, see Section 3.2 [Exiting], page 15).
Each buffer has a unique name, which can be of any length. When a buffer is displayed
in a window, its name is shown in the mode line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8). The
distinction between upper and lower case matters in buffer names. Most buffers are made
by visiting files, and their names are derived from the files’ names; however, you can also
create an empty buffer with any name you want. A newly started Emacs has several buffers,
including one named *scratch*, which can be used for evaluating Lisp expressions and is
not associated with any file (see Section 24.10 [Lisp Interaction], page 330).
At any time, one and only one buffer is selected; we call it the current buffer. We
sometimes say that a command operates on “the buffer”; this really means that it operates
on the current buffer. When there is only one Emacs window, the buffer displayed in that
window is current. When there are multiple windows, the buffer displayed in the selected
window is current. See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185.
A buffer’s contents consist of a series of characters, each of which optionally carries a set
of text properties (see Section 19.1 [International Chars], page 216) that can specify more
information about that character.
Aside from its textual contents, each buffer records several pieces of information, such
as what file it is visiting (if any), whether it is modified, and what major mode and minor
modes are in effect (see Chapter 20 [Modes], page 241). These are stored in buffer-local
variables—variables that can have a different value in each buffer. See Section 33.2.3 [Locals],
page 505.
A buffer’s size cannot be larger than some maximum, which is defined by the largest buffer
position representable by Emacs integers. This is because Emacs tracks buffer positions
using that data type. For typical 64-bit machines, this maximum buffer size is 261 − 2 bytes,
or about 2 EiB. For typical 32-bit machines, the maximum is usually 229 − 2 bytes, or about
512 MiB. Buffer sizes are also limited by the amount of memory in the system.

16.1 Creating and Selecting Buffers

C-x b buffer RET
Select or create a buffer named buffer (switch-to-buffer).
C-x 4 b buffer RET
Similar, but select buffer in another window (switch-to-buffer-other-
window).
C-x 5 b buffer RET
Similar, but select buffer in a separate frame (switch-to-buffer-other-
frame).
176 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x LEFT Select the previous buffer in the buffer list (previous-buffer).
C-x RIGHT Select the next buffer in the buffer list (next-buffer).
C-u M-g M-g
C-u M-g g Read a number n and move to line n in the most recently selected buffer other
than the current buffer, in another window.
The C-x b (switch-to-buffer) command reads a buffer name using the minibuffer.
Then it makes that buffer current, and displays it in the currently-selected window. An
empty input specifies the buffer that was current most recently among those not now
displayed in any window.
While entering the buffer name, you can use the usual completion and history commands
(see Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 27). Note that C-x b, and related commands, use permissive
completion with confirmation for minibuffer completion: if you type RET when the minibuffer
text names a nonexistent buffer, Emacs prints ‘[Confirm]’ and you must type a second RET
to submit that buffer name. See Section 5.4.3 [Completion Exit], page 32, for details. For
other completion options and features, see Section 5.4.5 [Completion Options], page 34.
If you specify a buffer that does not exist, C-x b creates a new, empty buffer that is not
visiting any file, and selects it for editing. The default value of the variable major-mode
determines the new buffer’s major mode; the default value is Fundamental mode. See
Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241. One reason to create a new buffer is to use it for
making temporary notes. If you try to save it, Emacs asks for the file name to use, and the
buffer’s major mode is re-established taking that file name into account (see Section 20.3
[Choosing Modes], page 244).
For conveniently switching between a few buffers, use the commands C-x LEFT and C-x
RIGHT. C-x LEFT (previous-buffer) selects the previous buffer (following the order of
most recent selection in the current frame), while C-x RIGHT (next-buffer) moves through
buffers in the reverse direction. Both commands support a numeric prefix argument that
serves as a repeat count.
To select a buffer in a window other than the current one (see Chapter 17 [Windows],
page 185), type C-x 4 b (switch-to-buffer-other-window). This prompts for a buffer
name using the minibuffer, displays that buffer in another window, and selects that window.
Similarly, C-x 5 b (switch-to-buffer-other-frame) prompts for a buffer name, dis-
plays that buffer in another frame (see Chapter 18 [Frames], page 194), and selects that
frame. If the buffer is already being shown in a window on another frame, Emacs selects
that window and frame instead of creating a new frame.
See Section 17.6 [Displaying Buffers], page 189, for how the C-x 4 b and C-x 5 b commands
get the window and/or frame to display in.
In addition, C-x C-f, and any other command for visiting a file, can also be used to
switch to an existing file-visiting buffer. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
C-u M-g M-g, that is goto-line with a plain prefix argument, reads a number n using
the minibuffer, selects the most recently selected buffer other than the current buffer in
another window, and then moves point to the beginning of line number n in that buffer.
This is mainly useful in a buffer that refers to line numbers in another buffer: if point is
on or just after a number, goto-line uses that number as the default for n. Note that
prefix arguments other than just C-u behave differently. C-u 4 M-g M-g goes to line 4 in the
Chapter 16: Using Multiple Buffers 177

current buffer, without reading a number from the minibuffer. (Remember that M-g M-g
without prefix argument reads a number n and then moves to line number n in the current
buffer. See Section 4.2 [Moving Point], page 17.)
Emacs uses buffer names that start with a space for internal purposes. It treats these
buffers specially in minor ways—for example, by default they do not record undo information.
It is best to avoid using such buffer names yourself.

16.2 Listing Existing Buffers

C-x C-b List the existing buffers (list-buffers).
To display a list of existing buffers, type C-x C-b. This pops up a buffer menu in a
buffer named *Buffer List*. Each line in the list shows one buffer’s name, size, major
mode and visited file. The buffers are listed in the order that they were current; the buffers
that were current most recently come first. This section describes how the list of buffers is
displayed and how to interpret the various indications in the list; see Section 16.5 [Several
Buffers], page 179, for description of the special mode in the *Buffer List* buffer and the
commands available there.
‘.’ in the first field of a line indicates that the buffer is current. ‘%’ indicates a read-only
buffer. ‘*’ indicates that the buffer is modified. If several buffers are modified, it may be
time to save some with C-x s (see Section 15.3.1 [Save Commands], page 149). Here is an
example of a buffer list:
CRM Buffer Size Mode File
. * .emacs 3294 Emacs-Lisp ~/.emacs
% *Help* 101 Help
search.c 86055 C ~/cvs/emacs/src/search.c
% src 20959 Dired by name ~/cvs/emacs/src/
* *mail* 42 Mail
% HELLO 1607 Fundamental ~/cvs/emacs/etc/HELLO
% NEWS 481184 Outline ~/cvs/emacs/etc/NEWS
*scratch* 191 Lisp Interaction
* *Messages* 1554 Messages
The buffer *Help* was made by a help request (see Chapter 7 [Help], page 41); it is not
visiting any file. The buffer src was made by Dired on the directory ~/cvs/emacs/src/.
You can list only buffers that are visiting files by giving the command a prefix argument, as
in C-u C-x C-b.
list-buffers omits buffers whose names begin with a space, unless they visit files: such
buffers are used internally by Emacs.

16.3 Miscellaneous Buffer Operations

C-x C-q Toggle read-only status of buffer (read-only-mode).
C-x x r RET buffer RET
Change the name of the current buffer.
C-x x u Rename the current buffer by adding ‘<number>’ to the end.
M-x view-buffer RET buffer RET
Scroll through buffer buffer. See Section 11.6 [View Mode], page 81.
178 GNU Emacs Manual

A buffer can be read-only, which means that commands to insert or delete its text are
not allowed. (However, other commands, like C-x RET f, can still mark it as modified, see
Section 19.9 [Text Coding], page 228). The mode line indicates read-only buffers with ‘%%’ or
‘%*’ near the left margin. See Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8. Read-only buffers are usually
made by subsystems such as Dired and Rmail that have special commands to operate on
the text. Visiting a file whose access control says you cannot write it also makes the buffer
read-only.
The command C-x C-q (read-only-mode) makes a read-only buffer writable, and makes
a writable buffer read-only. This works by setting the variable buffer-read-only, which
has a local value in each buffer and makes the buffer read-only if its value is non-nil. If you
change the option view-read-only to a non-nil value, making the buffer read-only with
C-x C-q also enables View mode in the buffer (see Section 11.6 [View Mode], page 81).
C-x x r (rename-buffer changes the name of the current buffer. You specify the new
name as a minibuffer argument; there is no default. If you specify a name that is in use for
some other buffer, an error happens and no renaming is done.
C-x x u (rename-uniquely) renames the current buffer to a similar name with a numeric
suffix added to make it both different and unique. This command does not need an argument.
It is useful for creating multiple shell buffers: if you rename the *shell* buffer, then do M-x
shell again, it makes a new shell buffer named *shell*; meanwhile, the old shell buffer
continues to exist under its new name. This method is also good for mail buffers, compilation
buffers, and most Emacs features that create special buffers with particular names. (With
some of these features, such as M-x compile, M-x grep, you need to switch to some other
buffer before using the command again, otherwise it will reuse the current buffer despite the
name change.)
The commands M-x append-to-buffer and C-x x i (insert-buffer) can also be used
to copy text from one buffer to another. See Section 9.4 [Accumulating Text], page 66.

16.4 Killing Buffers

If you continue an Emacs session for a while, you may accumulate a large number of buffers.
You may then find it convenient to kill the buffers you no longer need. (Some other editors
call this operation close, and talk about “closing the buffer” or “closing the file” visited in
the buffer.) On most operating systems, killing a buffer releases the memory Emacs used for
the buffer back to the operating system so that other programs can use it. Here are some
commands for killing buffers:
C-x k buffer RET
Kill buffer buffer (kill-buffer).
M-x kill-some-buffers
Offer to kill each buffer, one by one.
M-x kill-matching-buffers
Offer to kill all buffers matching a regular expression.
C-x k (kill-buffer) kills one buffer, whose name you specify in the minibuffer. The
default, used if you type just RET in the minibuffer, is to kill the current buffer. If you
kill the current buffer, another buffer becomes current: one that was current in the recent
Chapter 16: Using Multiple Buffers 179

past but is not displayed in any window now. If you ask to kill a file-visiting buffer that is
modified, then you must confirm with yes before the buffer is killed.
The command M-x kill-some-buffers asks about each buffer, one by one. An answer
of yes means to kill the buffer, just like kill-buffer. This command ignores buffers whose
names begin with a space, which are used internally by Emacs.
The command M-x kill-matching-buffers prompts for a regular expression and kills
all buffers whose names match that expression. See Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114. Like
kill-some-buffers, it asks for confirmation before each kill. This command normally
ignores buffers whose names begin with a space, which are used internally by Emacs. To kill
internal buffers as well, call kill-matching-buffers with a prefix argument.
The Buffer Menu feature is also convenient for killing various buffers. See Section 16.5
[Several Buffers], page 179.
If you want to do something special every time a buffer is killed, you can add hook
functions to the hook kill-buffer-hook (see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504).
If you run one Emacs session for a period of days, as many people do, it can fill up
with buffers that you used several days ago. The command M-x clean-buffer-list is a
convenient way to purge them; it kills all the unmodified buffers that you have not used for
a long time. An ordinary buffer is killed if it has not been displayed for three days; however,
you can specify certain buffers that should never be killed automatically, and others that
should be killed if they have been unused for a mere hour. These defaults, and other aspects
of this command’s behavior, can be controlled by customizing several options described in
the doc string of clean-buffer-list.
You can also have this buffer purging done for you, once a day, by enabling Midnight mode.
Midnight mode operates each day at midnight; at that time, it runs clean-buffer-list, or
whichever functions you have placed in the normal hook midnight-hook (see Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 504). To enable Midnight mode, use the Customization buffer to set the
variable midnight-mode to t. See Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494.

16.5 Operating on Several Buffers

M-x buffer-menu
Begin editing a buffer listing all Emacs buffers.
M-x buffer-menu-other-window
Similar, but do it in another window.
The Buffer Menu opened by C-x C-b (see Section 16.2 [List Buffers], page 177) does not
merely list buffers. It also allows you to perform various operations on buffers, through an
interface similar to Dired (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378). You can save buffers, kill them
(here called deleting them, for consistency with Dired), or display them.
To use the Buffer Menu, type C-x C-b and switch to the window displaying the *Buffer
List* buffer. You can also type M-x buffer-menu to open the Buffer Menu in the selected
window. Alternatively, the command M-x buffer-menu-other-window opens the Buffer
Menu in another window, and selects that window.
The Buffer Menu is a read-only buffer, and can be changed only through the special
commands described in this section. The usual cursor motion commands can be used in this
buffer. The following commands apply to the buffer described on the current line:
180 GNU Emacs Manual

d Flag the buffer for deletion (killing), then move point to the next line
(Buffer-menu-delete). The deletion flag is indicated by the character ‘D’ on
the line, before the buffer name. The deletion occurs only when you type the x
command (see below).
C-d Like d, but move point up instead of down (Buffer-menu-delete-backwards).
s Flag the buffer for saving (Buffer-menu-save). The save flag is indicated by
the character ‘S’ on the line, before the buffer name. The saving occurs only
when you type x. You may request both saving and deletion for the same buffer.
x Perform all flagged deletions and saves (Buffer-menu-execute).
u Remove all flags from the current line, and move down (Buffer-menu-unmark).
With a prefix argument, moves up after removing the flags.
DEL Move to the previous line and remove all flags on that line (Buffer-menu-
backup-unmark).
M-DEL Remove a particular flag from all lines (Buffer-menu-unmark-all-buffers).
This asks for a single character, and unmarks buffers marked with that character;
typing RET removes all marks.
U Remove all flags from all the lines (Buffer-menu-unmark-all).
The commands for removing flags, d and C-d, accept a numeric argument as a repeat count.
The following commands operate immediately on the buffer listed on the current line.
They also accept a numeric argument as a repeat count.
~ Mark the buffer as unmodified (Buffer-menu-not-modified). See
Section 15.3.1 [Save Commands], page 149.
% Toggle the buffer’s read-only status (Buffer-menu-toggle-read-only). See
Section 16.3 [Misc Buffer], page 177.
t Visit the buffer as a tags table (Buffer-menu-visit-tags-table). See
Section 25.4.3 [Select Tags Table], page 367.
The following commands are used to select another buffer or buffers:
q Quit the Buffer Menu (quit-window). The most recent formerly visible buffer
is displayed in its place.
RET
f Select this line’s buffer, replacing the *Buffer List* buffer in its window
(Buffer-menu-this-window).
o Select this line’s buffer in another window, as if by C-x 4 b, leaving *Buffer
List* visible (Buffer-menu-other-window).
C-o Display this line’s buffer in another window, without selecting it (Buffer-menu-
switch-other-window).
1 Select this line’s buffer in a full-frame window (Buffer-menu-1-window).
2 Set up two windows on the current frame, with this line’s buffer selected in
one, and a previously current buffer (aside from *Buffer List*) in the other
(Buffer-menu-2-window).
Chapter 16: Using Multiple Buffers 181

b Bury this line’s buffer (Buffer-menu-bury) (i.e., move it to the end of the buffer
list).
m Mark this line’s buffer to be displayed in another window if you exit with the v
command (Buffer-menu-mark). The display flag is indicated by the character
‘>’ at the beginning of the line. (A single buffer may not have both deletion and
display flags.)
v Select this line’s buffer, and also display in other windows any buffers flagged
with the m command (Buffer-menu-select). If you have not flagged any buffers,
this command is equivalent to 1.
The following commands affect the entire buffer list:
S Sort the Buffer Menu entries according to their values in the column at
point. With a numeric prefix argument n, sort according to the n-th column
(tabulated-list-sort).
} Widen the current column width by n (the prefix numeric argument) characters.
{ Narrow the current column width by n (the prefix numeric argument) characters.
T Delete, or reinsert, lines for non-file buffers (Buffer-menu-toggle-files-only).
This command toggles the inclusion of such buffers in the buffer list.
Normally, the buffer *Buffer List* is not updated automatically when buffers are
created and killed; its contents are just text. If you have created, deleted or renamed buffers,
the way to update *Buffer List* to show what you have done is to type g (revert-buffer).
You can make this happen regularly every auto-revert-interval seconds if you enable
Auto Revert mode in this buffer, as long as it is not marked modified. Global Auto Revert
mode applies to the *Buffer List* buffer only if global-auto-revert-non-file-buffers
is non-nil.

16.6 Indirect Buffers

An indirect buffer shares the text of some other buffer, which is called the base buffer of the
indirect buffer. In some ways it is a buffer analogue of a symbolic link between files.
M-x make-indirect-buffer RET base-buffer RET indirect-name RET
Create an indirect buffer named indirect-name with base buffer base-buffer.
M-x clone-indirect-buffer RET
Create an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer.
C-x 4 c Create an indirect buffer that is a twin copy of the current buffer, and select it
in another window (clone-indirect-buffer-other-window).
The text of the indirect buffer is always identical to the text of its base buffer; changes
made by editing either one are visible immediately in the other. “Text” here includes both
the characters and their text properties. But in all other respects, the indirect buffer and
its base buffer are completely separate. They can have different names, different values of
point, different narrowing, different markers, different overlays, different major modes, and
different local variables.
182 GNU Emacs Manual

An indirect buffer cannot visit a file, but its base buffer can. If you try to save the indirect
buffer, that actually works by saving the base buffer. Killing the base buffer effectively kills
the indirect buffer, but killing an indirect buffer has no effect on its base buffer.
One way to use indirect buffers is to display multiple views of an outline. See Section 22.9.5
[Outline Views], page 265.
A quick and handy way to make an indirect buffer is with the command C-x 4 c
(clone-indirect-buffer-other-window). It creates and selects an indirect buffer whose
base buffer is the current buffer. With a numeric argument, it prompts for the name of the
indirect buffer; otherwise it uses the name of the current buffer, with a ‘<n>’ suffix added.
The more general way to make an indirect buffer is with the command M-x
make-indirect-buffer. It creates an indirect buffer named indirect-name from a buffer
base-buffer, prompting for both using the minibuffer.
The functions that create indirect buffers run the hook clone-indirect-buffer-hook
after creating the indirect buffer. When this hook runs, the newly created indirect buffer is
the current buffer.
Note: When a modification is made to the text of a buffer, the modification hooks are
run only in the base buffer, because most of the functions on those hooks are not prepared
to work correctly in indirect buffers. So if you need a modification hook function in an
indirect buffer, you need to manually add that function to the hook in the base buffer and
then make the function operate in the desired indirect buffer.

16.7 Convenience Features and Customization of Buffer

Handling
This section describes several modes and features that make it more convenient to switch
between buffers.

16.7.1 Making Buffer Names Unique

When several buffers visit identically-named files, Emacs must give the buffers distinct names.
The default method adds a suffix based on the names of the directories that contain the
files. For example, if you visit files /foo/bar/mumble/name and /baz/quux/mumble/name at
the same time, their buffers will be named ‘name<bar/mumble>’ and ‘name<quux/mumble>’,
respectively. Emacs adds as many directory parts as are needed to make a unique name.
You can choose from several different styles for constructing unique buffer names, by
customizing the option uniquify-buffer-name-style.
The forward naming method includes part of the file’s directory name at the beginning
of the buffer name; using this method, buffers visiting the files /u/rms/tmp/Makefile
and /usr/projects/zaphod/Makefile would be named ‘tmp/Makefile’ and
‘zaphod/Makefile’.
In contrast, the post-forward naming method would call the buffers ‘Makefile|tmp’
and ‘Makefile|zaphod’. The default method post-forward-angle-brackets is
like post-forward, except that it encloses the unique path in angle brackets. The
reverse naming method would call them ‘Makefile\tmp’ and ‘Makefile\zaphod’.
The nontrivial difference between post-forward and reverse occurs when just one
directory name is not enough to distinguish two files; then reverse puts the directory
Chapter 16: Using Multiple Buffers 183

names in reverse order, so that /top/middle/file becomes ‘file\middle\top’, while

post-forward puts them in forward order after the file name, as in ‘file|top/middle’. If
uniquify-buffer-name-style is set to nil, the buffer names simply get ‘<2>’, ‘<3>’, etc.
appended.
The value of uniquify-buffer-name-style can be set to a customized function with
two arguments base and extra-strings where base is a string and extra-strings is a list of
strings. For example the current implementation for post-forward-angle-brackets could
be:
(defun my-post-forward-angle-brackets (base extra-string)
(concat base \"<\" (mapconcat #'identity extra-string \"/\") \">\"))
Which rule to follow for putting the directory names in the buffer name is not very
important if you are going to look at the buffer names before you type one. But as an
experienced user, if you know the rule, you won’t have to look. And then you may find that
one rule or another is easier for you to remember and apply quickly.

16.7.2 Fast minibuffer selection

Icomplete global minor mode provides a convenient way to quickly select an element among
the possible completions in a minibuffer. When enabled, typing in the minibuffer continuously
displays a list of possible completions that match the string you have typed.
At any time, you can type C-j to select the first completion in the list. So the way to
select a particular completion is to make it the first in the list. There are two ways to do
this. You can type more of the completion name and thus narrow down the list, excluding
unwanted completions above the desired one. Alternatively, you can use C-. and C-, to
rotate the list until the desired buffer is first.
M-TAB will select the first completion in the list, like C-j but without exiting the minibuffer,
so you can edit it further. This is typically used when entering a file name, where M-TAB
can be used a few times to descend in the hierarchy of directories.
To enable Icomplete mode, type M-x icomplete-mode, or customize the variable
icomplete-mode to t (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494).
An alternative to Icomplete mode is Fido mode. This is very similar to Icomplete mode,
but retains some functionality from a popular extension called Ido mode (in fact the name
is derived from “Fake Ido”). Among other things, in Fido mode, C-s and C-r are also used
to rotate the completions list, C-k can be used to delete files and kill buffers in-list. Another
noteworthy aspect is that flex is used as the default completion style (see Section 5.4.4
[Completion Styles], page 33). To change this, add the following to your initialization file
(see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522):
(defun my-icomplete-styles ()
(setq-local completion-styles '(initials flex)))
(add-hook 'icomplete-minibuffer-setup-hook 'my-icomplete-styles)
To enable Fido mode, type M-x fido-mode, or customize the variable fido-mode to t
(see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494).
Icomplete mode and Fido mode display the possible completions on the same line as the
prompt by default. To display the completion candidates vertically under the prompt, type
M-x icomplete-vertical-mode, or customize the variable icomplete-vertical-mode to
t (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494).
184 GNU Emacs Manual

16.7.3 Customizing Buffer Menus

M-x bs-show
Make a list of buffers similarly to M-x list-buffers but customizable.
M-x ibuffer
Make a list of buffers and operate on them in Dired-like fashion.
M-x bs-show pops up a buffer list similar to the one normally displayed by C-x C-b, but
whose display you can customize in a more flexible fashion. For example, you can specify the
list of buffer attributes to show, the minimum and maximum width of buffer name column,
a regexp for names of buffers that will never be shown and those which will always be shown,
etc. If you prefer this to the usual buffer list, you can bind this command to C-x C-b. To
customize this buffer list, use the bs Custom group (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization],
page 494), or invoke bs-customize.
MSB global minor mode (“MSB” stands for “mouse select buffer”) provides a different and
customizable mouse buffer menu which you may prefer. It replaces the mouse-buffer-menu
commands, normally bound to C-Down-mouse-1 and C-F10, with its own commands, and
also modifies the menu-bar buffer menu. You can customize the menu in the msb Custom
group.
IBuffer is a major mode for viewing a list of buffers and operating on them in a way
analogous to that of Dired (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378), including filtering, marking,
sorting in various ways, and acting on buffers.
 185

17 Multiple Windows
Emacs can split a frame into two or many windows. Multiple windows can display parts
of different buffers, or different parts of one buffer. Multiple frames always imply multiple
windows, because each frame has its own set of windows. Each window belongs to one and
only one frame.

17.1 Concepts of Emacs Windows

Each Emacs window displays one Emacs buffer at any time. A single buffer may appear in
more than one window; if it does, any changes in its text are displayed in all the windows
where it appears. But these windows can show different parts of the buffer, because each
window has its own value of point.
At any time, one Emacs window is the selected window; the buffer this window is
displaying is the current buffer. On graphical displays, the point is indicated by a solid
blinking cursor in the selected window, and by a hollow box in non-selected windows. On
text terminals, the cursor is drawn only in the selected window. See Section 11.21 [Cursor
Display], page 98.
Commands to move point affect the value of point for the selected Emacs window only.
They do not change the value of point in other Emacs windows, even those showing the
same buffer. The same is true for buffer-switching commands such as C-x b; they do not
affect other windows at all. However, there are other commands such as C-x 4 b that select
a different window and switch buffers in it. Also, all commands that display information in a
window, including (for example) C-h f (describe-function) and C-x C-b (list-buffers),
usually work by displaying buffers in a nonselected window without affecting the selected
window.
When multiple windows show the same buffer, they can have different regions, because
they can have different values of point. However, they all have the same value for the mark,
because each buffer has only one mark position.
Each window has its own mode line, which displays the buffer name, modification status
and major and minor modes of the buffer that is displayed in the window. The selected
window’s mode line appears in a different color. See Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8, for
details.

17.2 Splitting Windows

C-x 2 Split the selected window into two windows, one above the other (split-window-
below).
C-x 3 Split the selected window into two windows, positioned side by side
(split-window-right).
C-mouse-2
In the mode line of a window, split that window.
C-x 2 (split-window-below) splits the selected window into two windows, one above
the other. After splitting, the selected window is the upper one, and the newly split-off
window is below. Both windows have the same value of point as before, and display the same
186 GNU Emacs Manual

portion of the buffer (or as close to it as possible). If necessary, the windows are scrolled to
keep point on-screen. By default, the two windows each get half the height of the original
window. A positive numeric argument specifies how many lines to give to the top window; a
negative numeric argument specifies how many lines to give to the bottom window.
If you change the variable split-window-keep-point to nil, C-x 2 instead adjusts the
portion of the buffer displayed by the two windows, as well as the value of point in each
window, in order to keep the text on the screen as close as possible to what it was before;
furthermore, if point was in the lower half of the original window, the bottom window is
selected instead of the upper one.
C-x 3 (split-window-right) splits the selected window into two side-by-side windows.
The left window is the selected one; the right window displays the same portion of the same
buffer, and has the same value of point. A positive numeric argument specifies how many
columns to give the left window; a negative numeric argument specifies how many columns
to give the right window.
When you split a window with C-x 3, each resulting window occupies less than the
full width of the frame. If it becomes too narrow, the buffer may be difficult to read if
continuation lines are in use (see Section 4.8 [Continuation Lines], page 22). Therefore,
Emacs automatically switches to line truncation if the window width becomes narrower than
50 columns. This truncation occurs regardless of the value of the variable truncate-lines
(see Section 11.22 [Line Truncation], page 99); it is instead controlled by the variable
truncate-partial-width-windows. If the value of this variable is a positive integer (the
default is 50), that specifies the minimum total width for a partial-width window before
automatic line truncation occurs; if the value is nil, automatic line truncation is disabled;
and for any other non-nil value, Emacs truncates lines in every partial-width window
regardless of its width. The total width of a window is in column units as reported by
window-total-width (see Section “Window Sizes” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual),
it includes the fringes, the continuation and truncation glyphs, the margins, and the scroll
bar.
On text terminals, side-by-side windows are separated by a vertical divider which is
drawn using the vertical-border face.
If you click C-mouse-2 in the mode line of a window, that splits the window, putting a
vertical divider where you click. Depending on how Emacs is compiled, you can also split a
window by clicking C-mouse-2 in the scroll bar, which puts a horizontal divider where you
click (this feature does not work when Emacs uses GTK+ scroll bars).
By default, when you split a window, Emacs gives each of the resulting windows di-
mensions that are an integral multiple of the default font size of the frame. That might
subdivide the screen estate unevenly between the resulting windows. If you set the variable
window-resize-pixelwise to a non-nil value, Emacs will give each window the same
number of pixels (give or take one pixel if the initial dimension was an odd number of pixels).
Note that when a frame’s pixel size is not a multiple of the frame’s character size, at least
one window may get resized pixelwise even if this option is nil.

17.3 Using Other Windows

C-x o Select another window (other-window).
Chapter 17: Multiple Windows 187

C-M-v Scroll the next window upward (scroll-other-window).

C-M-S-v Scroll the next window downward (scroll-other-window-down).
C-M-S-l Recenter the next window (recenter-other-window).
mouse-1 mouse-1, in the text area of a window, selects the window and moves point
to the position clicked. Clicking in the mode line selects the window without
moving point in it.
With the keyboard, you can switch windows by typing C-x o (other-window). That
is an o, for “other”, not a zero. When there are more than two windows, this command
moves through all the windows in a cyclic order, generally top to bottom and left to right.
After the rightmost and bottommost window, it goes back to the one at the upper left
corner. A numeric argument means to move several steps in the cyclic order of windows.
A negative argument moves around the cycle in the opposite order. When the minibuffer
is active, the minibuffer window is the last window in the cycle; you can switch from the
minibuffer window to one of the other windows, and later switch back and finish supplying
the minibuffer argument that is requested. See Section 5.3 [Minibuffer Edit], page 29.
The other-window command will normally only switch to the next window in the
current frame (unless otherwise configured). If you work in a multi-frame environment
and you want windows in all frames to be part of the cycle, you can rebind C-x o to the
next-window-any-frame command. (See Section 33.3.5 [Rebinding], page 515, for how to
rebind a command.)
The usual scrolling commands (see Chapter 11 [Display], page 76) apply to the selected
window only, but there are also commands to scroll the next window. C-M-v (scroll-other-
window) scrolls the window that C-x o would select. In other respects, the command behaves
like C-v; both move the buffer text upward relative to the window, and take positive and
negative arguments. (In the minibuffer, C-M-v scrolls the help window associated with the
minibuffer, if any, rather than the next window in the standard cyclic order; see Section 5.3
[Minibuffer Edit], page 29.) C-M-S-v (scroll-other-window-down) scrolls the next window
downward in a similar way. Likewise, C-M-S-l (recenter-other-window) behaves like C-l
(recenter-top-bottom) in the next window.
If you set mouse-autoselect-window to a non-nil value, moving the mouse over a
different window selects that window. This feature is off by default.

17.4 Displaying in Another Window

C-x 4 is a prefix key for a variety of commands that switch to a buffer in a different window—
either another existing window, or a new window created by splitting the selected window.
See Section 17.6.1 [Window Choice], page 190, for how Emacs picks or creates the window
to use.
C-x 4 b bufname RET
Select buffer bufname in another window (switch-to-buffer-other-window).
See Section 16.1 [Select Buffer], page 175.
C-x 4 C-o bufname RET
Display buffer bufname in some window, without trying to select it
(display-buffer). See Section 17.6 [Displaying Buffers], page 189, for details
about how the window is chosen.
188 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x 4 f filename RET

Visit file filename and select its buffer in another window (find-file-other-
window). See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
C-x 4 d directory RET
Select a Dired buffer for directory directory in another window (dired-other-
window). See Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378.
C-x 4 m Start composing a mail message, similar to C-x m (see Chapter 29 [Sending
Mail], page 418), but in another window (compose-mail-other-window).
C-x 4 . Find the definition of an identifier, similar to M-. (see Section 25.4 [Xref],
page 356), but in another window (xref-find-definitions-other-window).
C-x 4 r filename RET
Visit file filename read-only, and select its buffer in another window (find-file-
read-only-other-window). See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
C-x 4 4 A more general prefix command affects the buffer displayed by the next command
invoked immediately after this prefix command. It requests the buffer of the
next command to be displayed in another window.
C-x 4 1 This general prefix command requests the buffer of the next command to be
displayed in the same window.

17.5 Deleting and Resizing Windows

C-x 0 Delete the selected window (delete-window).
C-x 1 Delete all windows in the selected frame except the selected window
(delete-other-windows).
C-x 4 0 Delete the selected window and kill the buffer that was showing in it
(kill-buffer-and-window). The last character in this key sequence is a zero.
M-x delete-windows-on RET buffer RET
Delete windows showing the specified buffer.
C-x ^ Make selected window taller (enlarge-window).
C-x } Make selected window wider (enlarge-window-horizontally).
C-x { Make selected window narrower (shrink-window-horizontally).
C-x - Shrink this window if its buffer doesn’t need so many lines (shrink-window-
if-larger-than-buffer).
C-x + Make all windows the same height (balance-windows).
To delete the selected window, type C-x 0 (delete-window). (That is a zero.) Once a
window is deleted, the space that it occupied is given to an adjacent window (but not the
minibuffer window, even if that is active at the time). Deleting the window has no effect
on the buffer it used to display; the buffer continues to exist, and you can still switch to it
with C-x b. The option delete-window-choose-selected controls which window is chosen
as the new selected window instead (see Section “Deleting Windows” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual).
Chapter 17: Multiple Windows 189

C-x 4 0 (kill-buffer-and-window) is a stronger command than C-x 0; it kills the

current buffer and then deletes the selected window.
C-x 1 (delete-other-windows) deletes all the windows, except the selected one; the
selected window expands to use the whole frame. (This command cannot be used while the
minibuffer window is active; attempting to do so signals an error.)
M-x delete-windows-on deletes windows that show a specific buffer. It prompts for the
buffer, defaulting to the current buffer. With prefix argument of zero, C-u 0, this command
deletes windows only on the current display’s frames.
The command C-x ^ (enlarge-window) makes the selected window one line taller, taking
space from a vertically adjacent window without changing the height of the frame. With a
positive numeric argument, this command increases the window height by that many lines;
with a negative argument, it reduces the height by that many lines. If there are no vertically
adjacent windows (i.e., the window is at the full frame height), that signals an error. The
command also signals an error if you attempt to reduce the height of any window below a
certain minimum number of lines, specified by the variable window-min-height (the default
is 4).
Similarly, C-x } (enlarge-window-horizontally) makes the selected window wider,
and C-x { (shrink-window-horizontally) makes it narrower. These commands signal an
error if you attempt to reduce the width of any window below a certain minimum number
of columns, specified by the variable window-min-width (the default is 10).
Mouse clicks on the mode line (see Section 18.5 [Mode Line Mouse], page 198) or on
window dividers (see Section 18.13 [Window Dividers], page 207) provide another way to
change window heights and to split or delete windows.
C-x - (shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer) reduces the height of the selected
window, if it is taller than necessary to show the whole text of the buffer it is displaying. It
gives the extra lines to other windows in the frame.
You can also use C-x + (balance-windows) to even out the heights of all the windows in
the selected frame.

17.6 Displaying a Buffer in a Window

It is a common Emacs operation to display or pop up some buffer in response to a user
command. There are several different ways in which commands do this.
Many commands, like C-x C-f (find-file), by default display the buffer by “taking
over” the selected window, expecting that the user’s attention will be diverted to that buffer.
Some commands try to display intelligently, trying not to take over the selected window,
e.g., by splitting off a new window and displaying the desired buffer there. Such commands,
which include the various help commands (see Chapter 7 [Help], page 41), work by calling
display-buffer internally. See Section 17.6.1 [Window Choice], page 190, for details.
Other commands do the same as display-buffer, and additionally select the displaying
window so that you can begin editing its buffer. The command M-g M-n (next-error) is one
example (see Section 24.2 [Compilation Mode], page 310). Such commands work by calling
the function pop-to-buffer internally. See Section “Switching to a Buffer in a Window” in
The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
190 GNU Emacs Manual

Commands with names ending in -other-window behave like display-buffer, except

that they never display in the selected window. Several of these commands are bound in the
C-x 4 prefix key (see Section 17.4 [Pop Up Window], page 187).
Commands with names ending in -other-frame behave like display-buffer, except
that they (i) never display in the selected window and (ii) prefer to either create a new
frame or use a window on some other frame to display the desired buffer. Several of these
commands are bound in the C-x 5 prefix key.

17.6.1 How display-buffer works

The display-buffer command (as well as commands that call it internally) chooses a
window to display by following the steps given below. See Section “Choosing a Window for
Displaying a Buffer” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for details about how to alter
this sequence of steps.
• If the buffer should be displayed in the selected window regardless of other considerations,
reuse the selected window. By default, this step is skipped, but you can tell Emacs not
to skip it by adding a regular expression matching the buffer’s name together with a
reference to the display-buffer-same-window action function (see Section “Action
Functions for Buffer Display” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) to the option
display-buffer-alist (see Section “Choosing a Window for Displaying a Buffer” in
The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). For example, to display the buffer *scratch*
preferably in the selected window write:
(setopt
display-buffer-alist
'(("\\*scratch\\*" (display-buffer-same-window))))
By default, display-buffer-alist is nil.
• Otherwise, if the buffer is already displayed in an existing window, reuse that window.
Normally, only windows on the selected frame are considered, but windows on other
frames are also reusable if you use the corresponding reusable-frames action alist
entry (see Section “Action Alists for Buffer Display” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual). See the next step for an example of how to do that.
• Otherwise, optionally create a new frame and display the buffer there. By default, this
step is skipped. To enable it, change the value of the option display-buffer-base-
action (see Section “Choosing a Window for Displaying a Buffer” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual) as follows:
(setopt
display-buffer-base-action
'((display-buffer-reuse-window display-buffer-pop-up-frame)
(reusable-frames . 0)))
This customization will also try to make the preceding step search for a reusable window
on all visible or iconified frames.
• Otherwise, try to create a new window by splitting a window on the selected frame, and
display the buffer in that new window.
The split can be either vertical or horizontal, depending on the variables split-height-
threshold and split-width-threshold. These variables should have integer values.
If split-height-threshold is smaller than the chosen window’s height, the split puts
Chapter 17: Multiple Windows 191

the new window below. Otherwise, if split-width-threshold is smaller than the

window’s width, the split puts the new window on the right. If neither condition holds,
Emacs tries to split so that the new window is below—but only if the window was not
split before (to avoid excessive splitting).
• Otherwise, display the buffer in a window previously showing it. Normally, only windows
on the selected frame are considered, but with a suitable reusable-frames action alist
entry (see above) the window may be also on another frame.
• Otherwise, display the buffer in an existing window on the selected frame.
• If all the above methods fail for whatever reason, create a new frame and display the
buffer there.

17.6.2 Displaying non-editable buffers.

Some buffers are shown in windows for perusal rather than for editing. Help commands (see
Chapter 7 [Help], page 41) typically use a buffer called *Help* for that purpose, minibuffer
completion (see Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30) uses a buffer called *Completions*, etc.
Such buffers are usually displayed only for a short period of time.
Normally, Emacs chooses the window for such temporary displays via display-buffer,
as described in the previous subsection. The *Completions* buffer, on the other hand,
is normally displayed in a window at the bottom of the selected frame, regardless of the
number of windows already shown on that frame.
If you prefer Emacs to display a temporary buffer in a different fashion, customize the
variable display-buffer-alist (see Section “Choosing a Window for Displaying a Buffer”
in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) appropriately. For example, to display *Completions*
always below the selected window, use the following form in your initialization file (see
Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522):
(setopt
display-buffer-alist
'(("\\*Completions\\*" display-buffer-below-selected)))
The *Completions* buffer is also special in the sense that Emacs usually tries to make
its window just as large as necessary to display all of its contents. To resize windows showing
other temporary displays, like, for example, the *Help* buffer, turn on the minor mode (see
Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242) temp-buffer-resize-mode (see Section “Temporary
Displays” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
The maximum size of windows resized by temp-buffer-resize-mode can be controlled
by customizing the options temp-buffer-max-height and temp-buffer-max-width (see
Section “Temporary Displays” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual), and cannot exceed
the size of the containing frame.

17.7 Convenience Features for Window Handling

Winner mode is a global minor mode that records the changes in the window configuration
(i.e., how the frames are partitioned into windows), so that you can undo them. You can
toggle Winner mode with M-x winner-mode, or by customizing the variable winner-mode.
When the mode is enabled, C-c left (winner-undo) undoes the last window configuration
change. If you change your mind while undoing, you can redo the changes you had undone
192 GNU Emacs Manual

using C-c right (M-x winner-redo). To prevent Winner mode from binding C-c left and
C-c right, you can customize the variable winner-dont-bind-my-keys to a non-nil value.
By default, Winner mode stores a maximum of 200 window configurations per frame, but
you can change that by modifying the variable winner-ring-size. If there are some buffers
whose windows you wouldn’t want Winner mode to restore, add their names to the list
variable winner-boring-buffers or to the regexp winner-boring-buffers-regexp.
Follow mode (M-x follow-mode) synchronizes several windows on the same buffer so
that they always display adjacent sections of that buffer. See Section 11.7 [Follow Mode],
page 81.
The Windmove package defines commands for moving directionally between neighbor-
ing windows in a frame. M-x windmove-right selects the window immediately to the
right of the currently selected one, and similarly for the left, up, and down counterparts.
windmove-default-keybindings binds these commands to S-right etc.; doing so disables
shift selection for those keys (see Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 56). In the same way
as key bindings can be defined for commands that select windows directionally, you can
use windmove-display-default-keybindings to define keybindings for commands that
specify in what direction to display the window for the buffer that the next command is going
to display. Also there is windmove-delete-default-keybindings to define keybindings
for commands that delete windows directionally, and windmove-swap-states-default-
keybindings that defines key bindings for commands that swap the window contents of the
selected window with the window in the specified direction.
The command M-x compare-windows lets you compare the text shown in different win-
dows. See Section 15.9 [Comparing Files], page 163.
Scroll All mode (M-x scroll-all-mode) is a global minor mode that causes scrolling
commands and point motion commands to apply to every single window.

17.8 Window Tab Line

The command global-tab-line-mode toggles the display of a tab line on the top screen
line of each window. The Tab Line shows special buttons (“tabs”) for each buffer that
was displayed in a window, and allows switching to any of these buffers by clicking the
corresponding button. Clicking on the + icon adds a new buffer to the window-local tab line
of buffers, and clicking on the x icon of a tab deletes it. The mouse wheel on the tab line
scrolls the tabs horizontally.
Selecting the previous window-local tab is the same as typing C-x LEFT
(previous-buffer), selecting the next tab is the same as C-x RIGHT (next-buffer). Both
commands support a numeric prefix argument as a repeat count.
You can customize the variable tab-line-tabs-function to define the preferred contents
of the tab line. By default, it displays all buffers previously visited in the window, as described
above. But you can also set it to display a list of buffers with the same major mode as the
current buffer, or to display buffers grouped by their major mode, where clicking on the
mode name in the first tab displays a list of all major modes where you can select another
group of buffers.
Note that the Tab Line is different from the Tab Bar (see Section 18.17 [Tab Bars],
page 209). Whereas tabs on the Tab Bar at the top of each frame are used to switch between
Chapter 17: Multiple Windows 193

window configurations containing several windows with buffers, tabs on the Tab Line at the
top of each window are used to switch between buffers in the window.
194 GNU Emacs Manual

18 Frames and Graphical Displays

When Emacs is started on a graphical display, e.g., on the X Window System, it occupies a
graphical system-level display region. In this manual, we call this a frame, reserving the word
“window” for the part of the frame used for displaying a buffer. A frame initially contains
one window, but it can be subdivided into multiple windows (see Chapter 17 [Windows],
page 185). A frame normally also contains a menu bar, tool bar, and echo area.
You can also create additional frames (see Section 18.6 [Creating Frames], page 199). All
frames created in the same Emacs session have access to the same underlying buffers and
other data. For instance, if a buffer is being shown in more than one frame, any changes
made to it in one frame show up immediately in the other frames too.
Typing C-x C-c closes all the frames on the current display, and ends the Emacs session
if it has no frames open on any other displays (see Section 3.2 [Exiting], page 15). To close
just the selected frame, type C-x 5 0 (that is zero, not o).
This chapter describes Emacs features specific to graphical displays (particularly mouse
commands), and features for managing multiple frames. On text terminals, many of these
features are unavailable. However, it is still possible to create multiple frames on text
terminals; such frames are displayed one at a time, filling the entire terminal screen (see
Section 18.21 [Non-Window Terminals], page 214). It is also possible to use the mouse on
some text terminals (see Section 18.22 [Text-Only Mouse], page 215, for doing so on GNU
and Unix systems; and see Section “MS-DOS Mouse” in Specialized Emacs Features, for
doing so on MS-DOS). Menus are supported on all text terminals.

18.1 Mouse Commands for Editing

mouse-1 Move point to where you click (mouse-set-point).
Drag-mouse-1
Activate the region around the text selected by dragging, and put the text in
the primary selection (mouse-set-region).
mouse-2 Move point to where you click, and insert the contents of the primary selection
there (mouse-yank-primary).
mouse-3 If the region is active, move the nearer end of the region to the click position;
otherwise, set mark at the current value of point and point at the click position.
Save the resulting region in the kill ring; on a second click, kill it (mouse-save-
then-kill).
C-M-mouse-1
Activate a rectangular region around the text selected by dragging. See
Section 9.5 [Rectangles], page 67.
The most basic mouse command is mouse-set-point, which is invoked by clicking with
the left mouse button, mouse-1, in the text area of a window. This moves point to the
position where you clicked. If that window was not the selected window, it becomes the
selected window. You can also activate a region by double-clicking mouse-1 (see Section 18.2
[Word and Line Mouse], page 196).
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 195

Normally, if the frame you clicked in was not the selected frame, it is made the selected
frame, in addition to selecting the window and setting the cursor. On the X Window System,
you can change this by setting the variable x-mouse-click-focus-ignore-position to t.
In that case, the initial click on an unselected frame just selects the frame, without doing
anything else; clicking again selects the window and sets the cursor position.
Holding down mouse-1 and dragging the mouse over a stretch of text activates the region
around that text (mouse-set-region), placing the mark where you started holding down
the mouse button, and point where you release it (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51). In
addition, the text in the region becomes the primary selection (see Section 9.3.2 [Primary
Selection], page 65).
If you change the variable mouse-drag-copy-region to a non-nil value, dragging the
mouse over a stretch of text also adds the text to the kill ring. The default is nil.
If this variable is non-empty, only copy to the kill ring if the region is non-empty. For
instance, if you mouse drag an area that is less than a half a character, you’d normally get
the empty string in your kill ring, but with non-empty, this short mouse drag won’t affect
the kill ring.
If you move the mouse off the top or bottom of the window while dragging, the window
scrolls at a steady rate until you move the mouse back into the window. This way, you
can select regions that don’t fit entirely on the screen. The number of lines scrolled per
step depends on how far away from the window edge the mouse has gone; the variable
mouse-scroll-min-lines specifies a minimum step size.
If you enable the option mouse-drag-mode-line-buffer and dragging files is supported
by the window system, then dragging the mouse on the buffer name portion of the mode
line will drag that buffer’s file to another program or frame.
Clicking with the middle mouse button, mouse-2, moves point to the position where
you clicked and inserts the contents of the primary selection (mouse-yank-primary). See
Section 9.3.2 [Primary Selection], page 65. This behavior is consistent with other X applica-
tions. Alternatively, you can rebind mouse-2 to mouse-yank-at-click, which performs a
yank at the position you click.
If you change the variable mouse-yank-at-point to a non-nil value, mouse-2 does not
move point; it inserts the text at point, regardless of where you clicked or even which of
the frame’s windows you clicked on. This variable affects both mouse-yank-primary and
mouse-yank-at-click.
Clicking with the right mouse button, mouse-3, runs the command mouse-save-then-
kill. This performs several actions depending on where you click and the status of the
region:
• If no region is active, clicking mouse-3 activates the region, placing the mark where
point was and point at the clicked position.
• If a region is active, clicking mouse-3 adjusts the nearer end of the region by moving it
to the clicked position. The adjusted region’s text is copied to the kill ring; if the text
in the original region was already on the kill ring, it replaces it there.
• If you originally specified the region using a double or triple mouse-1, so that the region
is defined to consist of entire words or lines (see Section 18.2 [Word and Line Mouse],
page 196), then adjusting the region with mouse-3 also proceeds by entire words or
lines.
196 GNU Emacs Manual

• If you use mouse-3 a second time consecutively, at the same place, that kills the region
already selected. Thus, the simplest way to kill text with the mouse is to click mouse-1
at one end, then click mouse-3 twice at the other end. To copy the text into the kill
ring without deleting it from the buffer, press mouse-3 just once—or just drag across
the text with mouse-1. Then you can copy it elsewhere by yanking it.
The mouse-save-then-kill command also obeys the variable mouse-drag-copy-region
(described above). If the value is non-nil, then whenever the command sets or adjusts the
active region, the text in the region is also added to the kill ring. If the latest kill ring entry
had been added the same way, that entry is replaced rather than making a new entry.
Whenever you set the region using any of the mouse commands described above, the
mark will be deactivated by any subsequent unshifted cursor motion command, in addition
to the usual ways of deactivating the mark. See Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 56.
Some mice have a “wheel” which can be used for scrolling. Emacs supports scrolling
windows with the mouse wheel, by default, on most graphical displays. To toggle this feature,
use M-x mouse-wheel-mode. The variables mouse-wheel-follow-mouse and mouse-wheel-
scroll-amount determine where and by how much buffers are scrolled. The variable
mouse-wheel-progressive-speed determines whether the scroll speed is linked to how fast
you move the wheel. This mode also supports increasing or decreasing the font size, by
default bound to scrolling with the Ctrl modifier. When this mode is enabled, mouse wheel
produces special events like wheel-up and wheel-down. (Some older systems report them as
mouse-4 and mouse-5.) If the mouse has a horizontal scroll wheel, it produces wheel-left
and wheel-right events as well.
Emacs also supports horizontal scrolling with the Shift modifier. Typing a numeric
prefix arg (e.g., M-5) before starting horizontal scrolling changes its step value defined by
the user option mouse-wheel-scroll-amount-horizontal.
If your mouse’s wheel can be tilted, or if your touchpad supports it, then you can also
enable horizontal scrolling by customizing the variable mouse-wheel-tilt-scroll to a
non-nil value. By default, tilting the mouse wheel scrolls the window’s view horizontally
in the direction of the tilt: e.g., tilting to the right scrolls the window to the right, so that
the text displayed in the window moves horizontally to the left. If you’d like to reverse the
direction of horizontal scrolling, customize the variable mouse-wheel-flip-direction to a
non-nil value.
When the mouse pointer is over an image in Image mode, see Section 15.19 [Image Mode],
page 171, scrolling the mouse wheel with the Ctrl modifier scales the image under the
mouse pointer, and scrolling the mouse wheel with the Shift modifier scrolls the image
horizontally.

18.2 Mouse Commands for Words and Lines

These variants of mouse-1 select entire words or lines at a time. Emacs activates the region
around the selected text, which is also copied to the kill ring.
Double-mouse-1
Select the text around the word or character which you click on.
Double-clicking on a character with symbol syntax (such as underscore, in
C mode) selects the symbol surrounding that character. Double-clicking on
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 197

a character with open- or close-parenthesis syntax selects the parenthetical

grouping which that character starts or ends. Double-clicking on a character
with string-delimiter syntax (such as a single-quote or double-quote in C) selects
the string constant (Emacs uses heuristics to figure out whether that character
is the beginning or the end of it).
Double-clicking on the beginning of a parenthetical grouping or beginning string-
delimiter moves point to the end of the region, scrolling the buffer display
forward if necessary to show the new location of point. Double-clicking on the
end of a parenthetical grouping or end string-delimiter keeps point at the end of
the region by default, so the beginning of the region will not be visible if it is
above the top of the window; setting the user option mouse-select-region-
move-to-beginning to non-nil changes this to move point to the beginning of
the region, scrolling the display backward if necessary.
Double-Drag-mouse-1
Select the text you drag across, in units of whole words.
Triple-mouse-1
Select the line you click on.
Triple-Drag-mouse-1
Select the text you drag across, in units of whole lines.

18.3 Following References with the Mouse

Some Emacs buffers include buttons, or hyperlinks: pieces of text that perform some action
(e.g., following a reference) when activated (e.g., by clicking on them). Usually, a button’s
text is visually highlighted: it is underlined, or a box is drawn around it. If you move the
mouse over a button, the shape of the mouse cursor changes and the button lights up. If
you change the variable mouse-highlight to nil, Emacs disables this highlighting.
You can activate a button by moving point to it and typing RET, or by clicking either
mouse-1 or mouse-2 on the button. For example, in a Dired buffer, each file name is a
button; activating it causes Emacs to visit that file (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378). In a
*Compilation* buffer, each error message is a button, and activating it visits the source
code for that error (see Section 24.1 [Compilation], page 309).
Although clicking mouse-1 on a button usually activates the button, if you hold the
mouse button down for a period of time before releasing it (specifically, for more than 450
milliseconds), then Emacs moves point where you clicked, without activating the button. In
this way, you can use the mouse to move point over a button without activating it. Dragging
the mouse over or onto a button has its usual behavior of setting the region, and does not
activate the button.
You can change how mouse-1 applies to buttons by customizing the variable mouse-1-
click-follows-link. If the value is a positive integer, that determines how long you need
to hold the mouse button down for, in milliseconds, to cancel button activation; the default
is 450, as described in the previous paragraph. If the value is nil, mouse-1 just sets point
where you clicked, and does not activate buttons. If the value is double, double clicks
activate buttons but single clicks just set point.
198 GNU Emacs Manual

Normally, mouse-1 on a button activates the button even if it is in a non-selected window.

If you change the variable mouse-1-click-in-non-selected-windows to nil, mouse-1 on
a button in an unselected window moves point to the clicked position and selects that
window, without activating the button.

18.4 Mouse Clicks for Menus

Several mouse clicks with the Ctrl and SHIFT modifiers bring up menus.
C-mouse-1
This menu is for selecting a buffer.
The MSB (“mouse select buffer”) global minor mode makes this menu smarter
and more customizable. See Section 16.7.3 [Buffer Menus], page 184.
C-mouse-2
This menu contains entries for examining faces and other text properties, and
well as for setting them (the latter is mainly useful when editing enriched text;
see Section 22.14 [Enriched Text], page 275).
C-mouse-3
This menu is mode-specific. For most modes if Menu-bar mode is on, this menu
has the same items as all the mode-specific menu-bar menus put together. Some
modes may specify a different menu for this button. If Menu Bar mode is off,
this menu contains all the items which would be present in the menu bar—not
just the mode-specific ones—so that you can access them without having to
display the menu bar.
S-mouse-1
This menu is for changing the default face within the window’s buffer. See
Section 11.12 [Text Scale], page 87.
Many GUI applications use mouse-3 to display context menus: menus that provide access
to various pertinent settings and actions for the location and context of the mouse click.
If you prefer this in Emacs over the default function of mouse-3, which is bound to the
mouse-save-then-kill command (see Section 18.1 [Mouse Commands], page 194), you can
enable the minor mode context-menu-mode. Then Emacs will show context menus when
you click mouse-3. The exact contents of these context menus depends on the current major
mode and the buffer contents around the place where you click the mouse. To customize
the contents of the context menu, you can use the variable context-menu-functions (see
Section “Major Mode Conventions” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). You can also
invoke the context menu by pressing S-F10.

18.5 Mode Line Mouse Commands

You can use mouse clicks on window mode lines to select and manipulate windows.
Some areas of the mode line, such as the buffer name, and major and minor mode names,
have their own special mouse bindings. These areas are highlighted when you hold the mouse
over them, and information about the special bindings will be displayed (see Section 18.19
[Tooltips], page 213). This section’s commands do not apply in those areas.
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 199

mouse-1 mouse-1 on a mode line selects the window it belongs to. By dragging mouse-1
on the mode line, you can move it, thus changing the height of the windows
above and below. Changing heights with the mouse in this way never deletes
windows, it just refuses to make any window smaller than the minimum height.
mouse-2 mouse-2 on a mode line expands that window to fill its frame.
mouse-3 mouse-3 on a mode line deletes the window it belongs to. If the frame has only
one window, it does nothing.
C-mouse-2
C-mouse-2 on a mode line splits that window, producing two side-by-side
windows with the boundary running through the click position (see Section 17.2
[Split Window], page 185).
Furthermore, by clicking and dragging mouse-1 on the divider between two side-by-side
mode lines, you can move the vertical boundary to the left or right.
Note that resizing windows is affected by the value of window-resize-pixelwise, see
Section 17.2 [Split Window], page 185.

18.6 Creating Frames

The prefix key C-x 5 is analogous to C-x 4. Whereas each C-x 4 command pops up a
buffer in a different window in the selected frame (see Section 17.4 [Pop Up Window],
page 187), the C-x 5 commands use a different frame. If an existing visible or iconified (a.k.a.
“minimized”, see Section “Visibility of Frames” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) frame
already displays the requested buffer, that frame is raised and deiconified (“un-minimized”);
otherwise, a new frame is created on the current display terminal.
The various C-x 5 commands differ in how they find or create the buffer to select:
C-x 5 2 Create a new frame using the default frame parameters (make-frame-command).
C-x 5 c Create a new frame using the window configuration and frame parameters of
the current frame (clone-frame).
C-x 5 b bufname RET
Select buffer bufname in another frame. This runs switch-to-buffer-other-
frame.
C-x 5 f filename RET
Visit file filename and select its buffer in another frame. This runs find-file-
other-frame. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
C-x 5 d directory RET
Select a Dired buffer for directory directory in another frame. This runs
dired-other-frame. See Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378.
C-x 5 m Start composing a mail message in another frame. This runs compose-mail-
other-frame. It is the other-frame variant of C-x m. See Chapter 29 [Sending
Mail], page 418.
C-x 5 . Find the definition of an identifier in another frame. This runs xref-find-
definitions-other-frame, the multiple-frame variant of M-.. See Section 25.4
[Xref], page 356.
200 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x 5 r filename RET

Visit file filename read-only, and select its buffer in another frame. This runs
find-file-read-only-other-frame. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
C-x 5 5 A more general prefix command that affects the buffer displayed by the next com-
mand invoked immediately after this prefix command (other-frame-prefix).
It requests the buffer of the next command to be displayed in another frame.
You can control the appearance and behavior of the newly-created frames by specifying
frame parameters. See Section 18.11 [Frame Parameters], page 205.

18.7 Frame Commands

The following commands are used to delete and operate on frames:
C-x 5 0 Delete the selected frame (delete-frame). This signals an error if there is only
one frame.
C-x 5 u When undelete-frame-mode is enabled, undelete one of the 16 most recently
deleted frames. Without a prefix argument, undelete the most recently deleted
frame. With a numerical prefix argument between 1 and 16, where 1 is the most
recently deleted frame, undelete the corresponding deleted frame.
C-z Minimize (or iconify) the selected Emacs frame (suspend-frame). See
Section 3.2 [Exiting], page 15.
C-x 5 o Select another frame, and raise it. If you repeat this command, it cycles through
all the frames on your terminal.
C-x 5 1 Delete all frames on the current terminal, except the selected one.
M-F10 Toggle the maximization state of the current frame. When a frame is maximized,
it fills the screen.
F11 Toggle full-screen mode for the current frame. (The difference between full-screen
and maximized is normally that the former hides window manager decorations,
giving slightly more screen space to Emacs itself.)
Note that with some window managers you may have to customize the variable
frame-resize-pixelwise to a non-nil value in order to make a frame truly maximized or
full-screen. This variable, when set to a non-nil value, in general allows resizing frames at
pixel resolution, rather than in integral multiples of lines and columns.
The C-x 5 0 (delete-frame) command deletes the selected frame. However, it will refuse
to delete the last frame in an Emacs session, to prevent you from losing the ability to
interact with the Emacs session. Note that when Emacs is run as a daemon (see Section 31.6
[Emacs Server], page 464), there is always a virtual frame that remains after all the ordinary,
interactive frames are deleted. In this case, C-x 5 0 can delete the last interactive frame;
you can use emacsclient to reconnect to the Emacs session.
The C-x 5 1 (delete-other-frames) command deletes all other frames on the current
terminal (this terminal refers to either a graphical display, or a text terminal; see Section 18.21
[Non-Window Terminals], page 214). If the Emacs session has frames open on other graphical
displays or text terminals, those are not deleted.
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 201

The C-x 5 o (other-frame) command selects the next frame on the current terminal. If
you are using Emacs on the X Window System with a window manager that selects (or
gives focus to) whatever frame the mouse cursor is over, you have to change the variable
focus-follows-mouse to t in order for this command to work properly. Then invoking C-x
5 o will also warp the mouse cursor to the chosen frame.

18.8 Fonts
By default, Emacs displays text on graphical displays using a 10-point monospace font, and
the font size can be changed interactively (see Section 11.12 [Text Scale], page 87).
There are several different ways to specify a different font:
• Click on ‘Set Default Font’ in the ‘Options’ menu. This makes the selected font the
default on all existing graphical frames. To save this for future sessions, click on ‘Save
Options’ in the ‘Options’ menu.
• Add a line to your init file, modifying the variable default-frame-alist to specify
the font parameter (see Section 18.11 [Frame Parameters], page 205), like this:
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
'(font . "DejaVu Sans Mono-10"))
This makes the font the default on all graphical frames created after restarting Emacs
with that init file.
• Add an ‘emacs.font’ X resource setting to your X resource file, like this:
emacs.font: DejaVu Sans Mono-12
You must restart X, or use the xrdb command, for the X resources file to take effect.
See Section D.1 [Resources], page 584. Do not quote font names in X resource files.
• If you are running Emacs on the GNOME desktop or Haiku, you can tell Emacs to
adjust the frame’s default font along with changes to the default system font by setting
the variable font-use-system-font to t (the default is nil). For this to work, Emacs
must have been compiled with support for Gsettings (or the older Gconf). (To be
specific, the Gsettings configuration names used are ‘org.gnome.desktop.interface
monospace-font-name’ and ‘org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name’.)
• Use the command line option ‘-fn’ (or ‘--font’). See Section C.6 [Font X], page 579.
To check what font you’re currently using, the C-u C-x = command can be helpful. It
describes the character at point, and names the font that it’s rendered in.
There are four different ways to express a font name. The first is to use a Fontconfig
pattern. Fontconfig patterns have the following form:
fontname[-fontsize][:name1=values1][:name2=values2]...
Within this format, any of the elements in brackets may be omitted. Here, fontname is the
family name of the font, such as ‘Monospace’ or ‘DejaVu Sans Mono’; fontsize is the point
size of the font (one printer’s point is about 1/72 of an inch); and the ‘name=values’ entries
specify settings such as the slant and weight of the font. Each values may be a single value,
or a list of values separated by commas. In addition, some property values are valid with
only one kind of property name, in which case the ‘name=’ part may be omitted.
Here is a list of common font properties:
‘slant’ One of ‘italic’, ‘oblique’, or ‘roman’.
202 GNU Emacs Manual

‘weight’ One of ‘light’, ‘medium’, ‘demibold’, ‘bold’ or ‘black’.

‘style’ Some fonts define special styles which are a combination of slant and weight.
For instance, ‘Dejavu Sans’ defines the ‘book’ style, which overrides the slant
and weight properties.
‘width’ One of ‘condensed’, ‘normal’, or ‘expanded’.
‘spacing’ One of ‘monospace’, ‘proportional’, ‘dual-width’, or ‘charcell’.
Here are some examples of Fontconfig patterns:
Monospace
Monospace-12
Monospace-12:bold
DejaVu Sans Mono:bold:italic
Monospace-12:weight=bold:slant=italic
For a more detailed description of Fontconfig patterns, see the Fontconfig manual,
which is distributed with Fontconfig and available online at https://fontconfig.org/
fontconfig-user.html.
On MS-Windows, only the subset of the form fontname[-fontsize] is supported for all
fonts; the full Fontconfig pattern might not work for all of them.
The second way to specify a font is to use a GTK font pattern. These have the syntax
fontname [properties] [fontsize]
where fontname is the family name, properties is a list of property values separated by
spaces, and fontsize is the point size. The properties that you may specify for GTK font
patterns are as follows:
• Slant properties: ‘Italic’ or ‘Oblique’. If omitted, the default (roman) slant is implied.
• Weight properties: ‘Bold’, ‘Book’, ‘Light’, ‘Medium’, ‘Semi-bold’, or ‘Ultra-light’. If
omitted, ‘Medium’ weight is implied.
• Width properties: ‘Semi-Condensed’ or ‘Condensed’. If omitted, a default width is
used.
Here are some examples of GTK font patterns:
Monospace 12
Monospace Bold Italic 12
On MS-Windows, only the subset fontname is supported.
The third way to specify a font is to use an XLFD (X Logical Font Description). This is
the traditional method for specifying fonts under X, and is also supported on MS-Windows.
Each XLFD consists of fourteen words or numbers, separated by dashes, like this:
-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-*-*-*-c-60-iso8859-1
A wildcard character (‘*’) in an XLFD matches any sequence of characters (including none),
and ‘?’ matches any single character. However, matching is implementation-dependent, and
can be inaccurate when wildcards match dashes in a long name. For reliable results, supply
all 14 dashes and use wildcards only within a field. Case is insignificant in an XLFD. The
syntax for an XLFD is as follows:
-maker-family-weight-slant-widthtype-style...
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 203

...-pixels-height-horiz-vert-spacing-width-registry-encoding
The entries have the following meanings:
maker The name of the font manufacturer.
family The name of the font family (e.g., ‘courier’).
weight The font weight—normally either ‘bold’, ‘medium’ or ‘light’. Some font names
support other values.
slant The font slant—normally ‘r’ (roman), ‘i’ (italic), ‘o’ (oblique), ‘ri’ (reverse
italic), or ‘ot’ (other). Some font names support other values.
widthtype The font width—normally ‘normal’, ‘condensed’, ‘semicondensed’, or
‘extended’. Some font names support other values.
style An optional additional style name. Usually it is empty—most XLFDs have two
hyphens in a row at this point. The style name can also specify a two-letter
ISO-639 language name, like ‘ja’ or ‘ko’; some fonts that support CJK scripts
have that spelled out in the style name part.
pixels The font height, in pixels.
height The font height on the screen, measured in tenths of a printer’s point. This is
the point size of the font, times ten. For a given vertical resolution, height and
pixels are proportional; therefore, it is common to specify just one of them and
use ‘*’ for the other.
horiz The horizontal resolution, in pixels per inch, of the screen for which the font is
intended.
vert The vertical resolution, in pixels per inch, of the screen for which the font is
intended. Normally the resolution of the fonts on your system is the right value
for your screen; therefore, you normally specify ‘*’ for this and horiz.
spacing This is ‘m’ (monospace), ‘p’ (proportional) or ‘c’ (character cell).
width The average character width, in pixels, multiplied by ten.
registry
encoding The X font character set that the font depicts. (X font character sets are not the
same as Emacs character sets, but they are similar.) You can use the xfontsel
program to check which choices you have. Normally you should use ‘iso8859’
for registry and ‘1’ for encoding.
The fourth and final method of specifying a font is to use a font nickname. Certain
fonts have shorter nicknames, which you can use instead of a normal font specification. For
instance, ‘6x13’ is equivalent to
-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-*-*-*-c-60-iso8859-1
This form is not supported on MS-Windows.
On X, Emacs recognizes two types of fonts: client-side fonts, which are provided by
the Xft and Fontconfig libraries, and server-side fonts, which are provided by the X server
itself. Most client-side fonts support advanced font features such as antialiasing and subpixel
204 GNU Emacs Manual

hinting, while server-side fonts do not. Fontconfig and GTK patterns match only client-side
fonts.
You will probably want to use a fixed-width default font—that is, a font in which all
characters have the same width. For Xft and Fontconfig fonts, you can use the fc-list
command to list the available fixed-width fonts, like this:
fc-list :spacing=mono
fc-list :spacing=charcell
For server-side X fonts, you can use the xlsfonts program to list the available fixed-width
fonts, like this:
xlsfonts -fn '*x*' | grep -E '^[0-9]+x[0-9]+'
xlsfonts -fn '*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-m*'
xlsfonts -fn '*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-c*'
Any font with ‘m’ or ‘c’ in the spacing field of the XLFD is a fixed-width font. To see what
a particular font looks like, use the xfd command. For example:
xfd -fn 6x13
displays the entire font ‘6x13’.
While running Emacs, you can also set the font of a specific kind of text (see Section 11.8
[Faces], page 82), or a particular frame (see Section 18.11 [Frame Parameters], page 205).

18.9 Speedbar Frames

The speedbar is a special frame for conveniently navigating in or operating on another frame.
The speedbar, when it exists, is always associated with a specific frame, called its attached
frame; all speedbar operations act on that frame.
Type M-x speedbar to create the speedbar and associate it with the current frame. To
dismiss the speedbar, type M-x speedbar again, or select the speedbar and type q. (You
can also delete the speedbar frame like any other Emacs frame.) If you wish to associate the
speedbar with a different frame, dismiss it and call M-x speedbar from that frame.
The speedbar can operate in various modes. Its default mode is File Display mode,
which shows the files in the current directory of the selected window of the attached frame,
one file per line. Clicking on a non-directory visits that file in the selected window of
the attached frame, and clicking on a directory shows that directory in the speedbar (see
Section 18.3 [Mouse References], page 197). Each line also has a box, ‘[+]’ or ‘<+>’, that you
can click on to expand the contents of that item. Expanding a directory adds the contents
of that directory to the speedbar display, underneath the directory’s own line. Expanding
an ordinary file adds a list of the tags in that file to the speedbar display; you can click on a
tag name to jump to that tag in the selected window of the attached frame. When a file or
directory is expanded, the ‘[+]’ changes to ‘[-]’; you can click on that box to contract the
item, hiding its contents.
You navigate through the speedbar using the keyboard, too. Typing RET while point
is on a line in the speedbar is equivalent to clicking the item on the current line, and SPC
expands or contracts the item. U displays the parent directory of the current directory. To
copy, delete, or rename the file on the current line, type C, D, and R respectively. To create a
new directory, type M.
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 205

Another general-purpose speedbar mode is Buffer Display mode; in this mode, the
speedbar displays a list of Emacs buffers. To switch to this mode, type b in the speedbar.
To return to File Display mode, type f. You can also change the display mode by clicking
mouse-3 anywhere in the speedbar window (or mouse-1 on the mode-line) and selecting
‘Displays’ in the pop-up menu.
Some major modes, including Rmail mode, Info, and GUD, have specialized ways of
putting useful items into the speedbar for you to select. For example, in Rmail mode, the
speedbar shows a list of Rmail files, and lets you move the current message to another Rmail
file by clicking on its ‘<M>’ box.
For more details on using and programming the speedbar, See Speedbar Manual.

18.10 Multiple Displays

A single Emacs can talk to more than one X display. Initially, Emacs uses just one display—
the one specified with the DISPLAY environment variable or with the ‘--display’ option (see
Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570). To connect to another display, use the command
make-frame-on-display:
M-x make-frame-on-display RET display RET
Create a new frame on display display.
A single X server can handle more than one screen. When you open frames on two
screens belonging to one server, Emacs knows they share a single keyboard, and it treats all
the commands arriving from these screens as a single stream of input.
When you open frames on different X servers, Emacs makes a separate input stream for
each server. Each server also has its own selected frame. The commands you enter with a
particular X server apply to that server’s selected frame.
On multi-monitor displays it is possible to use the command make-frame-on-monitor:
M-x make-frame-on-monitor RET monitor RET
Create a new frame on monitor monitor whose screen area is a part of the
current display.

18.11 Frame Parameters

You can control the default appearance and behavior of all frames by specifying a default
list of frame parameters in the variable default-frame-alist. Its value should be a list of
entries, each specifying a parameter name and a value for that parameter. These entries
take effect whenever Emacs creates a new frame, including the initial frame.
For example, you can add the following lines to your init file (see Section 33.4 [Init File],
page 522) to set the default frame width to 90 character columns, the default frame height
to 40 character rows, and the default font to ‘Monospace-10’:
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(width . 90))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(height . 40))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(font . "Monospace-10"))
For a list of frame parameters and their effects, see Section “Frame Parameters” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
206 GNU Emacs Manual

You can also specify a list of frame parameters which apply to just the initial frame, by
customizing the variable initial-frame-alist.
If Emacs is compiled to use an X toolkit, frame parameters that specify colors and fonts
don’t affect menus and the menu bar, since those are drawn by the toolkit and not directly
by Emacs.
Frame appearance and behavior can also be customized through X resources (see
Appendix D [X Resources], page 584); these override the parameters of the initial frame
specified in your init file.
Note that if you are using the desktop library to save and restore your sessions, the
frames to be restored are recorded in the desktop file, together with their parameters.
When these frames are restored, the recorded parameters take precedence over the frame
parameters specified by default-frame-alist and initial-frame-alist in your init file.
See Section 31.10 [Saving Emacs Sessions], page 478, for how to avoid that.

18.12 Scroll Bars

On graphical displays, there is a vertical scroll bar on the side of each Emacs window.
Clicking mouse-1 on the scroll bar’s up and down buttons scrolls the window by one line at
a time (but some toolkits allow you to customize the scroll bars to not have those buttons).
Clicking mouse-1 above or below the scroll bar’s inner box scrolls the window by nearly the
entire height of the window, like M-v and C-v respectively (see Section 4.2 [Moving Point],
page 17). (This, too, can behave differently with some toolkits.) Dragging the inner box
scrolls continuously.
If Emacs is compiled on the X Window System without X toolkit support, the scroll bar
behaves differently. Clicking mouse-1 anywhere on the scroll bar scrolls forward like C-v,
while mouse-3 scrolls backward like M-v. Clicking mouse-2 in the scroll bar lets you drag
the inner box up and down.
To toggle the use of vertical scroll bars, type M-x scroll-bar-mode. This command
applies to all frames, including frames yet to be created. To toggle vertical scroll bars for
just the selected frame, use the command M-x toggle-scroll-bar.
To control the use of vertical scroll bars at startup, customize the variable scroll-bar-
mode (see Chapter 33 [Customization], page 494). Its value should be either right (put
scroll bars on the right side of windows), left (put them on the left), or nil (disable vertical
scroll bars). By default, Emacs puts scroll bars on the right if it was compiled with GTK+
support on the X Window System, and on MS-Windows or macOS; Emacs puts scroll bars
on the left if compiled on the X Window System without GTK+ support (following the old
convention for X applications).
You can also use the X resource ‘verticalScrollBars’ to enable or disable the scroll
bars (see Section D.1 [Resources], page 584). To control the scroll bar width, change the
scroll-bar-width frame parameter (see Section “Frame Parameters” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual).
If you’re using Emacs on X (with GTK+ or Motif), you can customize the variable
scroll-bar-adjust-thumb-portion to control overscrolling of the scroll bar, i.e., dragging
the thumb down even when the end of the buffer is visible. If its value is non-nil, the scroll
bar can be dragged downwards even if the end of the buffer is shown; if nil, the thumb will
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 207

be at the bottom when the end of the buffer is shown. You cannot over-scroll when the
entire buffer is visible.
The visual appearance of the scroll bars is controlled by the scroll-bar face. (Some
toolkits, such as GTK+ and MS-Windows, ignore this face; the scroll-bar appearance there
can only be customized system-wide, for GTK+ see Section D.3 [GTK resources], page 587).
On graphical frames, vertical scroll bars implicitly serve to separate side-by-side windows
visually. When vertical scroll bars are disabled, Emacs by default separates such windows
with the help of a one-pixel wide vertical border. That border occupies the first pixel column
of the window on the right and may thus overdraw the leftmost pixels of any glyph displayed
there. If these pixels convey important information, you can make them visible by enabling
window dividers, see Section 18.13 [Window Dividers], page 207. To replicate the look of
vertical borders, set the right-divider-width parameter of frames to one and have the
window-divider face inherit from that of vertical-border, Section “Window Dividers”
in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
On graphical displays with toolkit support, Emacs may also supply a horizontal scroll
bar on the bottom of each window. Clicking mouse-1 on that scroll bar’s left and right
buttons scrolls the window horizontally by one column at a time. (Note that some toolkits
allow customizations of the scroll bar that cause these buttons not to be shown.) Clicking
mouse-1 on the left or right of the scroll bar’s inner box scrolls the window by four columns.
Dragging the inner box scrolls the window continuously.
Note that such horizontal scrolling can make the window’s position of point disappear
on the left or the right. Typing a character to insert text or moving point with a keyboard
command will usually bring it back into view.
To toggle the use of horizontal scroll bars, type M-x horizontal-scroll-bar-mode. This
command applies to all frames, including frames yet to be created. To toggle horizontal scroll
bars for just the selected frame, use the command M-x toggle-horizontal-scroll-bar.
To control the use of horizontal scroll bars at startup, customize the variable
horizontal-scroll-bar-mode.
You can also use the X resource ‘horizontalScrollBars’ to enable or disable horizontal
scroll bars (see Section D.1 [Resources], page 584). To control the scroll bar height, change
the scroll-bar-height frame parameter (see Section “Frame Parameters” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual).

18.13 Window Dividers

On graphical displays, you can use window dividers in order to separate windows visually.
Window dividers are bars that can be dragged with the mouse, thus allowing you to easily
resize adjacent windows.
To toggle the display of window dividers, use the command M-x window-divider-mode.
To customize where dividers should appear, use the option window-divider-default-
places. Its value should be either bottom-only (to show dividers only on the bottom of
windows), right-only (to show dividers only on the right of windows), or t (to show them
on the bottom and on the right).
To adjust the width of window dividers displayed by this mode customize the options
window-divider-default-bottom-width and window-divider-default-right-width.
208 GNU Emacs Manual

When vertical scroll bars are disabled, dividers can be also useful to make the first pixel
column of a window visible, which would be otherwise covered by the vertical border used
to separate side-by-side windows (see Section 18.12 [Scroll Bars], page 206).
For more details about window dividers see Section “Window Dividers” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual.

18.14 Drag and Drop

In most graphical desktop environments, Emacs has basic support for drag and drop
operations. For instance, dropping text onto an Emacs frame inserts the text where it is
dropped. Dropping a file onto an Emacs frame visits that file. As a special case, dropping the
file on a Dired buffer moves or copies the file (according to the conventions of the application
it came from) into the directory displayed in that buffer.
Dropping a file normally visits it in the window you drop it on. If you prefer to visit the
file in a new window in such cases, customize the variable dnd-open-file-other-window.
The XDND and Motif drag and drop protocols, and the old KDE 1.x protocol, are
currently supported.
It can be difficult to scroll a window or determine where dropped text will be inserted
while dragging text onto an Emacs window. Setting the option dnd-indicate-insertion-
point to a non-nil value makes point move to the location any dropped text will be inserted
when the mouse moves in a window during drag, and setting dnd-scroll-margin to an
integer value causes a window to be scrolled if the mouse moves within that many lines of
the top or bottom of the window during drag.
Emacs can also optionally drag the region with the mouse into another portion of this or
another buffer. To enable that, customize the variable mouse-drag-and-drop-region to a
non-nil value. Normally, the text is moved, i.e. cut and pasted, when the destination is the
same buffer as the origin; dropping the region on another buffer copies the text instead. If
the value of this variable names a modifier key, such as ‘shift’, ‘control’ or ‘alt’, then
pressing that modifier key when dropping the text will copy it instead of cutting it, even if
you drop on the same buffer as the one from which the text came.
In order to cut text even when source and destination buffers differ, set the option
mouse-drag-and-drop-region-cut-when-buffers-differ to a non-nil value. By default,
on a graphic display the selected text is shown in a tooltip and point moves together with
the mouse cursor during dragging. To suppress such behavior, set the options mouse-drag-
and-drop-region-show-tooltip and/or mouse-drag-and-drop-region-show-cursor to
nil.
To drag text from Emacs to other programs, set the option mouse-drag-and-drop-
region-cross-program to a non-nil value.
On the X window system, some programs can drop files on Emacs, expecting Emacs
to save them. Normally, Emacs will prompt for a file name under which the file will be
saved, and then open the file, but that behavior can be changed by changing the variable
x-dnd-direct-save-function. See Section “Drag and Drop” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 209

18.15 Menu Bars

You can toggle the use of menu bars with M-x menu-bar-mode. With no argument, this
command toggles Menu Bar mode, a global minor mode. With an argument, the command
turns Menu Bar mode on if the argument is positive, off if the argument is not positive. To
control the use of menu bars at startup, customize the variable menu-bar-mode.
Expert users often turn off the menu bar, especially on text terminals, where this makes
one additional line available for text. If the menu bar is off, you can still pop up a menu
of its contents with C-mouse-3 on a display which supports pop-up menus. Or you can
enable context-menu-mode and customize the variable context-menu-functions to pop
up a context menu with mouse-3. See Section 18.4 [Menu Mouse Clicks], page 198.
See Section 1.4 [Menu Bar], page 9, for information on how to invoke commands with
the menu bar. See Appendix D [X Resources], page 584, for how to customize the menu bar
menus’ visual appearance.

18.16 Tool Bars

On graphical displays, Emacs puts a tool bar at the top of each frame, just below the
menu bar. This is a row of icons which you can click on with the mouse to invoke various
commands.
The global (default) tool bar contains general commands. Some major modes define their
own tool bars; whenever a buffer with such a major mode is current, the mode’s tool bar
replaces the global tool bar.
To toggle the use of tool bars, type M-x tool-bar-mode. This command applies to all
frames, including frames yet to be created. To control the use of tool bars at startup,
customize the variable tool-bar-mode.
When Emacs is compiled with GTK+ support, each tool bar item can consist of an image,
or a text label, or both. By default, Emacs follows the Gnome desktop’s tool bar style
setting; if none is defined, it displays tool bar items as just images. To impose a specific tool
bar style, customize the variable tool-bar-style.
You can also control the placement of the tool bar for the GTK+ tool bar with the
frame parameter tool-bar-position. See Section “Frame Parameters” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual.
NS builds consider the tool bar to be a window decoration, and therefore do not display
it when a window is undecorated. See Section “Frame Parameters” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual. On macOS the tool bar is hidden when the frame is put into fullscreen,
but can be displayed by moving the mouse pointer to the top of the screen.

18.17 Tab Bars

On graphical displays and on text terminals, Emacs can optionally display a Tab Bar at
the top of each frame, just below the menu bar (see Section 18.15 [Menu Bars], page 209)
and above or below the tool bar (see Section 18.16 [Tool Bars], page 209) depending on the
variable tab-bar-position. The Tab Bar is a row of tabs—buttons that you can click to
switch between window configurations.
Each tab on the Tab Bar represents a named persistent window configuration of its
frame, i.e., how that frame is partitioned into windows and which buffer is displayed in each
210 GNU Emacs Manual

window. The tab’s name is composed from the list of names of buffers shown in windows
of that window configuration. Clicking on the tab switches to the window configuration
recorded by the tab; it is a configuration of windows and buffers which was previously used
in the frame when that tab was the current tab.
If you are using the desktop library to save and restore your sessions (see Section 31.10
[Saving Emacs Sessions], page 478), the tabs from the Tab Bar are recorded in the desktop
file, together with their associated window configurations, and will be available after restoring
the session.
Note that the Tab Bar is different from the Tab Line (see Section 17.8 [Tab Line],
page 192). Whereas tabs on the Tab Line at the top of each window are used to switch
between buffers in the window, tabs on the Tab Bar at the top of each frame are used to
switch between window configurations containing several windows showing one or more
buffers.
To toggle the use of Tab Bars, type M-x tab-bar-mode. This command applies to all
frames, including frames yet to be created. To control the use of tab bars at startup,
customize the variable tab-bar-mode and save your customization.
The variable tab-bar-show controls whether the Tab Bar mode is turned on automatically.
If the value is t, then tab-bar-mode is enabled when using the commands that create new
tabs. The value 1 hides the tab bar when it has only one tab, and shows it again when more
tabs are created. More generally, a value that is a non-negative integer causes the Tab Bar
to be displayed only if the number of tabs is greater than that integer. The value nil always
keeps the Tab Bar hidden; in this case it’s still possible to switch between named window
configurations without displaying the Tab Bar by using M-x tab-next, M-x tab-switcher,
and other commands that provide completion on tab names. Also it’s possible to create and
close tabs without the Tab Bar by using commands M-x tab-new, M-x tab-close, etc.
Note that a numerical value of tab-bar-show can cause the Tab Bar to be displayed on
some frames, but not on others, depending on the number of tabs created on each frame.
To toggle the use of the Tab Bar only on the selected frame, type M-x
toggle-frame-tab-bar. This command allows to enable the display of the Tab Bar
on some frames and disable it on others, regardless of the values of tab-bar-mode and
tab-bar-show.
The prefix key C-x t is analogous to C-x 5. Whereas each C-x 5 command pops up
a buffer in a different frame (see Section 18.6 [Creating Frames], page 199), the C-x t
commands use a different tab with a different window configuration in the selected frame.
The various C-x t commands differ in how they find or create the buffer to select. The
following commands can be used to select a buffer in a new tab:

C-x t 2 Add a new tab (tab-new). You can control the choice of the buffer displayed
in a new tab by customizing the variable tab-bar-new-tab-choice. You can
control the names given by default to new tabs by customizing the variable
tab-bar-tab-name-function.

C-x t b bufname RET

Select buffer bufname in another tab. This runs switch-to-buffer-other-tab.
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 211

C-x t f filename RET

Visit the file filename (see Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146) and select its buffer
in another tab. This runs find-file-other-tab.
C-x t d directory RET
Edit the specified directory (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378) in another tab.
This runs dired-other-tab.
C-x t t This is a prefix command (other-tab-prefix) that affects the next command
invoked immediately after this prefix command. It requests the buffer displayed
by the next command to be shown in another tab.
By default, a new tab starts with the buffer that was current before calling the command
that adds a new tab. To start a new tab with other buffers, customize the variable tab-bar-
new-tab-choice.
The variable tab-bar-new-tab-to defines where to place a new tab. By default, a new
tab is added on the right side of the current tab.
The following commands can be used to delete tabs:
C-x t 0 Close the selected tab (tab-close). This has no effect if there is only one
tab, unless the variable tab-bar-close-last-tab-choice is customized to a
non-default value.
C-x t 1 Close all tabs, except the selected tab, on the selected frame.
The variable tab-bar-close-tab-select defines what tab to select after closing the
current tab. By default, it selects a recently used tab.
The command tab-undo restores the last closed tab.
The following commands can be used to switch between tabs:
C-x t o
C-TAB Switch to the next tab (tab-next). If you repeat this command, it cycles
through all the tabs on the selected frame. With a positive numeric argument n,
it switches to the nth next tab; with a negative argument −n, it switches back
to the nth previous tab.
S-C-TAB Switch to the previous tab (tab-previous). With a positive numeric argument
n, it switches to the nth previous tab; with a negative argument −n, it switches
to the nth next tab.
C-x t RET tabname RET
Switch to the tab by its name (tab-switch), with completion on all tab names.
The default value and the “future history” of tab names is sorted by recency, so
you can use M-n (next-history-element) to get the name of the last visited
tab, the second last, and so on.
modifier-tab-number
Switch to the tab by its number tab-number (tab-select). After customizing
the variable tab-bar-select-tab-modifiers to specify one or more modifier
keys, you can select a tab by its ordinal number using one of the specified
modifiers in combination with the tab number to select. The number 9 can be
212 GNU Emacs Manual

used to select the last tab. You can select any modifiers supported by Emacs, see
Section 33.3.7 [Modifier Keys], page 517. To display the tab number alongside
the tab name, you can customize another variable tab-bar-tab-hints. This
will help you decide which numerical key to press to select the tab by its number.
modifier-9
Switch to the last tab (tab-last). The key combination is the modifier key
defined by tab-bar-select-tab-modifiers and the key 9. With a numeric
argument n, switch to the nth last tab.
modifier-0
Switch to the recent tab (tab-recent). The key combination is the modifier key
defined by tab-bar-select-tab-modifiers and the key 0. With a numeric
argument n, switch to the nth recent tab.
The following commands can be used to operate on tabs:
C-x t r tabname RET
Rename the current tab to tabname (tab-rename).
C-x t m Move the current tab one position to the right (tab-move). With a positive
numeric argument n, move it that many positions to the right; with a negative
argument −n, move it n positions to the left.
You can use the mouse to operate on tabs. Clicking mouse-2 closes the tab. Clicking
mouse-3 pops up the context menu with the items that operate on the clicked tab. Dragging
the tab with mouse-1 moves it to another position on the tab bar. Mouse wheel scrolling
switches to the next or previous tab. Holding down the SHIFT key during scrolling moves
the tab to the left or right.
You can enable tab-bar-history-mode to remember window configurations used in
every tab, and later restore them.
M-x tab-bar-history-back
Restore a previous window configuration used in the current tab. This navigates
back in the history of window configurations.
M-x tab-bar-history-forward
Cancel restoration of the previous window configuration. This moves forward in
the history of window configurations.
It’s possible to customize the items displayed on the tab bar by the user option tab-bar-
format.

18.18 Using Dialog Boxes

A dialog box is a special kind of menu for asking you a yes-or-no question or some other
special question. Many Emacs commands use a dialog box to ask a yes-or-no question, if
you used the mouse to invoke the command that led to the question.
To disable the use of dialog boxes, change the variable use-dialog-box to nil. In that
case, Emacs always performs yes-or-no prompts using the echo area and keyboard input.
This variable also controls whether to use file selection windows (but those are not supported
on all platforms).
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 213

A file selection window is a special kind of dialog box for asking for file names. You can
customize the variable use-file-dialog to suppress the use of file selection windows, even
if you still want other kinds of dialogs. This variable has no effect if you have suppressed all
dialog boxes with the variable use-dialog-box.
When Emacs is compiled with GTK+ support, it uses the GTK+ file chooser dialog.
Emacs adds an additional toggle button to this dialog, which you can use to enable or
disable the display of hidden files (files starting with a dot) in that dialog. If you want this
toggle to be activated by default, change the variable x-gtk-show-hidden-files to t. In
addition, Emacs adds help text to the GTK+ file chooser dialog; to disable this help text,
change the variable x-gtk-file-dialog-help-text to nil.

18.19 Tooltips
Tooltips are small special frames that display text information at the current mouse position.
They activate when there is a pause in mouse movement over some significant piece of text
in a window, or the mode line, or some other part of the Emacs frame such as a tool bar
button or menu item.
You can toggle the use of tooltips with the command M-x tooltip-mode. When Tooltip
mode is disabled, the help text is displayed in the echo area instead. To control the use of
tooltips at startup, customize the variable tooltip-mode.
The following variables provide customization options for tooltip display:
tooltip-delay
This variable specifies how long Emacs should wait before displaying the first
tooltip. The value is in seconds.
tooltip-short-delay
This variable specifies how long Emacs should wait before displaying subsequent
tooltips on different items, having already displayed the first tooltip. The value
is in seconds.
tooltip-hide-delay
The number of seconds since displaying a tooltip to hide it, if the mouse doesn’t
move.
tooltip-x-offset
tooltip-y-offset
The X and Y offsets, in pixels, of the left top corner of the tooltip from the mouse
pointer position. Note that these are ignored if tooltip-frame-parameters
was customized to include, respectively, the left and top parameters. The
values of the offsets should be chosen so that the tooltip doesn’t cover the mouse
pointer’s hot spot, or it might interfere with clicking the mouse.
tooltip-frame-parameters
The frame parameters used for displaying tooltips. See Section “Frame Parame-
ters” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, and also Section “Tooltips” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
For additional customization options for displaying tooltips, use M-x customize-group
RET tooltip RET.
214 GNU Emacs Manual

If Emacs is built with the GTK+ toolkit, Nextstep windowing, or Haiku windowing
support, it displays tooltips via the toolkit, using the default appearance of the toolkit’s
tooltips.1 To disable this, change the variable use-system-tooltips to nil. If you do
this, or if Emacs is built without the appropriate windowing support, most attributes of
the tooltip text are specified by the tooltip face, and by X resources (see Appendix D [X
Resources], page 584).
GUD tooltips are special tooltips that show the values of variables when debugging a
program with GUD. See Section 24.6.2 [Debugger Operation], page 316.

18.20 Mouse Avoidance

On graphical terminals, the mouse pointer may obscure the text in the Emacs frame. Emacs
provides two methods to avoid this problem.
Firstly, Emacs hides the mouse pointer each time you type a self-inserting character, if
the pointer lies inside an Emacs frame; moving the mouse pointer makes it visible again. To
disable this feature, set the variable make-pointer-invisible to nil. See Section 11.24
[Display Custom], page 101.
Secondly, you can use Mouse Avoidance mode, a minor mode, to keep the mouse pointer
away from point. To use Mouse Avoidance mode, customize the variable mouse-avoidance-
mode. You can set this to various values to move the mouse in several ways:
banish Move the pointer to a corner of the frame on any key-press. You can customize
the variable mouse-avoidance-banish-position to specify where the pointer
goes when it is banished.
exile Banish the pointer only if the cursor gets too close, and allow it to return once
the cursor is out of the way.
jump If the cursor gets too close to the pointer, displace the pointer by a random
distance and direction.
animate As jump, but shows steps along the way for illusion of motion.
cat-and-mouse
The same as animate.
proteus As animate, but changes the shape of the mouse pointer too.
You can also use the command M-x mouse-avoidance-mode to enable the mode. When-
ever Mouse Avoidance mode moves the mouse, it also raises the frame.

18.21 Non-Window Terminals

On a text terminal, Emacs can display only one Emacs frame at a time. However, you can
still create multiple Emacs frames, and switch between them. Switching frames on these
terminals is much like switching between different window configurations.
Use C-x 5 2 to create a new frame and switch to it; use C-x 5 o to cycle through the
existing frames; use C-x 5 0 to delete the current frame.
1
The foreground and background colors of toolkit-created tooltips on Nextstep can also be customized by
setting the foreground and background frame parameters that are part of tooltip-frame-parameters.
Chapter 18: Frames and Graphical Displays 215

Each frame has a number to distinguish it. If your terminal can display only one frame
at a time, the selected frame’s number n appears near the beginning of the mode line, in the
form ‘Fn’.
‘Fn’ is in fact the frame’s initial name. You can give frames more meaningful names if you
wish, and you can select a frame by its name. Use the command M-x set-frame-name RET
name RET to specify a new name for the selected frame, and use M-x select-frame-by-name
RET name RET to select a frame according to its name. The name you specify appears in the
mode line when the frame is selected.

18.22 Using a Mouse in Text Terminals

Some text terminals support mouse clicks in the terminal window.
In a terminal emulator which is compatible with xterm, you can use M-x
xterm-mouse-mode to give Emacs control over simple uses of the mouse—basically,
only non-modified single clicks are supported. Newer versions of xterm also support
mouse-tracking. The normal xterm mouse functionality for such clicks is still available by
holding down the SHIFT key when you press the mouse button. Xterm Mouse mode is a
global minor mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242). Repeating the command
turns the mode off again.
In the console on GNU/Linux, you can use M-x gpm-mouse-mode to enable mouse support.
You must have the gpm server installed and running on your system in order for this to
work. Note that when this mode is enabled, you cannot use the mouse to transfer text
between Emacs and other programs which use GPM. This is due to limitations in GPM
and the Linux kernel.
See Section “MS-DOS Mouse” in Specialized Emacs Features, for information about
mouse support on MS-DOS.
216 GNU Emacs Manual

19 International Character Set Support

Emacs supports a wide variety of international character sets, including European and
Vietnamese variants of the Latin alphabet, as well as Arabic scripts, Brahmic scripts (for
languages such as Bengali, Hindi, and Thai), Cyrillic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Greek, Han (for
Chinese and Japanese), Hangul (for Korean), Hebrew and IPA. Emacs also supports various
encodings of these characters that are used by other internationalized software, such as word
processors and mailers.
Emacs allows editing text with international characters by supporting all the related
activities:
• You can visit files with non-ASCII characters, save non-ASCII text, and pass non-ASCII
text between Emacs and programs it invokes (such as compilers, spell-checkers, and
mailers). Setting your language environment (see Section 19.2 [Language Environments],
page 218) takes care of setting up the coding systems and other options for a specific
language or culture. Alternatively, you can specify how Emacs should encode or decode
text for each command; see Section 19.9 [Text Coding], page 228.
• You can display non-ASCII characters encoded by the various scripts. This works by
using appropriate fonts on graphics displays (see Section 19.15 [Defining Fontsets],
page 233), and by sending special codes to text displays (see Section 19.13 [Terminal
Coding], page 231). If some characters are displayed incorrectly, refer to Section 19.17
[Undisplayable Characters], page 235, which describes possible problems and explains
how to solve them.
• Characters from scripts whose natural ordering of text is from right to left are reordered
for display (see Section 19.20 [Bidirectional Editing], page 238). These scripts include
Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Thaana, and a few others.
• You can insert non-ASCII characters or search for them. To do that, you can specify an
Emacs input method (see Section 19.4 [Select Input Method], page 222) suitable for
your language, or use the default input method set up when you choose your language
environment. If your keyboard can produce non-ASCII characters, you can select an
appropriate keyboard coding system (see Section 19.13 [Terminal Coding], page 231),
and Emacs will accept those characters. On graphical displays, modern systems typically
provide their native input methods, and Latin-1 characters can also be input by using
the C-x 8 prefix, see Section 19.18 [Unibyte Mode], page 236.
With the X Window System, your locale should be set to an appropriate value to
make sure Emacs interprets keyboard input correctly; see Section 19.2 [Language
Environments], page 218, and Section 19.12 [X Coding], page 231.
The rest of this chapter describes these issues in detail.

19.1 Introduction to International Character Sets

The users of international character sets and scripts have established many more-or-less
standard coding systems for storing files. These coding systems are typically multibyte,
meaning that sequences of two or more bytes are used to represent individual non-ASCII
characters.
Internally, Emacs uses its own multibyte character encoding, which is a superset of
the Unicode standard. This internal encoding allows characters from almost every known
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 217

script to be intermixed in a single buffer or string. Emacs translates between the multibyte
character encoding and various other coding systems when reading and writing files, and
when exchanging data with subprocesses.
The command C-h h (view-hello-file) displays the file etc/HELLO, which illustrates
various scripts by showing how to say “hello” in many languages. If some characters can’t
be displayed on your terminal, they appear as ‘?’ or as hollow boxes (see Section 19.17
[Undisplayable Characters], page 235).
Keyboards, even in the countries where these character sets are used, generally don’t
have keys for all the characters in them. You can insert characters that your keyboard
does not support, using C-x 8 RET (insert-char). See Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16.
Shorthands are available for some common characters; for example, you can insert a left
single quotation mark ‘ by typing C-x 8 [, or in Electric Quote mode, usually by simply
typing `. See Section 22.5 [Quotation Marks], page 255. Emacs also supports various input
methods, typically one for each script or language, which make it easier to type characters
in the script. See Section 19.3 [Input Methods], page 220.
The prefix key C-x RET is used for commands that pertain to multibyte characters, coding
systems, and input methods.
The command C-x = (what-cursor-position) shows information about the character
at point. In addition to the character position, which was described in Section 4.9 [Position
Info], page 23, this command displays how the character is encoded. For instance, it displays
the following line in the echo area for the character ‘c’:
Char: c (99, #o143, #x63) point=28062 of 36168 (78%) column=53
The four values after ‘Char:’ describe the character that follows point, first by showing it
and then by giving its character code in decimal, octal and hex. For a non-ASCII multibyte
character, these are followed by ‘file’ and the character’s representation, in hex, in the
buffer’s coding system, if that coding system encodes the character safely and with a single
byte (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223). If the character’s encoding is longer
than one byte, Emacs shows ‘file ...’.
On rare occasions, Emacs encounters raw bytes: single bytes whose values are in the
range 128 (0200 octal) through 255 (0377 octal), which Emacs cannot interpret as part
of a known encoding of some non-ASCII character. Such raw bytes are treated as if they
belonged to a special character set eight-bit; Emacs displays them as escaped octal codes
(this can be customized; see Section 11.24 [Display Custom], page 101). In this case, C-x
= shows ‘raw-byte’ instead of ‘file’. In addition, C-x = shows the character codes of raw
bytes as if they were in the range #x3FFF80..#x3FFFFF, which is where Emacs maps them
to distinguish them from Unicode characters in the range #x0080..#x00FF.
With a prefix argument (C-u C-x =), this command additionally calls the command
describe-char, which displays a detailed description of the character:
• The character set name, and the codes that identify the character within that character
set; ASCII characters are identified as belonging to the ascii character set.
• The character’s script, syntax and categories.
• What keys to type to input the character in the current input method (if it supports
the character).
• The character’s encodings, both internally in the buffer, and externally if you were to
save the buffer to a file.
218 GNU Emacs Manual

• If you are running Emacs on a graphical display, the font name and glyph code for
the character. If you are running Emacs on a text terminal, the code(s) sent to the
terminal.
• If the character was composed on display with any following characters to form one or
more grapheme clusters, the composition information: the font glyphs if the frame is on
a graphical display, and the characters that were composed.
• The character’s text properties (see Section “Text Properties” in the Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual), including any non-default faces used to display the character, and
any overlays containing it (see Section “Overlays” in the same manual).

Here’s an example, with some lines folded to fit into this manual:
position: 1 of 1 (0%), column: 0
character: e (displayed as ^
^ e) (codepoint 234, #o352, #xea)
preferred charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646))
code point in charset: 0xEA
script: latin
syntax: w which means: word
category: .:Base, L:Left-to-right (strong), c:Chinese,
j:Japanese, l:Latin, v:Viet
to input: type "C-x 8 RET ea" or
"C-x 8 RET LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX"
buffer code: #xC3 #xAA
file code: #xC3 #xAA (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
display: by this font (glyph code)
xft:-PfEd-DejaVu Sans Mono-normal-normal-
normal-*-15-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#xAC)

Character code properties: customize what to show

name: LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX
old-name: LATIN SMALL LETTER E CIRCUMFLEX
general-category: Ll (Letter, Lowercase)
decomposition: (101 770) ('e' '^')

19.2 Language Environments

All supported character sets are supported in Emacs buffers whenever multibyte characters
are enabled; there is no need to select a particular language in order to display its characters.
However, it is important to select a language environment in order to set various defaults.
Roughly speaking, the language environment represents a choice of preferred script rather
than a choice of language.
The language environment controls which coding systems to recognize when reading text
(see Section 19.6 [Recognize Coding], page 225). This applies to files, incoming mail, and
any other text you read into Emacs. It may also specify the default coding system to use
when you create a file. Each language environment also specifies a default input method.
To select a language environment, customize current-language-environment or use the
command M-x set-language-environment. It makes no difference which buffer is current
when you use this command, because the effects apply globally to the Emacs session. See the
variable language-info-alist for the list of supported language environments, and use the
command C-h L lang-env RET (describe-language-environment) for more information
about the language environment lang-env. Supported language environments include:
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 219

ASCII, Arabic, Belarusian, Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Burmese,

Cham, Chinese-BIG5, Chinese-CNS, Chinese-EUC-TW, Chinese-GB, Chinese-
GB18030, Chinese-GBK, Croatian, Cyrillic-ALT, Cyrillic-ISO, Cyrillic-KOI8,
Czech, Devanagari, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Ethiopic, French, Georgian,
German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, IPA, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Khmer,
Korean, Lao, Latin-1, Latin-2, Latin-3, Latin-4, Latin-5, Latin-6, Latin-7, Latin-
8, Latin-9, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Oriya, Persian, Polish, Punjabi,
Romanian, Russian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, TaiViet, Tajik,
Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, UTF-8, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh,
and Windows-1255.
To display the script(s) used by your language environment on a graphical display, you
need to have suitable fonts. See Section 19.14 [Fontsets], page 232, for more details about
setting up your fonts.
Some operating systems let you specify the character-set locale you are using by setting the
locale environment variables LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG. (If more than one of these is set, the
first one that is nonempty specifies your locale for this purpose.) During startup, Emacs looks
up your character-set locale’s name in the system locale alias table, matches its canonical
name against entries in the value of the variables locale-charset-language-names and
locale-language-names (the former overrides the latter), and selects the corresponding
language environment if a match is found. It also adjusts the display table and terminal
coding system, the locale coding system, the preferred coding system as needed for the
locale, and—last but not least—the way Emacs decodes non-ASCII characters sent by your
keyboard.
If you modify the LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, or LANG environment variables while running Emacs
(by using M-x setenv), you may want to invoke the set-locale-environment command
afterwards to readjust the language environment from the new locale.
The set-locale-environment function normally uses the preferred coding system estab-
lished by the language environment to decode system messages. But if your locale matches an
entry in the variable locale-preferred-coding-systems, Emacs uses the corresponding
coding system instead. For example, if the locale ‘ja_JP.PCK’ matches japanese-shift-jis
in locale-preferred-coding-systems, Emacs uses that encoding even though it might
normally use utf-8.
You can override the language environment chosen at startup with explicit use of
the command set-language-environment, or with customization of current-language-
environment in your init file.
To display information about the effects of a certain language environment lang-env,
use the command C-h L lang-env RET (describe-language-environment). This tells you
which languages this language environment is useful for, and lists the character sets, coding
systems, and input methods that go with it. It also shows some sample text to illustrate
scripts used in this language environment. If you give an empty input for lang-env, this
command describes the chosen language environment.
You can customize any language environment with the normal hook set-language-
environment-hook. The command set-language-environment runs that hook after set-
ting up the new language environment. The hook functions can test for a specific language
environment by checking the variable current-language-environment. This hook is where
220 GNU Emacs Manual

you should put non-default settings for specific language environments, such as coding
systems for keyboard input and terminal output, the default input method, etc.
Before it starts to set up the new language environment, set-language-environment
first runs the hook exit-language-environment-hook. This hook is useful for undoing
customizations that were made with set-language-environment-hook. For instance, if
you set up a special key binding in a specific language environment using set-language-
environment-hook, you should set up exit-language-environment-hook to restore the
normal binding for that key.

19.3 Input Methods

An input method is a kind of character conversion designed specifically for interactive input.
This section describes input methods that come with Emacs; for native input methods
provided by the underlying OS, see Section 19.18 [Unibyte Mode], page 236.
In Emacs, typically each language has its own input method; sometimes several languages
that use the same characters can share one input method. A few languages support several
input methods.
The simplest kind of input method works by mapping ASCII letters into another alphabet;
this allows you to use one other alphabet instead of ASCII. The Greek and Russian input
methods work this way.
A more powerful technique is composition: converting sequences of characters into one
letter. Many European input methods use composition to produce a single non-ASCII letter
from a sequence that consists of a letter followed by accent characters (or vice versa). For
example, some methods convert the sequence o ^ into a single accented letter. These input
methods have no special commands of their own; all they do is compose sequences of printing
characters.
The input methods for syllabic scripts typically use mapping followed by composition.
The input methods for Thai and Korean work this way. First, letters are mapped into
symbols for particular sounds or tone marks; then, sequences of these that make up a whole
syllable are mapped into one syllable sign.
Chinese and Japanese require more complex methods. In Chinese input methods, first
you enter the phonetic spelling of a Chinese word (in input method chinese-py, among
others), or a sequence of portions of the character (input methods chinese-4corner and
chinese-sw, and others). One input sequence typically corresponds to many possible
Chinese characters. You select the one you mean using keys such as C-f, C-b, C-n, C-p (or
the arrow keys), and digits, which have special meanings in this situation.
The possible characters are conceptually arranged in several rows, with each row holding
up to 10 alternatives. Normally, Emacs displays just one row at a time, in the echo area;
(i/j) appears at the beginning, to indicate that this is the ith row out of a total of j rows.
Type C-n or C-p to display the next row or the previous row.
Type C-f and C-b to move forward and backward among the alternatives in the current
row. As you do this, Emacs highlights the current alternative with a special color; type
C-SPC to select the current alternative and use it as input. The alternatives in the row are
also numbered; the number appears before the alternative. Typing a number selects the
associated alternative of the current row and uses it as input.
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 221

TAB in these Chinese input methods displays a buffer showing all the possible characters
at once; then clicking mouse-2 on one of them selects that alternative. The keys C-f, C-b,
C-n, C-p, and digits continue to work as usual, but they do the highlighting in the buffer
showing the possible characters, rather than in the echo area.
To enter characters according to the pīnyīn transliteration method instead, use the
chinese-sisheng input method. This is a composition based method, where e.g. pi1
results in ‘pī’.
In Japanese input methods, first you input a whole word using phonetic spelling; then,
after the word is in the buffer, Emacs converts it into one or more characters using a large
dictionary. One phonetic spelling corresponds to a number of different Japanese words; to
select one of them, use C-n and C-p to cycle through the alternatives.
Sometimes it is useful to cut off input method processing so that the characters you have
just entered will not combine with subsequent characters. For example, in input method
latin-1-postfix, the sequence o ^ combines to form an ‘o’ with an accent. What if you
want to enter them as separate characters?
One way is to type the accent twice; this is a special feature for entering the separate
letter and accent. For example, o ^ ^ gives you the two characters ‘o^’. Another way is to
type another letter after the o—something that won’t combine with that—and immediately
delete it. For example, you could type o o DEL ^ to get separate ‘o’ and ‘^’. Another method,
more general but not quite as easy to type, is to use C-\ C-\ between two characters to stop
them from combining. This is the command C-\ (toggle-input-method) used twice.
C-\ C-\ is especially useful inside an incremental search, because it stops waiting for
more characters to combine, and starts searching for what you have already entered.
To find out how to input the character after point using the current input method, type
C-u C-x =. See Section 4.9 [Position Info], page 23.
The variables input-method-highlight-flag and input-method-verbose-flag con-
trol how input methods explain what is happening. If input-method-highlight-flag is
non-nil, the partial sequence is highlighted in the buffer (for most input methods—some dis-
able this feature). If input-method-verbose-flag is non-nil, the list of possible characters
to type next is displayed in the echo area (but not when you are in the minibuffer).
You can modify how an input method works by making your changes in a function that
you add to the hook variable quail-activate-hook. See Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.
For example, you can redefine some of the input method’s keys by defining key bindings in
the keymap returned by the function quail-translation-keymap, using define-key. See
Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 516.
Input methods are inhibited when the text in the buffer is read-only for some reason.
This is so single-character key bindings work in modes that make buffer text or parts of it
read-only, such as read-only-mode and image-mode, even when an input method is active.
Another facility for typing characters not on your keyboard is by using C-x 8 RET
(insert-char) to insert a single character based on its Unicode name or code-point; see
Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16.
There are specialized commands for inserting Emoji, and these can be found on the
C-x 8 e keymap. C-x 8 e e (emoji-insert) will let you navigate through different Emoji
categories and then choose one. C-x 8 e l (emoji-list) will pop up a new buffer and list
222 GNU Emacs Manual

all the Emoji; clicking (or using RET) on an emoji character will insert it in the current
buffer. Finally, C-x 8 e s (emoji-search) will allow you to search for Emoji based on their
names.
describe-char displays a lot of information about the character/glyphs under point
(including emojis). It’s sometimes useful to get a quick description of the name, and you
can use the C-x 8 e d (emoji-describe) command to do that. It’s meant primarily to help
distinguish between different Emoji variants (which can look very similar), but it will also
tell you the names of non-Emoji characters.

19.4 Selecting an Input Method

C-\ Enable or disable use of the selected input method (toggle-input-method).
C-x RET C-\ method RET
Select a new input method for the current buffer (set-input-method).
C-x \ method RET
Temporarily enable the selected transient input method ; it will be automati-
cally disabled after inserting a single character (activate-transient-input-
method).
C-h I method RET
C-h C-\ method RET
Describe the input method method (describe-input-method). By default, it
describes the current input method (if any). This description should give you
the full details of how to use any particular input method.
M-x list-input-methods
Display a list of all the supported input methods.
To choose an input method for the current buffer, use C-x RET C-\ (set-input-method).
This command reads the input method name from the minibuffer; the name normally
starts with the language environment that it is meant to be used with. The variable
current-input-method records which input method is selected.
Input methods use various sequences of ASCII characters to stand for non-ASCII characters.
Sometimes it is useful to turn off the input method temporarily. To do this, type C-\
(toggle-input-method). To reenable the input method, type C-\ again.
If you type C-\ and you have not yet selected an input method, it prompts you to specify
one. This has the same effect as using C-x RET C-\ to specify an input method.
When invoked with a numeric argument, as in C-u C-\, toggle-input-method always
prompts you for an input method, suggesting the most recently selected one as the default.
Selecting a language environment specifies a default input method for use in various
buffers. When you have a default input method, you can select it in the current buffer by
typing C-\. The variable default-input-method specifies the default input method (nil
means there is none).
In some language environments, which support several different input methods, you
might want to use an input method different from the default chosen by set-language-
environment. You can instruct Emacs to select a different default input method for a
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 223

certain language environment, if you wish, by using set-language-environment-hook (see

Section 19.2 [Language Environments], page 218). For example:
(defun my-chinese-setup ()
"Set up my private Chinese environment."
(if (equal current-language-environment "Chinese-GB")
(setq default-input-method "chinese-tonepy")))
(add-hook 'set-language-environment-hook 'my-chinese-setup)
This sets the default input method to be chinese-tonepy whenever you choose a Chinese-GB
language environment.
You can instruct Emacs to activate a certain input method automatically. For example:
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook
(lambda () (set-input-method "german-prefix")))
This automatically activates the input method german-prefix in Text mode.
Some input methods for alphabetic scripts work by (in effect) remapping the keyboard
to emulate various keyboard layouts commonly used for those scripts. How to do this
remapping properly depends on your actual keyboard layout. To specify which layout your
keyboard has, use the command M-x quail-set-keyboard-layout.
You can use the command M-x quail-show-key to show what key (or key sequence) to
type in order to input the character following point, using the selected keyboard layout. The
command C-u C-x = also shows that information, in addition to other information about
the character.
M-x list-input-methods displays a list of all the supported input methods. The list
gives information about each input method, including the string that stands for it in the
mode line.
Sometimes it can be convenient to enable an input method transiently, for inserting only
a single character. Typing C-x \ (activate-transient-input-method) will temporarily
enable an input method, let you insert a single character using the input method rules, and
then automatically disable the input method. If no transient input method was selected yet,
C-x \ will prompt you for an input method; subsequent invocations of this command will
enable the selected transient input method. To select a different transient input method,
type C-u C-x \. You can select a transient method that is different from the input method
which you selected using C-u C-\.

19.5 Coding Systems

Users of various languages have established many more-or-less standard coding systems for
representing them. Emacs does not use these coding systems internally; instead, it converts
from various coding systems to its own system when reading data, and converts the internal
coding system to other coding systems when writing data. Conversion is possible in reading
or writing files, in sending or receiving from the terminal, and in exchanging data with
subprocesses.
Emacs assigns a name to each coding system. Most coding systems are used for one
language, and the name of the coding system starts with the language name. Some coding
systems are used for several languages; their names usually start with ‘iso’. There are also
special coding systems, such as no-conversion, raw-text, and emacs-internal.
224 GNU Emacs Manual

A special class of coding systems, collectively known as codepages, is designed to support

text encoded by MS-Windows and MS-DOS software. The names of these coding systems are
cpnnnn, where nnnn is a 3- or 4-digit number of the codepage. You can use these encodings
just like any other coding system; for example, to visit a file encoded in codepage 850, type
C-x RET c cp850 RET C-x C-f filename RET.
In addition to converting various representations of non-ASCII characters, a coding system
can perform end-of-line conversion. Emacs handles three different conventions for how to
separate lines in a file: newline (Unix), carriage return followed by linefeed (DOS), and just
carriage return (Mac).
C-h C coding RET
Describe coding system coding (describe-coding-system).
C-h C RET Describe the coding systems currently in use (describe-coding-system).
M-x list-coding-systems
Display a list of all the supported coding systems.
The command C-h C (describe-coding-system) displays information about particular
coding systems, including the end-of-line conversion specified by those coding systems.
You can specify a coding system name as the argument; alternatively, with an empty
argument, it describes the coding systems currently selected for various purposes, both in
the current buffer and as the defaults, and the priority list for recognizing coding systems
(see Section 19.6 [Recognize Coding], page 225).
To display a list of all the supported coding systems, type M-x list-coding-systems.
The list gives information about each coding system, including the letter that stands for it
in the mode line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8).
Each of the coding systems that appear in this list—except for no-conversion, which
means no conversion of any kind—specifies how and whether to convert printing characters,
but leaves the choice of end-of-line conversion to be decided based on the contents of each
file. For example, if the file appears to use the sequence carriage return and linefeed to
separate lines, DOS end-of-line conversion will be used.
Each of the listed coding systems has three variants, which specify exactly what to do
for end-of-line conversion:
...-unix Don’t do any end-of-line conversion; assume the file uses newline to separate
lines. (This is the convention normally used on Unix and GNU systems, and
macOS.)
...-dos Assume the file uses carriage return followed by linefeed to separate lines, and do
the appropriate conversion. (This is the convention normally used on Microsoft
systems.1 )
...-mac Assume the file uses carriage return to separate lines, and do the appropriate
conversion. (This was the convention used in Classic Mac OS.)
These variant coding systems are omitted from the list-coding-systems display for
brevity, since they are entirely predictable. For example, the coding system iso-latin-1
has variants iso-latin-1-unix, iso-latin-1-dos and iso-latin-1-mac.
1
It is also specified for MIME ‘text/*’ bodies and in other network transport contexts. It is different
from the SGML reference syntax record-start/record-end format, which Emacs doesn’t support directly.
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 225

The coding systems unix, dos, and mac are aliases for undecided-unix, undecided-dos,
and undecided-mac, respectively. These coding systems specify only the end-of-line conver-
sion, and leave the character code conversion to be deduced from the text itself.
The coding system raw-text is good for a file which is mainly ASCII text, but may contain
byte values above 127 that are not meant to encode non-ASCII characters. With raw-text,
Emacs copies those byte values unchanged, and sets enable-multibyte-characters to nil
in the current buffer so that they will be interpreted properly. raw-text handles end-of-line
conversion in the usual way, based on the data encountered, and has the usual three variants
to specify the kind of end-of-line conversion to use.
In contrast, the coding system no-conversion specifies no character code conversion at
all—none for non-ASCII byte values and none for end of line. This is useful for reading or
writing binary files, tar files, and other files that must be examined verbatim. It, too, sets
enable-multibyte-characters to nil.
The easiest way to edit a file with no conversion of any kind is with the M-x
find-file-literally command. This uses no-conversion, and also suppresses other
Emacs features that might convert the file contents before you see them. See Section 15.2
[Visiting], page 146.
The coding system emacs-internal (or utf-8-emacs, which is equivalent) means that
the file contains non-ASCII characters stored with the internal Emacs encoding. This coding
system handles end-of-line conversion based on the data encountered, and has the usual
three variants to specify the kind of end-of-line conversion.

19.6 Recognizing Coding Systems

Whenever Emacs reads a given piece of text, it tries to recognize which coding system to
use. This applies to files being read, output from subprocesses, text from X selections, etc.
Emacs can select the right coding system automatically most of the time—once you have
specified your preferences.
Some coding systems can be recognized or distinguished by which byte sequences appear
in the data. However, there are coding systems that cannot be distinguished, not even
potentially. For example, there is no way to distinguish between Latin-1 and Latin-2; they
use the same byte values with different meanings.
Emacs handles this situation by means of a priority list of coding systems. Whenever
Emacs reads a file, if you do not specify the coding system to use, Emacs checks the data
against each coding system, starting with the first in priority and working down the list,
until it finds a coding system that fits the data. Then it converts the file contents assuming
that they are represented in this coding system.
The priority list of coding systems depends on the selected language environment (see
Section 19.2 [Language Environments], page 218). For example, if you use French, you
probably want Emacs to prefer Latin-1 to Latin-2; if you use Czech, you probably want
Latin-2 to be preferred. This is one of the reasons to specify a language environment.
However, you can alter the coding system priority list in detail with the command
M-x prefer-coding-system. This command reads the name of a coding system from the
minibuffer, and adds it to the front of the priority list, so that it is preferred to all others. If
you use this command several times, each use adds one element to the front of the priority
list.
226 GNU Emacs Manual

If you use a coding system that specifies the end-of-line conversion type, such as iso-8859-
1-dos, what this means is that Emacs should attempt to recognize iso-8859-1 with priority,
and should use DOS end-of-line conversion when it does recognize iso-8859-1.
Sometimes a file name indicates which coding system to use for the file. The variable
file-coding-system-alist specifies this correspondence. There is a special function
modify-coding-system-alist for adding elements to this list. For example, to read and
write all ‘.txt’ files using the coding system chinese-iso-8bit, you can execute this Lisp
expression:
(modify-coding-system-alist 'file "\\.txt\\'" 'chinese-iso-8bit)
The first argument should be file, the second argument should be a regular expression that
determines which files this applies to, and the third argument says which coding system to
use for these files.
Emacs recognizes which kind of end-of-line conversion to use based on the contents of the
file: if it sees only carriage returns, or only carriage return followed by linefeed sequences,
then it chooses the end-of-line conversion accordingly. You can inhibit the automatic use of
end-of-line conversion by setting the variable inhibit-eol-conversion to non-nil. If you
do that, DOS-style files will be displayed with the ‘^M’ characters visible in the buffer; some
people prefer this to the more subtle ‘(DOS)’ end-of-line type indication near the left edge of
the mode line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8).
By default, the automatic detection of the coding system is sensitive to escape sequences.
If Emacs sees a sequence of characters that begin with an escape character, and the sequence
is valid as an ISO-2022 code, that tells Emacs to use one of the ISO-2022 encodings to
decode the file.
However, there may be cases that you want to read escape sequences in a file as is. In
such a case, you can set the variable inhibit-iso-escape-detection to non-nil. Then
the code detection ignores any escape sequences, and never uses an ISO-2022 encoding. The
result is that all escape sequences become visible in the buffer.
The default value of inhibit-iso-escape-detection is nil. We recommend that you
not change it permanently, only for one specific operation. That’s because some Emacs Lisp
source files in the Emacs distribution contain non-ASCII characters encoded in the coding
system iso-2022-7bit, and they won’t be decoded correctly when you visit those files if
you suppress the escape sequence detection.
The variables auto-coding-alist and auto-coding-regexp-alist are the strongest
way to specify the coding system for certain patterns of file names, or for files containing
certain patterns, respectively. These variables even override ‘-*-coding:-*-’ tags in the file
itself (see Section 19.7 [Specify Coding], page 226). For example, Emacs uses auto-coding-
alist for tar and archive files, to prevent it from being confused by a ‘-*-coding:-*-’ tag
in a member of the archive and thinking it applies to the archive file as a whole.
Another way to specify a coding system is with the variable auto-coding-functions.
For example, one of the builtin auto-coding-functions detects the encoding for XML files.
Unlike the previous two, this variable does not override any ‘-*-coding:-*-’ tag.

19.7 Specifying a File’s Coding System

If Emacs recognizes the encoding of a file incorrectly, you can reread the file using the correct
coding system with C-x RET r (revert-buffer-with-coding-system). This command
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 227

prompts for the coding system to use. To see what coding system Emacs actually used to
decode the file, look at the coding system mnemonic letter near the left edge of the mode
line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8), or type C-h C (describe-coding-system).

You can specify the coding system for a particular file in the file itself, using the
‘-*-...-*-’ construct at the beginning, or a local variables list at the end (see Section 33.2.4
[File Variables], page 507). You do this by defining a value for the “variable” named coding.
Emacs does not really have a variable coding; instead of setting a variable, this uses the
specified coding system for the file. For example, ‘-*-mode: C; coding: latin-1; -*-’
specifies use of the Latin-1 coding system, as well as C mode. When you specify the coding
explicitly in the file, that overrides file-coding-system-alist.

19.8 Choosing Coding Systems for Output

Once Emacs has chosen a coding system for a buffer, it stores that coding system in
buffer-file-coding-system. That makes it the default for operations that write from this
buffer into a file, such as save-buffer and write-region. You can specify a different coding
system for further file output from the buffer using set-buffer-file-coding-system (see
Section 19.9 [Text Coding], page 228).

You can insert any character Emacs supports into any Emacs buffer, but most coding
systems can only handle a subset of these characters. Therefore, it’s possible that the
characters you insert cannot be encoded with the coding system that will be used to save the
buffer. For example, you could visit a text file in Polish, encoded in iso-8859-2, and add
some Russian words to it. When you save that buffer, Emacs cannot use the current value
of buffer-file-coding-system, because the characters you added cannot be encoded by
that coding system.

When that happens, Emacs tries the most-preferred coding system (set by M-x
prefer-coding-system or M-x set-language-environment). If that coding system can
safely encode all of the characters in the buffer, Emacs uses it, and stores its value in
buffer-file-coding-system. Otherwise, Emacs displays a list of coding systems suitable
for encoding the buffer’s contents, and asks you to choose one of those coding systems.

If you insert the unsuitable characters in a mail message, Emacs behaves a bit differently.
It additionally checks whether the most-preferred coding system is recommended for use
in MIME messages; if not, it informs you of this fact and prompts you for another coding
system. This is so you won’t inadvertently send a message encoded in a way that your
recipient’s mail software will have difficulty decoding. (You can still use an unsuitable coding
system if you enter its name at the prompt.)

When you send a mail message (see Chapter 29 [Sending Mail], page 418), Emacs has
four different ways to determine the coding system to use for encoding the message text.
It first tries the buffer’s own value of buffer-file-coding-system, if that is non-nil.
Otherwise, it uses the value of sendmail-coding-system, if that is non-nil. Thirdly, it uses
the value of default-sendmail-coding-system. If all of these three values are nil, Emacs
encodes outgoing mail using the default coding system for new files (i.e., the default value of
buffer-file-coding-system), which is controlled by your choice of language environment.
228 GNU Emacs Manual

19.9 Specifying a Coding System for File Text

In cases where Emacs does not automatically choose the right coding system for a file’s
contents, you can use these commands to specify one:
C-x RET f coding RET
Use coding system coding to save or revisit the file in the current buffer
(set-buffer-file-coding-system).
C-x RET c coding RET
Specify coding system coding for the immediately following command
(universal-coding-system-argument).
C-x RET r coding RET
Revisit the current file using the coding system coding (revert-buffer-with-
coding-system).
M-x recode-region RET right RET wrong RET
Convert a region that was decoded using coding system wrong, decoding it using
coding system right instead.
The command C-x RET f (set-buffer-file-coding-system) sets the file coding system
for the current buffer (i.e., the coding system to use when saving or reverting the file). You
specify which coding system using the minibuffer. You can also invoke this command by
clicking with mouse-3 on the coding system indicator in the mode line (see Section 1.3
[Mode Line], page 8).
If you specify a coding system that cannot handle all the characters in the buffer, Emacs
will warn you about the troublesome characters, and ask you to choose another coding
system, when you try to save the buffer (see Section 19.8 [Output Coding], page 227).
You can also use this command to specify the end-of-line conversion (see Section 19.5
[Coding Systems], page 223) for encoding the current buffer. For example, C-x RET f dos
RET will cause Emacs to save the current buffer’s text with DOS-style carriage return followed
by linefeed line endings.
Another way to specify the coding system for a file is when you visit the file. First use
the command C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument); this command uses the
minibuffer to read a coding system name. After you exit the minibuffer, the specified coding
system is used for the immediately following command.
So if the immediately following command is C-x C-f, for example, it reads the file using
that coding system (and records the coding system for when you later save the file). Or if
the immediately following command is C-x C-w, it writes the file using that coding system.
When you specify the coding system for saving in this way, instead of with C-x RET f, there
is no warning if the buffer contains characters that the coding system cannot handle.
Other file commands affected by a specified coding system include C-x i and C-x C-v, as
well as the other-window variants of C-x C-f. C-x RET c also affects commands that start
subprocesses, including M-x shell (see Section 31.5 [Shell], page 453). If the immediately
following command does not use the coding system, then C-x RET c ultimately has no effect.
An easy way to visit a file with no conversion is with the M-x find-file-literally
command. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 229

The default value of the variable buffer-file-coding-system specifies the choice of

coding system to use when you create a new file. It applies when you find a new file, and
when you create a buffer and then save it in a file. Selecting a language environment typically
sets this variable to a good choice of default coding system for that language environment.
If you visit a file with a wrong coding system, you can correct this with C-x RET r
(revert-buffer-with-coding-system). This visits the current file again, using a coding
system you specify.
If a piece of text has already been inserted into a buffer using the wrong coding system,
you can redo the decoding of it using M-x recode-region. This prompts you for the proper
coding system, then for the wrong coding system that was actually used, and does the
conversion. It first encodes the region using the wrong coding system, then decodes it again
using the proper coding system.

19.10 Coding Systems for Interprocess Communication

This section explains how to specify coding systems for use in communication with other
processes.
C-x RET x coding RET
Use coding system coding for transferring selections to and from other graphical
applications (set-selection-coding-system).
C-x RET X coding RET
Use coding system coding for transferring one selection—the next one—to or
from another graphical application (set-next-selection-coding-system).
C-x RET p input-coding RET output-coding RET
Use coding systems input-coding and output-coding for subprocess input and
output in the current buffer (set-buffer-process-coding-system).
The command C-x RET x (set-selection-coding-system) specifies the coding system
for sending selected text to other windowing applications, and for receiving the text of
selections made in other applications. This command applies to all subsequent selections,
until you override it by using the command again. The command C-x RET X (set-next-
selection-coding-system) specifies the coding system for the next selection made in
Emacs or read by Emacs.
The variable x-select-request-type specifies the data type to request from the X
Window System for receiving text selections from other applications. If the value is nil
(the default), Emacs tries UTF8_STRING and COMPOUND_TEXT, in this order, and uses various
heuristics to choose the more appropriate of the two results; if none of these succeed,
Emacs falls back on STRING. If the value of x-select-request-type is one of the symbols
COMPOUND_TEXT, UTF8_STRING, STRING, or TEXT, Emacs uses only that request type. If the
value is a list of some of these symbols, Emacs tries only the request types in the list, in
order, until one of them succeeds, or until the list is exhausted.
The command C-x RET p (set-buffer-process-coding-system) specifies the coding
system for input and output to a subprocess. This command applies to the current buffer;
normally, each subprocess has its own buffer, and thus you can use this command to specify
translation to and from a particular subprocess by giving the command in the corresponding
buffer.
230 GNU Emacs Manual

You can also use C-x RET c (universal-coding-system-argument) just before the com-
mand that runs or starts a subprocess, to specify the coding system for communicating with
that subprocess. See Section 19.9 [Text Coding], page 228.
The default for translation of process input and output depends on the current language
environment.
The variable locale-coding-system specifies a coding system to use when encoding and
decoding system strings such as system error messages and format-time-string formats
and time stamps. That coding system might also be used for decoding non-ASCII keyboard
input on the X Window System and will also be used to encode text sent to the standard
output and error streams in batch mode. You should choose a coding system that is
compatible with the underlying system’s text representation, which is normally specified by
one of the environment variables LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG. (The first one, in the order
specified above, whose value is nonempty is the one that determines the text representation.)

19.11 Coding Systems for File Names

C-x RET F coding RET
Use coding system coding for encoding and decoding file names (set-file-
name-coding-system).

The command C-x RET F (set-file-name-coding-system) specifies a coding system to

use for encoding file names. It has no effect on reading and writing the contents of files.
In fact, all this command does is set the value of the variable file-name-coding-system.
If you set the variable to a coding system name (as a Lisp symbol or a string), Emacs
encodes file names using that coding system for all file operations. This makes it possible to
use non-ASCII characters in file names—or, at least, those non-ASCII characters that the
specified coding system can encode.
If file-name-coding-system is nil, Emacs uses a default coding system determined by
the selected language environment, and stored in the default-file-name-coding-system
variable (normally UTF-8).
When Emacs runs on MS-Windows versions that are descendants of the NT family
(Windows 2000, XP, and all the later versions), the value of file-name-coding-system is
largely ignored, as Emacs by default uses APIs that allow passing Unicode file names directly.
By contrast, on Windows 9X, file names are encoded using file-name-coding-system,
which should be set to the codepage (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223) pertinent
for the current system locale. The value of the variable w32-unicode-filenames controls
whether Emacs uses the Unicode APIs when it calls OS functions that accept file names.
This variable is set by the startup code to nil on Windows 9X, and to t on newer versions
of MS-Windows.
Warning: if you change file-name-coding-system (or the language environment) in
the middle of an Emacs session, problems can result if you have already visited files whose
names were encoded using the earlier coding system and cannot be encoded (or are encoded
differently) under the new coding system. If you try to save one of these buffers under the
visited file name, saving may use the wrong file name, or it may encounter an error. If such
a problem happens, use C-x C-w to specify a new file name for that buffer.
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 231

If a mistake occurs when encoding a file name, use the command M-x recode-file-name
to change the file name’s coding system. This prompts for an existing file name, its old
coding system, and the coding system to which you wish to convert.

19.12 Coding Systems for X Keyboard Input

Input methods under the X Window System specify their own coding systems that must
be used to decode keyboard input. By default, Emacs determines the coding system
used for each input method automatically upon establishing the connection to the input
method server, and uses that specific coding system to decode keyboard input. However,
that determination can sometimes fail; in that situation, the locale coding system (see
Section 19.10 [Communication Coding], page 229) is used instead.
If the input method does not correctly announce the coding system it uses to encode
text, then the coding system used by Emacs to decode text from input methods must
be manually specified. The value of the variable x-input-coding-system, when set to a
symbol, is unconditionally used as the coding system used to decode keyboard input from
input methods.

19.13 Coding Systems for Terminal I/O

C-x RET t coding RET
Use coding system coding for terminal output (set-terminal-coding-system).
C-x RET k coding RET
Use coding system coding for keyboard input (set-keyboard-coding-system).
The command C-x RET t (set-terminal-coding-system) specifies the coding system
for terminal output. If you specify a character code for terminal output, all characters
output to the terminal are translated into that coding system.
This feature is useful for certain character-only terminals built to support specific
languages or character sets—for example, European terminals that support one of the ISO
Latin character sets. You need to specify the terminal coding system when using multibyte
text, so that Emacs knows which characters the terminal can actually handle.
By default, output to the terminal is not translated at all, unless Emacs can deduce the
proper coding system from your terminal type or your locale specification (see Section 19.2
[Language Environments], page 218).
The command C-x RET k (set-keyboard-coding-system), or the variable
keyboard-coding-system, specifies the coding system for keyboard input. Character-code
translation of keyboard input is useful for terminals with keys that send non-ASCII graphic
characters—for example, some terminals designed for ISO Latin-1 or subsets of it.
By default, keyboard input is translated based on your system locale setting. If your
terminal does not really support the encoding implied by your locale (for example, if you find
it inserts a non-ASCII character if you type M-i), you will need to set keyboard-coding-
system to nil to turn off encoding. You can do this by putting
(set-keyboard-coding-system nil)
in your init file.
232 GNU Emacs Manual

Setting keyboard-coding-system has no effect on MS-Windows, except on old Windows

9X systems, in which case the encoding must match the current codepage of the MS-Windows
console, which can be changed by calling w32-set-console-codepage.
There is a similarity between using a coding system translation for keyboard input, and
using an input method: both define sequences of keyboard input that translate into single
characters. However, input methods are designed to be convenient for interactive use by
humans, and the sequences that are translated are typically sequences of ASCII printing
characters. Coding systems typically translate sequences of non-graphic characters.

19.14 Fontsets
A font typically defines shapes for a single alphabet or script. Therefore, displaying the
entire range of scripts that Emacs supports requires a collection of many fonts. In Emacs,
such a collection is called a fontset. A fontset is defined by a list of font specifications, each
assigned to handle a range of character codes, and may fall back on another fontset for
characters that are not covered by the fonts it specifies.
Each fontset has a name, like a font. However, while fonts are stored in the system
and the available font names are defined by the system, fontsets are defined within Emacs
itself. Once you have defined a fontset, you can use it within Emacs by specifying its name,
anywhere that you could use a single font. Of course, Emacs fontsets can use only the fonts
that your system supports. If some characters appear on the screen as empty boxes or hex
codes, this means that the fontset in use for them has no font for those characters. In this
case, or if the characters are shown, but not as well as you would like, you may need to
install extra fonts or modify the fontset to use specific fonts already installed on your system
(see below). Your operating system may have optional fonts that you can install; or you can
install the GNU Intlfonts package, which includes fonts for most supported scripts.2
Emacs creates three fontsets automatically: the standard fontset, the startup fontset
and the default fontset. The default fontset is most likely to have fonts for a wide variety
of non-ASCII characters, and is the default fallback for the other two fontsets, and if you
set a default font rather than fontset. However, it does not specify font family names, so
results can be somewhat random if you use it directly. You can specify a particular fontset
by starting Emacs with the ‘-fn’ option. For example,
emacs -fn fontset-standard
You can also specify a fontset with the ‘Font’ resource (see Appendix D [X Resources],
page 584).
If no fontset is specified for use, then Emacs uses an ASCII font, with ‘fontset-default’
as a fallback for characters the font does not cover. The standard fontset is only used if
explicitly requested, despite its name.
To show the information about a specific fontset, use the M-x describe-fontset com-
mand. It prompts for a fontset name, defaulting to the one used by the current frame, and
2
If you run Emacs on X, you may need to inform the X server about the location of the newly installed
fonts with commands such as:
xset fp+ /usr/local/share/emacs/fonts
xset fp rehash
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 233

then displays all the subranges of characters and the fonts assigned to them in that fontset.
To see which fonts Emacs is using in a session started without a specific fontset (which is
what happens normally), type fontset-default RET at the prompt, or just RET to describe
the fontset used by the current frame.
A fontset does not necessarily specify a font for every character code. If a fontset specifies
no font for a certain character, or if it specifies a font that does not exist on your system,
then it cannot display that character properly. It will display that character as a hex code
or thin space or an empty box instead. (See Section 11.20 [glyphless characters], page 97,
for details.) Or a fontset might specify a font for some range of characters, but you may
not like their visual appearance. If this happens, you may wish to modify your fontset; see
Section 19.16 [Modifying Fontsets], page 234, for how to do that.

19.15 Defining Fontsets

When running on X, Emacs creates a standard fontset automatically according to the value
of standard-fontset-spec. This fontset’s name is
-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-standard
or just ‘fontset-standard’ for short.
On GNUstep and macOS, the standard fontset is created using the value of ns-standard-
fontset-spec, and on MS Windows it is created using the value of w32-standard-fontset-
spec.
Bold, italic, and bold-italic variants of the standard fontset are created automatically.
Their names have ‘bold’ instead of ‘medium’, or ‘i’ instead of ‘r’, or both.
Emacs generates a fontset automatically, based on any default ASCII font that you
specify with the ‘Font’ resource or the ‘-fn’ argument, or the default font that Emacs found
when it started. This is the startup fontset and its name is fontset-startup. Emacs
generates this fontset by replacing the charset registry field with ‘fontset’, and replacing
the charset encoding field with ‘startup’, then using the resulting string to specify a fontset.
For instance, if you start Emacs with a font of this form,
emacs -fn "*courier-medium-r-normal--14-140-*-iso8859-1"
Emacs generates the following fontset and uses it for the initial X window frame:
-*-courier-medium-r-normal-*-14-140-*-*-*-*-fontset-startup
The startup fontset will use the font that you specify, or a variant with a different
registry and encoding, for all the characters that are supported by that font, and fallback
on ‘fontset-default’ for other characters.
With the X resource ‘Emacs.Font’, you can specify a fontset name just like an actual font
name. But be careful not to specify a fontset name in a wildcard resource like ‘Emacs*Font’—
that wildcard specification matches various other resources, such as for menus, and menus
cannot handle fontsets. See Appendix D [X Resources], page 584.
You can specify additional fontsets using X resources named ‘Fontset-n’, where n is an
integer starting from 0. The resource value should have this form:
fontpattern, [charset:font]. . .
where fontpattern should have the form of a standard X font name (see the previous fontset-
startup example), except for the last two fields. They should have the form ‘fontset-alias’.
234 GNU Emacs Manual

Each fontset has two names, one long and one short. The long name is fontpattern. The
short name is ‘fontset-alias’, the last 2 fields of the long name (e.g., ‘fontset-startup’
for the fontset automatically created at startup). You can refer to the fontset by either
name.
The construct ‘charset:font’ specifies which font to use (in this fontset) for one particular
character set. Here, charset is the name of a character set, and font is the font to use for
that character set. You can use this construct any number of times in defining one fontset.
For the other character sets, Emacs chooses a font based on fontpattern. It replaces
‘fontset-alias’ with values that describe the character set. For the ASCII character font,
‘fontset-alias’ is replaced with ‘ISO8859-1’.
In addition, when several consecutive fields are wildcards, Emacs collapses them into a
single wildcard. This is to prevent use of auto-scaled fonts. Fonts made by scaling larger
fonts are not usable for editing, and scaling a smaller font is also not useful, because it is
better to use the smaller font in its own size, which is what Emacs does.
Thus if fontpattern is this,
-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24
the font specification for ASCII characters would be this:
-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-ISO8859-1
and the font specification for Chinese GB2312 characters would be this:
-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-gb2312*-*
You may not have any Chinese font matching the above font specification. Most X
distributions include only Chinese fonts that have ‘song ti’ or ‘fangsong ti’ in the family
field. In such a case, ‘Fontset-n’ can be specified as:
Emacs.Fontset-0: -*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-24,\
chinese-gb2312:-*-*-medium-r-normal-*-24-*-gb2312*-*
Then, the font specifications for all but Chinese GB2312 characters have ‘fixed’ in the
family field, and the font specification for Chinese GB2312 characters has a wild card ‘*’ in
the family field.
The function that processes the fontset resource value to create the fontset is called
create-fontset-from-fontset-spec. You can also call this function explicitly to create a
fontset.
See Section 18.8 [Fonts], page 201, for more information about font naming.

19.16 Modifying Fontsets

Fontsets do not always have to be created from scratch. If only minor changes are required
it may be easier to modify an existing fontset, usually ‘fontset-default’. Modifying
‘fontset-default’ will also affect other fontsets that use it as a fallback, so can be an
effective way of fixing problems with the fonts that Emacs chooses for a particular script.
Fontsets can be modified using the function set-fontset-font, specifying a character,
a charset, a script, or a range of characters to modify the font for, and a font specification
for the font to be used. Some examples are:
;; Prefer a big5 font for han characters.
(set-fontset-font "fontset-default"
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 235

'han (font-spec :registry "big5")

nil 'prepend)

;; Use MyPrivateFont for the Unicode private use area.

(set-fontset-font "fontset-default" '(#xe000 . #xf8ff)
"MyPrivateFont")

;; Use Liberation Mono for latin-3 charset.

(set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'iso-8859-3
"Liberation Mono")

;; Use DejaVu Sans Mono as a fallback in fontset-startup

;; before resorting to fontset-default.
(set-fontset-font "fontset-startup" nil "DejaVu Sans Mono"
nil 'append)
See Section “Fontsets” in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more details about using
the set-fontset-font function.
If you don’t know the character’s codepoint or the script to which it belongs, you can ask
Emacs. With point at the character, type C-u C-x = (what-cursor-position), and this
information, together with much more, will be displayed in the *Help* buffer that Emacs
pops up. See Section 4.9 [Position Info], page 23. For example, Japanese characters belong
to the ‘kana’ script, but Japanese text also mixes them with Chinese characters so the
following uses the ‘han’ script to set up Emacs to use the ‘Kochi Gothic’ font for Japanese
text:
(set-fontset-font "fontset-default" 'han "Kochi Gothic")
(For convenience, the ‘han’ script in Emacs is set up to support all of the Chinese, Japanese,
and Korean, a.k.a. CJK, characters, not just Chinese characters.)
For the list of known scripts, see the variable script-representative-chars.
Fontset settings like those above only affect characters that the default font doesn’t
support, so if the ‘Kochi Gothic’ font covers Latin characters, it will not be used for
displaying Latin scripts, since the default font used by Emacs usually covers Basic Latin.
Some fonts installed on your system might be broken, or produce unpleasant results
for characters for which they are used, and you may wish to instruct Emacs to completely
ignore them while searching for a suitable font required to display a character. You can do
that by adding the offending fonts to the value of the variable face-ignored-fonts, which
is a list. Here’s an example to put in your ~/.emacs:
(add-to-list 'face-ignored-fonts "Some Bad Font")

19.17 Undisplayable Characters

There may be some non-ASCII characters that your terminal cannot display. Most text
terminals support just a single character set (use the variable default-terminal-coding-
system to tell Emacs which one, Section 19.13 [Terminal Coding], page 231); characters
that can’t be encoded in that coding system are displayed as ‘?’ by default.
Graphical displays can display a broader range of characters, but you may not have fonts
installed for all of them; characters that have no font appear as a hollow box.
236 GNU Emacs Manual

If you use Latin-1 characters but your terminal can’t display Latin-1, you can arrange
to display mnemonic ASCII sequences instead, e.g., ‘"o’ for o-umlaut. Load the library
iso-ascii to do this.
If your terminal can display Latin-1, you can display characters from other European
character sets using a mixture of equivalent Latin-1 characters and ASCII mnemonics.
Customize the variable latin1-display to enable this. The mnemonic ASCII sequences
mostly correspond to those of the prefix input methods.

19.18 Unibyte Editing Mode

The ISO 8859 Latin-n character sets define character codes in the range 0240 to 0377 octal
(160 to 255 decimal) to handle the accented letters and punctuation needed by various
European languages (and some non-European ones). Note that Emacs considers bytes with
codes in this range as raw bytes, not as characters, even in a unibyte buffer, i.e., if you
disable multibyte characters. However, Emacs can still handle these character codes as
if they belonged to one of the single-byte character sets at a time. To specify which of
these codes to use, invoke M-x set-language-environment and specify a suitable language
environment such as ‘Latin-n’. See Section “Disabling Multibyte Characters” in GNU
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Emacs can also display bytes in the range 160 to 255 as readable characters, provided the
terminal or font in use supports them. This works automatically. On a graphical display,
Emacs can also display single-byte characters through fontsets, in effect by displaying the
equivalent multibyte characters according to the current language environment. To request
this, set the variable unibyte-display-via-language-environment to a non-nil value.
Note that setting this only affects how these bytes are displayed, but does not change the
fundamental fact that Emacs treats them as raw bytes, not as characters.
If your terminal does not support display of the Latin-1 character set, Emacs can display
these characters as ASCII sequences which at least give you a clear idea of what the characters
are. To do this, load the library iso-ascii. Similar libraries for other Latin-n character
sets could be implemented, but have not been so far.
Normally non-ISO-8859 characters (decimal codes between 128 and 159 inclusive) are
displayed as octal escapes. You can change this for non-standard extended versions of
ISO-8859 character sets by using the function standard-display-8bit in the disp-table
library.
There are two ways to input single-byte non-ASCII characters:
• You can use an input method for the selected language environment. See Section 19.3
[Input Methods], page 220. When you use an input method in a unibyte buffer, the
non-ASCII character you specify with it is converted to unibyte.
• If your keyboard can generate character codes 128 (decimal) and up, representing
non-ASCII characters, you can type those character codes directly.
On a graphical display, you should not need to do anything special to use these keys;
they should simply work. On a text terminal, you should use the command M-x
set-keyboard-coding-system or customize the variable keyboard-coding-system to
specify which coding system your keyboard uses (see Section 19.13 [Terminal Coding],
page 231). Enabling this feature will probably require you to use ESC to type Meta
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 237

characters; however, on a console terminal or a terminal emulator such as xterm, you

can arrange for Meta to be converted to ESC and still be able to type 8-bit characters
present directly on the keyboard or using Compose or AltGr keys. See Section 2.1 [User
Input], page 11.
Many modern systems provide native input methods for many languages whose char-
acters don’t have keyboard keys assigned to them. If Emacs was built with support
for these native input methods, you can activate such an input method and type the
characters they support. How to activate and use these input methods depends on
the system and the input method, and will not be described here; see your system
documentation. Here we describe some Emacs facilities to control the use of the native
input methods.
In Emacs built with the GTK toolkit, the variable x-gtk-use-native-input controls
whether Emacs should receive characters produced by GTK input methods. If the value
is nil, the default, Emacs uses the X input methods (XIM), otherwise it uses the GTK
input methods. The useXIM X resource controls whether to use XIM, and inputStyle
X resource controls the display on X of preview text generated by the native input
methods; see Section D.2 [Table of Resources], page 585.
On MS-Windows, Emacs supports native inputs methods provided by IMM, the Input
Method Manager, but that can be turned off if needed; see Section H.6 [Windows
Keyboard], page 604.
• You can use the key C-x 8 as a compose-character prefix for entry of non-ASCII Latin-1
and other printing characters. C-x 8 is good for insertion (in the minibuffer as well as
other buffers), for searching, and in any other context where a key sequence is allowed.
C-x 8 works by loading the iso-transl library. Once that library is loaded, the Alt
modifier key, if the keyboard has one, serves the same purpose as C-x 8: use Alt together
with an accent character to modify the following letter. In addition, if the keyboard
has keys for the Latin-1 dead accent characters, they too are defined to compose with
the following character, once iso-transl is loaded.
Use C-x 8 C-h to list all the available C-x 8 translations.

19.19 Charsets
In Emacs, charset is short for “character set”. Emacs supports most popular charsets (such
as ascii, iso-8859-1, cp1250, big5, and unicode), in addition to some charsets of its own
(such as emacs, unicode-bmp, and eight-bit). All supported characters belong to one or
more charsets.
Emacs normally does the right thing with respect to charsets, so that you don’t have to
worry about them. However, it is sometimes helpful to know some of the underlying details
about charsets.
One example is font selection (see Section 18.8 [Fonts], page 201). Each language
environment (see Section 19.2 [Language Environments], page 218) defines a priority list for
the various charsets. When searching for a font, Emacs initially attempts to find one that can
display the highest-priority charsets. For instance, in the Japanese language environment,
the charset japanese-jisx0208 has the highest priority, so Emacs tries to use a font whose
registry property is ‘JISX0208.1983-0’.
238 GNU Emacs Manual

There are two commands that can be used to obtain information about charsets. The
command M-x list-charset-chars prompts for a charset name, and displays all the
characters in that character set. The command M-x describe-character-set prompts
for a charset name, and displays information about that charset, including its internal
representation within Emacs.
M-x list-character-sets displays a list of all supported charsets. The list gives the
names of charsets and additional information to identity each charset; for more details,
see the ISO International Register of Coded Character Sets to be Used with Escape
Sequences (ISO-IR) (https://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/itscj_english/iso-ir/ISO-IR.
pdf) maintained by the Information Processing Society of Japan/Information Technol-
ogy Standards Commission of Japan (IPSJ/ITSCJ) (https://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/
itscj_english/). In this list, charsets are divided into two categories: normal charsets are
listed first, followed by supplementary charsets. A supplementary charset is one that is used
to define another charset (as a parent or a subset), or to provide backward-compatibility for
older Emacs versions.
To find out which charset a character in the buffer belongs to, put point before it and
type C-u C-x = (see Section 19.1 [International Chars], page 216).

19.20 Bidirectional Editing

Emacs supports editing text written in scripts, such as Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew, whose
natural ordering of horizontal text for display is from right to left. However, digits and Latin
text embedded in these scripts are still displayed left to right. It is also not uncommon to
have small portions of text in Arabic or Hebrew embedded in an otherwise Latin document;
e.g., as comments and strings in a program source file. For these reasons, text that uses
these scripts is actually bidirectional: a mixture of runs of left-to-right and right-to-left
characters.
This section describes the facilities and options provided by Emacs for editing bidirectional
text.
Emacs stores right-to-left and bidirectional text in the so-called logical (or reading)
order: the buffer or string position of the first character you read precedes that of the next
character. Reordering of bidirectional text into the visual order happens at display time. As
a result, character positions no longer increase monotonically with their positions on display.
Emacs implements the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (UBA) described in the Unicode
Standard Annex #9 (https://unicode.org/reports/tr9/), for reordering of bidirectional
text for display. It deviates from the UBA only in how continuation lines are displayed when
text direction is opposite to the base paragraph direction, e.g., when a long line of English
text appears in a right-to-left paragraph.
The buffer-local variable bidi-display-reordering controls whether text in the buffer is
reordered for display. If its value is non-nil, Emacs reorders characters that have right-to-left
directionality when they are displayed. The default value is t.
Each paragraph of bidirectional text can have its own base direction, either right-to-left
or left-to-right. Text in left-to-right paragraphs begins on the screen at the left margin of
the window and is truncated or continued when it reaches the right margin. By contrast,
text in right-to-left paragraphs is displayed starting at the right margin and is continued
or truncated at the left margin. By default, paragraph boundaries are empty lines, i.e.,
Chapter 19: International Character Set Support 239

lines consisting entirely of whitespace characters. To change that, you can customize the
two variables bidi-paragraph-start-re and bidi-paragraph-separate-re, whose values
should be regular expressions (strings); e.g., to have a single newline start a new paragraph,
set both of these variables to "^". These two variables are buffer-local (see Section 33.2.3
[Locals], page 505).
Emacs determines the base direction of each paragraph dynamically, based on the text
at the beginning of the paragraph. However, sometimes a buffer may need to force a certain
base direction for its paragraphs. The variable bidi-paragraph-direction, if non-nil,
disables the dynamic determination of the base direction, and instead forces all paragraphs
in the buffer to have the direction specified by its buffer-local value. The value can be either
right-to-left or left-to-right. Any other value is interpreted as nil.
Alternatively, you can control the base direction of a paragraph by inserting special
formatting characters in front of the paragraph. The special character RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK,
or rlm, forces the right-to-left direction on the following paragraph, while LEFT-TO-RIGHT
MARK, or lrm forces the left-to-right direction. (You can use C-x 8 RET to insert these
characters.) In a GUI session, the lrm and rlm characters display as very thin blank
characters; on text terminals they display as blanks.
Because characters are reordered for display, Emacs commands that operate in the logical
order or on stretches of buffer positions may produce unusual effects. For example, the
commands C-f and C-b move point in the logical order, so the cursor will sometimes jump
when point traverses reordered bidirectional text. Similarly, a highlighted region covering a
contiguous range of character positions may look discontinuous if the region spans reordered
text. This is normal and similar to the behavior of other programs that support bidirectional
text.
Cursor motion commands bound to arrow keys, such as LEFT and C-RIGHT, are sensitive
to the base direction of the current paragraph. In a left-to-right paragraph, commands bound
to RIGHT with or without modifiers move forward through buffer text, but in a right-to-left
paragraph they move backward instead. This reflects the fact that in a right-to-left paragraph
buffer positions predominantly increase when moving to the left on display.
When you move out of a paragraph, the meaning of the arrow keys might change if the
base direction of the preceding or the following paragraph is different from the paragraph
out of which you moved. When that happens, you need to adjust the arrow key you press to
the new base direction.
By default, LEFT and RIGHT move in the logical order, but if visual-order-cursor-
movement is non-nil, these commands move to the character that is, correspondingly, to
the left or right of the current screen position, moving to the next or previous screen line
as appropriate. Note that this might potentially move point many buffer positions away,
depending on the surrounding bidirectional context.
Bidirectional text sometimes uses special formatting characters to affect the reordering
of text for display. The lrm and rlm characters, mentioned above, are two such characters,
but there are more of them. They are by default displayed as thin space glyphs on GUI
frames, and as simple spaces on text-mode frames. If you want to be aware of these special
control characters, so that their effect on display does not come as a surprise, you can turn
on the glyphless-display-mode (see Section 11.20 [Text Display], page 97). This minor
240 GNU Emacs Manual

mode will cause these formatting characters to be displayed as acronyms inside a small box,
so that they stand out on display, and make their effect easier to understand.
 241

20 Major and Minor Modes

Emacs contains many editing modes that alter its basic behavior in useful ways. These are
divided into major modes and minor modes.
Major modes provide specialized facilities for working on a particular file type, such
as a C source file (see Chapter 23 [Programs], page 285), or a particular type of non-file
buffer, such as a shell buffer (see Section 31.5 [Shell], page 453). Major modes are mutually
exclusive; each buffer has one and only one major mode at any time.
Minor modes are optional features which you can turn on or off, not necessarily specific
to a type of file or buffer. For example, Auto Fill mode is a minor mode in which SPC breaks
lines between words as you type (see Section 22.6.1 [Auto Fill], page 256). Minor modes are
independent of one another, and of the selected major mode.

20.1 Major Modes

Every buffer possesses a major mode, which determines the editing behavior of Emacs while
that buffer is current. The mode line normally shows the name of the current major mode,
in parentheses (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8).
The least specialized major mode is called Fundamental mode. This mode has no mode-
specific redefinitions or variable settings, so that each Emacs command behaves in its most
general manner, and each user option variable is in its default state.
For editing text of a specific type that Emacs knows about, such as Lisp code or English
text, you typically use a more specialized major mode, such as Lisp mode or Text mode.
Most major modes fall into three major groups. The first group contains modes for normal
text, either plain or with mark-up. It includes Text mode, HTML mode, SGML mode,
TEX mode and Outline mode. The second group contains modes for specific programming
languages. These include Lisp mode (which has several variants), C mode, Fortran mode,
and others. The third group consists of major modes that are not associated directly with
files; they are used in buffers created for specific purposes by Emacs. Examples include
Dired mode for buffers made by Dired (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378), Message mode
for buffers made by C-x m (see Chapter 29 [Sending Mail], page 418), and Shell mode for
buffers used to communicate with an inferior shell process (see Section 31.5.2 [Interactive
Shell], page 455).
Usually, the major mode is automatically set by Emacs, when you first visit a file or
create a buffer (see Section 20.3 [Choosing Modes], page 244). You can explicitly select a
new major mode by using an M-x command. Take the name of the mode and add -mode to
get the name of the command to select that mode (e.g., M-x lisp-mode enters Lisp mode).
Since every buffer has exactly one major mode, there is no way to “turn off” a major mode;
instead you must switch to a different one.
The value of the buffer-local variable major-mode is a symbol with the same name as
the major mode command (e.g., lisp-mode). This variable is set automatically; you should
not change it yourself.
The default value of major-mode determines the major mode to use for files that do
not specify a major mode, and for new buffers created with C-x b. Normally, this default
value is the symbol fundamental-mode, which specifies Fundamental mode. You can change
242 GNU Emacs Manual

this default value via the Customization interface (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization],
page 494), or by adding a line like this to your init file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522):
(setq-default major-mode 'text-mode)
If the default value of major-mode is nil, the major mode is taken from the previously
current buffer.
Specialized major modes often change the meanings of certain keys to do something more
suitable for the mode. For instance, programming language modes bind TAB to indent the
current line according to the rules of the language (see Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 247).
The keys that are commonly changed are TAB, DEL, and C-j. Many modes also define
special commands of their own, usually bound to key sequences whose prefix key is C-c (see
Section 2.2 [Keys], page 11). Major modes can also alter user options and variables; for
instance, programming language modes typically set a buffer-local value for the variable
comment-start, which determines how source code comments are delimited (see Section 23.5
[Comments], page 295).
To view the documentation for the current major mode, including a list of its key bindings,
type C-h m (describe-mode). See Section 7.7 [Misc Help], page 49.
Every major mode, apart from Fundamental mode, defines a mode hook, a customizable
list of Lisp functions to run each time the mode is enabled in a buffer. See Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 504, for more information about hooks. Each mode hook is named after
its major mode, e.g., Fortran mode has fortran-mode-hook. Furthermore, all text-based
major modes run text-mode-hook, and many programming language modes1 (including
all those distributed with Emacs) run prog-mode-hook, prior to running their own mode
hooks. Hook functions can look at the value of the variable major-mode to see which mode
is actually being entered.
Mode hooks are commonly used to enable minor modes (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes],
page 242). For example, you can put the following lines in your init file to enable Flyspell
minor mode in all text-based major modes (see Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134), and
ElDoc minor mode in Emacs Lisp mode (see Section 23.6.3 [Programming Language Doc],
page 299):
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode)
(add-hook 'emacs-lisp-mode-hook 'eldoc-mode)

20.2 Minor Modes

A minor mode is an optional editing mode that alters the behavior of Emacs in some
well-defined way. Unlike major modes, any number of minor modes can be in effect at any
time. Some minor modes are buffer-local, and can be turned on (enabled) in certain buffers
and off (disabled) in others. Other minor modes are global: while enabled, they affect
everything you do in the Emacs session, in all buffers. Most minor modes are disabled by
default, but a few are enabled by default.
Most buffer-local minor modes say in the mode line when they are enabled, just after the
major mode indicator. For example, ‘Fill’ in the mode line means that Auto Fill mode is
enabled. See Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8.
1
More specifically, the modes which are “derived” from prog-mode (see Section “Derived Modes” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
Chapter 20: Major and Minor Modes 243

Like major modes, each minor mode is associated with a mode command, whose name
consists of the mode name followed by ‘-mode’. For instance, the mode command for Auto
Fill mode is auto-fill-mode. But unlike a major mode command, which simply enables
the mode, the mode command for a minor mode can either enable or disable it:
• If you invoke the mode command directly with no prefix argument (either via M-x, or
by binding it to a key and typing that key; see Section 33.3 [Key Bindings], page 513),
that toggles the minor mode. The minor mode is turned on if it was off, and turned off
if it was on.
• If you invoke the mode command with a prefix argument, the minor mode is uncondi-
tionally turned off if that argument is zero or negative; otherwise, it is unconditionally
turned on.
• If the mode command is called via Lisp, the minor mode is unconditionally turned on
if the argument is omitted or nil. This makes it easy to turn on a minor mode from
a major mode’s mode hook (see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241). A non-nil
argument is handled like an interactive prefix argument, as described above.
Most minor modes also have a mode variable, with the same name as the mode command.
Its value is non-nil if the mode is enabled, and nil if it is disabled. In general, you should
not try to enable or disable the mode by changing the value of the mode variable directly
in Lisp; you should run the mode command instead. However, setting the mode variable
through the Customize interface (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494) will
always properly enable or disable the mode, since Customize automatically runs the mode
command for you.
The following is a list of some buffer-local minor modes:
• Abbrev mode automatically expands text based on pre-defined abbreviation definitions.
See Chapter 26 [Abbrevs], page 371.
• Auto Fill mode inserts newlines as you type to prevent lines from becoming too long.
See Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256.
• Auto Save mode saves the buffer contents periodically to reduce the amount of work
you can lose in case of a crash. See Section 15.6 [Auto Save], page 159.
• Electric Quote mode automatically converts quotation marks. For example, it requotes
text typed `like this' to text ‘like this’. You can control what kind of text it
operates in, and you can disable it entirely in individual buffers. See Section 22.5
[Quotation Marks], page 255.
• Enriched mode enables editing and saving of formatted text. See Section 22.14 [Enriched
Text], page 275.
• Flyspell mode automatically highlights misspelled words. See Section 13.4 [Spelling],
page 134.
• Font-Lock mode automatically highlights certain textual units found in programs. It is
enabled globally by default, but you can disable it in individual buffers. See Section 11.8
[Faces], page 82.
• Display Line Numbers mode is a convenience wrapper around display-line-numbers,
setting it using the value of display-line-numbers-type. See Section 11.24 [Display
Custom], page 101.
244 GNU Emacs Manual

• Outline minor mode provides similar facilities to the major mode called Outline mode.
See Section 22.9 [Outline Mode], page 262.
• Overwrite mode causes ordinary printing characters to replace existing text instead
of shoving it to the right. For example, if point is in front of the ‘B’ in ‘FOOBAR’, then
in Overwrite mode typing a G changes it to ‘FOOGAR’, instead of producing ‘FOOGBAR’
as usual. In Overwrite mode, the command C-q inserts the next character whatever
it may be, even if it is a digit—this gives you a way to insert a character instead of
replacing an existing character. The mode command, overwrite-mode, is bound to the
Insert key.
• Binary Overwrite mode is a variant of Overwrite mode for editing binary files; it treats
newlines and tabs like other characters, so that they overwrite other characters and can
be overwritten by them. In Binary Overwrite mode, digits after C-q specify an octal
character code, as usual.
• Visual Line mode performs word wrapping, causing long lines to be wrapped at word
boundaries. See Section 11.23 [Visual Line Mode], page 100.
And here are some useful global minor modes:
• Column Number mode enables display of the current column number in the mode line.
See Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8.
• Delete Selection mode causes text insertion to first delete the text in the region, if the
region is active. See Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 54.
• Icomplete mode displays an indication of available completions when you are in the
minibuffer and completion is active. See Section 16.7.2 [Icomplete], page 183.
• Line Number mode enables display of the current line number in the mode line. It is
enabled by default. See Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8.
• Menu Bar mode gives each frame a menu bar. It is enabled by default. See Section 18.15
[Menu Bars], page 209.
• Scroll Bar mode gives each window a scroll bar. It is enabled by default, but the scroll
bar is only displayed on graphical terminals. See Section 18.12 [Scroll Bars], page 206.
• Tool Bar mode gives each frame a tool bar. It is enabled by default, but the tool bar is
only displayed on graphical terminals. See Section 18.16 [Tool Bars], page 209.
• Tab Bar mode gives each frame a tab bar. See Section 18.17 [Tab Bars], page 209.
• Tab Line mode gives each window a tab line. See Section 17.8 [Tab Line], page 192.
• Transient Mark mode highlights the region, and makes many Emacs commands operate
on the region when the mark is active. It is enabled by default. See Chapter 8 [Mark],
page 51.

20.3 Choosing File Modes

When you visit a file, Emacs chooses a major mode automatically. Normally, it makes the
choice based on the file name—for example, files whose names end in ‘.c’ are normally
edited in C mode—but sometimes it chooses the major mode based on special text in the
file. This special text can also be used to enable buffer-local minor modes.
Here is the exact procedure:
Chapter 20: Major and Minor Modes 245

First, Emacs checks whether the file contains file-local mode variables. See Section 33.2.4
[File Variables], page 507. If there is a file-local variable that specifies a major mode, then
Emacs uses that major mode, ignoring all other criteria. There are several methods to
specify a major mode using a file-local variable; the simplest is to put the mode name in the
first nonblank line, preceded and followed by ‘-*-’. Other text may appear on the line as
well. For example,
; -*-Lisp-*-
tells Emacs to use Lisp mode. Note how the semicolon is used to make Lisp treat this line
as a comment. You could equivalently write
; -*- mode: Lisp;-*-
You can also use file-local variables to specify buffer-local minor modes, by using eval
specifications. For example, this first nonblank line puts the buffer in Lisp mode and enables
Auto-Fill mode:
; -*- mode: Lisp; eval: (auto-fill-mode 1); -*-
Note, however, that it is usually inappropriate to enable minor modes this way, since most
minor modes represent individual user preferences. If you personally want to use a minor
mode for a particular file type, it is better to enable the minor mode via a major mode hook
(see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241).
Second, Emacs checks whether the file’s extension matches an entry in any directory-local
auto-mode-alist. These are found using the .dir-locals.el facility (see Section 33.2.5
[Directory Variables], page 510).
Third, if there is no file variable specifying a major mode, Emacs checks whether the
file’s contents begin with ‘#!’. If so, that indicates that the file can serve as an executable
shell command, which works by running an interpreter named on the file’s first line (the rest
of the file is used as input to the interpreter). Therefore, Emacs tries to use the interpreter
name to choose a mode. For instance, a file that begins with ‘#!/usr/bin/perl’ is opened
in Perl mode. The variable interpreter-mode-alist specifies the correspondence between
interpreter program names and major modes.
When the first line starts with ‘#!’, you usually cannot use the ‘-*-’ feature on the first
line, because the system would get confused when running the interpreter. So Emacs looks
for ‘-*-’ on the second line in such files as well as on the first line. The same is true for
man pages which start with the magic string ‘'\"’ to specify a list of troff preprocessors.
Fourth, Emacs tries to determine the major mode by looking at the text at the start of
the buffer, based on the variable magic-mode-alist. By default, this variable is nil (an
empty list), so Emacs skips this step; however, you can customize it in your init file (see
Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522). The value should be a list of elements of the form
(regexp . mode-function)
where regexp is a regular expression (see Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114), and mode-
function is a major mode command. If the text at the beginning of the file matches regexp,
Emacs chooses the major mode specified by mode-function.
Alternatively, an element of magic-mode-alist may have the form
(match-function . mode-function)
where match-function is a Lisp function that is called at the beginning of the buffer; if the
function returns non-nil, Emacs set the major mode with mode-function.
246 GNU Emacs Manual

Fifth—if Emacs still hasn’t found a suitable major mode—it looks at the file’s name.
The correspondence between file names and major modes is controlled by the variable
auto-mode-alist. Its value is a list in which each element has this form,
(regexp . mode-function)
or this form,
(regexp mode-function flag)
For example, one element normally found in the list has the form ("\\.c\\'" . c-mode),
and it is responsible for selecting C mode for files whose names end in .c. (Note that ‘\\’
is needed in Lisp syntax to include a ‘\’ in the string, which must be used to suppress the
special meaning of ‘.’ in regexps.)
If the element has the form (regexp mode-function flag) and flag is non-nil, then
after calling mode-function (if it is non-nil), Emacs discards the suffix that matched regexp
and searches the list again for another match. This “recursive extension stripping” is used
for files which have multiple extensions, and the “outer” extension hides the “inner” one
that actually specifies the right mode. For example, backup files and GPG-encrypted files
with .gpg extension use this feature.
On GNU/Linux and other systems with case-sensitive file names, Emacs performs a
case-sensitive search through auto-mode-alist; if this search fails, it performs a second
case-insensitive search through the alist. To suppress the second search, change the variable
auto-mode-case-fold to nil. On systems with case-insensitive file names, such as Microsoft
Windows, Emacs performs a single case-insensitive search through auto-mode-alist.
Finally, if Emacs still hasn’t found a major mode to use, it compares the text at the
start of the buffer to the variable magic-fallback-mode-alist. This variable works like
magic-mode-alist, described above, except that it is consulted only after auto-mode-
alist. By default, magic-fallback-mode-alist contains forms that check for image files,
HTML/XML/SGML files, PostScript files, and Unix style Conf files.
Once a major mode is found, Emacs does a final check to see if the mode has been
remapped by major-mode-remap-alist, in which case it uses the remapped mode instead.
This is used when several different major modes can be used for the same file type, so you
can specify which mode you prefer.
If you have changed the major mode of a buffer, you can return to the major mode Emacs
would have chosen automatically, by typing M-x normal-mode. This is the same function
that find-file calls to choose the major mode. If the buffer is visiting a file, this command
also processes the file’s ‘-*-’ line and file-local variables list (if any). See Section 33.2.4 [File
Variables], page 507. If the buffer doesn’t visit a file, the command processes only the major
mode specification, if any, in the ‘-*-’ line and in the file-local variables list.
The commands C-x C-w and set-visited-file-name change to a new major mode if
the new file name implies a mode (see Section 15.3 [Saving], page 149). (C-x C-s does this
too, if the buffer wasn’t visiting a file.) However, this does not happen if the buffer contents
specify a major mode, and certain special major modes do not allow the mode to change. You
can turn off this mode-changing feature by setting change-major-mode-with-file-name
to nil.
 247

21 Indentation
Indentation refers to inserting or adjusting whitespace characters (space and/or tab char-
acters) at the beginning of a line of text. This chapter documents indentation commands
and options which are common to Text mode and related modes, as well as programming
language modes. See Section 23.3 [Program Indent], page 288, for additional documentation
about indenting in programming modes.
The simplest way to perform indentation is the TAB key. In most major modes, this runs
the command indent-for-tab-command. (In C and related modes, TAB runs the command
c-indent-line-or-region, which behaves similarly, see Section 23.3.4 [C Indent], page 290).
TAB Insert whitespace, or indent the current line, in a mode-appropriate way
(indent-for-tab-command). If the region is active, indent all the lines within
it.
The exact behavior of TAB depends on the major mode. In Text mode and related major
modes, TAB normally inserts some combination of space and tab characters to advance point
to the next tab stop (see Section 21.2 [Tab Stops], page 248). For this purpose, the position
of the first non-whitespace character on the preceding line is treated as an additional tab
stop, so you can use TAB to align point with the preceding line. If the region is active (see
Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 54), TAB acts specially: it indents each line in the region so
that its first non-whitespace character is aligned with the preceding line.
In programming modes, TAB indents the current line of code in a way that makes sense
given the code in the preceding lines. If the region is active, all the lines in the region
are indented this way. If point was initially within the current line’s indentation, it is
repositioned to the first non-whitespace character on the line.
If you just want to insert a tab character in the buffer, type C-q TAB (see Section 4.1
[Inserting Text], page 16).

21.1 Indentation Commands

Apart from the TAB (indent-for-tab-command) command, Emacs provides a variety of
commands to perform indentation in other ways.
C-M-o Split the current line at point (split-line). The text on the line after point
becomes a new line, indented to the same column where point is located. This
command first moves point forward over any spaces and tabs. Afterward, point
is positioned before the inserted newline.
M-m Move (forward or back) to the first non-whitespace character on the current line
(back-to-indentation). If there are no non-whitespace characters on the line,
move to the end of the line.
M-i Indent whitespace at point, up to the next tab stop (tab-to-tab-stop). See
Section 21.2 [Tab Stops], page 248.
M-x indent-relative
Insert whitespace at point, until point is aligned with the first non-whitespace
character on the previous line (actually, the last non-blank line). If point is
already farther right than that, run tab-to-tab-stop instead—unless called
with a numeric argument, in which case do nothing.
248 GNU Emacs Manual

M-^ Merge the previous and the current line (delete-indentation). This joins the
two lines cleanly, by replacing any indentation at the front of the current line,
together with the line boundary, with a single space.
As a special case (useful for Lisp code), the single space is omitted if the
characters to be joined are consecutive opening and closing parentheses, or if
the junction follows another newline.
If there is a fill prefix, M-^ deletes the fill prefix if it appears after the newline
that is deleted. See Section 22.6.3 [Fill Prefix], page 258.
With a prefix argument, join the current line to the following line. If the region
is active, and no prefix argument is given, join all lines in the region instead.
C-M-\ Indent all the lines in the region, as though you had typed TAB at the beginning
of each line (indent-region).
If a numeric argument is supplied, indent every line in the region to that column
number.
C-x TAB Indent all lines that begin in the region, moving the affected lines as a rigid unit
(indent-rigidly).
If called with no argument, this command activates a transient mode for adjusting
the indentation of the affected lines interactively. While this transient mode is
active, typing LEFT or RIGHT indents leftward and rightward, respectively, by
one space. You can also type S-LEFT or S-RIGHT to indent leftward or rightward
to the next tab stop (see Section 21.2 [Tab Stops], page 248). Typing any other
key disables the transient mode, and this key is then acted upon as normally.
If called with a prefix argument n, this command indents the lines forward by
n spaces (without enabling the transient mode). Negative values of n indent
backward, so you can remove all indentation from the lines in the region using
a large negative argument, like this:
C-u -999 C-x TAB

21.2 Tab Stops

Emacs defines certain column numbers to be tab stops. These are used as stopping points by
TAB when inserting whitespace in Text mode and related modes (see Chapter 21 [Indentation],
page 247), and by commands like M-i (see Section 21.1 [Indentation Commands], page 247).
The variable tab-stop-list controls these positions. The default value is nil, which means
a tab stop every 8 columns. The value can also be a list of zero-based column numbers (in
increasing order) at which to place tab stops. Emacs extends the list forever by repeating
the difference between the last and next-to-last elements.
Instead of customizing the variable tab-stop-list directly, a convenient way to view and
set tab stops is via the command M-x edit-tab-stops. This switches to a buffer containing
a description of the tab stop settings, which looks like this:
: : : : : :
0 1 2 3 4
0123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678
To install changes, type C-c C-c
Chapter 21: Indentation 249

The first line contains a colon at each tab stop. The numbers on the next two lines are
present just to indicate where the colons are. If the value of tab-stop-list is nil, as it is
by default, no colons are displayed initially.
You can edit this buffer to specify different tab stops by placing colons on the desired
columns. The buffer uses Overwrite mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242).
Remember that Emacs will extend the list of tab stops forever by repeating the difference
between the last two explicit stops that you place. When you are done, type C-c C-c
to make the new tab stops take effect. Normally, the new tab stop settings apply to all
buffers. However, if you have made the tab-stop-list variable local to the buffer where
you called M-x edit-tab-stops (see Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 505), then the new tab
stop settings apply only to that buffer. To save the tab stop settings for future Emacs
sessions, use the Customize interface to save the value of tab-stop-list (see Section 33.1
[Easy Customization], page 494).
Note that the tab stops discussed in this section have nothing to do with how tab
characters are displayed in the buffer. Tab characters are always displayed as empty spaces
extending to the next display tab stop. See Section 11.20 [Text Display], page 97.

21.3 Tabs vs. Spaces

Normally, indentation commands insert (or remove) the shortest possible series of tab and
space characters so as to align to the desired column. Tab characters are displayed as a
stretch of empty space extending to the next display tab stop. By default, there is one
display tab stop every tab-width columns (the default is 8). See Section 11.20 [Text Display],
page 97.
If you prefer, all indentation can be made from spaces only. To request this, set the
buffer-local variable indent-tabs-mode to nil. See Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 505, for
information about setting buffer-local variables. Note, however, that C-q TAB always inserts
a tab character, regardless of the value of indent-tabs-mode.
One reason to set indent-tabs-mode to nil is that not all editors display tab characters
in the same way. Emacs users, too, may have different customized values of tab-width.
By using spaces only, you can make sure that your file always looks the same. If you only
care about how it looks within Emacs, another way to tackle this problem is to set the
tab-width variable in a file-local variable (see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507).
There are also commands to convert tabs to spaces or vice versa, always preserving the
columns of all non-whitespace text. M-x tabify scans the region for sequences of spaces,
and converts sequences of at least two spaces to tabs if that can be done without changing
indentation. M-x untabify changes all tabs in the region to appropriate numbers of spaces.

21.4 Convenience Features for Indentation

The variable tab-always-indent tweaks the behavior of the TAB (indent-for-tab-
command) command. The default value, t, gives the behavior described in Chapter 21
[Indentation], page 247. If you change the value to the symbol complete, then TAB first
tries to indent the current line, and if the line was already indented, it tries to complete the
text at point (see Section 23.8 [Symbol Completion], page 302). If the value is nil, then
TAB indents the current line only if point is at the left margin or in the line’s indentation;
otherwise, it inserts a tab character.
250 GNU Emacs Manual

If tab-always-indent is complete, whether to expand or indent can be further cus-

tomized via the tab-first-completion variable. For instance, if that variable is eol, only
complete if point is at the end of a line. See Section “Mode-Specific Indent” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual, for further details.
Electric Indent mode is a global minor mode that automatically indents the line
after every RET you type. This mode is enabled by default. To toggle this minor
mode, type M-x electric-indent-mode. To toggle the mode in a single buffer, use M-x
electric-indent-local-mode.
 251

22 Commands for Human Languages

This chapter describes Emacs commands that act on text, by which we mean sequences of
characters in a human language (as opposed to, say, a computer programming language).
These commands act in ways that take into account the syntactic and stylistic conventions
of human languages: conventions involving words, sentences, paragraphs, and capital letters.
There are also commands for filling, which means rearranging the lines of a paragraph to be
approximately equal in length. These commands, while intended primarily for editing text,
are also often useful for editing programs.
Emacs has several major modes for editing human-language text. If the file contains
ordinary text, use Text mode, which customizes Emacs in small ways for the syntactic
conventions of text. Outline mode provides special commands for operating on text with an
outline structure. See Section 22.9 [Outline Mode], page 262.
Org mode extends Outline mode and turns Emacs into a full-fledged organizer: you
can manage TODO lists, store notes and publish them in many formats. See the Org Info
manual, which is distributed with Emacs.
Emacs has other major modes for text which contains embedded commands, such as TEX
and LATEX (see Section 22.11 [TeX Mode], page 268); HTML and SGML (see Section 22.12
[HTML Mode], page 273); XML (see the nXML mode Info manual, which is distributed
with Emacs); and Groff and Nroff (see Section 22.13 [Nroff Mode], page 274).
If you need to edit ASCII art pictures made out of text characters, use Picture mode, a
special major mode for editing such pictures. See Section “Picture Mode” in Specialized
Emacs Features.

22.1 Words
Emacs defines several commands for moving over or operating on words:
M-f Move forward over a word (forward-word).
M-b Move backward over a word (backward-word).
M-d Kill up to the end of a word (kill-word).
M-DEL Kill back to the beginning of a word (backward-kill-word).
M-@ Set mark at the end of the next word (mark-word).
M-t Transpose two words or drag a word across others (transpose-words).
Notice how these keys form a series that parallels the character-based C-f, C-b, C-d, DEL
and C-t. M-@ is cognate to C-@, which is an alias for C-SPC.
The commands M-f (forward-word) and M-b (backward-word) move forward and back-
ward over words. These Meta-based key sequences are analogous to the key sequences C-f
and C-b, which move over single characters. The analogy extends to numeric arguments,
which serve as repeat counts. M-f with a negative argument moves backward, and M-b with
a negative argument moves forward. Forward motion stops right after the last letter of the
word, while backward motion stops right before the first letter.
M-d (kill-word) kills the word after point. To be precise, it kills everything from point
to the place M-f would move to. Thus, if point is in the middle of a word, M-d kills just
252 GNU Emacs Manual

the part after point. If some punctuation comes between point and the next word, it is
killed along with the word. (If you wish to kill only the next word but not the punctuation
before it, simply do M-f to get the end, and kill the word backwards with M-DEL.) M-d takes
arguments just like M-f.
M-DEL (backward-kill-word) kills the word before point. It kills everything from point
back to where M-b would move to. For instance, if point is after the space in ‘FOO, BAR’, it
kills ‘FOO, ’. If you wish to kill just ‘FOO’, and not the comma and the space, use M-b M-d
instead of M-DEL.
M-t (transpose-words) exchanges the word before or containing point with the following
word. The delimiter characters between the words do not move. For example, ‘FOO, BAR’
transposes into ‘BAR, FOO’ rather than ‘BAR FOO,’. See Section 13.2 [Transpose], page 132,
for more on transposition.
To operate on words with an operation which acts on the region, use the command M-@
(mark-word). This command sets the mark where M-f would move to. See Section 8.2
[Marking Objects], page 53, for more information about this command.
The word commands’ understanding of word boundaries is controlled by the syntax table.
Any character can, for example, be declared to be a word delimiter. See Section “Syntax
Tables” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
In addition, see Section 4.9 [Position Info], page 23, for the M-= (count-words-region)
and M-x count-words commands, which count and report the number of words in the region
or buffer.

22.2 Sentences
The Emacs commands for manipulating sentences and paragraphs are mostly on Meta keys,
like the word-handling commands.
M-a Move back to the beginning of the sentence (backward-sentence).
M-e Move forward to the end of the sentence (forward-sentence).
M-k Kill forward to the end of the sentence (kill-sentence).
C-x DEL Kill back to the beginning of the sentence (backward-kill-sentence).
The commands M-a (backward-sentence) and M-e (forward-sentence) move to the
beginning and end of the current sentence, respectively. Their bindings were chosen to
resemble C-a and C-e, which move to the beginning and end of a line. Unlike them, M-a
and M-e move over successive sentences if repeated.
Moving backward over a sentence places point just before the first character of the
sentence; moving forward places point right after the punctuation that ends the sentence.
Neither one moves over the whitespace at the sentence boundary.
Just as C-a and C-e have a kill command, C-k, to go with them, M-a and M-e have
a corresponding kill command: M-k (kill-sentence) kills from point to the end of the
sentence. With a positive numeric argument n, it kills the next n sentences; with a negative
argument −n, it kills back to the beginning of the nth preceding sentence.
The C-x DEL (backward-kill-sentence) kills back to the beginning of a sentence.
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 253

The sentence commands assume that you follow the American typist’s convention of
putting two spaces at the end of a sentence. That is, a sentence ends wherever there is a
‘.’, ‘?’ or ‘!’ followed by the end of a line or two spaces, with any number of ‘)’, ‘]’, ‘'’,
or ‘"’ characters allowed in between. A sentence also begins or ends wherever a paragraph
begins or ends. It is useful to follow this convention, because it allows the Emacs sentence
commands to distinguish between periods that end a sentence and periods that indicate
abbreviations.
If you want to use just one space between sentences, you can set the variable
sentence-end-double-space to nil to make the sentence commands stop for single
spaces. However, this has a drawback: there is no way to distinguish between periods
that end sentences and those that indicate abbreviations. For convenient and reliable
editing, we therefore recommend you follow the two-space convention. The variable
sentence-end-double-space also affects filling (see Section 22.6.2 [Fill Commands],
page 257).
The variable sentence-end controls how to recognize the end of a sentence. If non-nil,
its value should be a regular expression, which is used to match the last few characters of a
sentence, together with the whitespace following the sentence (see Section 12.6 [Regexps],
page 114). If the value is nil, the default, then Emacs computes sentence ends according to
various criteria such as the value of sentence-end-double-space.
Some languages, such as Thai, do not use periods to indicate the end of a sentence. Set
the variable sentence-end-without-period to t in such cases.

22.3 Paragraphs
The Emacs commands for manipulating paragraphs are also on Meta keys.
M-{ Move back to previous paragraph beginning (backward-paragraph).
M-} Move forward to next paragraph end (forward-paragraph).
M-h Put point and mark around this or next paragraph (mark-paragraph).
M-{ (backward-paragraph) moves to the beginning of the current or previous paragraph,
depending on where point is when the command is invoked (see below for the definition of a
paragraph). M-} (forward-paragraph) similarly moves to the end of the current or next
paragraph. If there is a blank line before the paragraph, M-{ moves to the blank line.
When you wish to operate on a paragraph, type M-h (mark-paragraph) to set the region
around it. For example, M-h C-w kills the paragraph around or after point. M-h puts point
at the beginning and mark at the end of the paragraph point was in. If point is between
paragraphs (in a run of blank lines, or at a boundary), M-h sets the region around the
paragraph following point. If there are blank lines preceding the first line of the paragraph,
one of these blank lines is included in the region. If the region is already active, the command
sets the mark without changing point, and each subsequent M-h further advances the mark
by one paragraph.
The definition of a paragraph depends on the major mode. In Fundamental mode, as well
as Text mode and related modes, a paragraph is separated from neighboring paragraphs by
one or more blank lines—lines that are either empty, or consist solely of space, tab and/or
formfeed characters. In programming language modes, paragraphs are usually defined in
254 GNU Emacs Manual

a similar way, so that you can use the paragraph commands even though there are no
paragraphs as such in a program.
Note that an indented line is not itself a paragraph break in Text mode. If you want
indented lines to separate paragraphs, use Paragraph-Indent Text mode instead. See
Section 22.8 [Text Mode], page 261.
If you set a fill prefix, then paragraphs are delimited by all lines which don’t start with
the fill prefix. See Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256.
The precise definition of a paragraph boundary is controlled by the variables
paragraph-separate and paragraph-start. The value of paragraph-start is a regular
expression that should match lines that either start or separate paragraphs (see Section 12.6
[Regexps], page 114). The value of paragraph-separate is another regular expression that
should match lines that separate paragraphs without being part of any paragraph (for
example, blank lines). Lines that start a new paragraph and are contained in it must match
only paragraph-start, not paragraph-separate. For example, in Fundamental mode,
paragraph-start is "\f\\|[ \t]*$", and paragraph-separate is "[ \t\f]*$".
Note that paragraph-start and paragraph-separate are matched against the text at
the left margin, which is not necessarily the beginning of the line, so these regexps should
not use ‘^’ as an anchor, to ensure that the paragraph functions will work equally within a
region of text indented by a margin setting.

22.4 Pages
Within some text files, text is divided into pages delimited by the formfeed character (ASCII
code 12, also denoted as ‘control-L’), which is displayed in Emacs as the escape sequence
‘^L’ (see Section 11.20 [Text Display], page 97). Traditionally, when such text files are printed
to hardcopy, each formfeed character forces a page break. Most Emacs commands treat it
just like any other character, so you can insert it with C-q C-l, delete it with DEL, etc. In
addition, Emacs provides commands to move over pages and operate on them.
M-x what-page
Display the page number of point, and the line number within that page.
C-x [ Move point to previous page boundary (backward-page).
C-x ] Move point to next page boundary (forward-page).
C-x C-p Put point and mark around this page (or another page) (mark-page).
C-x l Count the lines in this page (count-lines-page).
M-x what-page counts pages from the beginning of the file, and counts lines within the
page, showing both numbers in the echo area.
The C-x [ (backward-page) command moves point to immediately after the previous
page delimiter. If point is already right after a page delimiter, it skips that one and stops at
the previous one. A numeric argument serves as a repeat count. The C-x ] (forward-page)
command moves forward past the next page delimiter.
The C-x C-p command (mark-page) puts point at the beginning of the current page
(after that page delimiter at the front), and the mark at the end of the page (after the page
delimiter at the end).
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 255

C-x C-p C-w is a handy way to kill a page to move it elsewhere. If you move to another
page delimiter with C-x [ and C-x ], then yank the killed page, all the pages will be properly
delimited once again. Making sure this works as expected is the reason C-x C-p includes
only the following page delimiter in the region.
A numeric argument to C-x C-p specifies which page to go to, relative to the current one.
Zero means the current page, one means the next page, and −1 means the previous one.
The C-x l command (count-lines-page) is good for deciding where to break a page in
two. It displays in the echo area the total number of lines in the current page, and then
divides it up into those preceding the current line and those following, as in
Page has 96 (72+25) lines
Notice that the sum is off by one; this is correct if point is not at the beginning of a line.
The variable page-delimiter controls where pages begin. Its value is a regular expression
that matches the beginning of a line that separates pages (see Section 12.6 [Regexps],
page 114). The normal value of this variable is "^\f", which matches a formfeed character
at the beginning of a line.

22.5 Quotation Marks

One common way to quote is the typewriter convention, which quotes using straight
apostrophes ‘'like this'’ or double-quotes ‘"like this"’. Another common way is the
curved quote convention, which uses left and right single or double quotation marks ‘like
this’ or “like this”1 . In text files, typewriter quotes are simple and portable; curved
quotes are less ambiguous and typically look nicer.
Electric Quote mode makes it easier to type curved quotes. As you type characters it
optionally converts ` to ‘, ' to ’, `` to “, and '' to ”. It’s possible to change the default
quotes listed above, by customizing the variable electric-quote-chars, a list of four
characters, where the items correspond to the left single quote, the right single quote, the left
double quote and the right double quote, respectively, whose default value is '(?‘ ?’ ?“ ?”).
You can customize the behavior of Electric Quote mode by customizing variables that
control where it is active. It is active in text paragraphs if electric-quote-paragraph is
non-nil, in programming-language comments if electric-quote-comment is non-nil, and
in programming-language strings if electric-quote-string is non-nil. The default is nil
for electric-quote-string and t for the other variables.
You can also set the option electric-quote-replace-double to a non-nil value. Then,
typing " inserts an appropriate curved double quote depending on context: “ at the beginning
of the buffer or after a line break, whitespace, opening parenthesis, or quote character, and
” otherwise.
Electric Quote mode is disabled by default. To toggle it in a single buffer, use M-x
electric-quote-local-mode. To toggle it globally, type M-x electric-quote-mode. To
suppress it for a single use, type C-q ` or C-q ' instead of ` or '. To insert a curved quote
even when Electric Quote is disabled or inactive, you can type C-x 8 [ for ‘, C-x 8 ] for
1
The curved single quote characters are U+2018 left single quotation mark and U+2019 right
single quotation mark; the curved double quotes are U+201C left double quotation mark and
U+201D right double quotation mark. On text terminals which cannot display these characters,
the Info reader might show them as the typewriter ASCII quote characters.
256 GNU Emacs Manual

’, C-x 8 { for “, and C-x 8 } for ”. See Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16. Note that
the value of electric-quote-chars does not affect these key bindings, they are not key
bindings of electric-quote-mode but bound in global-map.

22.6 Filling Text

Filling text means breaking it up into lines that fit a specified width. Emacs does filling in
two ways. In Auto Fill mode, inserting text with self-inserting characters also automatically
fills it. There are also explicit fill commands that you can use when editing text.

22.6.1 Auto Fill Mode

Auto Fill mode is a buffer-local minor mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242) in
which lines are broken automatically when the line becomes too wide and you type SPC or
RET.
M-x auto-fill-mode
Enable or disable Auto Fill mode.
SPC
RET In Auto Fill mode, break lines when appropriate.
The mode command M-x auto-fill-mode toggles Auto Fill mode in the current buffer.
Like any other minor mode, with a positive numeric argument, it enables Auto Fill mode,
and with a negative argument it disables it. To enable Auto Fill mode automatically in
certain major modes, add auto-fill-mode to the mode hooks (see Section 20.1 [Major
Modes], page 241). When Auto Fill mode is enabled, the mode indicator ‘Fill’ appears in
the mode line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8).
Auto Fill mode breaks lines automatically at the appropriate places whenever lines get
longer than the desired width. This line breaking occurs only when you type SPC or RET. If
you wish to insert a space or newline without permitting line-breaking, type C-q SPC or C-q
C-j respectively. Also, C-o inserts a newline without line breaking.
The place where Auto Fill breaks a line depends on the line’s characters. For characters
from ASCII, Latin, and most other scripts Emacs breaks a line on space characters, to keep
the words intact. But for CJK scripts, a line can be broken between any two characters.
(If you load the kinsoku library, Emacs will avoid breaking a line between certain pairs of
CJK characters, where special rules prohibit that.)
When Auto Fill mode breaks a line, it tries to obey the adaptive fill prefix: if a fill prefix
can be deduced from the first and/or second line of the current paragraph, it is inserted
into the new line (see Section 22.6.4 [Adaptive Fill], page 259). Otherwise the new line is
indented, as though you had typed TAB on it (see Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 247). In a
programming language mode, if a line is broken in the middle of a comment, the comment
is split by inserting new comment delimiters as appropriate.
Auto Fill mode does not refill entire paragraphs; it breaks lines but does not merge
lines. Therefore, editing in the middle of a paragraph can result in a paragraph that is not
correctly filled. To fill it, call the explicit fill commands described in the next section.
A similar feature that wraps long lines automatically at display time is Visual Line Mode
(see Section 11.23 [Visual Line Mode], page 100).
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 257

22.6.2 Explicit Fill Commands

M-q Fill current paragraph (fill-paragraph).
C-x f Set the fill column (set-fill-column).
M-x fill-region
Fill each paragraph in the region (fill-region).
M-x fill-region-as-paragraph
Fill the region, considering it as one paragraph.
M-x center-line
Center a line.
The command M-q (fill-paragraph) fills the current paragraph. It redistributes the
line breaks within the paragraph, and deletes any excess space and tab characters occurring
within the paragraph, in such a way that the lines end up fitting within a certain maximum
width. Like Auto Fill mode, this and other filling commands usually break lines at space
characters, but for CJK characters these commands can break a line between almost any
two characters, and they can also obey the kinsoku rules. See Section 22.6.1 [Auto Fill],
page 256.
Normally, M-q acts on the paragraph where point is, but if point is between paragraphs,
it acts on the paragraph after point. If the region is active, it acts instead on the text in the
region. You can also call M-x fill-region to specifically fill the text in the region.
M-q and fill-region use the usual Emacs criteria for finding paragraph boundaries
(see Section 22.3 [Paragraphs], page 253). For more control, you can use M-x
fill-region-as-paragraph, which refills everything between point and mark as a single
paragraph. This command deletes any blank lines within the region, so separate blocks of
text end up combined into one block.
A numeric argument to M-q tells it to justify the text as well as filling it. This means
that extra spaces are inserted to make the right margin line up exactly at the fill column.
To remove the extra spaces, use M-q with no argument. (Likewise for fill-region.)
The maximum line width for filling is specified by the buffer-local variable fill-column.
The default value (see Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 505) is 70. The easiest way to set
fill-column in the current buffer is to use the command C-x f (set-fill-column). With
a numeric argument, it uses that as the new fill column. With just C-u as argument, it
sets fill-column to the current horizontal position of point. Note that, by its very nature,
fill-column is measured in column units; the actual position of that column on a graphical
display depends on the font being used. In particular, using variable-pitch fonts will cause
the fill-column occupy different horizontal positions on display in different lines.
The command M-x center-line centers the current line within the current fill column.
With an argument n, it centers n lines individually and moves past them. This binding is
made by Text mode and is available only in that and related modes (see Section 22.8 [Text
Mode], page 261).
By default, Emacs considers a period followed by two spaces or by a newline as the end
of a sentence; a period followed by just one space indicates an abbreviation, not the end of a
sentence. Accordingly, the fill commands will not break a line after a period followed by just
one space. If you set the variable sentence-end-double-space to nil, the fill commands
258 GNU Emacs Manual

will break a line after a period followed by one space, and put just one space after each
period. See Section 22.2 [Sentences], page 252, for other effects and possible drawbacks of
this.
If the variable colon-double-space is non-nil, the fill commands put two spaces after
a colon.
To specify additional conditions where line-breaking is not allowed, customize the abnor-
mal hook variable fill-nobreak-predicate (see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504). Each
function in this hook is called with no arguments, with point positioned where Emacs is
considering breaking a line. If a function returns a non-nil value, Emacs will not break the
line there. Functions you can use there include: fill-single-word-nobreak-p (don’t break
after the first word of a sentence or before the last); fill-single-char-nobreak-p (don’t
break after a one-letter word preceded by a whitespace character); fill-french-nobreak-p
(don’t break after ‘(’ or before ‘)’, ‘:’ or ‘?’); and fill-polish-nobreak-p (don’t break
after a one letter word, even if preceded by a non-whitespace character).
Emacs can display an indicator in the fill-column position using the Display fill column
indicator mode (see Section 11.16 [Displaying Boundaries], page 93).

22.6.3 The Fill Prefix

The fill prefix feature allows paragraphs to be filled so that each line starts with a special
string of characters (such as a sequence of spaces, giving an indented paragraph). You
can specify a fill prefix explicitly; otherwise, Emacs tries to deduce one automatically (see
Section 22.6.4 [Adaptive Fill], page 259).

C-x . Set the fill prefix (set-fill-prefix).

M-q Fill a paragraph using current fill prefix (fill-paragraph).
M-x fill-individual-paragraphs
Fill the region, considering each change of indentation as starting a new para-
graph.
M-x fill-nonuniform-paragraphs
Fill the region, considering only paragraph-separator lines as starting a new
paragraph.

To specify a fill prefix for the current buffer, move to a line that starts with the desired
prefix, put point at the end of the prefix, and type C-x . (set-fill-prefix). (That’s a
period after the C-x.) To turn off the fill prefix, specify an empty prefix: type C-x . with
point at the beginning of a line.
When a fill prefix is in effect, the fill commands remove the fill prefix from each line of the
paragraph before filling, and insert it on each line after filling. (The beginning of the first
line of the paragraph is left unchanged, since often that is intentionally different.) Auto Fill
mode also inserts the fill prefix automatically when it makes a new line (see Section 22.6.1
[Auto Fill], page 256). The C-o command inserts the fill prefix on new lines it creates, when
you use it at the beginning of a line (see Section 4.7 [Blank Lines], page 22). Conversely, the
command M-^ deletes the prefix (if it occurs) after the newline that it deletes (see Chapter 21
[Indentation], page 247).
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 259

For example, if fill-column is 40 and you set the fill prefix to ‘;; ’, then M-q in the
following text
;; This is an
;; example of a paragraph
;; inside a Lisp-style comment.
produces this:
;; This is an example of a paragraph
;; inside a Lisp-style comment.
Lines that do not start with the fill prefix are considered to start paragraphs, both in
M-q and the paragraph commands; this gives good results for paragraphs with hanging
indentation (every line indented except the first one). Lines which are blank or indented
once the prefix is removed also separate or start paragraphs; this is what you want if you
are writing multi-paragraph comments with a comment delimiter on each line.
You can use M-x fill-individual-paragraphs to set the fill prefix for each paragraph
automatically. This command divides the region into paragraphs, treating every change in
the amount of indentation as the start of a new paragraph, and fills each of these paragraphs.
Thus, all the lines in one paragraph have the same amount of indentation. That indentation
serves as the fill prefix for that paragraph.
M-x fill-nonuniform-paragraphs is a similar command that divides the region into
paragraphs in a different way. It considers only paragraph-separating lines (as defined by
paragraph-separate) as starting a new paragraph. Since this means that the lines of one
paragraph may have different amounts of indentation, the fill prefix used is the smallest
amount of indentation of any of the lines of the paragraph. This gives good results with
styles that indent a paragraph’s first line more or less that the rest of the paragraph.
The fill prefix is stored in the variable fill-prefix. Its value is a string, or nil when
there is no fill prefix. This is a per-buffer variable; altering the variable affects only the
current buffer, but there is a default value which you can change as well. See Section 33.2.3
[Locals], page 505.
The indentation text property provides another way to control the amount of indentation
paragraphs receive. See Section 22.14.5 [Enriched Indentation], page 277.

22.6.4 Adaptive Filling

The fill commands can deduce the proper fill prefix for a paragraph automatically in certain
cases: either whitespace or certain punctuation characters at the beginning of a line are
propagated to all lines of the paragraph.
If the paragraph has two or more lines, the fill prefix is taken from the paragraph’s second
line, but only if it appears on the first line as well.
If a paragraph has just one line, fill commands may take a prefix from that line. The
decision is complicated because there are three reasonable things to do in such a case:
• Use the first line’s prefix on all the lines of the paragraph.
• Indent subsequent lines with whitespace, so that they line up under the text that follows
the prefix on the first line, but don’t actually copy the prefix from the first line.
• Don’t do anything special with the second and following lines.
260 GNU Emacs Manual

All three of these styles of formatting are commonly used. So the fill commands try to
determine what you would like, based on the prefix that appears and on the major mode.
Here is how.
If the prefix found on the first line matches adaptive-fill-first-line-regexp, or if
it appears to be a comment-starting sequence (this depends on the major mode), then the
prefix found is used for filling the paragraph, provided it would not act as a paragraph
starter on subsequent lines.
Otherwise, the prefix found is converted to an equivalent number of spaces, and those
spaces are used as the fill prefix for the rest of the lines, provided they would not act as a
paragraph starter on subsequent lines.
In Text mode, and other modes where only blank lines and page delimiters separate
paragraphs, the prefix chosen by adaptive filling never acts as a paragraph starter, so it can
always be used for filling.
The variable adaptive-fill-regexp determines what kinds of line beginnings can serve
as a fill prefix: any characters at the start of the line that match this regular expression
are used. If you set the variable adaptive-fill-mode to nil, the fill prefix is never chosen
automatically.
You can specify more complex ways of choosing a fill prefix automatically by setting the
variable adaptive-fill-function to a function. This function is called with point after
the left margin of a line, and it should return the appropriate fill prefix based on that line.
If it returns nil, adaptive-fill-regexp gets a chance to find a prefix.

22.7 Case Conversion Commands

Emacs has commands for converting either a single word or any arbitrary range of text to
upper case or to lower case.
M-l Convert following word to lower case (downcase-word).
M-u Convert following word to upper case (upcase-word).
M-c Capitalize the following word (capitalize-word).
C-x C-l Convert region to lower case (downcase-region).
C-x C-u Convert region to upper case (upcase-region).
M-l (downcase-word) converts the word after point to lower case, moving past it. Thus,
repeating M-l converts successive words. M-u (upcase-word) converts to all capitals instead,
while M-c (capitalize-word) puts the first letter of the word into upper case and the rest
into lower case. All these commands convert several words at once if given an argument.
They are especially convenient for converting a large amount of text from all upper case to
mixed case, because you can move through the text using M-l, M-u or M-c on each word as
appropriate, occasionally using M-f instead to skip a word.
When given a negative argument, the word case conversion commands apply to the
appropriate number of words before point, but do not move point. This is convenient when
you have just typed a word in the wrong case: you can give the case conversion command
and continue typing.
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 261

If a word case conversion command is given in the middle of a word, it applies only to the
part of the word which follows point. (This is comparable to what M-d (kill-word) does.)
With a negative argument, case conversion applies only to the part of the word before point.
The other case conversion commands are C-x C-u (upcase-region) and C-x C-l
(downcase-region), which convert everything between point and mark to the specified
case. Point and mark do not move.
The region case conversion commands upcase-region and downcase-region are nor-
mally disabled. This means that they ask for confirmation if you try to use them. When
you confirm, you may enable the command, which means it will not ask for confirmation
again. See Section 33.3.11 [Disabling], page 521.

22.8 Text Mode

Text mode is a major mode for editing files of text in a human language. Files which have
names ending in the extension .txt are usually opened in Text mode (see Section 20.3
[Choosing Modes], page 244). To explicitly switch to Text mode, type M-x text-mode.
In Text mode, only blank lines and page delimiters separate paragraphs. As a result,
paragraphs can be indented, and adaptive filling determines what indentation to use when
filling a paragraph. See Section 22.6.4 [Adaptive Fill], page 259.
In Text mode, the TAB (indent-for-tab-command) command usually inserts whitespace
up to the next tab stop, instead of indenting the current line. See Chapter 21 [Indentation],
page 247, for details.
Text mode turns off the features concerned with comments except when you explicitly
invoke them. It changes the syntax table so that apostrophes are considered part of words
(e.g., ‘don't’ is considered one word). However, if a word starts with an apostrophe, it
is treated as a prefix for the purposes of capitalization (e.g., M-c converts ‘'hello'’ into
‘'Hello'’, as expected).
If you indent the first lines of paragraphs, then you should use Paragraph-Indent Text
mode (M-x paragraph-indent-text-mode) rather than Text mode. In that mode, you
do not need to have blank lines between paragraphs, because the first-line indentation is
sufficient to start a paragraph; however paragraphs in which every line is indented are not
supported. Use M-x paragraph-indent-minor-mode to enable an equivalent minor mode
for situations where you shouldn’t change the major mode—in mail composition, for instance.
Text mode binds M-TAB to ispell-complete-word. This command performs completion
of the partial word in the buffer before point, using the spelling dictionary as the space of
possible words. See Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134. If your window manager defines M-TAB
to switch windows, you can type ESC TAB or C-M-i instead.
Entering Text mode runs the mode hook text-mode-hook (see Section 20.1 [Major
Modes], page 241).
The following sections describe several major modes that are derived from Text mode.
These derivatives share most of the features of Text mode described above. In particular,
derivatives of Text mode run text-mode-hook prior to running their own mode hooks.
262 GNU Emacs Manual

22.9 Outline Mode

Outline mode is a major mode derived from Text mode, which is specialized for editing
outlines. It provides commands to navigate between entries in the outline structure, and
commands to make parts of a buffer temporarily invisible, so that the outline structure
may be more easily viewed. Type M-x outline-mode to switch to Outline mode. Entering
Outline mode runs the hook text-mode-hook followed by the hook outline-mode-hook
(see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504).
When you use an Outline mode command to make a line invisible (see Section 22.9.4
[Outline Visibility], page 264), the line disappears from the screen. An ellipsis (three periods
in a row) is displayed at the end of the previous visible line, to indicate the hidden text.
Multiple consecutive invisible lines produce just one ellipsis.
Editing commands that operate on lines, such as C-n and C-p, treat the text of the
invisible line as part of the previous visible line. Killing the ellipsis at the end of a visible
line really kills all the following invisible text associated with the ellipsis.

22.9.1 Outline Minor Mode

Outline minor mode is a buffer-local minor mode which provides the same commands as the
major mode, Outline mode, but can be used in conjunction with other major modes. You
can type M-x outline-minor-mode to toggle Outline minor mode in the current buffer, or
use a file-local variable setting to enable it in a specific file (see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables],
page 507).
The major mode, Outline mode, provides special key bindings on the C-c prefix. Outline
minor mode provides similar bindings with C-c @ as the prefix; this is to reduce the conflicts
with the major mode’s special commands. (The variable outline-minor-mode-prefix
controls the prefix used.)
If outline-minor-mode-use-buttons is non-nil, Outline minor mode will use buttons
at the beginning of the heading lines, in addition to ellipsis, to show that a section is hidden.
Clicking the mouse on the button toggles display of the section. If the value of this variable
is insert, the buttons are inserted directly into the buffer text, so RET on the button will
also toggle display of the section, like a mouse click does. If the value is in-margins, Outline
minor mode will use the window margins to indicate that a section is hidden. The buttons
are customizable as icons (see Section 11.11 [Icons], page 86).
If the outline-minor-mode-cycle user option is non-nil, the TAB and S-TAB keys that
cycle the visibility are enabled on the outline heading lines (see Section 22.9.4 [Outline
Visibility], page 264). TAB cycles hiding, showing the sub-heading, and showing all for the
current section. S-TAB does the same for the entire buffer.

22.9.2 Format of Outlines

Outline mode assumes that the lines in the buffer are of two types: heading lines and body
lines. A heading line represents a topic in the outline. Heading lines start with one or more
asterisk (‘*’) characters; the number of asterisks determines the depth of the heading in the
outline structure. Thus, a heading line with one ‘*’ is a major topic; all the heading lines
with two ‘*’s between it and the next one-‘*’ heading are its subtopics; and so on. Any line
that is not a heading line is a body line. Body lines belong with the preceding heading line.
Here is an example:
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 263

* Food
This is the body,
which says something about the topic of food.

** Delicious Food
This is the body of the second-level header.

** Distasteful Food
This could have
a body too, with
several lines.

*** Dormitory Food

* Shelter
Another first-level topic with its header line.
A heading line together with all following body lines is called collectively an entry. A
heading line together with all following deeper heading lines and their body lines is called a
subtree.
You can customize the criterion for distinguishing heading lines by setting the variable
outline-regexp. (The recommended ways to do this are in a major mode function or with
a file local variable.) Any line whose beginning has a match for this regexp is considered a
heading line. Matches that start within a line (not at the left margin) do not count.
The length of the matching text determines the level of the heading; longer matches
make a more deeply nested level. Thus, for example, if a text formatter has commands
‘@chapter’, ‘@section’ and ‘@subsection’ to divide the document into chapters and sec-
tions, you could make those lines count as heading lines by setting outline-regexp to
‘"@chap\\|@\\(sub\\)*section"’. Note the trick: the two words ‘chapter’ and ‘section’
are equally long, but by defining the regexp to match only ‘chap’ we ensure that the length
of the text matched on a chapter heading is shorter, so that Outline mode will know that
sections are contained in chapters. This works as long as no other command starts with
‘@chap’.
You can explicitly specify a rule for calculating the level of a heading line by setting the
variable outline-level. The value of outline-level should be a function that takes no
arguments and returns the level of the current heading. The recommended ways to set this
variable are in a major mode command or with a file local variable.

22.9.3 Outline Motion Commands

Outline mode provides special motion commands that move backward and forward to heading
lines.
C-c C-n Move point to the next visible heading line (outline-next-visible-heading).
C-c C-p Move point to the previous visible heading line (outline-previous-visible-
heading).
C-c C-f Move point to the next visible heading line at the same level as the one point is
on (outline-forward-same-level).
264 GNU Emacs Manual

C-c C-b Move point to the previous visible heading line at the same level
(outline-backward-same-level).
C-c C-u Move point up to a lower-level (more inclusive) visible heading line (outline-up-
heading).
All of the above commands accept numeric arguments as repeat counts. For example,
C-c C-f, when given an argument, moves forward that many visible heading lines on the
same level, and C-c C-u with an argument moves out of that many nested levels.

22.9.4 Outline Visibility Commands

Outline mode provides several commands for temporarily hiding or revealing parts of the
buffer, based on the outline structure. These commands are not undoable; their effects
are simply not recorded by the undo mechanism, so you can undo right past them (see
Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131).
Many of these commands act on the current heading line. If point is on a heading line,
that is the current heading line; if point is on a body line, the current heading line is the
nearest preceding header line.
C-c C-c Make the current heading line’s body invisible (outline-hide-entry).
C-c C-e Make the current heading line’s body visible (outline-show-entry).
C-c C-d Make everything under the current heading invisible, not including the heading
itself (outline-hide-subtree).
C-c C-s Make everything under the current heading visible, including body, subheadings,
and their bodies (outline-show-subtree).
C-c C-l Make the body of the current heading line, and of all its subheadings, invisible
(outline-hide-leaves).
C-c C-k Make all subheadings of the current heading line, at all levels, visible
(outline-show-branches).
C-c C-i Make immediate subheadings (one level down) of the current heading line visible
(outline-show-children).
C-c C-t Make all body lines in the buffer invisible (outline-hide-body).
C-c C-a Make all lines in the buffer visible (outline-show-all).
C-c C-q Hide everything except the top n levels of heading lines (outline-hide-
sublevels).
C-c C-o Hide everything except for the heading or body that point is in, plus the headings
leading up from there to the top level of the outline (outline-hide-other).
The simplest of these commands are C-c C-c (outline-hide-entry), which hides the
body lines directly following the current heading line, and C-c C-e (outline-show-entry),
which reveals them. Subheadings and their bodies are not affected.
The commands C-c C-d (outline-hide-subtree) and C-c C-s (outline-show-
subtree) are more powerful. They apply to the current heading line’s subtree: its body, all
of its subheadings, both direct and indirect, and all of their bodies.
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 265

The command C-c C-l (outline-hide-leaves) hides the body of the current heading
line as well as all the bodies in its subtree; the subheadings themselves are left visible. The
command C-c C-k (outline-show-branches) reveals the subheadings, if they had previously
been hidden (e.g., by C-c C-d). The command C-c C-i (outline-show-children) is a
weaker version of this; it reveals just the direct subheadings, i.e., those one level down.
The command C-c C-o (outline-hide-other) hides everything except the entry that
point is in, plus its parents (the headers leading up from there to top level in the outline)
and the top level headings. It also reveals body lines preceding the first heading in the
buffer.
The remaining commands affect the whole buffer. C-c C-t (outline-hide-body) makes
all body lines invisible, so that you see just the outline structure (as a special exception, it
will not hide lines at the top of the file, preceding the first header line, even though these
are technically body lines). C-c C-a (outline-show-all) makes all lines visible. C-c C-q
(outline-hide-sublevels) hides all but the top level headings at and above the level of the
current heading line (defaulting to 1 if point is not on a heading); with a numeric argument
n, it hides everything except the top n levels of heading lines. Note that it completely reveals
all the n top levels and the body lines before the first heading.
Outline also provides two convenience commands to cycle the visibility of each section
and the whole buffer. Typing TAB (outline-cycle) on a heading cycles the current section
between “hide all”, “subheadings”, and “show all” states. Typing S-TAB (outline-cycle-
buffer) cycles the whole buffer between “only top-level headings”, “all headings and
subheadings”, and “show all” states.
When incremental search finds text that is hidden by Outline mode, it makes that part of
the buffer visible. If you exit the search at that position, the text remains visible. To toggle
whether or not an active incremental search can match hidden text, type M-s i. To change
the default for future searches, customize the option search-invisible. (This option also
affects how query-replace and related functions treat hidden text, see Section 12.10.4
[Query Replace], page 124.) You can also automatically make text visible as you navigate in
it by using Reveal mode (M-x reveal-mode), a buffer-local minor mode.
The outline-default-state variable controls what headings will be visible after Outline
mode is turned on. If non-nil, some headings are initially outlined. If equal to a number,
show only headings up to and including the corresponding level. If equal to outline-show-
all, all text of buffer is shown. If equal to outline-show-only-headings, show only
headings, whatever their level is. If equal to a lambda function or function name, this
function is expected to toggle headings visibility, and will be called without arguments after
the mode is enabled.

22.9.5 Viewing One Outline in Multiple Views

You can display two views of a single outline at the same time, in different windows. To
do this, you must create an indirect buffer using M-x make-indirect-buffer. The first
argument of this command is the existing outline buffer name, and its second argument is
the name to use for the new indirect buffer. See Section 16.6 [Indirect Buffers], page 181.
Once the indirect buffer exists, you can display it in a window in the normal fashion, with
C-x 4 b or other Emacs commands. The Outline mode commands to show and hide parts of
the text operate on each buffer independently; as a result, each buffer can have its own view.
If you want more than two views on the same outline, create additional indirect buffers.
266 GNU Emacs Manual

22.9.6 Folding Editing

The Foldout package extends Outline mode and Outline minor mode with folding commands.
The idea of folding is that you zoom in on a nested portion of the outline, while hiding its
relatives at higher levels.
Consider an Outline mode buffer with all the text and subheadings under level-1 headings
hidden. To look at what is hidden under one of these headings, you could use C-c C-e (M-x
outline-show-entry) to expose the body, or C-c C-i to expose the child (level-2) headings.
With Foldout, you use C-c C-z (M-x foldout-zoom-subtree). This exposes the body
and child subheadings, and narrows the buffer so that only the level-1 heading, the body
and the level-2 headings are visible. Now to look under one of the level-2 headings, position
the cursor on it and use C-c C-z again. This exposes the level-2 body and its level-3 child
subheadings and narrows the buffer again. Zooming in on successive subheadings can be
done as much as you like. A string in the mode line shows how deep you’ve gone.
When zooming in on a heading, to see only the child subheadings specify a numeric
argument: C-u C-c C-z. The number of levels of children can be specified too (compare
M-x outline-show-children), e.g., M-2 C-c C-z exposes two levels of child subheadings.
Alternatively, the body can be specified with a negative argument: M-- C-c C-z. The whole
subtree can be expanded, similarly to C-c C-s (M-x outline-show-subtree), by specifying
a zero argument: M-0 C-c C-z.
While you’re zoomed in, you can still use Outline mode’s exposure and hiding functions
without disturbing Foldout. Also, since the buffer is narrowed, global editing actions will
only affect text under the zoomed-in heading. This is useful for restricting changes to a
particular chapter or section of your document.
To unzoom (exit) a fold, use C-c C-x (M-x foldout-exit-fold). This hides all the text
and subheadings under the top-level heading and returns you to the previous view of the
buffer. Specifying a numeric argument exits that many levels of folds. Specifying a zero
argument exits all folds.
To cancel the narrowing of a fold without hiding the text and subheadings, specify a
negative argument. For example, M--2 C-c C-x exits two folds and leaves the text and
subheadings exposed.
Foldout mode also provides mouse commands for entering and exiting folds, and for
showing and hiding text:
C-M-mouse-1 zooms in on the heading clicked on
single click: expose body.
double click: expose subheadings.
triple click: expose body and subheadings.
quad click: expose entire subtree.
C-M-mouse-2 exposes text under the heading clicked on
single click: expose body.
double click: expose subheadings.
triple click: expose body and subheadings.
quad click: expose entire subtree.
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 267

C-M-mouse-3 hides text under the heading clicked on or exits fold

single click: hide subtree.
double click: exit fold and hide text.
triple click: exit fold without hiding text.
quad click: exit all folds and hide text.
You can specify different modifier keys (instead of Ctrl-Meta-) by setting
foldout-mouse-modifiers; but if you have already loaded the foldout.el library, you
must reload it in order for this to take effect.
To use the Foldout package, you can type M-x load-library RET foldout RET; or you
can arrange for to do that automatically by putting the following in your init file:
(with-eval-after-load "outline"
(require 'foldout))

22.10 Org Mode

Org mode is a variant of Outline mode for using Emacs as an organizer and/or authoring
system. Files with names ending in the extension .org are opened in Org mode (see
Section 20.3 [Choosing Modes], page 244). To explicitly switch to Org mode, type M-x
org-mode.
In Org mode, as in Outline mode, each entry has a heading line that starts with one or
more ‘*’ characters. See Section 22.9.2 [Outline Format], page 262. In addition, any line
that begins with the ‘#’ character is treated as a comment.
Org mode provides commands for easily viewing and manipulating the outline structure.
The simplest of these commands is TAB (org-cycle). If invoked on a heading line, it cycles
through the different visibility states of the subtree: (i) showing only that heading line, (ii)
showing only the heading line and the heading lines of its direct children, if any, and (iii)
showing the entire subtree. If invoked in a body line, the global binding for TAB is executed.
Typing S-TAB (org-shifttab) anywhere in an Org mode buffer cycles the visibility of
the entire outline structure, between (i) showing only top-level heading lines, (ii) showing all
heading lines but no body lines, and (iii) showing everything.
You can move an entire entry up or down in the buffer, including its body lines and
subtree (if any), by typing M-UP (org-metaup) or M-DOWN (org-metadown) on the heading
line. Similarly, you can promote or demote a heading line with M-LEFT (org-metaleft) and
M-RIGHT (org-metaright). These commands execute their global bindings if invoked on a
body line.
The following subsections give basic instructions for using Org mode as an organizer and
as an authoring system. For details, see Section “Introduction” in The Org Manual.

22.10.1 Org as an organizer

You can tag an Org entry as a TODO item by typing C-c C-t (org-todo) anywhere in the
entry. This adds the keyword ‘TODO’ to the heading line. Typing C-c C-t again switches the
keyword to ‘DONE’; another C-c C-t removes the keyword entirely, and so forth. You can
customize the keywords used by C-c C-t via the variable org-todo-keywords.
Apart from marking an entry as TODO, you can attach a date to it, by typing C-c C-s
(org-schedule) in the entry. This prompts for a date by popping up the Emacs Calendar
268 GNU Emacs Manual

(see Chapter 28 [Calendar/Diary], page 399), and then adds the tag ‘SCHEDULED’, together
with the selected date, beneath the heading line. The command C-c C-d (org-deadline)
has the same effect, except that it uses the tag DEADLINE.
Once you have some TODO items planned in an Org file, you can add that file to the
list of agenda files by typing C-c [ (org-agenda-file-to-front). Org mode is designed
to let you easily maintain multiple agenda files, e.g., for organizing different aspects of your
life. The list of agenda files is stored in the variable org-agenda-files.
To view items coming from your agenda files, type M-x org-agenda. This command
prompts for what you want to see: a list of things to do this week, a list of TODO items
with specific keywords, etc.

22.10.2 Org as an authoring system

You may want to format your Org notes nicely and to prepare them for export and publication.
To export the current buffer, type C-c C-e (org-export-dispatch) anywhere in an Org
buffer. This command prompts for an export format; currently supported formats include
HTML, LATEX, Texinfo, OpenDocument (.odt), iCalendar, Markdown, man-page, and PDF.
Some formats, such as PDF, require certain system tools to be installed.
To export several files at once to a specific directory, either locally or over the network,
you must define a list of projects through the variable org-publish-project-alist. See
its documentation for details.
Org supports a simple markup scheme for applying text formatting to exported documents:
- This text is /emphasized/
- This text is *in bold*
- This text is _underlined_
- This text uses =a teletype font=

#+begin_quote
``This is a quote.''
#+end_quote

#+begin_example
This is an example.
#+end_example
For further details, Section “Exporting” in The Org Manual, and Section “Publishing”
in The Org Manual.

22.11 TEX Mode

TEX is a powerful text formatter written by Donald Knuth; like GNU Emacs, it is free
software. The TEX format has several variants, including LATEX, a simplified input format
for TEX; DocTEX, a special file format in which the LATEX sources are written, combining
sources with documentation; and SliTEX, an obsolete special form of LATEX2 .
Emacs provides a TEX major mode for each of these variants: Plain TEX mode, LATEX
mode, DocTEX mode, and SliTEX mode. Emacs selects the appropriate mode by looking
2
It has been replaced by the ‘slides’ document class, which comes with LATEX.
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 269

at the contents of the buffer. (This is done by invoking the tex-mode command, which is
normally called automatically when you visit a TEX-like file. See Section 20.3 [Choosing
Modes], page 244.) If the contents are insufficient to determine this, Emacs chooses the mode
specified by the variable tex-default-mode; its default value is latex-mode. If Emacs
does not guess right, you can select the correct variant of TEX mode using the commands
plain-tex-mode, latex-mode, slitex-mode, or doctex-mode.
The following sections document the features of TEX mode and its variants. There are
several other TEX-related Emacs packages, which are not documented in this manual:
• BibTEX mode is a major mode for BibTEX files, which are commonly used for keeping
bibliographic references for LATEX documents. For more information, see the documen-
tation string for the command bibtex-mode.
• The RefTEX package provides a minor mode which can be used with LATEX mode to
manage bibliographic references. For more information, see the RefTEX Info manual,
which is distributed with Emacs.
• The AUCTEX package provides more advanced features for editing TEX and its related
formats, including the ability to preview TEX equations within Emacs buffers. Unlike
BibTEX mode and the RefTEX package, AUCTEX is not distributed with Emacs by
default. It can be downloaded via the Package Menu (see Chapter 32 [Packages],
page 485); once installed, see the AUCTEX manual, which is included with the package.

22.11.1 TEX Editing Commands

" Insert, according to context, either ‘``’ or ‘"’ or ‘''’ (tex-insert-quote).
C-j Insert a paragraph break (two newlines) and check the previous paragraph for
unbalanced braces or dollar signs (tex-terminate-paragraph).
M-x tex-validate-region
Check each paragraph in the region for unbalanced braces or dollar signs.
C-c { Insert ‘{}’ and position point between them (tex-insert-braces).
C-c } Move forward past the next unmatched close brace (up-list).
In TEX, the character ‘"’ is not normally used; instead, quotations begin with ‘``’ and
end with ‘''’. TEX mode therefore binds the " key to the tex-insert-quote command.
This inserts ‘``’ after whitespace or an open brace, ‘"’ after a backslash, and ‘''’ after any
other character.
As a special exception, if you type " when the text before point is either ‘``’ or ‘''’,
Emacs replaces that preceding text with a single ‘"’ character. You can therefore type "" to
insert ‘"’, should you ever need to do so. (You can also use C-q " to insert this character.)
In TEX mode, ‘$’ has a special syntax code which attempts to understand the way TEX
math mode delimiters match. When you insert a ‘$’ that is meant to exit math mode, the
position of the matching ‘$’ that entered math mode is displayed for a second. This is
the same feature that displays the open brace that matches a close brace that is inserted.
However, there is no way to tell whether a ‘$’ enters math mode or leaves it; so when you
insert a ‘$’ that enters math mode, the previous ‘$’ position is shown as if it were a match,
even though they are actually unrelated.
270 GNU Emacs Manual

TEX uses braces as delimiters that must match. Some users prefer to keep braces balanced
at all times, rather than inserting them singly. Use C-c { (tex-insert-braces) to insert a
pair of braces. It leaves point between the two braces so you can insert the text that belongs
inside. Afterward, use the command C-c } (up-list) to move forward past the close brace.
You can also invoke C-c { after marking some text: then the command encloses the marked
text in braces.
There are two commands for checking the matching of braces. C-j (tex-terminate-
paragraph) checks the paragraph before point, and inserts two newlines to start a
new paragraph. It outputs a message in the echo area if any mismatch is found. M-x
tex-validate-region checks a region, paragraph by paragraph. The errors are listed in an
*Occur* buffer; you can use the usual Occur mode commands in that buffer, such as C-c
C-c, to visit a particular mismatch (see Section 12.11 [Other Repeating Search], page 126).
Note that Emacs commands count square brackets and parentheses in TEX mode, not
just braces. This is not strictly correct for the purpose of checking TEX syntax. However,
parentheses and square brackets are likely to be used in text as matching delimiters, and it
is useful for the various motion commands and automatic match display to work with them.

22.11.2 LATEX Editing Commands

LATEX mode provides a few extra features not applicable to plain TEX:
C-c C-o Insert ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ for LATEX block and position point on a line between
them (latex-insert-block).
C-c C-e Close the innermost LATEX block not yet closed (latex-close-block).
In LATEX input, ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ tags are used to group blocks of text. To insert a
block, type C-c C-o (latex-insert-block). This prompts for a block type, and inserts the
appropriate matching ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ tags, leaving a blank line between the two and
moving point there.
When entering the block type argument to C-c C-o, you can use the usual completion
commands (see Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30). The default completion list contains the
standard LATEX block types. If you want additional block types for completion, customize
the list variable latex-block-names.
In LATEX input, ‘\begin’ and ‘\end’ tags must balance. You can use C-c C-e
(latex-close-block) to insert an ‘\end’ tag which matches the last unmatched
‘\begin’. It also indents the ‘\end’ to match the corresponding ‘\begin’, and inserts
a newline after the ‘\end’ tag if point is at the beginning of a line. The minor mode
latex-electric-env-pair-mode automatically inserts an ‘\end’ or ‘\begin’ tag for you
when you type the corresponding one.

22.11.3 TEX Printing Commands

You can invoke TEX as a subprocess of Emacs, supplying either the entire contents of the
buffer or just part of it (e.g., one chapter of a larger document).
C-c C-b Invoke TEX on the entire current buffer (tex-buffer).
C-c C-r Invoke TEX on the current region, together with the buffer’s header
(tex-region).
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 271

C-c C-f Invoke TEX on the current file (tex-file).

C-c C-v Preview the output from the last C-c C-b, C-c C-r, or C-c C-f command
(tex-view).
C-c C-p Print the output from the last C-c C-b, C-c C-r, or C-c C-f command
(tex-print).
C-c TAB Invoke BibTEX on the current file (tex-bibtex-file).
C-c C-l Recenter the window showing output from TEX so that the last line can be seen
(tex-recenter-output-buffer).
C-c C-k Kill the TEX subprocess (tex-kill-job).
C-c C-c Invoke some other compilation command on the entire current buffer
(tex-compile).
To pass the current buffer through TEX, type C-c C-b (tex-buffer). The formatted
output goes in a temporary file, normally a .dvi file. Afterwards, you can type C-c C-v
(tex-view) to launch an external program, such as xdvi, to view this output file. You can
also type C-c C-p (tex-print) to print a hardcopy of the output file.
By default, C-c C-b runs TEX in the current directory. The output of TEX is also created
in this directory. To run TEX in a different directory, change the variable tex-directory
to the desired directory. If your environment variable TEXINPUTS contains relative names,
or if your files contain ‘\input’ commands with relative file names, then tex-directory
must be "." or you will get the wrong results. Otherwise, it is safe to specify some other
directory, such as "/tmp".
The buffer’s TEX variant determines what shell command C-c C-b actually runs. In
Plain TEX mode, it is specified by the variable tex-run-command, which defaults to "tex".
In LATEX mode, it is specified by latex-run-command, which defaults to "latex". The
shell command that C-c C-v runs to view the .dvi output is determined by the variable
tex-dvi-view-command, regardless of the TEX variant. The shell command that C-c C-p
runs to print the output is determined by the variable tex-dvi-print-command. The
variable tex-print-file-extension can be set to the required file extension for viewing
and printing TEX-compiled files. For example, you can set it to .pdf, and update tex-dvi-
view-command and tex-dvi-print-command accordingly, as well as latex-run-command or
tex-run-command.
Normally, Emacs automatically appends the output file name to the shell command
strings described in the preceding paragraph. For example, if tex-dvi-view-command is
"xdvi", C-c C-v runs xdvi output-file-name. In some cases, however, the file name needs
to be embedded in the command, e.g., if you need to provide the file name as an argument
to one command whose output is piped to another. You can specify where to put the file
name with ‘*’ in the command string. For example,
(setq tex-dvi-print-command "dvips -f * | lpr")
The terminal output from TEX, including any error messages, appears in a buffer called
*tex-shell*. If TEX gets an error, you can switch to this buffer and feed it input (this
works as in Shell mode; see Section 31.5.2 [Interactive Shell], page 455). Without switching
to this buffer you can scroll it so that its last line is visible by typing C-c C-l.
272 GNU Emacs Manual

Type C-c C-k (tex-kill-job) to kill the TEX process if you see that its output is no
longer useful. Using C-c C-b or C-c C-r also kills any TEX process still running.
You can also pass an arbitrary region through TEX by typing C-c C-r (tex-region).
This is tricky, however, because most files of TEX input contain commands at the beginning
to set parameters and define macros, without which no later part of the file will format
correctly. To solve this problem, C-c C-r allows you to designate a part of the file as
containing essential commands; it is included before the specified region as part of the input
to TEX. The designated part of the file is called the header.
To indicate the bounds of the header in Plain TEX mode, you insert two special strings
in the file. Insert ‘%**start of header’ before the header, and ‘%**end of header’ after it.
Each string must appear entirely on one line, but there may be other text on the line before
or after. The lines containing the two strings are included in the header. If ‘%**start of
header’ does not appear within the first 100 lines of the buffer, C-c C-r assumes that there
is no header.
In LATEX mode, the header begins with ‘\documentclass’ or ‘\documentstyle’ and ends
with ‘\begin{document}’. These are commands that LATEX requires you to use in any case,
so nothing special needs to be done to identify the header.
The commands (tex-buffer) and (tex-region) do all of their work in a temporary
directory, and do not have available any of the auxiliary files needed by TEX for cross-
references; these commands are generally not suitable for running the final copy in which all
of the cross-references need to be correct.
When you want the auxiliary files for cross references, use C-c C-f (tex-file) which runs
TEX on the current buffer’s file, in that file’s directory. Before running TEX, it offers to save
any modified buffers. Generally, you need to use (tex-file) twice to get the cross-references
right.
The value of the variable tex-start-options specifies options for the TEX run.
The value of the variable tex-start-commands specifies TEX commands for starting TEX.
The default value causes TEX to run in nonstop mode. To run TEX interactively, set the
variable to "".
Large TEX documents are often split into several files—one main file, plus subfiles.
Running TEX on a subfile typically does not work; you have to run it on the main file. In
order to make tex-file useful when you are editing a subfile, you can set the variable
tex-main-file to the name of the main file. Then tex-file runs TEX on that file.
The most convenient way to use tex-main-file is to specify it in a local variable list in
each of the subfiles. See Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507.
For LATEX files, you can use BibTEX to process the auxiliary file for the current buffer’s file.
BibTEX looks up bibliographic citations in a data base and prepares the cited references for the
bibliography section. The command C-c TAB (tex-bibtex-file) runs the shell command
(tex-bibtex-command) to produce a ‘.bbl’ file for the current buffer’s file. Generally,
you need to do C-c C-f (tex-file) once to generate the ‘.aux’ file, then do C-c TAB
(tex-bibtex-file), and then repeat C-c C-f (tex-file) twice more to get the cross-
references correct.
To invoke some other compilation program on the current TEX buffer, type C-c C-c
(tex-compile). This command knows how to pass arguments to many common programs,
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 273

including pdflatex, yap, xdvi, and dvips. You can select your desired compilation program
using the standard completion keys (see Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30).

22.11.4 TEX Mode Miscellany

Entering any variant of TEX mode runs the hooks text-mode-hook and tex-mode-hook.
Then it runs either plain-tex-mode-hook, doctex-mode-hook, latex-mode-hook, or
slitex-mode-hook, whichever is appropriate. Starting the TEX shell runs the hook
tex-shell-hook. See Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.
The commands M-x iso-iso2tex, M-x iso-tex2iso, M-x iso-iso2gtex and M-x
iso-gtex2iso can be used to convert between Latin-1 encoded files and TEX-encoded
equivalents.

22.12 SGML and HTML Modes

The major modes for SGML and HTML provide indentation support and commands for
operating on tags.
HTML consists of two modes—one, a basic mode called html-mode is a slightly customized
variant of SGML mode. The other, which is used by default for HTML files, is called
mhtml-mode, and attempts to properly handle Javascript enclosed in a <script> element
and CSS embedded in a <style> element.
C-c C-n Interactively specify a special character and insert the SGML ‘&’-command for
that character (sgml-name-char).
C-c C-t Interactively specify a tag and its attributes (sgml-tag). This command asks
you for a tag name and for the attribute values, then inserts both the opening
tag and the closing tag, leaving point between them.
With a prefix argument n, the command puts the tag around the n words already
present in the buffer after point. Whenever a region is active, it puts the tag
around the region (when Transient Mark mode is off, it does this when a numeric
argument of −1 is supplied.)
C-c C-a Interactively insert attribute values for the current tag (sgml-attributes).
C-c C-f Skip across a balanced tag group (which extends from an opening tag through
its corresponding closing tag) (sgml-skip-tag-forward). A numeric argument
acts as a repeat count.
C-c C-b Skip backward across a balanced tag group (which extends from an opening tag
through its corresponding closing tag) (sgml-skip-tag-backward). A numeric
argument acts as a repeat count.
C-c C-d Delete the tag at or after point, and delete the matching tag too (sgml-delete-
tag). If the tag at or after point is an opening tag, delete the closing tag too; if
it is a closing tag, delete the opening tag too.
C-c ? tag RET
Display a description of the meaning of tag tag (sgml-tag-help). If the
argument tag is empty, describe the tag at point.
C-c / Insert a close tag for the innermost unterminated tag (sgml-close-tag). If
called within a tag or a comment, close it instead of inserting a close tag.
274 GNU Emacs Manual

C-c 8 Toggle a minor mode in which Latin-1 characters insert the corresponding
SGML commands that stand for them, instead of the characters themselves
(sgml-name-8bit-mode).
C-c C-v Run a shell command (which you must specify) to validate the current buffer as
SGML (sgml-validate). (In HTML mode this key sequence runs a different
command.)
C-c TAB Toggle the visibility of existing tags in the buffer. This can be used as a cheap
preview (sgml-tags-invisible).
The major mode for editing XML documents is called nXML mode. This is a powerful
major mode that can recognize many existing XML schemas and use them to provide comple-
tion of XML elements via M-TAB, as well as on-the-fly XML validation with error highlighting.
To enable nXML mode in an existing buffer, type M-x nxml-mode, or, equivalently, M-x
xml-mode. Emacs uses nXML mode for files which have the extension .xml. For XHTML
files, which have the extension .xhtml, Emacs uses HTML mode by default; you can make it
use nXML mode by customizing the variable auto-mode-alist (see Section 20.3 [Choosing
Modes], page 244). nXML mode is described in an Info manual, which is distributed with
Emacs.
You may choose to use the less powerful SGML mode for editing XML, since XML is a
strict subset of SGML. To enable SGML mode in an existing buffer, type M-x sgml-mode.
On enabling SGML mode, Emacs examines the buffer to determine whether it is XML; if
so, it sets the variable sgml-xml-mode to a non-nil value. This causes SGML mode’s tag
insertion commands, described above, to always insert explicit closing tags as well.

22.13 Nroff Mode

Nroff mode, a major mode derived from Text mode, is specialized for editing nroff files (e.g.,
Unix man pages). Type M-x nroff-mode to enter this mode. Entering Nroff mode runs the
hook text-mode-hook, then nroff-mode-hook (see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504).
In Nroff mode, nroff command lines are treated as paragraph separators, pages are
separated by ‘.bp’ commands, and comments start with backslash-doublequote. It also
defines these commands:
M-n Move to the beginning of the next line that isn’t an nroff command
(nroff-forward-text-line). An argument is a repeat count.
M-p Like M-n but move up (nroff-backward-text-line).
M-? Displays in the echo area the number of text lines (lines that are not nroff
commands) in the region (nroff-count-text-lines).
Electric Nroff mode is a buffer-local minor mode that can be used with Nroff mode. To
toggle this minor mode, type M-x nroff-electric-mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes],
page 242). When the mode is on, each time you type RET to end a line containing an
nroff command that opens a kind of grouping, the nroff command to close that grouping is
automatically inserted on the following line.
If you use Outline minor mode with Nroff mode (see Section 22.9 [Outline Mode],
page 262), heading lines are lines of the form ‘.H’ followed by a number (the header level).
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 275

22.14 Enriched Text

Enriched mode is a minor mode for editing formatted text files in a WYSIWYG (What
You See Is What You Get) fashion. When Enriched mode is enabled, you can apply various
formatting properties to the text in the buffer, such as fonts and colors; upon saving the
buffer, those properties are saved together with the text, using the MIME ‘text/enriched’
file format.
Enriched mode is typically used with Text mode (see Section 22.8 [Text Mode], page 261).
It is not compatible with Font Lock mode, which is used by many major modes, including
most programming language modes, for syntax highlighting (see Section 11.13 [Font Lock],
page 88). Unlike Enriched mode, Font Lock mode assigns text properties automatically,
based on the current buffer contents; those properties are not saved to disk.
The file enriched.txt in Emacs’s data-directory serves as an example of the features
of Enriched mode.

22.14.1 Enriched Mode

Enriched mode is a buffer-local minor mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242). When
you visit a file that has been saved in the ‘text/enriched’ format, Emacs automatically
enables Enriched mode, and applies the formatting information in the file to the buffer text.
When you save a buffer with Enriched mode enabled, it is saved using the ‘text/enriched’
format, including the formatting information.
To create a new file of formatted text, visit the nonexistent file and type M-x
enriched-mode. This command actually toggles Enriched mode. With a prefix argument,
it enables Enriched mode if the argument is positive, and disables Enriched mode otherwise.
If you disable Enriched mode, Emacs no longer saves the buffer using the ‘text/enriched’
format; any formatting properties that have been added to the buffer remain in the buffer,
but they are not saved to disk.
Enriched mode does not save all Emacs text properties, only those specified in the
variable enriched-translations. These include properties for fonts, colors, indentation,
and justification.
If you visit a file and Emacs fails to recognize that it is in the ‘text/enriched’ format,
type M-x format-decode-buffer. This command prompts for a file format, and re-reads the
file in that format. Specifying the ‘text/enriched’ format automatically enables Enriched
mode.
To view a ‘text/enriched’ file in raw form (as plain text with markup tags rather than
formatted text), use M-x find-file-literally (see Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146).
See Section “Format Conversion” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for details of
how Emacs recognizes and converts file formats like ‘text/enriched’. See Section “Text
Properties” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more information about text properties.

22.14.2 Hard and Soft Newlines

In Enriched mode, Emacs distinguishes between two different kinds of newlines, hard newlines
and soft newlines. You can also enable or disable this feature in other buffers, by typing M-x
use-hard-newlines.
Hard newlines are used to separate paragraphs, or anywhere there needs to be a line break
regardless of how the text is filled; soft newlines are used for filling. The RET (newline)
276 GNU Emacs Manual

and C-o (open-line) commands insert hard newlines. The fill commands, including Auto
Fill (see Section 22.6.1 [Auto Fill], page 256), insert only soft newlines and delete only soft
newlines, leaving hard newlines alone.
Thus, when editing with Enriched mode, you should not use RET or C-o to break lines
in the middle of filled paragraphs. Use Auto Fill mode or explicit fill commands (see
Section 22.6.2 [Fill Commands], page 257) instead. Use RET or C-o where line breaks should
always remain, such as in tables and lists. For such lines, you may also want to set the
justification style to unfilled (see Section 22.14.6 [Enriched Justification], page 278).

22.14.3 Editing Format Information

The easiest way to alter properties is with the ‘Text Properties’ menu. You can get to
this menu from the ‘Edit’ menu in the menu bar (see Section 1.4 [Menu Bar], page 9), or
with C-mouse-2 (see Section 18.4 [Menu Mouse Clicks], page 198). Some of the commands
in the ‘Text Properties’ menu are listed below (you can also invoke them with M-x):
Remove Face Properties
Remove face properties from the region (facemenu-remove-face-props).
Remove Text Properties
Remove all text properties from the region, including face properties
(facemenu-remove-all).
Describe Properties
List all text properties and other information about the character following
point (describe-text-properties).
Display Faces
Display a list of defined faces (list-faces-display). See Section 11.8 [Faces],
page 82.
Display Colors
Display a list of defined colors (list-colors-display). See Section 11.9 [Col-
ors], page 82.
The other menu entries are described in the following sections.

22.14.4 Faces in Enriched Text

The following commands can be used to add or remove faces (see Section 11.8 [Faces],
page 82). Each applies to the text in the region if the mark is active, and to the next
self-inserting character if the mark is inactive. With a prefix argument, each command
applies to the next self-inserting character even if the region is active.
M-o d Remove all face properties (facemenu-set-default).
M-o b Apply the bold face (facemenu-set-bold).
M-o i Apply the italic face (facemenu-set-italic).
M-o l Apply the bold-italic face (facemenu-set-bold-italic).
M-o u Apply the underline face (facemenu-set-underline).
M-o o face RET
Apply the face face (facemenu-set-face).
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 277

M-x facemenu-set-foreground
Prompt for a color (see Section 11.9 [Colors], page 82), and apply it as a
foreground color.
M-x facemenu-set-background
Prompt for a color, and apply it as a background color.
These commands are also available via the Text Properties menu.
A self-inserting character normally inherits the face properties (and most other text
properties) from the preceding character in the buffer. If you use one of the above commands
to specify the face for the next self-inserting character, that character will not inherit the
faces properties from the preceding character, but it will still inherit other text properties.
Enriched mode defines two additional faces: excerpt and fixed. These correspond to
codes used in the text/enriched file format. The excerpt face is intended for quotations;
by default, it appears the same as italic. The fixed face specifies fixed-width text; by
default, it appears the same as bold.

22.14.5 Indentation in Enriched Text

In Enriched mode, you can specify different amounts of indentation for the right or left
margin of a paragraph or a part of a paragraph. These margins also affect fill commands
such as M-q (see Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256).
The Indentation submenu of Text Properties offers commands for specifying indentation:
Indent More
Indent the region by 4 columns (increase-left-margin). In Enriched mode,
this command is also available on C-x TAB; if you supply a numeric argument,
that says how many columns to add to the margin (a negative argument reduces
the number of columns).
Indent Less
Remove 4 columns of indentation from the region.
Indent Right More
Make the text narrower by indenting 4 columns at the right margin.
Indent Right Less
Remove 4 columns of indentation from the right margin.
The variable standard-indent specifies how many columns these commands should add
to or subtract from the indentation. The default value is 4. The default right margin for
Enriched mode is controlled by the variable fill-column, as usual.
You can also type C-c [ (set-left-margin) and C-c ] (set-right-margin) to set the
left and right margins. You can specify the margin width with a numeric argument; otherwise
these commands prompt for a value via the minibuffer.
The fill prefix, if any, works in addition to the specified paragraph indentation: C-x . does
not include the specified indentation’s whitespace in the new value for the fill prefix, and the
fill commands look for the fill prefix after the indentation on each line. See Section 22.6.3
[Fill Prefix], page 258.
278 GNU Emacs Manual

22.14.6 Justification in Enriched Text

In Enriched mode, you can use the following commands to specify various justification styles
for filling. These commands apply to the paragraph containing point, or, if the region is
active, to all paragraphs overlapping the region.

M-j l Align lines to the left margin (set-justification-left).

M-j r Align lines to the right margin (set-justification-right).

M-j b Align lines to both margins, inserting spaces in the middle of the line to achieve
this (set-justification-full).

M-j c
M-S Center lines between the margins (set-justification-center).

M-j u Turn off filling entirely (set-justification-none). The fill commands do

nothing on text with this setting. You can, however, still indent the left margin.

You can also specify justification styles using the Justification submenu in the Text
Properties menu. The default justification style is specified by the per-buffer variable
default-justification. Its value should be one of the symbols left, right, full, center,
or none; their meanings correspond to the commands above.

22.14.7 Setting Other Text Properties

The Special Properties submenu of Text Properties has entries for adding or removing four
other text properties: read-only, (which disallows alteration of the text), invisible (which
hides text), intangible (which disallows moving point within the text), and charset (which
is important for selecting a proper font to display a character). The ‘Remove Special’ menu
item removes all of these special properties from the text in the region.
The invisible and intangible properties are not saved.
Enriched mode also supports saving and restoring display properties (see Section
“Display Property” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual), which affect how text is displayed
on the screen, and also allow displaying images and strings that come from sources other
than buffer text. The display properties also support execution of arbitrary Lisp forms as
part of processing the property for display, thus providing a means to dynamically tailor
the display to some conditions that can only be known at display time. Since execution
of arbitrary Lisp opens Emacs to potential attacks, especially when the source of enriched
text is outside of Emacs or even outside of your system (e.g., if it was received in an email
message), such execution is by default disabled in Enriched mode. You can enable it by
customizing the variable enriched-allow-eval-in-display-props to a non-nil value.

22.15 Editing Text-based Tables

The table package provides commands to easily edit text-based tables. Here is an example
of what such a table looks like:
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 279

+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+
| Command | Description | Key Binding |
+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+
| forward-char |Move point right N characters | C-f |
| |(left if N is negative). | |
| | | |
+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+
| backward-char |Move point left N characters | C-b |
| |(right if N is negative). | |
| | | |
+-----------------+--------------------------------+-----------------+

When Emacs recognizes such a stretch of text as a table (see Section 22.15.3 [Table
Recognition], page 280), editing the contents of each table cell will automatically resize the
table, whenever the contents become too large to fit in the cell. You can use the commands
defined in the following sections for navigating and editing the table layout.
Type M-x table-fixed-width-mode to toggle the automatic table resizing feature.

22.15.1 What is a Text-based Table?

A table consists of a rectangular text area which is divided into cells. Each cell must be at
least one character wide and one character high, not counting its border lines. A cell can be
subdivided into more cells, but they cannot overlap.
Cell border lines are drawn with three special characters, specified by the following
variables:

table-cell-vertical-char
The character used for vertical lines. The default is ‘|’.
table-cell-horizontal-chars
The characters used for horizontal lines. The default is ‘"-="’.
table-cell-intersection-char
The character used for the intersection of horizontal and vertical lines. The
default is ‘+’.

The following are examples of invalid tables:

+-----+ +--+ +-++--+
| | | | | || |
| | | | | || |
+--+ | +--+--+ +-++--+
| | | | | | +-++--+
| | | | | | | || |
+--+--+ +--+--+ +-++--+
a b c
From left to right:
a. Overlapped cells or non-rectangular cells are not allowed.
b. The border must be rectangular.
c. Cells must have a minimum width/height of one character.
280 GNU Emacs Manual

22.15.2 Creating a Table

To create a text-based table from scratch, type M-x table-insert. This command prompts
for the number of table columns, the number of table rows, cell width and cell height. The
cell width and cell height do not include the cell borders; each can be specified as a single
integer (which means each cell is given the same width/height), or as a sequence of integers
separated by spaces or commas (which specify the width/height of the individual table
columns/rows, counting from left to right for table columns and from top to bottom for
table rows). The specified table is then inserted at point.
The table inserted by M-x table-insert contains special text properties, which tell
Emacs to treat it specially as a text-based table. If you save the buffer to a file and visit it
again later, those properties are lost, and the table appears to Emacs as an ordinary piece
of text. See the next section, for how to convert it back into a table.

22.15.3 Table Recognition

Existing text-based tables in a buffer, which lack the special text properties applied by
M-x table-insert, are not treated specially as tables. To apply those text properties,
type M-x table-recognize. This command scans the current buffer, recognizes valid table
cells, and applies the relevant text properties. Conversely, type M-x table-unrecognize
to unrecognize all tables in the current buffer, removing the special text properties and
converting tables back to plain text.
You can also use the following commands to selectively recognize or unrecognize tables:
M-x table-recognize-region
Recognize tables within the current region.
M-x table-unrecognize-region
Unrecognize tables within the current region.
M-x table-recognize-table
Recognize the table at point and activate it.
M-x table-unrecognize-table
Deactivate the table at point.
M-x table-recognize-cell
Recognize the cell at point and activate it.
M-x table-unrecognize-cell
Deactivate the cell at point.
See Section 22.15.7 [Table Conversion], page 282, for another way to recognize a table.

22.15.4 Commands for Table Cells

The commands M-x table-forward-cell and M-x table-backward-cell move point from
the current cell to an adjacent cell. The order is cyclic: when point is in the last cell of a
table, M-x table-forward-cell moves to the first cell. Likewise, when point is on the first
cell, M-x table-backward-cell moves to the last cell.
M-x table-span-cell prompts for a direction—right, left, above, or below—and merges
the current cell with the adjacent cell in that direction. This command signals an error if
the merge would result in an illegitimate cell layout.
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 281

M-x table-split-cell splits the current cell vertically or horizontally, prompting

for the direction with the minibuffer. To split in a specific direction, use M-x
table-split-cell-vertically and M-x table-split-cell-horizontally. When
splitting vertically, the old cell contents are automatically split between the two new cells.
When splitting horizontally, you are prompted for how to divide the cell contents, if the cell
is non-empty; the options are ‘split’ (divide the contents at point), ‘left’ (put all the
contents in the left cell), and ‘right’ (put all the contents in the right cell).
The following commands enlarge or shrink a cell. By default, they resize by one row or
column; if a numeric argument is supplied, that specifies the number of rows or columns to
resize by.
M-x table-heighten-cell
Enlarge the current cell vertically.
M-x table-shorten-cell
Shrink the current cell vertically.
M-x table-widen-cell
Enlarge the current cell horizontally.
M-x table-narrow-cell
Shrink the current cell horizontally.

22.15.5 Cell Justification

The command M-x table-justify imposes justification on one or more cells in a text-based
table. Justification determines how the text in the cell is aligned, relative to the edges of
the cell. Each cell in a table can be separately justified.
M-x table-justify first prompts for what to justify; the options are ‘cell’ (just the
current cell), ‘column’ (all cells in the current table column) and ‘row’ (all cells in the current
table row). The command then prompts for the justification style; the options are left,
center, right, top, middle, bottom, or none (meaning no vertical justification).
Horizontal and vertical justification styles are specified independently, and both types
can be in effect simultaneously; for instance, you can call M-x table-justify twice, once
to specify right justification and once to specify bottom justification, to align the contents
of a cell to the bottom right.
The justification style is stored in the buffer as a text property, and is lost when you
kill the buffer or exit Emacs. However, the table recognition commands, such as M-x
table-recognize (see Section 22.15.3 [Table Recognition], page 280), attempt to determine
and re-apply each cell’s justification style, by examining its contents. To disable this feature,
change the variable table-detect-cell-alignment to nil.

22.15.6 Table Rows and Columns

M-x table-insert-row inserts a row of cells before the current table row. The current
row, together with point, is pushed down past the new row. To insert a row after the last
row at the bottom of a table, invoke this command with point below the table, just below
the bottom edge. You can insert more than one row at a time by using a numeric prefix
argument.
282 GNU Emacs Manual

Similarly, M-x table-insert-column inserts a column of cells to the left of the current
table column. To insert a column to the right side of the rightmost column, invoke this
command with point to the right of the rightmost column, outside the table. A numeric
prefix argument specifies the number of columns to insert.
M-x table-delete-column deletes the column of cells at point. Similarly, M-x
table-delete-row deletes the row of cells at point. A numeric prefix argument to either
command specifies the number of columns or rows to delete.

22.15.7 Converting Between Plain Text and Tables

The command M-x table-capture captures plain text in a region and turns it into a
table. Unlike M-x table-recognize (see Section 22.15.3 [Table Recognition], page 280),
the original text does not need to have a table appearance; it only needs to have a logical
table-like structure.
For example, suppose we have the following numbers, which are divided into three lines
and separated horizontally by commas:
1, 2, 3, 4
5, 6, 7, 8
, 9, 10
Invoking M-x table-capture on that text produces this table:
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|1 |2 |3 |4 |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|5 |6 |7 |8 |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| |9 |10 | |
+-----+-----+-----+-----+
M-x table-release does the opposite: it converts a table back to plain text, removing
its cell borders.
One application of this pair of commands is to edit a text in layout. Look at the following
three paragraphs:
table-capture is a powerful command.
Here are some things it can do:

Parse Cell Items Using row and column delimiter regexps,

it parses the specified text area and
extracts cell items into a table.
Applying table-capture to a region containing the above text, with empty strings for the
column and row delimiter regexps, creates a table with a single cell like the following one.
+----------------------------------------------------------+
|table-capture is a powerful command. |
|Here are some things it can do: |
| |
|Parse Cell Items Using row and column delimiter regexps,|
| it parses the specified text area and |
| extracts cell items into a table. |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
Chapter 22: Commands for Human Languages 283

We can then use the cell splitting commands (see Section 22.15.4 [Cell Commands], page 280)
to subdivide the table so that each paragraph occupies a cell:
+----------------------------------------------------------+
|table-capture is a powerful command. |
|Here are some things it can do: |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+
|Parse Cell Items | Using row and column delimiter regexps,|
| | it parses the specified text area and |
| | extracts cell items into a table. |
+-----------------+----------------------------------------+
Each cell can now be edited independently without affecting the layout of other cells. When
finished, we can invoke M-x table-release to convert the table back to plain text.

22.15.8 Table Miscellany

The command table-query-dimension reports the layout of the table and table cell at
point. Here is an example of its output:
Cell: (21w, 6h), Table: (67w, 16h), Dim: (2c, 3r), Total Cells: 5
This indicates that the current cell is 21 characters wide and 6 lines high, the table is 67
characters wide and 16 lines high with 2 columns and 3 rows, and a total of 5 cells.
M-x table-insert-sequence traverses the cells of a table inserting a sequence of text
strings into each cell as it goes. It asks for the base string of the sequence, and then produces
the sequence by “incrementing” the base string, either numerically (if the base string ends
in numerical characters) or in the ASCII order. In addition to the base string, the command
prompts for the number of elements in the sequence, the increment, the cell interval, and
the justification of the text in each cell.
M-x table-generate-source generates a table formatted for a specific markup language.
It asks for a language (which must be one of html, latex, cals, wiki or mediawiki), a
destination buffer in which to put the result, and a table caption, and then inserts the
generated table into the specified buffer. The default destination buffer is table.lang,
where lang is the language you specified.

22.16 Two-Column Editing

Two-column mode lets you conveniently edit two side-by-side columns of text. It uses two
side-by-side windows, each showing its own buffer. There are three ways to enter two-column
mode:
F2 2 or C-x 6 2
Enter two-column mode with the current buffer on the left, and on the right,
a buffer whose name is based on the current buffer’s name (2C-two-columns).
If the right-hand buffer doesn’t already exist, it starts out empty; the current
buffer’s contents are not changed.
This command is appropriate when the current buffer is empty or contains just
one column and you want to add another column.
F2 s or C-x 6 s
Split the current buffer, which contains two-column text, into two buffers, and
display them side by side (2C-split). The current buffer becomes the left-hand
284 GNU Emacs Manual

buffer, but the text in the right-hand column is moved into the right-hand buffer.
The current column specifies the split point. Splitting starts with the current
line and continues to the end of the buffer.
This command is appropriate when you have a buffer that already contains
two-column text, and you wish to separate the columns temporarily.
F2 b buffer RET
C-x 6 b buffer RET
Enter two-column mode using the current buffer as the left-hand buffer, and
using buffer buffer as the right-hand buffer (2C-associate-buffer).
F2 s or C-x 6 s looks for a column separator, which is a string that appears on each
line between the two columns. You can specify the width of the separator with a numeric
argument to F2 s; that many characters, before point, constitute the separator string. By
default, the width is 1, so the column separator is the character before point.
When a line has the separator at the proper place, F2 s puts the text after the separator
into the right-hand buffer, and deletes the separator. Lines that don’t have the column
separator at the proper place remain unsplit; they stay in the left-hand buffer, and the
right-hand buffer gets an empty line to correspond. (This is the way to write a line that
spans both columns while in two-column mode: write it in the left-hand buffer, and put an
empty line in the right-hand buffer.)
The command F2 RET or C-x 6 RET (2C-newline) inserts a newline in each of the two
buffers at corresponding positions. This is the easiest way to add a new line to the two-column
text while editing it in split buffers.
When you have edited both buffers as you wish, merge them with F2 1 or C-x 6 1
(2C-merge). This copies the text from the right-hand buffer as a second column in the other
buffer. To go back to two-column editing, use F2 s.
Use F2 d or C-x 6 d to dissociate the two buffers, leaving each as it stands
(2C-dissociate). If the other buffer, the one not current when you type F2 d, is empty, F2
d kills it.
 285

23 Editing Programs
This chapter describes Emacs features for facilitating editing programs. Some of the things
these features can do are:
• Find or move over top-level definitions (see Section 23.2 [Defuns], page 286).
• Apply the usual indentation conventions of the language (see Section 23.3 [Program
Indent], page 288).
• Balance parentheses (see Section 23.4 [Parentheses], page 292).
• Insert, kill or align comments (see Section 23.5 [Comments], page 295).
• Highlight program syntax (see Section 11.13 [Font Lock], page 88).

23.1 Major Modes for Programming Languages

Emacs has specialized major modes (see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241) for many
programming languages. A programming language mode typically specifies the syntax of
expressions, the customary rules for indentation, how to do syntax highlighting for the
language, and how to find the beginning or end of a function definition. It often has features
for compiling and debugging programs as well. The major mode for each language is named
after the language; for instance, the major mode for the C programming language is c-mode.
Emacs has programming language modes for Lisp, Scheme, the Scheme-based DSSSL ex-
pression language, Ada, ASM, AWK, C, C++, C#, Fortran, Icon, IDL (CORBA), IDLWAVE,
Java, Javascript, M4, Makefiles, Metafont (TEX’s companion for font creation), Modula2,
Object Pascal, Objective-C, Octave, Pascal, Perl, Pike, PostScript, Prolog, Python, Ruby,
Simula, SQL, Tcl, TypeScript, Verilog, and VHDL. An alternative mode for Perl is called
CPerl mode. Modes are also available for the scripting languages of the common GNU and
Unix shells, and MS-DOS/MS-Windows ‘BAT’ files, JSON, DNS master files, CSS (Cascading
Style Sheets), Dockerfiles, CMake files, and various sorts of configuration files.
Ideally, Emacs should have a major mode for each programming language that you might
want to edit. If it doesn’t have a mode for your favorite language, the mode might be
implemented in a package not distributed with Emacs (see Chapter 32 [Packages], page 485);
or you can contribute one.
If Emacs has been compiled with the ‘tree-sitter’ library, it offers several optional
editing modes based on that library, which utilize the incremental parsing capabilities
provided by ‘tree-sitter’. These modes have ‘-ts-’ in their names; for example c-ts-
mode, python-ts-mode, etc.
In most programming languages, indentation should vary from line to line to illustrate
the structure of the program. Therefore, in most programming language modes, typing TAB
updates the indentation of the current line (see Section 23.3 [Program Indent], page 288).
Furthermore, DEL is usually bound to backward-delete-char-untabify, which deletes
backward treating each tab as if it were the equivalent number of spaces, so that you can
delete one column of indentation without worrying whether the whitespace consists of spaces
or tabs.
Entering a programming language mode runs the custom Lisp functions specified in the
hook variable prog-mode-hook, followed by those specified in the mode’s own mode hook
(see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241). For instance, entering C mode runs the hooks
286 GNU Emacs Manual

prog-mode-hook and c-mode-hook. See Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504, for information
about hooks.
The Emacs distribution contains Info manuals for the major modes for Ada,
C/C++/Objective C/Java/Corba IDL/Pike/AWK, Octave, VHDL, and IDLWAVE. For
Fortran mode, see Section “Fortran” in Specialized Emacs Features.

23.2 Top-Level Definitions, or Defuns

In Emacs, a major definition at the top level in the buffer, such as a function, is called a
defun. The name comes from Lisp, but in Emacs we use it for all languages.

23.2.1 Left Margin Convention

Many programming-language modes have traditionally assumed that any opening parenthesis
or brace found at the left margin is the start of a top-level definition, or defun. So, by
default, commands which seek the beginning of a defun accept such a delimiter as signifying
that position.
If you want to override this convention, you can do so by setting the user option
open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start to nil. If this option is set to t (the default),
commands seeking the start of a defun will stop at opening parentheses or braces at column
zero which aren’t in a comment or string. When it is nil, defuns are found by searching for
parens or braces at the outermost level. Since low-level Emacs routines no longer depend on
this convention, you usually won’t need to change open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-
start from its default.

23.2.2 Moving by Defuns

These commands move point or set up the region based on top-level major definitions, also
called defuns.
C-M-a Move to beginning of current or preceding defun (beginning-of-defun).
C-M-e Move to end of current or following defun (end-of-defun).
C-M-h Put region around whole current or following defun (mark-defun).
The commands to move to the beginning and end of the current defun are C-M-a
(beginning-of-defun) and C-M-e (end-of-defun). If you repeat one of these commands,
or use a positive numeric argument, each repetition moves to the next defun in the direction
of motion.
C-M-a with a negative argument −n moves forward n times to the next beginning of a
defun. This is not exactly the same place that C-M-e with argument n would move to; the
end of this defun is not usually exactly the same place as the beginning of the following
defun. (Whitespace, comments, and perhaps declarations can separate them.) Likewise,
C-M-e with a negative argument moves back to an end of a defun, which is not quite the
same as C-M-a with a positive argument.
To operate on the current defun, use C-M-h (mark-defun), which sets the mark at the
end of the current defun and puts point at its beginning. See Section 8.2 [Marking Objects],
page 53. This is the easiest way to get ready to kill the defun in order to move it to a
different place in the file. If the defun is directly preceded by comments (with no intervening
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 287

blank lines), they are marked, too. If you use the command while point is between defuns,
it uses the following defun. If you use the command while the mark is already active, it
extends the end of the region to include one more defun. With a prefix argument, it marks
that many defuns or extends the region by the appropriate number of defuns. With negative
prefix argument it marks defuns in the opposite direction and also changes the direction of
selecting for subsequent uses of mark-defun.
In C mode, C-M-h runs the function c-mark-function, which is almost the same as
mark-defun; the difference is that it backs up over the argument declarations, function name
and returned data type so that the entire C function is inside the region. This is an example
of how major modes adjust the standard key bindings so that they do their standard jobs in
a way better fitting a particular language. Other major modes may replace any or all of
these key bindings for that purpose.
Some programming languages supported nested defuns, whereby a defun (such as a
function or a method or a class) can be defined inside (i.e., as part of the body) of another
defun. The commands described above by default find the beginning and the end of the
innermost defun around point. Major modes based on the tree-sitter library provide control
of this behavior: if the variable treesit-defun-tactic is set to the value top-level, the
defun commands will find the outermost defuns instead.

23.2.3 Imenu
The Imenu facility offers a way to find the major definitions in a file by name. It is also useful
in text formatter major modes, where it treats each chapter, section, etc., as a definition.
(See Section 25.4 [Xref], page 356, for a more powerful feature that handles multiple files
together.)
If you type M-g i (imenu), it reads the name of a definition using the minibuffer, then
moves point to that definition. You can use completion to specify the name; the command
always displays the whole list of valid names.
Alternatively, you can bind the command imenu to a mouse click. Then it displays mouse
menus for you to select a definition name. You can also add the buffer’s index to the menu bar
by calling imenu-add-menubar-index. If you want to have this menu bar item available for
all buffers in a certain major mode, you can do this by adding imenu-add-menubar-index
to its mode hook. But if you have done that, you will have to wait a little while each time
you visit a file in that mode, while Emacs finds all the definitions in that buffer.
When you change the contents of a buffer, if you add or delete definitions, you can update
the buffer’s index based on the new contents by invoking the ‘*Rescan*’ item in the menu.
Rescanning happens automatically if you set imenu-auto-rescan to a non-nil value. There
is no need to rescan because of small changes in the text.
imenu-auto-rescan will be disabled in buffers that are larger than imenu-auto-rescan-
maxout in bytes, and scanning is stopped if it takes more than imenu-max-index-time
seconds.
You can customize the way the menus are sorted by setting the variable imenu-sort-
function. By default, names are ordered as they occur in the buffer; if you want alphabetic
sorting, use the symbol imenu--sort-by-name as the value. You can also define your own
comparison function by writing Lisp code.
288 GNU Emacs Manual

If Eglot is activated for the current buffer’s project (see Section 25.2 [Projects], page 351)
and the current buffer’s major mode, Eglot provides its own facility for producing the buffer’s
index based on the analysis of the program source by the language-server which manages
the current buffer. See Section “Eglot Features” in Eglot: The Emacs LSP Client.
Imenu provides the information to guide Which Function mode (see below). The Speedbar
can also use it (see Section 18.9 [Speedbar], page 204).

23.2.4 Which Function Mode

Which Function mode is a global minor mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242)
which displays the current function name in the mode line, updating it as you move around
in a buffer.
To either enable or disable Which Function mode, use the command M-x
which-function-mode. Which Function mode is a global minor mode. By default, it takes
effect in all major modes that know how to support it (i.e., all the major modes that
support Imenu). You can restrict it to a specific list of major modes by changing the value
of the variable which-func-modes from t (which means to support all available major
modes) to a list of major mode names.

23.3 Indentation for Programs

The best way to keep a program properly indented is to use Emacs to reindent it as you
change it. Emacs has commands to indent either a single line, a specified number of lines,
or all of the lines inside a single parenthetical grouping.
See Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 247, for general information about indentation. This
section describes indentation features specific to programming language modes.
Emacs also provides a Lisp pretty-printer in the pp package, which reformats Lisp objects
with nice-looking indentation. See Section “Output Functions” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual.

23.3.1 Basic Program Indentation Commands

TAB Adjust indentation of current line (indent-for-tab-command).
RET Insert a newline, then adjust indentation of following line (newline).
The basic indentation command is TAB (indent-for-tab-command), which was docu-
mented in Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 247. In programming language modes, TAB indents
the current line, based on the indentation and syntactic content of the preceding lines; if the
region is active, TAB indents each line within the region, not just the current line.
The command RET (newline), which was documented in Section 4.1 [Inserting Text],
page 16, does the same as C-j followed by TAB: it inserts a new line, then adjusts the line’s
indentation.
When indenting a line that starts within a parenthetical grouping, Emacs usually places
the start of the line under the preceding line within the group, or under the text after the
parenthesis. If you manually give one of these lines a nonstandard indentation (e.g., for
aesthetic purposes), the lines below will follow it.
The indentation commands for most programming language modes assume that an
open-parenthesis, open-brace or other opening delimiter at the left margin is the start of a
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 289

function. If the code you are editing violates this assumption—even if the delimiters occur
in strings or comments—you must set open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start to nil
for indentation to work properly. See Section 23.2.1 [Left Margin Paren], page 286.

23.3.2 Indenting Several Lines

Sometimes, you may want to reindent several lines of code at a time. One way to do this is
to use the mark; when the mark is active and the region is non-empty, TAB indents every
line in the region. Alternatively, the command C-M-\ (indent-region) indents every line
in the region, whether or not the mark is active (see Section 21.1 [Indentation Commands],
page 247).
In addition, Emacs provides the following commands for indenting large chunks of code:
C-M-q Reindent all the lines within one parenthetical grouping.
C-u TAB Shift an entire parenthetical grouping rigidly sideways so that its first line is
properly indented.
M-x indent-code-rigidly
Shift all the lines in the region rigidly sideways, but do not alter lines that start
inside comments and strings.
To reindent the contents of a single parenthetical grouping, position point before the
beginning of the grouping and type C-M-q. This changes the relative indentation within
the grouping, without affecting its overall indentation (i.e., the indentation of the line
where the grouping starts). The function that C-M-q runs depends on the major mode; it
is indent-pp-sexp in Lisp mode, c-indent-exp in C mode, etc. To correct the overall
indentation as well, type TAB first.
If you like the relative indentation within a grouping but not the indentation of its first
line, move point to that first line and type C-u TAB. In Lisp, C, and some other major
modes, TAB with a numeric argument reindents the current line as usual, then reindents by
the same amount all the lines in the parenthetical grouping starting on the current line. It
is clever, though, and does not alter lines that start inside strings. Neither does it alter C
preprocessor lines when in C mode, but it does reindent any continuation lines that may be
attached to them.
The command M-x indent-code-rigidly rigidly shifts all the lines in the region sideways,
like indent-rigidly does (see Section 21.1 [Indentation Commands], page 247). It doesn’t
alter the indentation of lines that start inside a string, unless the region also starts inside
that string. The prefix arg specifies the number of columns to indent.

23.3.3 Customizing Lisp Indentation

The indentation pattern for a Lisp expression can depend on the function called by the
expression. For each Lisp function, you can choose among several predefined patterns of
indentation, or define an arbitrary one with a Lisp program.
The standard pattern of indentation is as follows: the second line of the expression
is indented under the first argument, if that is on the same line as the beginning of the
expression; otherwise, the second line is indented underneath the function name. Each
following line is indented under the previous line whose nesting depth is the same.
290 GNU Emacs Manual

If the variable lisp-indent-offset is non-nil, it overrides the usual indentation pattern

for the second line of an expression, so that such lines are always indented lisp-indent-
offset more columns than the containing list.
Certain functions override the standard pattern. Functions whose names start with def
treat the second lines as the start of a body, by indenting the second line lisp-body-indent
additional columns beyond the open-parenthesis that starts the expression.
You can override the standard pattern in various ways for individual functions, according
to the lisp-indent-function property of the function name. This is normally done for
macro definitions, using the declare construct. See Section “Defining Macros” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
In Emacs Lisp, lists are usually indented as if they are function-like forms:
(setq foo '(bar zot
gazonk))
However, if you add a space after the opening parenthesis, this tells Emacs that it’s a
data list instead of a piece of code, and Emacs will then indent it like this:
(setq foo '( bar zot
gazonk))

23.3.4 Commands for C Indentation

Here are special features for indentation in C mode and related modes:
C-c C-q Reindent the current top-level function definition or aggregate type declaration
(c-indent-defun in CC mode, c-ts-mode-indent-defun in c-ts-mode based
on tree-sitter).
C-M-q Reindent each line in the balanced expression (see Section 23.4.1 [Expressions],
page 292), also known as “sexp”, that follows point. In CC mode, this invokes
c-indent-exp; in tree-sitter based c-ts-mode this invokes a more general
prog-indent-sexp. A prefix argument inhibits warning messages about invalid
syntax.
TAB Reindent the current line, active region, or block starting on this line (c-indent-
line-or-region). With prefix argument, rigidly reindent the balanced expres-
sion which starts on the current line, if the current line needs reindentation.
If c-tab-always-indent is t, this command always reindents the current line
and does nothing else. This is the default.
If that variable is nil, this command reindents the current line only if point is
at the left margin or in the line’s indentation; otherwise, it inserts a tab (or the
equivalent number of spaces, if indent-tabs-mode is nil).
Any other value (not nil or t) means always reindent the line, and also insert a
tab if within a comment or a string.
To reindent the whole current buffer, type C-x h C-M-\. This first selects the whole
buffer as the region, then reindents that region.
To reindent the current block, use C-M-u C-M-q. This moves to the front of the block
and then reindents it all.
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 291

23.3.5 Customizing C Indentation

C mode and related modes use a flexible mechanism for customizing indentation. C mode
indents a source line in two steps: first it classifies the line syntactically according to its
contents and context; second, it determines the indentation offset associated by your selected
style with the syntactic construct and adds this onto the indentation of the anchor statement.
C-c . style RET
Select a predefined style style (c-set-style in CC mode, c-ts-mode-set-
style in c-ts-mode based on tree-sitter).
A style is a named collection of customizations that can be used in C mode and the
related modes. Section “Styles” in The CC Mode Manual, for a complete description. Emacs
comes with several predefined styles, including gnu, k&r, bsd, stroustrup, linux, python,
java, whitesmith, ellemtel, and awk. Some of these styles are primarily intended for one
language, but any of them can be used with any of the languages supported by these modes.
To find out what a style looks like, select it and reindent some code, e.g., by typing C-M-q
at the start of a function definition.
To choose a style for the current buffer, use the command C-c .. Specify a style name as
an argument (case is not significant). This command affects the current buffer only, and it
affects only future invocations of the indentation commands; it does not reindent the code
already in the buffer. To reindent the whole buffer in the new style, you can type C-x h
C-M-\.
When using CC mode, you can also set the variable c-default-style to specify the
default style for various major modes. Its value should be either the style’s name (a string)
or an alist, in which each element specifies one major mode and which indentation style to
use for it. For example,
(setq c-default-style
'((java-mode . "java")
(awk-mode . "awk")
(other . "gnu")))
specifies explicit choices for Java and AWK modes, and the default ‘gnu’ style for the other
C-like modes. (These settings are actually the defaults.) This variable takes effect when you
select one of the C-like major modes; thus, if you specify a new default style for Java mode,
you can make it take effect in an existing Java mode buffer by typing M-x java-mode there.
When using the tree-sitter based c-ts-mode, you can set the default indentation style by
customizing the variable c-ts-mode-indent-style.
The gnu style specifies the formatting recommended by the GNU Project for C; it is the
default, so as to encourage use of our recommended style.
See Section “Indentation Engine Basics” in the CC Mode Manual, and Section “Customiz-
ing Indentation” in the CC Mode Manual, for more information on customizing indentation
for C and related modes, including how to override parts of an existing style and how to
define your own styles.
As an alternative to specifying a style, you can tell Emacs to guess a style by typing
M-x c-guess in a sample code buffer. You can then apply the guessed style to other buffers
with M-x c-guess-install. See Section “Guessing the Style” in the CC Mode Manual, for
details.
292 GNU Emacs Manual

23.4 Commands for Editing with Parentheses

This section describes the commands and features that take advantage of the parenthesis
structure in a program, or help you keep it balanced.
When talking about these facilities, the term “parenthesis” also includes braces, brackets,
or whatever delimiters are defined to match in pairs. The major mode controls which
delimiters are significant, through the syntax table (see Section “Syntax Tables” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). In Lisp, only parentheses count; in C, these commands
apply to braces and brackets too.
You can use M-x check-parens to find any unbalanced parentheses and unbalanced
string quotes in the buffer.

23.4.1 Expressions with Balanced Parentheses

Each programming language mode has its own definition of a balanced expression. Balanced
expressions typically include individual symbols, numbers, and string constants, as well as
pieces of code enclosed in a matching pair of delimiters. The following commands deal with
balanced expressions (in Emacs, such expressions are referred to internally as sexps 1 ).
C-M-f Move forward over a balanced expression (forward-sexp).
C-M-b Move backward over a balanced expression (backward-sexp).
C-M-k Kill balanced expression forward (kill-sexp).
C-M-t Transpose expressions (transpose-sexps).
C-M-@
C-M-SPC Put mark after following expression (mark-sexp).
To move forward over a balanced expression, use C-M-f (forward-sexp). If the first
significant character after point is an opening delimiter (e.g., ‘(’, ‘[’ or ‘{’ in C), this
command moves past the matching closing delimiter. If the character begins a symbol,
string, or number, the command moves over that.
The command C-M-b (backward-sexp) moves backward over a balanced expression—like
C-M-f, but in the reverse direction. If the expression is preceded by any prefix characters
(single-quote, backquote and comma, in Lisp), the command moves back over them as well.
C-M-f or C-M-b with an argument repeats that operation the specified number of times;
with a negative argument means to move in the opposite direction. In most modes, these
two commands move across comments as if they were whitespace. Note that their keys,
C-M-f and C-M-b, are analogous to C-f and C-b, which move by characters (see Section 4.2
[Moving Point], page 17), and M-f and M-b, which move by words (see Section 22.1 [Words],
page 251).
To kill a whole balanced expression, type C-M-k (kill-sexp). This kills the text that
C-M-f would move over.
C-M-t (transpose-sexps) switches the positions of the previous balanced expression
and the next one. It is analogous to the C-t command, which transposes characters (see
Section 13.2 [Transpose], page 132). An argument to C-M-t serves as a repeat count, moving
1
The word “sexp” is used to refer to an expression in Lisp.
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 293

the previous expression over that many following ones. A negative argument moves the
previous balanced expression backwards across those before it. An argument of zero, rather
than doing nothing, transposes the balanced expressions ending at or after point and the
mark.
To operate on balanced expressions with a command which acts on the region, type
C-M-SPC (mark-sexp). This sets the mark where C-M-f would move to. While the mark
is active, each successive call to this command extends the region by shifting the mark
by one expression. Positive or negative numeric arguments move the mark forward or
backward by the specified number of expressions. The alias C-M-@ is equivalent to C-M-SPC.
See Section 8.2 [Marking Objects], page 53, for more information about this and related
commands.
In languages that use infix operators, such as C, it is not possible to recognize all balanced
expressions because there can be multiple possibilities at a given position. For example, C
mode does not treat ‘foo + bar’ as a single expression, even though it is one C expression;
instead, it recognizes ‘foo’ as one expression and ‘bar’ as another, with the ‘+’ as punctuation
between them. However, C mode recognizes ‘(foo + bar)’ as a single expression, because of
the parentheses.

23.4.2 Moving in the Parenthesis Structure

The following commands move over groupings delimited by parentheses (or whatever else
serves as delimiters in the language you are working with). They ignore strings and comments,
including any parentheses within them, and also ignore parentheses that are quoted with an
escape character. These commands are mainly intended for editing programs, but can be
useful for editing any text containing parentheses. They are referred to internally as “list
commands” because in Lisp these groupings are lists.
These commands assume that the starting point is not inside a string or a comment. If
you invoke them from inside a string or comment, the results are unreliable.

C-M-n Move forward over a parenthetical group (forward-list).

C-M-p Move backward over a parenthetical group (backward-list).
C-M-u Move up in parenthesis structure (backward-up-list).
C-M-d Move down in parenthesis structure (down-list).

The list commands C-M-n (forward-list) and C-M-p (backward-list) move forward
or backward over one (or n) parenthetical groupings.
C-M-n and C-M-p try to stay at the same level in the parenthesis structure. To move
up one (or n) levels, use C-M-u (backward-up-list). C-M-u moves backward up past one
unmatched opening delimiter. A positive argument serves as a repeat count; a negative
argument reverses the direction of motion, so that the command moves forward and up one
or more levels.
To move down in the parenthesis structure, use C-M-d (down-list). In Lisp mode, where
‘(’ is the only opening delimiter, this is nearly the same as searching for a ‘(’. An argument
specifies the number of levels to go down.
294 GNU Emacs Manual

23.4.3 Matching Parentheses

Emacs has a number of parenthesis matching features, which make it easy to see how and
whether parentheses (or other delimiters) match up.
Whenever you type a self-inserting character that is a closing delimiter, Emacs briefly
indicates the location of the matching opening delimiter, provided that is on the screen. If
it is not on the screen, Emacs displays some of the text near it in the echo area. Either way,
you can tell which grouping you are closing off. If the opening delimiter and closing delimiter
are mismatched—such as in ‘[x)’—a warning message is displayed in the echo area.
Three variables control the display of matching parentheses:
• blink-matching-paren turns the feature on or off: nil disables it, but the default is t
to enable it. Set it to jump to make indication work by momentarily moving the cursor
to the matching opening delimiter. Set it to jump-offscreen to make the cursor jump,
even if the opening delimiter is off screen.
• blink-matching-delay says how many seconds to keep indicating the matching opening
delimiter. This may be an integer or floating-point number; the default is 1.
• blink-matching-paren-distance specifies how many characters back to search to find
the matching opening delimiter. If the match is not found in that distance, Emacs stops
scanning and nothing is displayed. The default is 102400.
Show Paren mode is a minor mode that provides a more powerful kind of automatic
matching. Whenever point is before an opening delimiter or after a closing delimiter, the
delimiter, its matching delimiter, and optionally the text between them are highlighted.
To toggle Show Paren mode globally, type M-x show-paren-mode. To toggle it only in the
current buffer, type M-x show-paren-local-mode.
By default, this mode is switched on in all buffers that are meant for editing, but is not
enabled in buffers that show data. This is controlled by the show-paren-predicate user
option.
To customize the mode, type M-x customize-group RET paren-showing. The customiz-
able options which control the operation of this mode include:
• show-paren-highlight-openparen controls whether to highlight an open paren when
point is just before it, and hence its position is marked by the cursor anyway. The
default is non-nil (yes).
• show-paren-style controls whether just the two parens, or also the text between
them get highlighted. The valid options here are parenthesis (show the matching
paren), expression (highlight the entire expression enclosed by the parens), and mixed
(highlight the matching paren if it is visible in the window, the expression otherwise).
• show-paren-when-point-inside-paren, when non-nil, causes highlighting also when
point is inside of the parentheses. The default is nil.
• show-paren-when-point-in-periphery, when non-nil, causes highlighting also when
point is in whitespace at the beginning of a line and there is a paren at the first or last
non-whitespace position on the line, or when point is at the end of a line and there is a
paren at the last non-whitespace position on the line.
• show-paren-context-when-offscreen, when non-nil, shows some context in the echo
area when point is in a closing delimiter and the opening delimiter is offscreen. The
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 295

context is usually the line that contains the opening delimiter, except if the opening
delimiter is on its own line, in which case the context includes the previous nonblank
line.
Electric Pair mode, a global minor mode, provides a way to easily insert matching
delimiters: parentheses, braces, brackets, etc. Whenever you insert an opening delimiter,
the matching closing delimiter is automatically inserted as well, leaving point between the
two. Conversely, when you insert a closing delimiter over an existing one, no insertion takes
places, and that position is simply skipped over. If the region is active (see Chapter 8 [Mark],
page 51), insertion of a delimiter operates on the region: the characters in the region are
enclosed in a pair of matching delimiters, leaving point after the delimiter you typed.
These variables control additional features of Electric Pair mode:
• electric-pair-preserve-balance, when non-nil, makes the default pairing logic
balance out the number of opening and closing delimiters.
• electric-pair-delete-adjacent-pairs, when non-nil, makes backspacing between
two adjacent delimiters also automatically delete the closing delimiter.
• electric-pair-open-newline-between-pairs, when non-nil, makes inserting a new-
line between two adjacent pairs also automatically open an extra newline after point.
• electric-pair-skip-whitespace, when non-nil, causes the minor mode to skip
whitespace forward before deciding whether to skip over the closing delimiter.
To toggle Electric Pair mode, type M-x electric-pair-mode. To toggle the mode in a
single buffer, use M-x electric-pair-local-mode.

23.5 Manipulating Comments

Because comments are such an important part of programming, Emacs provides special
commands for editing and inserting comments. It can also do spell checking on comments
with Flyspell Prog mode (see Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134).
Some major modes have special rules for indenting different kinds of comments. For
example, in Lisp code, comments starting with two semicolons are indented as if they were
lines of code, while those starting with three semicolons are supposed to be aligned to the
left margin and are often used for sectioning purposes. Emacs understands these conventions;
for instance, typing TAB on a comment line will indent the comment to the appropriate
position.
;; This function is just an example.
;;; Here either two or three semicolons are appropriate.
(defun foo (x)
;;; And now, the first part of the function:
;; The following line adds one.
(1+ x)) ; This line adds one.

23.5.1 Comment Commands

The following commands operate on comments:
M-; Insert or realign comment on current line; if the region is active, comment or
uncomment the region instead (comment-dwim).
296 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x C-; Comment or uncomment the current line (comment-line). If the region is active,
comment or uncomment the lines in the region instead.
C-u M-; Kill comment on current line (comment-kill).
C-x ; Set comment column (comment-set-column).
C-M-j
M-j Like RET followed by inserting and aligning a comment (default-indent-new-
line). See Section 23.5.2 [Multi-Line Comments], page 297.
M-x comment-region
C-c C-c (in C-like modes)
Add comment delimiters to all the lines in the region.
The command to create or align a comment is M-; (comment-dwim). The word “dwim”
is an acronym for “Do What I Mean”; it indicates that this command can be used for many
different jobs relating to comments, depending on the situation where you use it.
When a region is active (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51), M-; either adds comment
delimiters to the region, or removes them. If every line in the region is already a comment,
it uncomments each of those lines by removing their comment delimiters. Otherwise, it adds
comment delimiters to enclose the text in the region.
If you supply a prefix argument to M-; when a region is active, that specifies the number
of comment delimiters to add or delete. A positive argument n adds n delimiters, while a
negative argument −n removes n delimiters.
If the region is not active, and there is no existing comment on the current line, M-;
adds a new comment to the current line. If the line is blank (i.e., empty or containing only
whitespace characters), the comment is indented to the same position where TAB would
indent to (see Section 23.3.1 [Basic Indent], page 288). If the line is non-blank, the comment
is placed after the last non-whitespace character on the line. Emacs tries to fit the comment
between the columns specified by the variables comment-column and comment-fill-column
(see Section 23.5.3 [Options for Comments], page 297), if possible. Otherwise, it will choose
some other suitable position, usually separated from the non-comment text by at least one
space. In each case, Emacs places point after the comment’s starting delimiter, so that you
can start typing the comment text right away.
You can also use M-; to align an existing comment. If a line already contains the
comment-start string, M-; realigns it to the conventional alignment and moves point after
the comment’s starting delimiter. As an exception, comments starting in column 0 are not
moved. Even when an existing comment is properly aligned, M-; is still useful for moving
directly to the start of the comment text.
C-x C-; (comment-line) comments or uncomments complete lines. When a region is
active (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51), C-x C-; either comments or uncomments the lines
in the region. If the region is not active, this command comments or uncomments the line
point is on. With a positive prefix argument n, it operates on n lines starting with the
current one; with a negative argument −n, it affects n preceding lines. After invoking this
command with a negative argument, successive invocations with a positive argument will
operate on preceding lines as if the argument were negated.
C-u M-; (comment-dwim with a prefix argument) when the region is not active kills any
comment on the current line, along with the whitespace before it. Since the comment is
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 297

saved to the kill ring, you can reinsert it on another line by moving to the end of that line,
doing C-y, and then M-; to realign the comment. You can achieve the same effect as C-u M-;
by typing M-x comment-kill (comment-dwim actually calls comment-kill as a subroutine
when it is given a prefix argument). Invoking comment-dwim with a prefix numeric argument,
as in C-u n M-;, when there’s no active region, tells comment-kill to kill comments on n
lines.
The command M-x comment-region is equivalent to calling M-; on an active region,
except that it always acts on the region, even if the mark is inactive. In C mode and
related modes, this command is bound to C-c C-c. The command M-x uncomment-region
uncomments each line in the region; a numeric prefix argument specifies the number of
comment delimiters to remove (negative arguments specify the number of comment delimiters
to add).
For C-like modes, you can configure the exact effect of M-; by setting the variables
c-indent-comment-alist and c-indent-comments-syntactically-p. For example, on a
line ending in a closing brace, M-; puts the comment one space after the brace rather than
at comment-column. For full details see Section “Comment Commands” in The CC Mode
Manual.

23.5.2 Multiple Lines of Comments

If you are typing a comment and wish to continue it to another line, type M-j or C-M-j
(default-indent-new-line). This breaks the current line, and inserts the necessary com-
ment delimiters and indentation to continue the comment.
For languages with closing comment delimiters (e.g., ‘*/’ in C), the exact behavior of
M-j depends on the value of the variable comment-multi-line. If the value is nil, the
command closes the comment on the old line and starts a new comment on the new line.
Otherwise, it opens a new line within the current comment delimiters.
When Auto Fill mode is on, going past the fill column while typing a comment also
continues the comment, in the same way as an explicit invocation of M-j.
To turn existing lines into comment lines, use M-; with the region active, or use M-x
comment-region as described in the preceding section.
You can configure C Mode such that when you type a ‘/’ at the start of a line in a
multi-line block comment, this closes the comment. Enable the comment-close-slash
clean-up for this. See Section “Clean-ups” in The CC Mode Manual.

23.5.3 Options Controlling Comments

As mentioned in Section 23.5.1 [Comment Commands], page 295, when the M-j command
adds a comment to a line, it tries to place the comment between the columns specified
by the buffer-local variables comment-column and comment-fill-column (or if that is nil,
then the value of fill-column, see Section 22.6.2 [Fill Commands], page 257). You can set
either the local value or the default value of these buffer-local variables in the usual way (see
Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 505). Alternatively, you can type C-x ; (comment-set-column)
to set the value of comment-column in the current buffer to the column where point is
currently located. C-u C-x ; sets the comment column to match the last comment before
point in the buffer, and then does a M-; to align the current line’s comment under the
previous one.
298 GNU Emacs Manual

The comment commands recognize comments based on the regular expression that is the
value of the variable comment-start-skip. Make sure this regexp does not match the null
string. It may match more than the comment starting delimiter in the strictest sense of the
word; for example, in C mode the value of the variable could be "/\\*+[ \t]*\\|//+[ \t]*",
which matches extra stars and spaces after the ‘/*’ itself, and accepts C++ style (‘//’)
comments also. (Note that ‘\\’ is needed in Lisp syntax to include a ‘\’ in the string, which
is needed to deny the first star its special meaning in regexp syntax. See Section 12.7 [Regexp
Backslash], page 117.)
When a comment command makes a new comment, it inserts the value of comment-start
as an opening comment delimiter. It also inserts the value of comment-end after point,
as a closing comment delimiter. For example, in Lisp mode, comment-start is ‘";"’ and
comment-end is "" (the empty string). In C mode, comment-start is "/* " and comment-end
is " */".
The variable comment-padding specifies a string that the commenting commands should
insert between the comment delimiter(s) and the comment text. The default, ‘" "’, specifies
a single space. Alternatively, the value can be a number, which specifies that number of
spaces, or nil, which means no spaces at all.
The variable comment-multi-line controls how M-j and Auto Fill mode continue com-
ments over multiple lines. See Section 23.5.2 [Multi-Line Comments], page 297.
The variable comment-indent-function should contain a function that will be called to
compute the alignment for a newly inserted comment or for aligning an existing comment.
It is set differently by various major modes. The function is called with no arguments, but
with point at the beginning of the comment, or at the end of a line if a new comment is to
be inserted. It should return the column in which the comment ought to start. For example,
the default function bases its decision on how many comment characters begin an existing
comment.
Emacs also tries to align comments on adjacent lines. To override this, the function may
return a cons of two (possibly equal) integers to indicate an acceptable range of indentation.

23.6 Documentation Lookup

Emacs provides several features you can use to look up the documentation of functions,
variables and commands that you plan to use in your program.

23.6.1 Info Documentation Lookup

For major modes that apply to languages which have documentation in Info, you can use C-h
S (info-lookup-symbol) to view the Info documentation for a symbol used in the program.
You specify the symbol with the minibuffer; the default is the symbol appearing in the buffer
at point. For example, in C mode this looks for the symbol in the C Library Manual. The
command only works if the appropriate manual’s Info files are installed.
Emacs determines where to look for documentation for the symbol—which Info files
to look in, and which indices to search—based on the major mode. You can also use M-x
info-lookup-file to look for documentation for a file name.
If you use C-h S in a major mode that does not support it, it asks you to specify the
symbol help mode. You should enter a command such as c-mode that would select a major
mode which C-h S does support.
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 299

23.6.2 Man Page Lookup

On Unix, the main form of on-line documentation was the manual page or man page. In
the GNU operating system, we aim to replace man pages with better-organized manuals
that you can browse with Info (see Section 7.7 [Misc Help], page 49). This process is not
finished, so it is still useful to read manual pages.
You can read the man page for an operating system command, library function, or system
call, with the M-x man command. This prompts for a topic, with completion (see Section 5.4
[Completion], page 30), and runs the man program to format the corresponding man page.
If the system permits, it runs man asynchronously, so that you can keep on editing while the
page is being formatted. The result goes in a buffer named *Man topic*. These buffers use
a special major mode, Man mode, that facilitates scrolling and jumping to other manual
pages. For details, type C-h m while in a Man mode buffer.
Each man page belongs to one of ten or more sections, each named by a digit or by a digit
and a letter. Sometimes there are man pages with the same name in different sections. To
read a man page from a specific section, type ‘topic(section)’ or ‘section topic’ when
M-x man prompts for the topic. For example, the man page for the C library function chmod
is in section 2, but there is a shell command of the same name, whose man page is in section
1; to view the former, type M-x man RET chmod(2) RET.
If you do not specify a section, M-x man normally displays only the first man page found.
On some systems, the man program accepts a ‘-a’ command-line option, which tells it to
display all the man pages for the specified topic. To make use of this, change the value of
the variable Man-switches to ‘"-a"’. Then, in the Man mode buffer, you can type M-n and
M-p to switch between man pages in different sections. The mode line shows how many
manual pages are available.
An alternative way of reading manual pages is the M-x woman command. Unlike M-x man,
it does not run any external programs to format and display the man pages; the formatting
is done by Emacs, so it works on systems such as MS-Windows where the man program
may be unavailable. It prompts for a man page, and displays it in a buffer named *WoMan
section topic.
M-x woman computes the completion list for manpages the first time you invoke the
command. With a numeric argument, it recomputes this list; this is useful if you add or
delete manual pages.
If you type a name of a manual page and M-x woman finds that several manual pages by
the same name exist in different sections, it pops up a window with possible candidates
asking you to choose one of them.
Note that M-x woman doesn’t yet support the latest features of modern man pages, so we
recommend using M-x man if that is available on your system.
For more information about setting up and using M-x woman, see the WoMan Info manual,
which is distributed with Emacs.

23.6.3 Programming Language Documentation Lookup

When editing Emacs Lisp code, you can use the commands C-h f (describe-function)
and C-h v (describe-variable) to view the built-in documentation for the Lisp functions
and variables that you want to use. See Section 7.2 [Name Help], page 44.
300 GNU Emacs Manual

ElDoc2 is a buffer-local minor mode that helps with looking up documentation of symbols
(functions, methods, classes, variables, etc.) in your program. When this mode is enabled,
the echo area displays useful information whenever there is a documented symbol at point.
For example, in buffers under the Emacs Lisp mode, it shows the argument list of a function
at point, and for a Lisp variable it shows the first line of the variable’s documentation string.
To toggle ElDoc mode, type M-x eldoc-mode. There’s also a Global ElDoc mode, which
is turned on by default, and turns on the ElDoc mode in buffers whose major mode sets the
variables described below. Use M-x global-eldoc-mode to turn it off globally.
Various major modes configure the Global ElDoc mode to use their documentation
functions. Examples include Emacs Lisp mode, Python mode, and Cfengine mode. In
addition, Emacs features that provide support for several major modes configure ElDoc to
use their facilities for retrieving the documentation. Examples include Eglot (see Section
“Eglot Features” in Eglot: The Emacs LSP Client), which provides documentation based
on information from language servers; Semantic’s Idle Summary mode (see Section “Idle
Summary Mode” in Semantic Manual); and Flymake, which uses ElDoc to show diagnostics
at point (see Section “Finding diagnostics” in GNU Flymake manual).
The ElDoc mode works by scheduling the display of the available documentation for
the symbol at point after Emacs has been idle for some short time. This avoids annoying
flickering of documentation messages in the echo area or the mode line when you type quickly
and without delay.
You can also trigger the display of documentation for a symbol at point by using the
command M-x eldoc-print-current-symbol-info.
The following variables can be used to configure ElDoc mode:
eldoc-idle-delay
The value of this user option controls the amount of idle time before the at-point
documentation is displayed. It should be set to the number of seconds to wait;
the value of zero means to display without any delay. The default is 0.5 sec.
eldoc-print-after-edit
If this user option is non-nil, ElDoc will show documentation only after some
editing command, like inserting or deleting some text. This comes in handy if
you want Emacs to display documentation only about symbols that you type,
but not about symbols that are already in the buffer (so just reading the source
code will not show documentation). The default value is nil. If you change the
value, you need to toggle eldoc-mode off and on again.
eldoc-echo-area-use-multiline-p
This user option controls whether and how to truncate documentation text
if it is longer than the echo-area can display as a single screen line. If the
value is a positive number, it specifies the number of screen lines that ElDoc is
allowed to display in the echo area without truncating the documentation. A
positive integer specifies the absolute maximum number of screen lines to use; a
floating-point number specifies the number of screen lines as a fraction of the
frame’s height. The value of t means never truncate the documentation (the
echo-area will be resized up to the height allowed by max-mini-window-height,
2
The name “ElDoc” is a historical accident: this mode started by supporting Emacs Lisp buffers.
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 301

see Section 5.3 [Minibuffer Edit], page 29), whereas the value of nil means
truncate if the documentation is longer than a single screen line. Finally, the
special value truncate-sym-name-if-fit (the default) means to truncate the
part of the documentation that represents a symbol’s name if doing that will
allow the documentation to fit on a single screen line.
eldoc-echo-area-display-truncation-message
If non-nil (the default), and documentation shown in the echo area is truncated
because it’s too long, follow the documentation by instructions about how to
view the complete documentation text. If nil, just indicate with ‘...’ that the
documentation was truncated.
eldoc-echo-area-prefer-doc-buffer
If the value of this user option is t, ElDoc will not show the documentation in
the echo area if the ElDoc buffer with the documentation is already displayed
in some window. (You can use the command M-x eldoc-doc-buffer any time
to show the ElDoc buffer.) If the value of this option is the symbol maybe,
the documentation will not be displayed in the echo area if the ElDoc buffer
is shown in some window, and the documentation text has to be truncated if
displayed in the echo area. Finally, the value of nil (the default) means always
show the documentation in the echo area.
eldoc-documentation-strategy
This customizable variable’s value is the function which is used to retrieve and dis-
play documentation for the symbol at point. The documentation is produced by
the functions in the hook eldoc-documentation-functions. The default value
of eldoc-documentation-strategy specifies that ElDoc should display the
first documentation text produced by functions in the eldoc-documentation-
functions hook, but you can customize eldoc-documentation-strategy to
work in other ways, such as displaying all of the documentation texts concate-
nated together.
eldoc-documentation-functions
This abnormal hook’s value is a list of functions that can produce documentation
for the symbol at point as appropriate for the current buffer’s major-mode. These
functions act as a collection of backends for ElDoc. Major modes register their
documentation lookup functions with ElDoc by adding their functions to the
buffer-local value of this variable.

23.7 Hideshow minor mode

Hideshow mode is a buffer-local minor mode that allows you to selectively display portions
of a program, which are referred to as blocks. Type M-x hs-minor-mode to toggle this minor
mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242).
When you use Hideshow mode to hide a block, the block disappears from the screen, to
be replaced by an ellipsis (three periods in a row). Just what constitutes a block depends
on the major mode. In C mode and related modes, blocks are delimited by braces, while in
Lisp mode they are delimited by parentheses. Multi-line comments also count as blocks.
Hideshow mode provides the following commands:
302 GNU Emacs Manual

C-c @ C-h
C-c @ C-d Hide the current block (hs-hide-block).
C-c @ C-s Show the current block (hs-show-block).
C-c @ C-c
C-c @ C-e
S-mouse-2
Either hide or show the current block (hs-toggle-hiding).
C-c @ C-M-h
C-c @ C-t Hide all top-level blocks (hs-hide-all).
C-c @ C-M-s
C-c @ C-a Show all blocks in the buffer (hs-show-all).
C-u n C-c @ C-l
Hide all blocks n levels below this block (hs-hide-level).
These variables can be used to customize Hideshow mode:
hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all
If non-nil, C-c @ C-M-h (hs-hide-all) hides comments too.
hs-isearch-open
This variable specifies the conditions under which incremental search should
unhide a hidden block when matching text occurs within the block. Its value
should be either code (unhide only code blocks), comment (unhide only com-
ments), t (unhide both code blocks and comments), or nil (unhide neither code
blocks nor comments). The default value is code.

23.8 Completion for Symbol Names

Completion is normally done in the minibuffer (see Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30), but
you can also complete symbol names in ordinary Emacs buffers.
In most programming language modes, C-M-i (or M-TAB3 ) invokes the command
completion-at-point, which generates the list of possible completions for the symbol at
point. This command uses the available support facilities to come up with the completion
candidates:
• If Eglot is activated for the current buffer’s project (see Section 25.2 [Projects], page 351)
and the current buffer’s major mode, the command tries to use the corresponding
language server for producing the list of completion candidates. See Section “Eglot
Features” in Eglot: The Emacs LSP Client.
• If Semantic mode is enabled (see Section 23.10 [Semantic], page 303), the command
tries to use the Semantic parser data for completion.
• If Semantic mode is not enabled or fails at performing completion, the command tries
to complete using the selected tags table (see Section 25.4.2 [Tags Tables], page 361);
you need to visit the tags table with M-x visit-tags-table for that to work.
3
On graphical displays, the M-TAB key is usually reserved by the window manager for switching graphical
windows, so you should type C-M-i or ESC TAB instead.
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 303

• In Emacs Lisp mode, the command performs completion using the function, variable,
or property names defined in the current Emacs session.
In all other respects, in-buffer symbol completion behaves like minibuffer completion.
For instance, if Emacs cannot complete to a unique symbol, it displays a list of completion
alternatives in another window. Then you can use the keys M-DOWN and M-UP to navigate
through the completions displayed in the completions buffer without leaving the original
buffer, and the key M-RET to insert the currently highlighted completion to the buffer. See
Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30.
In Text mode and related modes, M-TAB completes words based on the spell-checker’s
dictionary. See Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134.

23.9 MixedCase Words

Some programming styles make use of mixed-case (or “CamelCase”) symbols like
‘unReadableSymbol’. (In the GNU project, we recommend using underscores to separate
words within an identifier, rather than using case distinctions.) Emacs has various features
to make it easier to deal with such symbols.
Glasses mode is a buffer-local minor mode that makes it easier to read such symbols,
by altering how they are displayed. By default, it displays extra underscores between each
lower-case letter and the following capital letter. This does not alter the buffer text, only
how it is displayed.
To toggle Glasses mode, type M-x glasses-mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes],
page 242). When Glasses mode is enabled, the minor mode indicator ‘o^o’ appears in
the mode line. For more information about Glasses mode, type C-h P glasses RET.
Subword mode is another buffer-local minor mode. In subword mode, Emacs’s word
commands recognize upper case letters in ‘StudlyCapsIdentifiers’ as word boundaries.
When Subword mode is enabled, the minor mode indicator ‘,’ appears in the mode line. See
also the similar superword-mode (see Section 23.11 [Misc for Programs], page 304).

23.10 Semantic
Semantic is a package that provides language-aware editing commands based on source
code parsers. This section provides a brief description of Semantic; for full details, see the
Semantic Info manual, which is distributed with Emacs.
Most of the language-aware features in Emacs, such as Font Lock mode (see Section 11.13
[Font Lock], page 88), rely on rules of thumb4 that usually give good results but are never
completely exact. In contrast, the parsers used by Semantic have an exact understanding
of programming language syntax. This allows Semantic to provide search, navigation, and
completion commands that are powerful and precise.
To begin using Semantic, type M-x semantic-mode or click on the menu item named
‘Source Code Parsers (Semantic)’ in the ‘Tools’ menu. This enables Semantic mode, a
global minor mode.
When Semantic mode is enabled, Emacs automatically attempts to parse each file you
visit. Currently, Semantic understands C, C++, HTML, Java, Javascript, Make, Python,
4
Regular expressions and syntax tables.
304 GNU Emacs Manual

Scheme, SRecode, and Texinfo. Within each parsed buffer, the following commands are
available:
C-c , j Prompt for the name of a function defined in the current file, and move point
there (semantic-complete-jump-local).
C-c , J Prompt for the name of a function defined in any file Emacs has parsed, and
move point there (semantic-complete-jump).
C-c , SPC Display a list of possible completions for the symbol at point
(semantic-complete-analyze-inline). This also activates a set of special
key bindings for choosing a completion: RET accepts the current completion,
M-n and M-p cycle through possible completions, TAB completes as far as
possible and then cycles, and C-g or any other key aborts completion.
C-c , l Display a list of the possible completions of the symbol at point, in another
window (semantic-analyze-possible-completions).
In addition to the above commands, the Semantic package provides a variety of other ways to
make use of parser information. For instance, you can use it to display a list of completions
when Emacs is idle.

23.11 Other Features Useful for Editing Programs

Some Emacs commands that aren’t designed specifically for editing programs are useful for
that nonetheless.
The Emacs commands that operate on words, sentences and paragraphs are useful for
editing code. Most symbol names contain words (see Section 22.1 [Words], page 251), while
sentences can be found in strings and comments (see Section 22.2 [Sentences], page 252). As
for paragraphs, they are defined in most programming language modes to begin and end
at blank lines (see Section 22.3 [Paragraphs], page 253). Therefore, judicious use of blank
lines to make the program clearer will also provide useful chunks of text for the paragraph
commands to work on. Auto Fill mode, if enabled in a programming language major mode,
indents the new lines which it creates.
Superword mode is a buffer-local minor mode that causes editing and motion commands
to treat symbols (e.g., ‘this_is_a_symbol’) as words. When Superword mode is enabled,
the minor mode indicator ‘2 ’ appears in the mode line. See also the similar subword-mode
(see Section 23.9 [MixedCase Words], page 303).
Electric Layout mode (M-x electric-layout-mode) is a global minor mode that auto-
matically inserts newlines when you type certain characters; for example, ‘{’, ‘}’ and ‘;’ in
Javascript mode.
Apart from Hideshow mode (see Section 23.7 [Hideshow], page 301), another way to
selectively display parts of a program is to use the selective display feature (see Section 11.18
[Selective Display], page 95). Programming modes often also support Outline minor mode
(see Section 22.9 [Outline Mode], page 262), which can be used with the Foldout package
(see Section 22.9.6 [Foldout], page 266).
Prettify Symbols mode is a buffer-local minor mode that replaces certain strings with more
attractive versions for display purposes. For example, in Emacs Lisp mode, it replaces the
string ‘lambda’ with the Greek lambda character ‘λ’. In a TEX buffer, it will replace ‘\alpha’
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 305

. . . ‘\omega’ and other math macros with their Unicode characters. You may wish to use
this in non-programming modes as well. You can customize the mode by adding more entries
to prettify-symbols-alist. More elaborate customization is available via customizing
prettify-symbols-compose-predicate if its default value prettify-symbols-default-
compose-p is not appropriate. There is also a global version, global-prettify-symbols-
mode, which enables the mode in all buffers that support it.
The symbol at point can be shown in its original form. This is controlled by the variable
prettify-symbols-unprettify-at-point: if non-nil, the original form of symbol at point
will be restored for as long as point is at it.

23.12 C and Related Modes

This section gives a brief description of the special features available in C, C++, Objective-C,
Java, CORBA IDL, Pike and AWK modes. (These are called “C mode and related modes”.)
For more details, see the CC mode Info manual, which is distributed with Emacs.

23.12.1 C Mode Motion Commands

This section describes commands for moving point, in C mode and related modes.
C-M-a
C-M-e Move point to the beginning or end of the current function or top-level definition.
In languages with enclosing scopes (such as C++’s classes) the current function
is the immediate one, possibly inside a scope. Otherwise it is the one defined
by the least enclosing braces. (By contrast, beginning-of-defun and end-of-
defun search for braces in column zero.) See Section 23.2.2 [Moving by Defuns],
page 286.
C-c C-u Move point back to the containing preprocessor conditional, leaving the mark
behind. A prefix argument acts as a repeat count. With a negative argument,
move point forward to the end of the containing preprocessor conditional.
‘#elif’ is equivalent to ‘#else’ followed by ‘#if’, so the function will stop at a
‘#elif’ when going backward, but not when going forward.
C-c C-p Move point back over a preprocessor conditional, leaving the mark behind.
A prefix argument acts as a repeat count. With a negative argument, move
forward.
C-c C-n Move point forward across a preprocessor conditional, leaving the mark behind.
A prefix argument acts as a repeat count. With a negative argument, move
backward.
M-a Move point to the beginning of the innermost C statement (c-beginning-of-
statement). If point is already at the beginning of a statement, move to the
beginning of the preceding statement. With prefix argument n, move back n −
1 statements.
In comments or in strings which span more than one line, this command moves
by sentences instead of statements.
M-e Move point to the end of the innermost C statement or sentence; like M-a except
that it moves in the other direction (c-end-of-statement).
306 GNU Emacs Manual

23.12.2 Electric C Characters

In C mode and related modes, certain printing characters are electric—in addition to
inserting themselves, they also reindent the current line, and optionally also insert newlines.
The electric characters are {, }, :, #, ;, ,, <, >, /, *, (, and ).
You might find electric indentation inconvenient if you are editing chaotically indented
code. If you are new to CC Mode, you might find it disconcerting. You can toggle electric
action with the command C-c C-l; when it is enabled, ‘/cl’ appears in the mode line after
the mode name (where c, if present, is ‘*’ or ‘/’, depending on whether the comment style
is block or line). See Section “Minor Modes” in The CC Mode Manual, for more about
mode-line indicators in CC Mode.
C-c C-l Toggle electric action (c-toggle-electric-state). With a positive prefix
argument, this command enables electric action, with a negative one it disables
it.
Electric characters insert newlines only when, in addition to the electric state, the auto-
newline feature is enabled (indicated by ‘/cla’ in the mode line after the mode name). You
can turn this feature on or off with the command C-c C-a:
C-c C-a Toggle the auto-newline feature (c-toggle-auto-newline). With a prefix
argument, this command turns the auto-newline feature on if the argument is
positive, and off if it is negative.
Usually the CC Mode style configures the exact circumstances in which Emacs inserts
auto-newlines. You can also configure this directly. See Section “Custom Auto-newlines” in
The CC Mode Manual.

23.12.3 Hungry Delete Feature in C

If you want to delete an entire block of whitespace at point, you can use hungry deletion.
This deletes all the contiguous whitespace either before point or after point in a single
operation. Whitespace here includes tabs and newlines, but not comments or preprocessor
commands.
C-c C-DEL
C-c DEL Delete the entire block of whitespace preceding point (c-hungry-delete-
backwards).
C-c C-d
C-c C-Delete
C-c Delete
Delete the entire block of whitespace after point (c-hungry-delete-forward).
As an alternative to the above commands, you can enable hungry delete mode. When
this feature is enabled (indicated by ‘h’ after a ‘/’ in the mode line after the mode name), a
single DEL deletes all preceding whitespace, not just one space, and a single C-d (but not
plain Delete) deletes all following whitespace.
M-x c-toggle-hungry-state
Toggle the hungry-delete feature (c-toggle-hungry-state). With a prefix
argument, this command turns the hungry-delete feature on if the argument is
positive, and off if it is negative.
Chapter 23: Editing Programs 307

The variable c-hungry-delete-key controls whether the hungry-delete feature is enabled.

23.12.4 Other Commands for C Mode

M-x c-context-line-break
This command inserts a line break and indents the new line in a manner
appropriate to the context. In normal code, it does the work of RET (newline),
in a C preprocessor line it additionally inserts a ‘\’ at the line break, and within
comments it’s like M-j (c-indent-new-comment-line).
c-context-line-break isn’t bound to a key by default, but it needs a binding
to be useful. The following code will bind it to RET. We use c-initialization-
hook here to make sure the keymap is loaded before we try to change it.
(defun my-bind-clb ()
(keymap-set c-mode-base-map "RET"
'c-context-line-break))
(add-hook 'c-initialization-hook 'my-bind-clb)
C-M-h Put mark at the end of a function definition, and put point at the beginning
(c-mark-function).
M-q Fill a paragraph, handling C and C++ comments (c-fill-paragraph). If any
part of the current line is a comment or within a comment, this command fills
the comment or the paragraph of it that point is in, preserving the comment
indentation and comment delimiters.
C-c C-e Run the C preprocessor on the text in the region, and show the result, which
includes the expansion of all the macro calls (c-macro-expand). The buffer
text before the region is also included in preprocessing, for the sake of macros
defined there, but the output from this part isn’t shown.
When you are debugging C code that uses macros, sometimes it is hard to figure
out precisely how the macros expand. With this command, you don’t have to
figure it out; you can see the expansions.
C-c C-\ Insert or align ‘\’ characters at the ends of the lines of the region (c-backslash-
region). This is useful after writing or editing a C macro definition.
If a line already ends in ‘\’, this command adjusts the amount of whitespace
before it. Otherwise, it inserts a new ‘\’. However, the last line in the region is
treated specially; no ‘\’ is inserted on that line, and any ‘\’ there is deleted.
M-x cpp-highlight-buffer
Highlight parts of the text according to its preprocessor conditionals. This
command displays another buffer named *CPP Edit*, which serves as a graphic
menu for selecting how to display particular kinds of conditionals and their
contents. After changing various settings, click on ‘[A]pply these settings’
(or go to that buffer and type a) to rehighlight the C mode buffer accordingly.
C-c C-s Display the syntactic information about the current source line (c-show-
syntactic-information). This information directs how the line is indented.
M-x cwarn-mode
M-x global-cwarn-mode
CWarn minor mode highlights certain suspicious C and C++ constructions:
308 GNU Emacs Manual

• Assignments inside expressions.

• Semicolon following immediately after ‘if’, ‘for’, and ‘while’ (except after
a ‘do ... while’ statement);
• C++ functions with reference parameters.
You can enable the mode for one buffer with the command M-x cwarn-mode,
or for all suitable buffers with the command M-x global-cwarn-mode or by
customizing the variable global-cwarn-mode. You must also enable Font Lock
mode to make it work.
M-x hide-ifdef-mode
Hide-ifdef minor mode hides selected code within ‘#if’ and ‘#ifdef’ preprocessor
blocks. If you change the variable hide-ifdef-shadow to t, Hide-ifdef minor
mode shadows preprocessor blocks by displaying them with a less prominent face,
instead of hiding them entirely. See the documentation string of hide-ifdef-
mode for more information.
M-x ff-find-related-file
Find a file related in a special way to the file visited by the current buffer.
Typically this will be the header file corresponding to a C/C++ source file, or
vice versa. The variable ff-related-file-alist specifies how to compute
related file names.

23.13 Asm Mode

Asm mode is a major mode for editing files of assembler code. It defines these commands:
TAB tab-to-tab-stop.
C-j Insert a newline and then indent using tab-to-tab-stop.
: Insert a colon and then remove the indentation from before the label preceding
colon. Then do tab-to-tab-stop.
; Insert or align a comment.
The variable asm-comment-char specifies which character starts comments in assembler
syntax.
 309

24 Compiling and Testing Programs

The previous chapter discusses the Emacs commands that are useful for making changes in
programs. This chapter deals with commands that assist in the process of compiling and
testing programs.

24.1 Running Compilations under Emacs

Emacs can run compilers for languages such as C and Fortran, feeding the compilation log
into an Emacs buffer. It can also parse the error messages and show you where the errors
occurred.
M-x compile
Run a compiler asynchronously under Emacs, with error messages going to the
*compilation* buffer.
M-x recompile
g (Compilation mode)
Invoke a compiler with the same command as in the last invocation of M-x
compile.
M-x kill-compilation
Kill the running compilation subprocess.
To run make or another compilation command, type M-x compile. This reads a shell
command line using the minibuffer, and then executes the command by running a shell
as a subprocess (or inferior process) of Emacs. The output is inserted in a buffer named
*compilation*. The current buffer’s default directory is used as the working directory for
the execution of the command, so by default compilation takes place in that directory.
The default compilation command is ‘make -k’, which is usually correct for programs
compiled using the make utility (the ‘-k’ flag tells make to continue compiling as much as
possible after an error). See Section “Make” in GNU Make Manual. If you have done M-x
compile before, the command that you specified is automatically stored in the variable
compile-command; this is used as the default the next time you type M-x compile. A file
can also specify a file-local value for compile-command (see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables],
page 507).
Starting a compilation displays the *compilation* buffer in another window but does
not select it. While the compilation is running, the word ‘run’ is shown in the major mode
indicator for the *compilation* buffer, and the word ‘Compiling’ appears in all mode lines.
You do not have to keep the *compilation* buffer visible while compilation is running; it
continues in any case. When the compilation ends, for whatever reason, the mode line of the
*compilation* buffer changes to say ‘exit’ (followed by the exit code: ‘[0]’ for a normal
exit), or ‘signal’ (if a signal terminated the process).
If you want to watch the compilation transcript as it appears, switch to the *compilation*
buffer and move point to the end of the buffer. When point is at the end, new compilation
output is inserted above point, which remains at the end. Otherwise, point remains fixed
while compilation output is added at the end of the buffer.
While compilation proceeds, the mode line shows the number of errors, warnings, and
informational messages emitted by the compiler so far.
310 GNU Emacs Manual

If you change the variable compilation-scroll-output to a non-nil value, the

*compilation* buffer scrolls automatically to follow the output. If the value is
first-error, scrolling stops when the first error appears, leaving point at that error. For
any other non-nil value, scrolling continues until there is no more output.
To rerun the last compilation with the same command, type M-x recompile. This
reuses the compilation command from the last invocation of M-x compile. It also reuses
the *compilation* buffer and starts the compilation in its default directory, which is the
directory in which the previous compilation was started. In *compilation* buffers this
command is bound to g.
Starting a new compilation also kills any compilation already running in *compilation*,
as the buffer can only handle one compilation at any time. However, M-x compile and M-x
recompile ask for confirmation before actually killing a compilation that is running; to always
automatically kill the compilation without asking, change the variable compilation-always-
kill to t. You can also kill a compilation process with the command M-x kill-compilation.
To run two compilations at once, start the first one, then rename the *compilation*
buffer (perhaps using rename-uniquely; see Section 16.3 [Misc Buffer], page 177), then
switch buffers and start the other compilation. This will create a new *compilation* buffer.
You can control the environment passed to the compilation command with the variable
compilation-environment. Its value is a list of environment variable settings; each element
should be a string of the form "envvarname=value". These environment variable settings
override the usual ones.
Displaying extremely long lines in compilation output can slow Emacs down. Lines
that are longer than compilation-max-output-line-length will have the portion that’s
exceeds that limit hidden behind a button that can be clicked on to reveal the hidden portion.
Set this variable to nil to never hide anything.

24.2 Compilation Mode

The *compilation* buffer uses a major mode called Compilation mode. Compilation mode
turns each error message in the buffer into a hyperlink; you can move point to it and type
RET, or click on it with the mouse (see Section 18.3 [Mouse References], page 197), to visit
the locus of the error message in a separate window. The locus is the specific position in a
file where that error occurred.
The appearance of the *compilation* buffer can be controlled by customizing the faces
which are used to highlight parts of the *compilation* buffer, e.g., compilation-error or
compilation-warning, for error and warning messages respectively. Note that since those
faces inherit from the error and warning faces, it is also possible to customize the parent
face directly instead.
Use M-x customize-group RET compilation to see the entire list of customization vari-
ables and faces.
If you change the variable compilation-auto-jump-to-first-error to a non-nil
value, Emacs automatically visits the locus of the first error message that appears in
the *compilation* buffer. (This variable can also have the values if-location-known and
first-known, which modify the conditions for automatically visiting the error locus.)
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 311

Compilation mode provides the following additional commands. These commands can
also be used in *grep* buffers, where the hyperlinks are search matches rather than error
messages (see Section 24.4 [Grep Searching], page 313).
M-g M-n
M-g n
C-x ` Visit the locus of the next error message or match (next-error).
M-g M-p
M-g p Visit the locus of the previous error message or match (previous-error).
M-n Move point to the next error message or match, without visiting its locus
(compilation-next-error).
M-p Move point to the previous error message or match, without visiting its locus
(compilation-previous-error).
M-} Move point to the next error message or match occurring in a different file
(compilation-next-file).
M-{ Move point to the previous error message or match occurring in a different file
(compilation-previous-file).
C-c C-f Toggle Next Error Follow minor mode, which makes cursor motion in the
compilation buffer produce automatic source display.
g Re-run the last command whose output is shown in the *compilation* buffer.
M-x next-error-select-buffer
Select a buffer to be used by next invocation of next-error and
previous-error.
To visit errors sequentially, type C-x ` (next-error), or equivalently M-g M-n or M-g n.
This command can be invoked from any buffer, not just a Compilation mode buffer. The
first time you invoke it after a compilation, it visits the locus of the first error message. Each
subsequent M-g M-n visits the next error, in a similar fashion. If you visit a specific error
with RET or a mouse click in the *compilation* buffer, subsequent M-g M-n commands
advance from there. When M-g M-n finds no more error messages to visit, it signals an error.
C-u M-g M-n starts again from the beginning of the compilation buffer, and visits the first
locus.
M-g M-p or M-g p (previous-error) iterates through errors in the opposite direction.
The next-error and previous-error commands don’t just act on the errors or matches
listed in *compilation* and *grep* buffers; they also know how to iterate through error
or match lists produced by other commands, such as M-x occur (see Section 12.11 [Other
Repeating Search], page 126). If the current buffer contains error messages or matches,
these commands will iterate through them; otherwise, Emacs looks for a buffer containing
error messages or matches amongst the windows of the selected frame (if the variable
next-error-find-buffer-function is customized to the value next-error-buffer-on-
selected-frame), then for a buffer used previously by next-error or previous-error,
and finally all other buffers. Any buffer these commands iterate through that is not
currently displayed in a window will be displayed. You can use the next-error-select-
buffer command to switch to a different buffer to be used by the subsequent invocation of
next-error.
312 GNU Emacs Manual

By default, the next-error and previous-error commands skip less important messages.
The variable compilation-skip-threshold controls this. The default value, 1, means to
skip anything less important than a warning. A value of 2 means to skip anything less
important than an error, while 0 means not to skip any messages.
When Emacs visits the locus of an error message, it momentarily highlights the relevant
source line. The duration of this highlight is determined by the variable next-error-
highlight for the locus in the selected buffer, and next-error-highlight-no-select for
the locus in non-selected buffers. Also you can customize the variable next-error-message-
highlight that defines how to highlight the current error message in the buffer that contains
messages.
If the *compilation* buffer is shown in a window with a left fringe (see Section 11.15
[Fringes], page 92), the locus-visiting commands put an arrow in the fringe, pointing to the
current error message. If the window has no left fringe, such as on a text terminal, these
commands scroll the window so that the current message is at the top of the window. If you
change the variable compilation-context-lines to t, a visible arrow is inserted before
column zero instead. If you change the variable to an integer value n, these commands scroll
the window so that the current error message is n lines from the top, whether or not there
is a fringe; the default value, nil, gives the behavior described above.
Compilation output can sometimes be very verbose, and much of it isn’t of particular
interest to a user. The compilation-hidden-output user option should either be a regexp
or a list of regexps, and output that matches will be made invisible. For instance, to hide
the verbose output from recursive makefiles, you can say something like:
(setq compilation-hidden-output
'("^make[^\n]+\n"))
To parse messages from the compiler, Compilation mode uses the variable
compilation-error-regexp-alist which lists various error message formats and tells
Emacs how to extract the locus from each. A similar variable, grep-regexp-alist, tells
Emacs how to parse output from a grep command (see Section 24.4 [Grep Searching],
page 313).
Compilation mode also defines the keys SPC and DEL to scroll by screenfuls; M-n
(compilation-next-error) and M-p (compilation-previous-error) to move to
the next or previous error message; and M-{ (compilation-next-file) and M-}
(compilation-previous-file) to move to the next or previous error message for a
different source file.
You can type C-c C-f to toggle Next Error Follow mode. In this minor mode, ordinary
cursor motion in the compilation buffer automatically updates the source buffer, i.e., moving
the cursor over an error message causes the locus of that error to be displayed.
The features of Compilation mode are also available in a minor mode called Compilation
Minor mode. This lets you parse error messages in any buffer, not just a normal compilation
output buffer. Type M-x compilation-minor-mode to enable the minor mode. For instance,
in an Rlogin buffer (see Section 31.5.10 [Remote Host], page 464), Compilation minor mode
automatically accesses remote source files by FTP (see Section 15.1 [File Names], page 145).
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 313

24.3 Subshells for Compilation

This section includes various techniques and advice for using a shell and its features in
compilation buffers. This material is specific to local compilations, and will most probably
not work in (or be irrelevant to) compilation buffers whose default directory is on remote
hosts.
The M-x compile command uses a shell to run the compilation command, but specifies
the option for a noninteractive shell. This means, in particular, that the shell should start
with no prompt. If you find your usual shell prompt making an unsightly appearance in the
*compilation* buffer, it means you have made a mistake in your shell’s init file by setting
the prompt unconditionally. (This init file may be named .bashrc, .profile, .cshrc,
.shrc, etc., depending on what shell you use.) The shell init file should set the prompt only
if there already is a prompt. Here’s how to do it in bash:
if [ "${PS1+set}" = set ]
then PS1=...
fi
And here’s how to do it in csh:
if ($?prompt) set prompt = ...
If you want to customize the value of the TERM environment variable passed to the
compilation subshell, customize the variable comint-terminfo-terminal (see Section 31.5.7
[Shell Options], page 462).
Emacs does not expect a compiler process to launch asynchronous subprocesses; if it
does, and they keep running after the main compiler process has terminated, Emacs may
kill them or their output may not arrive in Emacs. To avoid this problem, make the main
compilation process wait for its subprocesses to finish. In a shell script, you can do this
using ‘$!’ and ‘wait’, like this:
(sleep 10; echo 2nd)& pid=$! # Record pid of subprocess
echo first message
wait $pid # Wait for subprocess
If the background process does not output to the compilation buffer, so you only need to
prevent it from being killed when the main compilation process terminates, this is sufficient:
nohup command; sleep 1

24.4 Searching with Grep under Emacs

Just as you can run a compiler from Emacs and then visit the lines with compilation errors,
you can also run grep and then visit the lines on which matches were found. This works
by treating the matches reported by grep as if they were errors. The output buffer uses
Grep mode, which is a variant of Compilation mode (see Section 24.2 [Compilation Mode],
page 310).
M-x grep
M-x lgrep Run grep asynchronously under Emacs, listing matching lines in the buffer
named *grep*.
M-x grep-find
M-x find-grep
M-x rgrep Run grep via find, and collect output in the *grep* buffer.
314 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x zrgrep
Run zgrep and collect output in the *grep* buffer.
M-x kill-grep
Kill the running grep subprocess.
To run grep, type M-x grep, then enter a command line that specifies how to run grep.
Use the same arguments you would give grep when running it normally: a grep-style regexp
(usually in single-quotes to quote the shell’s special characters) followed by file names, which
may use wildcards. If you specify a prefix argument for M-x grep, it finds the identifier (see
Section 25.4 [Xref], page 356) in the buffer around point, and puts that into the default
grep command.
Your command need not simply run grep; you can use any shell command that produces
output in the same format. For instance, you can chain grep commands, like this:
grep -nH -e foo *.el | grep bar | grep toto
The output from grep goes in the *grep* buffer. You can find the corresponding lines
in the original files using M-g M-n, RET, and so forth, just like compilation errors. See
Section 24.2 [Compilation Mode], page 310, for detailed description of commands and key
bindings available in the *grep* buffer.
Some grep programs accept a ‘--color’ option to output special markers around matches
for the purpose of highlighting. You can make use of this feature by setting grep-highlight-
matches to t. When displaying a match in the source buffer, the exact match will be
highlighted, instead of the entire source line. Highlighting is provided via matching the
ANSI escape sequences emitted by grep. The matching of the sequences is controlled by
grep-match-regexp, which can be customized to accommodate different grep programs.
As with compilation commands (see Section 24.1 [Compilation], page 309), while the grep
command runs, the mode line shows the running number of matches found and highlighted
so far.
The grep commands will offer to save buffers before running. This is controlled by the
grep-save-buffers variable. The possible values are either nil (don’t save), ask (ask
before saving), or a function which will be used as a predicate (and is called with the file
name as the parameter and should return non-nil if the buffer is to be saved). Any other
non-nil value means that all buffers should be saved without asking. The default is ask.
The command M-x grep-find (also available as M-x find-grep) is similar to M-x grep,
but it supplies a different initial default for the command—one that runs both find and
grep, so as to search every file in a directory tree. See also the find-grep-dired command,
in Section 27.16 [Dired and Find], page 394.
The commands M-x lgrep (local grep) and M-x rgrep (recursive grep) are more user-
friendly versions of grep and grep-find, which prompt separately for the regular expression
to match, the files to search, and the base directory for the search. Case sensitivity of the
search is controlled by the current value of case-fold-search. The command M-x zrgrep
is similar to M-x rgrep, but it calls zgrep instead of grep to search the contents of gzipped
files.
These commands build the shell commands based on the variables grep-template (for
lgrep) and grep-find-template (for rgrep). The files to search can use aliases defined in
the variable grep-files-aliases.
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 315

Directories listed in the variable grep-find-ignored-directories are automatically

skipped by M-x rgrep. The default value includes the data directories used by various
version control systems.
By default, the shell commands constructed for lgrep, rgrep, and zgrep are abbreviated
for display by concealing the part that contains a long list of files and directories to
ignore. You can reveal the concealed part by clicking on the button with ellipsis, which
represents them. You can also interactively toggle viewing the concealed part by typing
M-x grep-find-toggle-abbreviation. To disable this abbreviation of the shell commands,
customize the option grep-find-abbreviate to a nil value.

24.5 Finding Syntax Errors On The Fly

Flymake mode is a minor mode that performs on-the-fly syntax checking for many program-
ming and markup languages, including C, C++, Perl, HTML, and TEX/LATEX. It is somewhat
analogous to Flyspell mode, which performs spell checking for ordinary human languages in
a similar fashion (see Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134). As you edit a file, Flymake mode
runs an appropriate syntax checking tool in the background, using a temporary copy of the
buffer. It then parses the error and warning messages, and highlights the erroneous lines
in the buffer. The syntax checking tool used depends on the language; for example, for
C/C++ files this is usually the C compiler. Flymake can also use build tools such as make
for checking complicated projects.
To enable Flymake mode, type M-x flymake-mode. You can jump to the errors that
it finds by using M-x flymake-goto-next-error and M-x flymake-goto-prev-error.
To display a detailed overview of the diagnostics for the current buffer, use the
command M-x flymake-show-buffer-diagnostics; to display a similar overview
of diagnostics for the entire project (see Section 25.2 [Projects], page 351), use
M-x flymake-show-project-diagnostics.
For more details about using Flymake, see the Flymake Info manual, which is distributed
with Emacs.

24.6 Running Debuggers Under Emacs

The GUD (Grand Unified Debugger) library provides an Emacs interface to a wide variety
of symbolic debuggers. It can run the GNU Debugger (GDB), as well as DBX, SDB, XDB,
Guile REPL debug commands, Perl’s debugging mode, the Python debugger PDB, and the
Java Debugger JDB.
Emacs provides a special interface to GDB, which uses extra Emacs windows to display
the state of the debugged program. See Section 24.6.5 [GDB Graphical Interface], page 320.
Emacs also has a built-in debugger for Emacs Lisp programs. See Section “The Lisp
Debugger” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

24.6.1 Starting GUD

There are several commands for starting a debugger subprocess, each corresponding to a
particular debugger program.
316 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x gdb Run GDB as a subprocess, and interact with it via an IDE-like Emacs interface.
See Section 24.6.5 [GDB Graphical Interface], page 320, for more information
about this command.
M-x gud-gdb
Run GDB, using a GUD interaction buffer for input and output to the GDB
subprocess (see Section 24.6.2 [Debugger Operation], page 316). If such a buffer
already exists, switch to it; otherwise, create the buffer and switch to it.
The other commands in this list do the same, for other debugger programs.
M-x perldb
Run the Perl interpreter in debug mode.
M-x jdb Run the Java debugger.
M-x pdb Run the Python debugger.
M-x guiler
Run Guile REPL for debugging Guile Scheme programs.
M-x dbx Run the DBX debugger.
M-x xdb Run the XDB debugger.
M-x sdb Run the SDB debugger.
Each of these commands reads a command line to invoke the debugger, using the
minibuffer. The minibuffer’s initial contents contain the standard executable name and
options for the debugger, and sometimes also a guess for the name of the executable file you
want to debug. Shell wildcards and variables are not allowed in this command line. Emacs
assumes that the first command argument which does not start with a ‘-’ is the executable
file name.
Tramp provides a facility for remote debugging, whereby both the debugger and the
program being debugged are on the same remote host. See Section “Running a debugger
on a remote host” in The Tramp Manual, for details. This is separate from GDB’s remote
debugging feature, where the program and the debugger run on different machines (see
Section “Debugging Remote Programs” in The GNU debugger).

24.6.2 Debugger Operation

The GUD interaction buffer is an Emacs buffer which is used to send text commands to a
debugger subprocess, and record its output. This is the basic interface for interacting with a
debugger, used by M-x gud-gdb and other commands listed in the preceding section. The
M-x gdb command extends this interface with additional specialized buffers for controlling
breakpoints, stack frames, and other aspects of the debugger state (see Section 24.6.5 [GDB
Graphical Interface], page 320).
The GUD interaction buffer uses a variant of Shell mode, so the Emacs commands defined
by Shell mode are available (see Section 31.5.3 [Shell Mode], page 456). Completion is
available for most debugger commands (see Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30), and you can
use the usual Shell mode history commands to repeat them. See the next section for special
commands that can be used in the GUD interaction buffer.
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 317

As you debug a program, Emacs displays the relevant source files by visiting them in
Emacs buffers, with an arrow in the left fringe indicating the current execution line. (On a
text terminal, the arrow appears as ‘=>’, overlaid on the first two text columns.) Moving
point in such a buffer does not move the arrow. You are free to edit these source files, but
note that inserting or deleting lines will throw off the arrow’s positioning, as Emacs has no
way to figure out which edited source line corresponds to the line reported by the debugger
subprocess. To update this information, you typically have to recompile and restart the
program.
GUD Tooltip mode is a global minor mode that adds tooltip support to GUD. To toggle
this mode, type M-x gud-tooltip-mode. It is disabled by default. If enabled, you can move
the mouse pointer over a variable, a function, or a macro (collectively called identifiers) to
show their values in tooltips (see Section 18.19 [Tooltips], page 213). If just placing the
mouse pointer over an expression doesn’t show the value of the expression you had in mind,
you can tell Emacs more explicitly what expression to evaluate by dragging the mouse over
the expression, then leaving the mouse inside the marked area. The GUD Tooltip mode
takes effect in the GUD interaction buffer, and in all source buffers with major modes listed
in the variable gud-tooltip-modes. If the variable gud-tooltip-echo-area is non-nil, or
if you turned off the tooltip mode, values are shown in the echo area instead of a tooltip.
When using GUD Tooltip mode with M-x gud-gdb, displaying an expression’s value in
GDB can sometimes expand a macro, potentially causing side effects in the debugged program.
For that reason, using tooltips in gud-gdb is disabled. If you use the M-x gdb interface, this
problem does not occur, as there is special code to avoid side-effects; furthermore, you can
display macro definitions associated with an identifier when the program is not executing.

24.6.3 Commands of GUD

GUD provides commands for setting and clearing breakpoints, selecting stack frames, and
stepping through the program.
C-x C-a C-b
Set a breakpoint on the source line that point is on.
C-x C-a C-b (gud-break), when called in a source buffer, sets a debugger breakpoint on
the current source line. This command is available only after starting GUD. If you call it in
a buffer that is not associated with any debugger subprocess, it signals an error.
The following commands are available both in the GUD interaction buffer and globally,
but with different key bindings. The keys starting with C-c are available only in the GUD
interaction buffer, while those starting with C-x C-a are available globally. Some of these
commands are also available via the tool bar; some are not supported by certain debuggers.
C-c C-l
C-x C-a C-l
Display, in another window, the last source line referred to in the GUD interaction
buffer (gud-refresh).
C-c C-s
C-x C-a C-s
Execute the next single line of code (gud-step). If the line contains a function
call, execution stops after entering the called function.
318 GNU Emacs Manual

C-c C-n
C-x C-a C-n
Execute the next single line of code, stepping across function calls without
stopping inside the functions (gud-next).
C-c C-i
C-x C-a C-i
Execute a single machine instruction (gud-stepi).
C-c C-p
C-x C-a C-p
Evaluate the expression at point (gud-print). If Emacs does not print the
exact expression that you want, mark it as a region first.
C-c C-r
C-x C-a C-r
Continue execution without specifying any stopping point. The program will
run until it hits a breakpoint, terminates, or gets a signal that the debugger is
checking for (gud-cont).
C-c C-d
C-x C-a C-d
Delete the breakpoint(s) on the current source line, if any (gud-remove). If you
use this command in the GUD interaction buffer, it applies to the line where
the program last stopped.
C-c C-t
C-x C-a C-t
Set a temporary breakpoint on the current source line, if any (gud-tbreak).
If you use this command in the GUD interaction buffer, it applies to the line
where the program last stopped.
C-c <
C-x C-a < Select the next enclosing stack frame (gud-up). This is equivalent to the GDB
command ‘up’.
C-c >
C-x C-a > Select the next inner stack frame (gud-down). This is equivalent to the GDB
command ‘down’.
C-c C-u
C-x C-a C-u
Continue execution to the current line (gud-until). The program will run until
it hits a breakpoint, terminates, gets a signal that the debugger is checking for,
or reaches the line on which the cursor currently sits.
C-c C-f
C-x C-a C-f
Run the program until the selected stack frame returns or stops for some other
reason (gud-finish).
If you are using GDB, these additional key bindings are available:
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 319

C-x C-a C-j

Only useful in a source buffer, gud-jump transfers the program’s execution point
to the current line. In other words, the next line that the program executes
will be the one where you gave the command. If the new execution line is in
a different function from the previously one, GDB prompts for confirmation
since the results may be bizarre. See the GDB manual entry regarding jump for
details.
TAB With GDB, complete a symbol name (gud-gdb-complete-command). This key
is available only in the GUD interaction buffer.
These commands interpret a numeric argument as a repeat count, when that makes sense.
Because TAB serves as a completion command, you can’t use it to enter a tab as input to
the program you are debugging with GDB. Instead, type C-q TAB to enter a tab.

24.6.4 GUD Customization

On startup, GUD runs one of the following hooks: gdb-mode-hook, if you are using GDB;
dbx-mode-hook, if you are using DBX; sdb-mode-hook, if you are using SDB; xdb-mode-
hook, if you are using XDB; guiler-mode-hook for Guile REPL debugging; perldb-mode-
hook, for Perl debugging mode; pdb-mode-hook, for PDB; jdb-mode-hook, for JDB. See
Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.
The gud-def Lisp macro (see Section “Defining Macros” in the Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual) provides a convenient way to define an Emacs command that sends a particular
command string to the debugger, and set up a key binding for in the GUD interaction buffer:
(gud-def function cmdstring binding docstring)
This defines a command named function which sends cmdstring to the debugger process,
and gives it the documentation string docstring. You can then use the command function in
any buffer. If binding is non-nil, gud-def also binds the command to C-c binding in the
GUD buffer’s mode and to C-x C-a binding generally.
The command string cmdstring may contain certain ‘%’-sequences that stand for data to
be filled in at the time function is called:
‘%f’ The name of the current source file. If the current buffer is the GUD buffer,
then the current source file is the file that the program stopped in.
‘%l’ The number of the current source line. If the current buffer is the GUD buffer,
then the current source line is the line that the program stopped in.
‘%e’ In transient-mark-mode the text in the region, if it is active. Otherwise the text
of the C lvalue or function-call expression at or adjacent to point.
‘%a’ The text of the hexadecimal address at or adjacent to point.
‘%p’ The numeric argument of the called function, as a decimal number. If the
command is used without a numeric argument, ‘%p’ stands for the empty string.
If you don’t use ‘%p’ in the command string, the command you define ignores
any numeric argument.
‘%d’ The name of the directory of the current source file.
‘%c’ Fully qualified class name derived from the expression surrounding point (jdb
only).
320 GNU Emacs Manual

24.6.5 GDB Graphical Interface

The command M-x gdb starts GDB in an IDE-like interface, with specialized buffers for
controlling breakpoints, stack frames, and other aspects of the debugger state. It also
provides additional ways to control the debugging session with the mouse, such as clicking
in the fringe of a source buffer to set a breakpoint there.
To run GDB using just the GUD interaction buffer interface, without these additional
features, use M-x gud-gdb (see Section 24.6.1 [Starting GUD], page 315).
Internally, M-x gdb informs GDB that its screen size is unlimited; for correct operation,
you must not change GDB’s screen height and width values during the debugging session.

24.6.5.1 GDB User Interface Layout

If the variable gdb-many-windows is nil (the default), M-x gdb normally displays only the
GUD interaction buffer. However, if the variable gdb-show-main is also non-nil, it starts
with two windows: one displaying the GUD interaction buffer, and the other showing the
source for the main function of the program you are debugging.
If gdb-many-windows is non-nil, then M-x gdb displays the following frame layout:
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
| GUD interaction buffer | Locals/Registers buffer |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
| Primary Source buffer | I/O buffer for debugged pgm |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
| Stack buffer | Breakpoints/Threads buffer |
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------+
You can customize the window layout based on the one above and save that layout to a
file using gdb-save-window-configuration. Then you can later load this layout back using
gdb-load-window-configuration. (Internally, Emacs uses the term window configuration
instead of window layout.) You can set your custom layout as the default one used by
gdb-many-windows by customizing gdb-default-window-configuration-file. If it is
not an absolute file name, GDB looks under gdb-window-configuration-directory for
the file. gdb-window-configuration-directory defaults to user-emacs-directory (see
Section 33.4.4 [Find Init], page 527).
If you ever change the window layout, you can restore the default layout by typing M-x
gdb-restore-windows. To toggle between the many windows layout and a simple layout
with just the GUD interaction buffer and a source file, type M-x gdb-many-windows.
If you have an elaborate window setup, and don’t want gdb-many-windows to disrupt
that, it is better to invoke M-x gdb in a separate frame to begin with, then the arrangement
of windows on your original frame will not be affected. A separate frame for GDB sessions
can come in especially handy if you work on a text-mode terminal, where the screen
estate for windows could be at a premium. If you choose to start GDB in the same
frame, consider setting gdb-restore-window-configuration-after-quit to a non-nil
value. Your original layout will then be restored after GDB quits. Use t to always restore;
use if-gdb-many-windows to restore only when gdb-many-windows is non-nil; use if-gdb-
show-main to restore only when gdb-show-main is non-nil.
You may also specify additional GDB-related buffers to display, either in the same frame or
a different one. Select the buffers you want by typing M-x gdb-display-buffertype-buffer
or M-x gdb-frame-buffertype-buffer, where buffertype is the relevant buffer type, such
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 321

as ‘breakpoints’ or ‘io’. You can do the same from the menu bar, with the ‘GDB-Windows’
and ‘GDB-Frames’ sub-menus of the ‘GUD’ menu.
By default, GDB uses at most one window to display the source file. You can make it
use more windows by customizing gdb-max-source-window-count. You can also customize
gdb-display-source-buffer-action to control how GDB displays source files.
When you finish debugging, kill the GUD interaction buffer with C-x k, which will also
kill all the buffers associated with the session. However you need not do this if, after editing
and re-compiling your source code within Emacs, you wish to continue debugging. When
you restart execution, GDB automatically finds the new executable. Keeping the GUD
interaction buffer has the advantage of keeping the shell history as well as GDB’s breakpoints.
You do need to check that the breakpoints in recently edited source files are still in the right
places.

24.6.5.2 Source Buffers

mouse-1 (in fringe)
Set or clear a breakpoint on that line (gdb-mouse-set-clear-breakpoint).
C-mouse-1 (in fringe)
Enable or disable a breakpoint on that line (gdb-mouse-toggle-breakpoint-
margin).
mouse-3 (in fringe)
Continue execution to that line (gdb-mouse-until).
C-mouse-3 (in fringe)
Jump to that line (gdb-mouse-jump).
On a graphical display, you can click mouse-1 in the fringe of a source buffer, to set a
breakpoint on that line (see Section 11.15 [Fringes], page 92). A red dot appears in the fringe,
where you clicked. If a breakpoint already exists there, the click removes it. A C-mouse-1
click enables or disables an existing breakpoint; a breakpoint that is disabled, but not unset,
is indicated by a gray dot.
On a text terminal, or when fringes are disabled, enabled breakpoints are indicated with
a ‘B’ character in the left margin of the window. Disabled breakpoints are indicated with ‘b’.
(The margin is only displayed if a breakpoint is present.)
A solid arrow in the left fringe of a source buffer indicates the line of the innermost frame
where the debugged program has stopped. A hollow arrow indicates the current execution
line of a higher-level frame. If you drag the arrow in the fringe with mouse-1, that causes
execution to advance to the line where you release the button. Alternatively, you can click
mouse-3 in the fringe to advance to that line. You can click C-mouse-3 in the fringe to
jump to that line without executing the intermediate lines. This command allows you to
go backwards, which can be useful for running through code that has already executed, in
order to examine its execution in more detail.
By default, source file names and non-ASCII strings in the program being debugged
are decoded using the default coding-system. If you prefer a different decoding, perhaps
because the program being debugged uses a different character encoding, set the variable
gdb-mi-decode-strings to the appropriate coding-system, or to nil to leave non-ASCII
characters as undecoded octal escapes.
322 GNU Emacs Manual

24.6.5.3 Breakpoints Buffer

The GDB Breakpoints buffer shows the breakpoints, watchpoints and catchpoints in the
debugger session. See Section “Breakpoints” in The GNU debugger. It provides the following
commands, which mostly apply to the current breakpoint (the breakpoint which point is
on):
SPC Enable/disable current breakpoint (gdb-toggle-breakpoint). On a graphical
display, this changes the color of the dot in the fringe of the source buffer at
that line. The dot is red when the breakpoint is enabled, and gray when it is
disabled.
D Delete the current breakpoint (gdb-delete-breakpoint).
RET Visit the source line for the current breakpoint (gdb-goto-breakpoint).
mouse-2 Visit the source line for the breakpoint you click on (gdb-goto-breakpoint).
When gdb-many-windows is non-nil, the GDB Breakpoints buffer shares its window
with the GDB Threads buffer. To switch from one to the other click with mouse-1 on the
relevant button in the header line. If gdb-show-threads-by-default is non-nil, the GDB
Threads buffer is the one shown by default.

24.6.5.4 Threads Buffer

The GDB Threads buffer displays a summary of the threads in the debugged program. See
Section “Debugging programs with multiple threads” in The GNU debugger. To select a
thread, move point there and press RET (gdb-select-thread), or click on it with mouse-2.
This also displays the associated source buffer, and updates the contents of the other GDB
buffers.
You can customize variables in the gdb-buffers group to select fields included in GDB
Threads buffer.
gdb-thread-buffer-verbose-names
Show long thread names like ‘Thread 0x4e2ab70 (LWP 1983)’.
gdb-thread-buffer-arguments
Show arguments of thread top frames.
gdb-thread-buffer-locations
Show file information or library names.
gdb-thread-buffer-addresses
Show addresses for thread frames in threads buffer.
To view information for several threads simultaneously, use the following commands from
the GDB Threads buffer.
d Display disassembly buffer for the thread at current line (gdb-display-
disassembly-for-thread).
f Display the GDB Stack buffer for the thread at current line (gdb-display-
stack-for-thread).
l Display the GDB Locals buffer for the thread at current line (gdb-display-
locals-for-thread).
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 323

r Display the GDB Registers buffer for the thread at current line (gdb-display-
registers-for-thread).

Their upper-case counterparts, D, F ,L and R, display the corresponding buffer in a new

frame.
When you create a buffer showing information about some specific thread, it becomes
bound to that thread and keeps showing actual information while you debug your program.
The mode indicator for each GDB buffer shows the number of the thread whose information
that buffer displays. The thread number is also included in the name of each bound buffer.
Further commands are available in the GDB Threads buffer which depend on the
mode of GDB that is used for controlling execution of your program. See Section 24.6.5.8
[Multithreaded Debugging], page 325.

24.6.5.5 Stack Buffer

The GDB Stack buffer displays a call stack, with one line for each of the nested subroutine
calls (stack frames) in the debugger session. See Section “Backtraces” in The GNU debugger.
On graphical displays, the selected stack frame is indicated by an arrow in the fringe. On
text terminals, or when fringes are disabled, the selected stack frame is displayed in reverse
contrast. To select a stack frame, move point in its line and type RET (gdb-frames-select),
or click mouse-2 on it. Doing so also updates the Locals buffer (described in the next
section).
If you want the frame address to be shown each stack frame, customize the variable
gdb-stack-buffer-addresses to a non-nil value.

24.6.5.6 Other GDB Buffers

Other buffers provided by M-x gdb whose display you can optionally request include:

Locals Buffer
This buffer displays the values of local variables of the current stack frame for
simple data types (see Section “Information on a frame” in The GNU debugger).
Press RET or click mouse-2 on the value if you want to edit it.
Arrays and structures display their type only. With GDB 6.4 or later, you
can examine the value of the local variable at point by typing RET, or with
a mouse-2 click. With earlier versions of GDB, use RET or mouse-2 on the
type description (‘[struct/union]’ or ‘[array]’). See Section 24.6.5.7 [Watch
Expressions], page 324.
To display the Locals buffer, type M-x gdb-display-locals-buffer.
I/O Buffer
If the program you are debugging uses standard input and output streams for
interaction with the user, or emits a significant amount of output to its standard
output, you may wish to separate its I/O from interaction with GDB. Use
the command M-x gdb-display-io-buffer to show a window with a buffer
to which Emacs redirects the input and output from the program you are
debugging.
324 GNU Emacs Manual

Registers Buffer
This buffer displays the values held by the registers (see Section “Registers” in
The GNU debugger). Request the display of this buffer with the command M-x
gdb-display-registers-buffer. Press RET or click mouse-2 on a register if
you want to edit its value. With GDB 6.4 or later, recently changed register
values display with font-lock-warning-face.
Assembler Buffer
The assembler buffer displays the current frame as machine code. An arrow
points to the current instruction, and you can set and remove breakpoints as
in a source buffer. Breakpoint icons also appear in the fringe or margin. To
request the display of this buffer, use M-x gdb-display-disassembly-buffer.
Memory Buffer
The memory buffer lets you examine sections of program memory (see Section
“Examining memory” in The GNU debugger). Click mouse-1 on the appropriate
part of the header line to change the starting address or number of data items
that the buffer displays. Alternatively, use S or N respectively. Click mouse-3
on the header line to select the display format or unit size for these data items.
Use M-x gdb-display-memory-buffer to request display of this buffer.
When gdb-many-windows is non-nil, the locals buffer shares its window with the registers
buffer, just like breakpoints and threads buffers. To switch from one to the other, click with
mouse-1 on the relevant button in the header line.

24.6.5.7 Watch Expressions

If you want to see how a variable changes each time your program stops, move point into
the variable name and click on the watch icon in the tool bar (gud-watch) or type C-x C-a
C-w. If you specify a prefix argument, you can enter the variable name in the minibuffer.
Each watch expression is displayed in the speedbar (see Section 18.9 [Speedbar], page 204).
Complex data types, such as arrays, structures and unions are represented in a tree format.
Leaves and simple data types show the name of the expression and its value and, when the
speedbar frame is selected, display the type as a tooltip. Higher levels show the name, type
and address value for pointers and just the name and type otherwise. Root expressions also
display the frame address as a tooltip to help identify the frame in which they were defined.
To expand or contract a complex data type, click mouse-2 or press SPC on the tag to the
left of the expression. Emacs asks for confirmation before expanding the expression if its
number of immediate children exceeds the value of the variable gdb-max-children.
To delete a complex watch expression, move point to the root expression in the speedbar
and type D (gdb-var-delete).
To edit a variable with a simple data type, or a simple element of a complex data type,
move point there in the speedbar and type RET (gdb-edit-value). Or you can click mouse-2
on a value to edit it. Either way, this reads the new value using the minibuffer.
If you set the variable gdb-show-changed-values to non-nil (the default value), Emacs
uses font-lock-warning-face to highlight values that have recently changed and shadow
face to make variables which have gone out of scope less noticeable. When a variable goes
out of scope you can’t edit its value.
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 325

If the variable gdb-delete-out-of-scope is non-nil (the default value), Emacs auto-

matically deletes watch expressions which go out of scope. Sometimes, when your program
re-enters the same function many times, it may be useful to set this value to nil so that
you don’t need to recreate the watch expression.
If the variable gdb-use-colon-colon-notation is non-nil, Emacs uses the
‘function::variable’ format. This allows the user to display watch expressions which
share the same variable name. The default value is nil.
To automatically raise the speedbar every time the display of watch expressions updates,
set gdb-speedbar-auto-raise to non-nil. This can be useful if you are debugging with a
full screen Emacs frame.

24.6.5.8 Multithreaded Debugging

In GDB’s all-stop mode, whenever your program stops, all execution threads stop. Likewise,
whenever you restart the program, all threads start executing. See Section “All-Stop Mode”
in The GNU debugger. For some multi-threaded targets, GDB supports a further mode of
operation, called non-stop mode, in which you can examine stopped program threads in the
debugger while other threads continue to execute freely. See Section “Non-Stop Mode” in
The GNU debugger. Versions of GDB prior to 7.0 do not support non-stop mode, and it
does not work on all targets.
The variable gdb-non-stop-setting determines whether Emacs runs GDB in all-stop
mode or non-stop mode. The default is t, which means it tries to use non-stop mode if that
is available. If you change the value to nil, or if non-stop mode is unavailable, Emacs runs
GDB in all-stop mode. The variable takes effect when Emacs begins a debugging session; if
you change its value, you should restart any active debugging session.
When a thread stops in non-stop mode, Emacs usually switches to that thread. If you
don’t want Emacs to do this switch if another stopped thread is already selected, change
the variable gdb-switch-when-another-stopped to nil.
Emacs can decide whether or not to switch to the stopped thread depending on the
reason which caused the stop. Customize the variable gdb-switch-reasons to select the
stop reasons which will cause a thread switch.
The variable gdb-stopped-functions allows you to execute your functions whenever
some thread stops.
In non-stop mode, you can switch between different modes for GUD execution control
commands.
Non-stop/A
When gdb-gud-control-all-threads is t (the default value), interruption and
continuation commands apply to all threads, so you can halt or continue all your
threads with one command using gud-stop-subjob and gud-cont, respectively.
The ‘Go’ button is shown on the tool bar when at least one thread is stopped,
whereas ‘Stop’ button is shown when at least one thread is running.
Non-stop/T
When gdb-gud-control-all-threads is nil, only the current thread is
stopped/continued. ‘Go’ and ‘Stop’ buttons on the GUD tool bar are shown
depending on the state of current thread.
326 GNU Emacs Manual

You can change the current value of gdb-gud-control-all-threads from the tool bar
or from ‘GUD->GDB-MI’ menu.
Stepping commands always apply to the current thread.
In non-stop mode, you can interrupt/continue your threads without selecting them.
Hitting i in threads buffer interrupts thread under point, c continues it, s steps through.
More such commands may be added in the future.
Note that when you interrupt a thread, it stops with the ‘signal received’ reason. If
that reason is included in your gdb-switch-reasons (it is by default), Emacs will switch to
that thread.

24.7 Executing Lisp Expressions

Emacs has major modes for several variants of Lisp. They use the same editing commands
as other programming language modes (see Chapter 23 [Programs], page 285). In addition,
they provide special commands for executing Lisp expressions.
Emacs Lisp mode
The mode for editing Emacs Lisp source files. It defines C-M-x to evaluate the
current top-level Lisp expression. See Section 24.9 [Lisp Eval], page 328.
Lisp Interaction mode
The mode for an interactive Emacs Lisp session. It defines C-j to evaluate the
expression before point and insert its value in the buffer. See Section 24.10 [Lisp
Interaction], page 330.
Lisp mode The mode for editing source files of programs that run in Lisps other than Emacs
Lisp. It defines C-M-x to evaluate the current top-level expression in an external
Lisp. See Section 24.11 [External Lisp], page 330.
Inferior Lisp mode
The mode for an interactive session with an external Lisp which is being run as
a subprocess (or inferior process) of Emacs.
Scheme mode
Like Lisp mode, but for Scheme programs.
Inferior Scheme mode
Like Inferior Lisp mode, but for Scheme.

24.8 Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs

Emacs Lisp code is stored in files whose names conventionally end in .el. Such files are
automatically visited in Emacs Lisp mode.
Emacs Lisp code can be compiled into byte-code, which loads faster, takes up less space,
and executes faster. By convention, compiled Emacs Lisp code goes in a separate file whose
name ends in ‘.elc’. For example, the compiled code for foo.el goes in foo.elc. See
Section “Byte Compilation” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Emacs Lisp code can also be compiled into native code: machine code not unlike the
one produced by a C or Fortran compiler. Native code runs even faster than byte-code.
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 327

Natively-compiled Emacs Lisp code is stored in files whose names end in ‘.eln’. See Section
“Native Compilation” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
To load an Emacs Lisp file, type M-x load-file. This command reads a file name using
the minibuffer, and executes the contents of that file as Emacs Lisp code. It is not necessary
to visit the file first; this command reads the file directly from disk, not from an existing
Emacs buffer.
If an Emacs Lisp file is installed in the Emacs Lisp load path (defined below), you can load
it by typing M-x load-library, instead of using M-x load-file. The M-x load-library
command prompts for a library name rather than a file name; it searches through each
directory in the Emacs Lisp load path, trying to find a file matching that library name. If
the library name is ‘foo’, it tries looking for files named foo.elc, foo.el, and foo. (If
Emacs was built with native compilation enabled, load-library looks for a ‘.eln’ file that
corresponds to foo.el and loads it instead of foo.elc.) The default behavior is to load the
first file found. This command prefers .eln files over .elc files, and prefers .elc files over
.el files, because compiled files load and run faster. If it finds that lib.el is newer than
lib.elc, it issues a warning, in case someone made changes to the .el file and forgot to
recompile it, but loads the .elc file anyway. (Due to this behavior, you can save unfinished
edits to Emacs Lisp source files, and not recompile until your changes are ready for use.) If
you set the option load-prefer-newer to a non-nil value, however, then rather than the
procedure described above, Emacs loads whichever version of the file is newest. If Emacs
was built with native compilation, and it cannot find the ‘.eln’ file corresponding to lib.el,
it will load a lib.elc and start native compilation of lib.el in the background, then load
the ‘.eln’ file when it finishes compilation.
Emacs Lisp programs usually load Emacs Lisp files using the load function. This is
similar to load-library, but is lower-level and accepts additional arguments. See Section
“How Programs Do Loading” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
The Emacs Lisp load path is specified by the variable load-path. Its value should be
a list of directories (strings). These directories are searched, in the specified order, by the
M-x load-library command, the lower-level load function, and other Emacs functions
that find Emacs Lisp libraries. An entry in load-path can also have the special value nil,
which stands for the current default directory, but it is almost always a bad idea to use this,
because its meaning will depend on the buffer that is current when load-path is used by
Emacs. (If you find yourself wishing that nil were in the list, most likely what you really
want is to use M-x load-file.)
The default value of load-path is a list of directories where the Lisp code for Emacs itself
is stored. If you have libraries of your own in another directory, you can add that directory
to the load path. Unlike most other variables described in this manual, load-path cannot
be changed via the Customize interface (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494),
but you can add a directory to it by putting a line like this in your init file (see Section 33.4
[Init File], page 522):
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/my/lisp/library")
It is customary to put locally installed libraries in the site-lisp directory that is already
in the default value of load-path, or in some subdirectory of site-lisp. This way, you
don’t need to modify the default value of load-path.
328 GNU Emacs Manual

Similarly to load-path, the list of directories where Emacs looks for *.eln files with
natively-compiled Lisp code is specified by the variable native-comp-eln-load-path.
Some commands are autoloaded; when you run them, Emacs automatically loads the
associated library first. For instance, the M-x compile command (see Section 24.1 [Compila-
tion], page 309) is autoloaded; if you call it, Emacs automatically loads the compile library
first. In contrast, the command M-x recompile is not autoloaded, so it is unavailable until
you load the compile library.
Automatic loading can also occur when you look up the documentation of an autoloaded
command (see Section 7.2 [Name Help], page 44), if the documentation refers to other
functions and variables in its library (loading the library lets Emacs properly set up the
hyperlinks in the *Help* buffer). To disable this feature, change the variable help-enable-
autoload to nil.
Automatic loading also occurs when completing names for describe-variable and
describe-function, based on the prefix being completed. To disable this feature, change
the variable help-enable-completion-autoload to nil.
Once you put your library in a directory where Emacs can find and load it, you may wish
to make it available at startup. This is useful when the library defines features that should
be available automatically on demand, and manually loading the library is thus inconvenient.
In these cases, make sure the library will be loaded by adding suitable forms to your init
file: either load or require (if you always need to load the library at startup), or autoload
if you need Emacs to load the library when some command or function is invoked. For
example:
;; Loads my-shining-package.elc unconditionally.
(require 'my-shining-package)
;; Will load my-shining-package.elc when my-func is invoked.
(autoload 'my-func "my-shining-package")

Note that installing a package using package-install (see Section 32.3 [Package Instal-
lation], page 488) takes care of placing the package’s Lisp files in a directory where Emacs
will find it, and also writes the necessary initialization code into your init files, making the
above manual customizations unnecessary.

24.9 Evaluating Emacs Lisp Expressions

Emacs Lisp mode is the major mode for editing Emacs Lisp. Its mode command is M-x
emacs-lisp-mode.
Emacs provides several commands for evaluating Emacs Lisp expressions. You can use
these commands in Emacs Lisp mode, to test your Emacs Lisp code as it is being written.
For example, after re-writing a function, you can evaluate the function definition to make it
take effect for subsequent function calls. These commands are also available globally, and
can be used outside Emacs Lisp mode.

M-: Read a single Emacs Lisp expression in the minibuffer, evaluate it, and print
the value in the echo area (eval-expression).
C-x C-e Evaluate the Emacs Lisp expression before point, and print the value in the
echo area (eval-last-sexp).
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 329

C-M-x (in Emacs Lisp mode)

M-x eval-defun
Evaluate the defun containing or after point, and print the value in the echo
area (eval-defun).
M-x eval-region
Evaluate all the Emacs Lisp expressions in the region.
M-x eval-buffer
Evaluate all the Emacs Lisp expressions in the buffer.
M-: (eval-expression) reads an expression using the minibuffer, and evaluates it.
(Before evaluating the expression, the current buffer switches back to the buffer that was
current when you typed M-:, not the minibuffer into which you typed the expression.)
The command C-x C-e (eval-last-sexp) evaluates the Emacs Lisp expression preceding
point in the buffer, and displays the value in the echo area. When the result of an evaluation
is an integer, it is displayed together with the value in other formats (octal, hexadecimal,
and character if eval-expression-print-maximum-character, described below, allows it).
If M-: or C-x C-e is given a prefix argument, it inserts the value into the current buffer
at point, rather than displaying it in the echo area. If the prefix argument is zero, any
integer output is inserted together with its value in other formats (octal, hexadecimal, and
character). Such a prefix argument also prevents abbreviation of the output according to
the variables eval-expression-print-level and eval-expression-print-length (see
below). Similarly, a prefix argument of -1 overrides the effect of eval-expression-print-
length.
C-x C-e (eval-last-sexp) treats defvar expressions specially. Normally, evaluating
a defvar expression does nothing if the variable it defines already has a value. But this
command unconditionally resets the variable to the initial value specified by the defvar; this
is convenient for debugging Emacs Lisp programs. defcustom and defface expressions are
treated similarly. Note the other commands documented in this section, except eval-defun,
do not have this special feature.
The eval-defun command is bound to C-M-x in Emacs Lisp mode. It evaluates the
top-level Lisp expression containing or following point, and prints the value in the echo area.
In this context, a top-level expression is referred to as a “defun”, but it need not be an
actual defun (function definition).
This command handles defvar/defcustom/defface forms the same way that
eval-last-sexp does.
With a prefix argument, C-M-x instruments the function definition for Edebug, the Emacs
Lisp Debugger. See Section “Instrumenting” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
The command M-x eval-region parses the text of the region as one or more Lisp
expressions, evaluating them one by one. M-x eval-buffer is similar but evaluates the
entire buffer.
The options eval-expression-print-level and eval-expression-print-length con-
trol the maximum depth and length of lists to print in the result of the evaluation com-
mands before abbreviating them. Supplying a zero prefix argument to eval-expression
or eval-last-sexp causes lists to be printed in full. eval-expression-debug-on-error
controls whether evaluation errors invoke the debugger when these commands are used;
330 GNU Emacs Manual

its default is t. eval-expression-print-maximum-character prevents integers which are

larger than it from being displayed as characters.

24.10 Lisp Interaction Buffers

When Emacs starts up, it contains a buffer named *scratch*, which is provided for
evaluating Emacs Lisp expressions interactively. Its major mode is Lisp Interaction mode.
You can also enable Lisp Interaction mode by typing M-x lisp-interaction-mode.
If you kill the *scratch* buffer, you can recreate it with the M-x scratch-buffer
command.
In the *scratch* buffer, and other Lisp Interaction mode buffers, C-j (eval-print-
last-sexp) evaluates the Lisp expression before point, and inserts the value at point. Thus,
as you type expressions into the buffer followed by C-j after each expression, the buffer
records a transcript of the evaluated expressions and their values. All other commands in
Lisp Interaction mode are the same as in Emacs Lisp mode.
At startup, the *scratch* buffer contains a short message, in the form of a Lisp comment,
that explains what it is for. This message is controlled by the variable initial-scratch-
message, which should be either a documentation string, or nil (which means to suppress
the message).
An alternative way of evaluating Emacs Lisp expressions interactively is to use Inferior
Emacs Lisp mode, which provides an interface rather like Shell mode (see Section 31.5.3 [Shell
Mode], page 456) for evaluating Emacs Lisp expressions. Type M-x ielm to create an *ielm*
buffer which uses this mode. For more information, see that command’s documentation.

24.11 Running an External Lisp

Lisp mode is the major mode for editing programs written in general-purpose Lisp dialects,
such as Common Lisp. Its mode command is M-x lisp-mode. Emacs uses Lisp mode
automatically for files whose names end in .l, .lsp, or .lisp.
You can run an external Lisp session as a subprocess or inferior process of Emacs, and
pass expressions to it to be evaluated. To begin an external Lisp session, type M-x run-lisp.
This runs the program named lisp, and sets it up so that both input and output go through
an Emacs buffer named *inferior-lisp*. To change the name of the Lisp program run by
M-x run-lisp, change the variable inferior-lisp-program.
The major mode for the *lisp* buffer is Inferior Lisp mode, which combines the
characteristics of Lisp mode and Shell mode (see Section 31.5.3 [Shell Mode], page 456).
To send input to the Lisp session, go to the end of the *lisp* buffer and type the input,
followed by RET. Terminal output from the Lisp session is automatically inserted in the
buffer.
When you edit a Lisp program in Lisp mode, you can type C-M-x (lisp-eval-defun) to
send an expression from the Lisp mode buffer to a Lisp session that you had started with
M-x run-lisp. The expression sent is the top-level Lisp expression at or following point.
The resulting value goes as usual into the *inferior-lisp* buffer. Note that the effect of
C-M-x in Lisp mode is thus very similar to its effect in Emacs Lisp mode (see Section 24.9
[Lisp Eval], page 328), except that the expression is sent to a different Lisp environment
instead of being evaluated in Emacs.
Chapter 24: Compiling and Testing Programs 331

The facilities for editing Scheme code, and for sending expressions to a Scheme subprocess,
are very similar. Scheme source files are edited in Scheme mode, which can be explicitly
enabled with M-x scheme-mode. You can initiate a Scheme session by typing M-x run-scheme
(the buffer for interacting with Scheme is named *scheme*), and send expressions to it by
typing C-M-x.
332 GNU Emacs Manual

25 Maintaining Large Programs

This chapter describes Emacs features for maintaining medium- to large-size programs and
packages. These features include:
− Unified interface to Support for Version Control Systems (VCS) that record the history
of changes to source files.
− Commands for handling programming projects.
− A specialized mode for maintaining ChangeLog files that provide a chronological log of
program changes.
− Xref, a set of commands for displaying definitions of symbols (a.k.a. “identifiers”) and
their references.
− EDE, the Emacs’s own IDE.
− A minor-mode for highlighting bug references and visiting the referenced bug reports in
their issue tracker.

If you are maintaining a large Lisp program, then in addition to the features described
here, you may find the Emacs Lisp Regression Testing (ERT) library useful (see Section
“ERT” in Emacs Lisp Regression Testing).

25.1 Version Control

A version control system is a program that can record multiple versions of a source file,
storing information such as the creation time of each version, who made it, and a description
of what was changed.
The Emacs version control interface is called VC. VC commands work with several differ-
ent version control systems; currently, it supports Bazaar, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Monotone,
RCS, SRC, SCCS/CSSC, and Subversion. Of these, the GNU project distributes CVS, RCS,
and Bazaar.
VC is enabled automatically whenever you visit a file governed by a version control
system. To disable VC entirely, set the customizable variable vc-handled-backends to nil
(see Section “Customizing VC” in Specialized Emacs Features).
To update the VC state information for the file visited in the current buffer, use the
command vc-refresh-state. This command is useful when you perform version control
commands outside Emacs (e.g., from the shell prompt), or if you put the buffer’s file under
a different version control system, or remove it from version control entirely.
VC is also enabled automatically in Dired buffers (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378)
showing directories whose files are controlled by a VCS. All VC commands described in this
section can be invoked from any Dired buffer showing a directory with VC-controlled files;
any files that are marked in a Dired buffer (see Section 27.6 [Marks vs Flags], page 383) are
considered to belong to the current fileset, and VC commands operate on the files in this
fileset. This allows you to construct VC filesets including any files you want, regardless of
their VC state. (If no files are marked when a VC command is invoked from a Dired buffer,
the file shown on the current line in the buffer is considered the only file in the fileset.)
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 333

25.1.1 Introduction to Version Control

VC allows you to use a version control system from within Emacs, integrating the version
control operations smoothly with editing. It provides a uniform interface for common
operations in many version control operations.
Some uncommon or intricate version control operations, such as altering repository
settings, are not supported in VC. You should perform such tasks outside VC, e.g., via the
command line.
This section provides a general overview of version control, and describes the version
control systems that VC supports. You can skip this section if you are already familiar with
the version control system you want to use.

25.1.1.1 Understanding the Problems it Addresses

Version control systems provide you with three important capabilities:
• Reversibility: the ability to back up to a previous state if you discover that some
modification you did was a mistake or a bad idea.
• Concurrency: the ability to have many people modifying the same collection of files
knowing that conflicting modifications can be detected and resolved.
• History: the ability to attach historical data to your data, such as explanatory comments
about the intention behind each change. Even for a programmer working solo, change
histories are an important aid to memory; for a multi-person project, they are a vitally
important form of communication among developers.

25.1.1.2 Supported Version Control Systems

VC currently works with many different version control systems, which it refers to as back
ends:
• Git is a decentralized version control system originally invented by Linus Torvalds to
support development of Linux (his kernel). VC supports many common Git operations,
but others, such as repository syncing, must be done from the command line.
• CVS is the free version control system that was, until circa 2008, used by the majority
of free software projects. Since then, it has been superseded by newer systems. CVS
allows concurrent multi-user development either locally or over the network. Unlike
newer systems, it lacks support for atomic commits and file moving/renaming. VC
supports all basic editing operations under CVS.
• Subversion (svn) is a free version control system designed to be similar to CVS but
without its problems (e.g., it supports atomic commits of filesets, and versioning of
directories, symbolic links, meta-data, renames, copies, and deletes).
• SCCS was the first version control system ever built, and was long ago superseded by
more advanced ones. VC compensates for certain features missing in SCCS (e.g., tag
names for releases) by implementing them itself. Other VC features, such as multiple
branches, are simply unavailable. Since SCCS is non-free, we recommend avoiding it.
• CSSC is a free replacement for SCCS. You should use CSSC only if, for some reason,
you cannot use a more recent and better-designed version control system.
334 GNU Emacs Manual

• RCS is the free version control system around which VC was initially built. It is
relatively primitive: it cannot be used over the network, and works at the level of
individual files. Almost everything you can do with RCS can be done through VC.
• Mercurial (hg) is a decentralized version control system broadly resembling Git. VC
supports most Mercurial commands, with the exception of repository sync operations.
• Bazaar (bzr) is a decentralized version control system that supports both repository-
based and decentralized versioning. VC supports most basic editing operations under
Bazaar.
• SRC (src) is RCS, reloaded—a specialized version-control system designed for single-
file projects worked on by only one person. It allows multiple files with independent
version-control histories to exist in one directory, and is thus particularly well suited
for maintaining small documents, scripts, and dotfiles. While it uses RCS for revision
storage, it presents a modern user interface featuring lockless operation and integer
sequential version numbers. VC supports almost all SRC operations.

25.1.1.3 Concepts of Version Control

When a file is under version control, we say that it is registered in the version control
system. The system has a repository which stores both the file’s present state and its change
history—enough to reconstruct the current version or any earlier version. The repository
also contains other information, such as log entries that describe the changes made to each
file.
The copy of a version-controlled file that you actually edit is called the work file. You can
change each work file as you would an ordinary file. After you are done with a set of changes,
you may commit (or check in) the changes; this records the changes in the repository, along
with a descriptive log entry.
A directory tree of work files is called a working tree.
Each commit creates a new revision in the repository. The version control system keeps
track of all past revisions and the changes that were made in each revision. Each revision is
named by a revision ID, whose format depends on the version control system; in the simplest
case, it is just an integer.
To go beyond these basic concepts, you will need to understand three aspects in which
version control systems differ. As explained in the next three sections, they can be lock-based
or merge-based; file-based or changeset-based; and centralized or decentralized. VC handles
all these modes of operation, but it cannot hide the differences.

25.1.1.4 Merge-based vs Lock-based Version Control

A version control system typically has some mechanism to coordinate between users who
want to change the same file. There are two ways to do this: merging and locking.
In a version control system that uses merging, each user may modify a work file at any
time. The system lets you merge your work file, which may contain changes that have not
been committed, with the latest changes that others have committed.
Older version control systems use a locking scheme instead. Here, work files are normally
read-only. To edit a file, you ask the version control system to make it writable for you by
locking it; only one user can lock a given file at any given time. This procedure is analogous
to, but different from, the locking that Emacs uses to detect simultaneous editing of ordinary
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 335

files (see Section 15.3.4 [Interlocking], page 155). When you commit your changes, that
unlocks the file, and the work file becomes read-only again. Other users may then lock the
file to make their own changes.
Both locking and merging systems can have problems when multiple users try to modify
the same file at the same time. Locking systems have lock conflicts; a user may try to
check a file out and be unable to because it is locked. In merging systems, merge conflicts
happen when you commit a change to a file that conflicts with a change committed by
someone else after your checkout. Both kinds of conflict have to be resolved by human
judgment and communication. Experience has shown that merging is superior to locking,
both in convenience to developers and in minimizing the number and severity of conflicts
that actually occur.
SCCS always uses locking. RCS is lock-based by default but can be told to operate in a
merging style. CVS and Subversion are merge-based by default but can be told to operate
in a locking mode. Decentralized version control systems, such as Git and Mercurial, are
exclusively merging-based.
VC mode supports both locking and merging version control. The terms “commit” and
“update” are used in newer version control systems; older lock-based systems use the terms
“check in” and “check out”. VC hides the differences between them as much as possible.

25.1.1.5 Changeset-based vs File-based Version Control

On SCCS, RCS, CVS, and other early version control systems (and also in SRC), version
control operations are file-based: each file has its own comment and revision history separate
from that of all other files. Newer systems, beginning with Subversion, are changeset-based:
a commit may include changes to several files, and the entire set of changes is handled as a
unit. Any comment associated with the change does not belong to a single file, but to the
changeset itself.
Changeset-based version control is more flexible and powerful than file-based version
control; usually, when a change to multiple files has to be reversed, it’s good to be able to
easily identify and remove all of it.

25.1.1.6 Decentralized vs Centralized Repositories

Early version control systems were designed around a centralized model in which each project
has only one repository used by all developers. SCCS, RCS, CVS, Subversion, and SRC
share this kind of model. One of its drawbacks is that the repository is a choke point for
reliability and efficiency.
GNU Arch pioneered the concept of distributed or decentralized version control, later
implemented in Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar. A project may have several different repositories,
and these systems support a sort of super-merge between repositories that tries to reconcile
their change histories. In effect, there is one repository for each developer, and repository
merges take the place of commit operations.
VC helps you manage the traffic between your personal workfiles and a repository.
Whether the repository is a single master, or one of a network of peer repositories, is not
something VC has to care about.
336 GNU Emacs Manual

25.1.1.7 Types of Log File

Projects that use a version control system can have two types of log for changes. One is
the log maintained by the version control system: each time you commit a change, you fill
out a log entry for the change (see Section 25.1.4 [Log Buffer], page 339). This is called the
version control log.
The other kind of log is the file ChangeLog (see Section 25.3 [Change Log], page 354).
It provides a chronological record of all changes to a large portion of a program—typically
one directory and its subdirectories. A small program would use one ChangeLog file; a large
program may have a ChangeLog file in each major directory. See Section 25.3 [Change Log],
page 354. Programmers have used change logs since long before version control systems.
Changeset-based version systems typically maintain a changeset-based modification log
for the entire system, which makes change log files somewhat redundant. One advantage
that they retain is that it is sometimes useful to be able to view the transaction history
of a single directory separately from those of other directories. Another advantage is that
commit logs can’t be fixed in many version control systems.
A project maintained with version control can use just the version control log, or it can
use both kinds of logs. It can handle some files one way and some files the other way. Each
project has its policy, which you should follow.
When the policy is to use both, you typically want to write an entry for each change
just once, then put it into both logs. You can write the entry in ChangeLog, then copy it to
the log buffer with C-c C-a when committing the change (see Section 25.1.4 [Log Buffer],
page 339). Or you can write the entry in the log buffer while committing the change (with
the help of C-c C-w), and later use the C-x v a command to copy it to ChangeLog (see
Section “Change Logs and VC” in Specialized Emacs Features).

25.1.2 Version Control and the Mode Line

When you visit a file that is under version control, Emacs indicates this on the mode line.
For example, ‘Bzr-1223’ says that Bazaar is used for that file, and the current revision ID
is 1223.
The character between the back-end name and the revision ID indicates the version control
status of the work file. In a merge-based version control system, a ‘-’ character indicates
that the work file is unmodified, and ‘:’ indicates that it has been modified. ‘!’ indicates
that the file contains conflicts as result of a recent merge operation (see Section 25.1.11.3
[Merging], page 350), or that the file was removed from the version control. Finally, ‘?’
means that the file is under version control, but is missing from the working tree.
In a lock-based system, ‘-’ indicates an unlocked file, and ‘:’ a locked file; if the file is
locked by another user (for instance, ‘jim’), that is displayed as ‘RCS:jim:1.3’. ‘@’ means
that the file was locally added, but not yet committed to the master repository.
On a graphical display, you can move the mouse over this mode line indicator to pop up
a tool-tip, which displays a more verbose description of the version control status. Pressing
mouse-1 over the indicator pops up a menu of VC commands, identical to ‘Tools / Version
Control’ on the menu bar.
When Auto Revert mode (see Section 15.4 [Reverting], page 157) reverts a buffer that is
under version control, it updates the version control information in the mode line. However,
Auto Revert mode may not properly update this information if the version control status
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 337

changes without changes to the work file, from outside the current Emacs session. If you set
auto-revert-check-vc-info to t, Auto Revert mode updates the version control status
information every auto-revert-interval seconds, even if the work file itself is unchanged.
The resulting CPU usage depends on the version control system, but is usually not excessive.

25.1.3 Basic Editing under Version Control

Most VC commands operate on VC filesets. A VC fileset is a collection of one or more
files that a VC operation acts on. When you type VC commands in a buffer visiting a
version-controlled file, the VC fileset is simply that one file. When you type them in a VC
Directory buffer, and some files in it are marked, the VC fileset consists of the marked files
(see Section 25.1.10 [VC Directory Mode], page 345). Likewise, when you invoke a VC
command from a Dired buffer, the VC fileset consists of the marked files (see Section 27.6
[Marks vs Flags], page 383), defaulting to the file shown on the current line if no files are
marked.
On modern changeset-based version control systems (see Section 25.1.1.5 [VCS Change-
sets], page 335), VC commands handle multi-file VC filesets as a group. For example,
committing a multi-file VC fileset generates a single revision, containing the changes to all
those files. On older file-based version control systems like CVS, each file in a multi-file
VC fileset is handled individually; for example, a commit generates one revision for each
changed file.
C-x v v Perform the next appropriate version control operation on the current VC fileset.
The principal VC command is a multi-purpose command, C-x v v (vc-next-action),
which performs the most appropriate action on the current VC fileset: either registering it
with a version control system, or committing it, or unlocking it, or merging changes into it.
The precise actions are described in detail in the following subsections. You can use C-x v v
either in a file-visiting buffer, in a Dired buffer, or in a VC Directory buffer; in the latter
two cases the command operates on the fileset consisting of the marked files.
Note that VC filesets are distinct from the named filesets used for viewing and visiting
files in functional groups (see Section 15.20 [Filesets], page 174). Unlike named filesets, VC
filesets are not named and don’t persist across sessions.

25.1.3.1 Basic Version Control with Merging

On a merging-based version control system (i.e., most modern ones; see Section 25.1.1.4
[VCS Merging], page 334), C-x v v does the following:
• If there is more than one file in the VC fileset and the files have inconsistent version
control statuses, signal an error. (Note, however, that a fileset is allowed to include
both newly-added files and modified files; see Section 25.1.5 [Registering], page 340.)
• If none of the files in the VC fileset are registered with a version control system, register
the VC fileset, i.e., place it under version control. See Section 25.1.5 [Registering],
page 340. If Emacs cannot find a system to register under, it prompts for a repository
type, creates a new repository, and registers the VC fileset with it.
• If every work file in the VC fileset is unchanged, do nothing.
• If every work file in the VC fileset has been modified, commit the changes. To do
this, Emacs pops up a *vc-log* buffer; type the desired log entry for the new revision,
followed by C-c C-c to commit. See Section 25.1.4 [Log Buffer], page 339.
338 GNU Emacs Manual

If committing to a shared repository, the commit may fail if the repository has been
changed since your last update. In that case, you must perform an update before trying
again. On a decentralized version control system, use C-x v + (see Section 25.1.11.2
[Pulling / Pushing], page 349) or C-x v m (see Section 25.1.11.3 [Merging], page 350).
On a centralized version control system, type C-x v v again to merge in the repository
changes.
• Finally, if you are using a centralized version control system, check if each work file
in the VC fileset is up-to-date. If any file has been changed in the repository, offer to
update it.
These rules also apply when you use RCS in its non-locking mode, except that changes
are not automatically merged from the repository. Nothing informs you if another user
has committed changes in the same file since you began editing it; when you commit your
revision, that other user’s changes are removed (however, they remain in the repository
and are thus not irrevocably lost). Therefore, you must verify that the current revision is
unchanged before committing your changes. In addition, locking is possible with RCS even
in this mode: C-x v v with an unmodified file locks the file, just as it does with RCS in its
normal locking mode (see Section 25.1.3.2 [VC With A Locking VCS], page 338).

25.1.3.2 Basic Version Control with Locking

On a locking-based version control system (such as SCCS, and RCS in its default mode),
C-x v v does the following:
• If there is more than one file in the VC fileset and the files have inconsistent version
control statuses, signal an error.
• If each file in the VC fileset is not registered with a version control system, register the
VC fileset. See Section 25.1.5 [Registering], page 340. If Emacs cannot find a system to
register under, it prompts for a repository type, creates a new repository, and registers
the VC fileset with it.
• If each file is registered and unlocked, lock it and make it writable, so that you can
begin to edit it.
• If each file is locked by you and contains changes, commit the changes. To do this,
Emacs pops up a *vc-log* buffer; type the desired log entry for the new revision,
followed by C-c C-c to commit (see Section 25.1.4 [Log Buffer], page 339).
• If each file is locked by you, but you have not changed it, release the lock and make the
file read-only again.
• If each file is locked by another user, ask whether you want to steal the lock. If you say
yes, the file becomes locked by you, and a warning message is sent to the user who had
formerly locked the file.
These rules also apply when you use CVS in locking mode, except that CVS does not
support stealing locks.

25.1.3.3 Advanced Control in C-x v v

When you give a prefix argument to vc-next-action (C-u C-x v v), it still performs the
next logical version control operation, but accepts additional arguments to specify precisely
how to do the operation.
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 339

• You can specify the name of a version control system. This is useful if the fileset can
be managed by more than one version control system, and Emacs fails to detect the
correct one.
• Otherwise, if using CVS, RCS or SRC, you can specify a revision ID.
If the fileset is modified (or locked), this makes Emacs commit with that revision ID.
You can create a new branch by supplying an appropriate revision ID (see Section 25.1.11
[Branches], page 348).
If the fileset is unmodified (and unlocked), this checks the specified revision into the
working tree. You can also specify a revision on another branch by giving its revision or
branch ID (see Section 25.1.11.1 [Switching Branches], page 348). An empty argument
(i.e., C-u C-x v v RET) checks out the latest (head) revision on the current branch.
This is silently ignored on a decentralized version control system. Those systems do
not let you specify your own revision IDs, nor do they use the concept of checking out
individual files.

25.1.4 Features of the Log Entry Buffer

When you tell VC to commit a change, it pops up a buffer named *vc-log*. In this buffer,
you should write a log entry describing the changes you have made (see Section 25.1.1.1
[Why Version Control?], page 333). After you are done, type C-c C-c (log-edit-done) to
exit the buffer and commit the change, together with your log entry.
The major mode for the *vc-log* buffer is Log Edit mode, a variant of Text mode (see
Section 22.8 [Text Mode], page 261). On entering Log Edit mode, Emacs runs the hooks
text-mode-hook and vc-log-mode-hook (see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504).
In the *vc-log* buffer, you can write one or more header lines, specifying additional
information to be supplied to the version control system. Each header line must occupy a
single line at the top of the buffer; the first line that is not a header line is treated as the
start of the log entry. For example, the following header line states that the present change
was not written by you, but by another developer:
Author: J. R. Hacker <[email protected]>
Apart from the ‘Author’ header, Emacs recognizes the headers ‘Summary’ (a one-line summary
of the changeset), ‘Date’ (a manually-specified commit time), and ‘Fixes’ (a reference to
a bug fixed by the change). Not all version control systems recognize all headers. If you
specify a header for a system that does not support it, the header is treated as part of the
log entry.
While in the *vc-log* buffer, the current VC fileset is considered to be the fileset that
will be committed if you type C-c C-c. To view a list of the files in the VC fileset, type
C-c C-f (log-edit-show-files). To view a diff of changes between the VC fileset and the
version from which you started editing (see Section 25.1.6 [Old Revisions], page 340), type
C-c C-d (log-edit-show-diff).
To help generate ChangeLog entries, type C-c C-w (log-edit-generate-changelog-
from-diff), to generate skeleton ChangeLog entries, listing all changed file and function
names based on the diff of the VC fileset. Consecutive entries left empty will be combined
by M-q (fill-paragraph). By default the skeleton will just include the file name, without
any leading directories. If you wish to prepend the leading directories up to the VC root,
customize diff-add-log-use-relative-names.
340 GNU Emacs Manual

If the VC fileset includes one or more ChangeLog files (see Section 25.3 [Change Log],
page 354), type C-c C-a (log-edit-insert-changelog) to pull the relevant entries into
the *vc-log* buffer. If the topmost item in each ChangeLog was made under your user
name on the current date, this command searches that item for entries matching the file(s)
to be committed, and inserts them.
To abort a commit, just don’t type C-c C-c in that buffer. You can switch buffers and
do other editing. As long as you don’t try to make another commit, the entry you were
editing remains in the *vc-log* buffer, and you can go back to that buffer at any time to
complete the commit.
You can also browse the history of previous log entries to duplicate a commit comment.
This can be useful when you want to make several commits with similar comments. The
commands M-n, M-p, M-s and M-r for doing this work just like the minibuffer history
commands (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35), except that they are used outside
the minibuffer.

25.1.5 Registering a File for Version Control

C-x v i Register the visited file for version control.
The command C-x v i (vc-register) registers each file in the current VC fileset, placing
it under version control. This is essentially equivalent to the action of C-x v v on an
unregistered VC fileset (see Section 25.1.3 [Basic VC Editing], page 337), except that if the
VC fileset is already registered, C-x v i signals an error whereas C-x v v performs some
other action.
To register a file, Emacs must choose a version control system. For a multi-file VC
fileset, the VC Directory buffer specifies the system to use (see Section 25.1.10 [VC Directory
Mode], page 345). For a single-file VC fileset, if the file’s directory already contains files
registered in a version control system, or if the directory is part of a directory tree controlled
by a version control system, Emacs chooses that system. In the event that more than one
version control system is applicable, Emacs uses the one that appears first in the variable
vc-handled-backends. If Emacs cannot find a version control system to register the file
under, it prompts for a repository type, creates a new repository, and registers the file into
that repository.
On most version control systems, registering a file with C-x v i or C-x v v adds it to the
working tree but not to the repository. Such files are labeled as ‘added’ in the VC Directory
buffer, and show a revision ID of ‘@@’ in the mode line. To make the registration take
effect in the repository, you must perform a commit (see Section 25.1.3 [Basic VC Editing],
page 337). Note that a single commit can include both file additions and edits to existing
files.
On a locking-based version control system (see Section 25.1.1.4 [VCS Merging], page 334),
registering a file leaves it unlocked and read-only. Type C-x v v to start editing it.

25.1.6 Examining And Comparing Old Revisions

C-x v = Compare the work files in the current VC fileset with the versions you started
from (vc-diff). With a prefix argument, prompt for two revisions of the current
VC fileset and compare them. You can also call this command from a Dired
buffer (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378).
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 341

C-x v D Compare the entire working tree to the revision you started from (vc-root-
diff). With a prefix argument, prompt for two revisions and compare their
trees.
C-x v ~ Prompt for a revision of the current file, and visit it in a separate buffer
(vc-revision-other-window).
C-x v g Display an annotated version of the current file: for each line, show the latest
revision in which it was modified (vc-annotate).
C-x v = (vc-diff) displays a diff which compares each work file in the current VC fileset
to the version(s) from which you started editing. The diff is displayed in another window, in
a Diff mode buffer (see Section 15.10 [Diff Mode], page 164) named *vc-diff*. The usual
Diff mode commands are available in this buffer. In particular, the g (revert-buffer)
command performs the file comparison again, generating a new diff.
To compare two arbitrary revisions of the current VC fileset, call vc-diff with a prefix
argument: C-u C-x v =. This prompts for two revision IDs (see Section 25.1.1.3 [VCS
Concepts], page 334), and displays a diff between those versions of the fileset. This will not
work reliably for multi-file VC filesets, if the version control system is file-based rather than
changeset-based (e.g., CVS), since then revision IDs for different files would not be related
in any meaningful way.
Instead of the revision ID, some version control systems let you specify revisions in other
formats. For instance, under Bazaar you can enter ‘date:yesterday’ for the argument to
C-u C-x v = (and related commands) to specify the first revision committed after yesterday.
See the documentation of the version control system for details.
If you invoke C-x v = or C-u C-x v = from a Dired buffer (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378),
the file listed on the current line is treated as the current VC fileset. The VC fileset can also
include several marked files.
C-x v D (vc-root-diff) is similar to C-x v =, but it displays the changes in the entire
current working tree (i.e., the working tree containing the current VC fileset). If you invoke
this command from a Dired buffer, it applies to the working tree containing the directory.
To compare two arbitrary revisions of the whole trees, call vc-root-diff with a prefix
argument: C-u C-x v D. This prompts for two revision IDs (see Section 25.1.1.3 [VCS
Concepts], page 334), and displays a diff between those versions of the entire version-
controlled directory trees (RCS, SCCS, CVS, and SRC do not support this feature).
You can customize the diff options that C-x v = and C-x v D use for generating diffs.
The options used are taken from the first non-nil value amongst the variables vc-backend-
diff-switches, vc-diff-switches, and diff-switches (see Section 15.9 [Comparing
Files], page 163), in that order. Here, backend stands for the relevant version control system,
e.g., bzr for Bazaar. Since nil means to check the next variable in the sequence, either
of the first two may use the value t to mean no switches at all. Most of the vc-backend-
diff-switches variables default to nil, but some default to t; these are for version control
systems whose diff implementations do not accept common diff options, such as Subversion.
To directly examine an older version of a file, visit the work file and type C-x v ~
revision RET (vc-revision-other-window). This retrieves the file version corresponding
to revision, saves it to filename.~revision~, and visits it in a separate window.
342 GNU Emacs Manual

Many version control systems allow you to view files annotated with per-line revision
information, by typing C-x v g (vc-annotate). This creates a new “annotate” buffer
displaying the file’s text, with each line colored to show how old it is. Red text is new, blue
is old, and intermediate colors indicate intermediate ages. By default, the color is scaled over
the full range of ages, such that the oldest changes are blue, and the newest changes are red.
If the variable vc-annotate-background-mode is non-nil, the colors expressing the age of
each line are applied to the background color, leaving the foreground at its default color.
You can customize the annotate options that C-x v g uses by customizing vc-backend-
annotate-switches and vc-annotate-switches. They function similarly to vc-backend-
diff-switches and vc-diff-switches, described above.
When you give a prefix argument to C-x v g, Emacs reads two arguments using the
minibuffer: the revision to display and annotate (instead of the current file contents), and
the time span in days the color range should cover.
From the “annotate” buffer, these and other color scaling options are available from
the ‘VC-Annotate’ menu. In this buffer, you can also use the following keys to browse the
annotations of past revisions, view diffs, or view log entries:
p Annotate the previous revision, i.e., the revision before the one currently an-
notated. A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count, so C-u 10 p would take
you back 10 revisions.
n Annotate the next revision, i.e., the revision after the one currently annotated.
A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.
j Annotate the revision indicated by the current line.
a Annotate the revision before the one indicated by the current line. This is useful
to see the state the file was in before the change on the current line was made.
f Show in a buffer the file revision indicated by the current line.
d Display the diff between the current line’s revision and the previous revision.
This is useful to see what the current line’s revision actually changed in the file.
D Display the diff between the current line’s revision and the previous revision
for all files in the changeset (for VC systems that support changesets). This is
useful to see what the current line’s revision actually changed in the tree.
l Show the log of the current line’s revision. This is useful to see the author’s
description of the changes in the revision on the current line.
w Annotate the working revision—the one you are editing. If you used p and n to
browse to other revisions, use this key to return to your working revision.
v Toggle the annotation visibility. This is useful for looking just at the file contents
without distraction from the annotations.

25.1.7 VC Change Log

C-x v l Display the change history for the current fileset (vc-print-log).
C-x v L Display the change history for the current repository (vc-print-root-log).
C-x v b l Display the change history for another branch (vc-print-branch-log).
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 343

C-x v I Display the changes that a “pull” operation will retrieve (vc-log-incoming).
C-x v O Display the changes that will be sent by the next “push” operation (vc-log-
outgoing).
C-x v h Display the history of changes made in the region of file visited by the current
buffer (vc-region-history).
M-x vc-log-search RET
Search the change history for a specified pattern.
C-x v l (vc-print-log) displays a buffer named *vc-change-log*, showing the history
of changes made to the current fileset in the long form, including who made the changes,
the dates, and the log entry for each change (these are the same log entries you would enter
via the *vc-log* buffer; see Section 25.1.4 [Log Buffer], page 339). When invoked from a
buffer visiting a file, the current fileset consists of that single file, and point in the displayed
*vc-change-log* buffer is centered at the revision of that file. When invoked from a VC
Directory buffer (see Section 25.1.10 [VC Directory Mode], page 345) or from a Dired buffer
(see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378), the fileset consists of all the marked files, defaulting to
the file shown on the current line in the directory buffer if no file is marked.
If the fileset includes one or more directories, the resulting *vc-change-log* buffer
shows a short log of changes (one line for each change), if the VC backend supports that;
otherwise it shows the log in the long form.
With a prefix argument, the command prompts for the revision to center on in the
*vc-change-log* buffer and for the maximum number of revisions to display.
C-x v L (vc-print-root-log) displays a *vc-change-log* buffer showing the history
of the entire version-controlled directory tree (RCS, SCCS, CVS, and SRC do not support
this feature). With a prefix argument, the command prompts for the maximum number
of revisions to display. A numeric prefix argument specifies the maximum number of
revisions without prompting. When the numeric prefix argument is 1, as in C-1 C-x v L or
C-u 1 C-x v L, the command prompts for the revision ID, and displays the log entry of that
revision together with the changes (diffs) it introduced. (Some less capable version control
systems, such as RCS and CVS, don’t have commands to show a revision log with its diffs;
for them the command displays only the log entry, and you can request to show the diffs by
typing d or D, see below.)
The C-x v L history is shown in a compact form, usually showing only the first line
of each log entry. However, you can type RET (log-view-toggle-entry-display) in the
*vc-change-log* buffer to reveal the entire log entry for the revision at point. A second
RET hides it again.
C-x v b l branch-name RET (vc-print-branch-log) displays a *vc-change-log* buffer
showing the history of the version-controlled directory tree, like vc-print-root-log does,
but it shows the history of a branch other than the current one; it prompts for the branch
whose history to display.
On a decentralized version control system, the C-x v I (vc-log-incoming) command
displays a log buffer showing the changes that will be applied, the next time you run the
version control system’s pull command to get new revisions from another remote location
(see Section 25.1.11.2 [Pulling / Pushing], page 349). This other remote location is the
default one from which changes are pulled, as defined by the version control system; with a
344 GNU Emacs Manual

prefix argument, vc-log-incoming prompts for a specific remote location. Similarly, C-x v
O (vc-log-outgoing) shows the changes that will be sent to another remote location, the
next time you run the push command; with a prefix argument, it prompts for a specific
destination that in case of some version control system can be a branch name.
In the *vc-change-log* buffer, you can use the following keys to move between the logs
of revisions and of files, and to examine and compare past revisions (see Section 25.1.6 [Old
Revisions], page 340):
p Move to the previous revision entry. (Revision entries in the log buffer are
usually in reverse-chronological order, so the previous revision-item usually
corresponds to a newer revision.) A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.
n Move to the next revision entry. A numeric prefix argument is a repeat count.
a Annotate the revision on the current line (see Section 25.1.6 [Old Revisions],
page 340).
e Modify the change comment displayed at point. Note that not all VC systems
support modifying change comments.
f Visit the revision indicated at the current line.
d Display a diff between the revision at point and the next earlier revision, for the
specific file.
D Display the changeset diff between the revision at point and the next earlier
revision. This shows the changes to all files made in that revision.
RET In a compact-style log buffer (e.g., the one created by C-x v L), toggle between
showing and hiding the full log entry for the revision at point.
Because fetching many log entries can be slow, the *vc-change-log* buffer displays no
more than 2000 revisions by default. The variable vc-log-show-limit specifies this limit;
if you set the value to zero, that removes the limit. You can also increase the number of
revisions shown in an existing *vc-change-log* buffer by clicking on the ‘Show 2X entries’
or ‘Show unlimited entries’ buttons at the end of the buffer. However, RCS, SCCS, CVS,
and SRC do not support this feature.
A useful variant of examining history of changes is provided by the command
vc-region-history (by default bound to C-x v h), which shows a *VC-history* buffer
with the history of changes made in the region of the current buffer’s file between point and
the mark (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51). The history of changes includes the commit log
messages and also the changes themselves in the Diff format.
Invoke this command after marking in the current buffer the region in whose changes
you are interested. In the *VC-history* buffer it pops up, you can use all of the commands
available in the *vc-change-log* buffer described above, and also the commands defined
by Diff mode (see Section 15.10 [Diff Mode], page 164).
This command is currently available only with Git and Mercurial (hg).
The command vc-log-search allows searching for a pattern in the log of changes. It
prompts for a pattern (a regular expression), and displays all entries in the change history
whose log messages match the pattern. When invoked with a prefix argument, the command
will also prompt for a specific VCS shell command to run for this purpose.
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 345

25.1.8 Undoing Version Control Actions

C-x v u Revert the work file(s) in the current VC fileset to the last revision (vc-revert).
If you want to discard all the changes you have made to the current VC fileset, type C-x
v u (vc-revert). This will ask you for confirmation before discarding the changes. If you
agree, the fileset is reverted.
If vc-revert-show-diff is non-nil, this command will show you a diff between the
work file(s) and the revision from which you started editing. Afterwards, the diff buffer will
either be killed (if this variable is kill), or the buffer will be buried (any other non-nil
value). If you don’t want C-x v u to show a diff, set this variable to nil (you can still view
the diff directly with C-x v =; see Section 25.1.6 [Old Revisions], page 340).
On locking-based version control systems, C-x v u leaves files unlocked; you must lock
again to resume editing. You can also use C-x v u to unlock a file if you lock it and then
decide not to change it.

25.1.9 Ignore Version Control Files

C-x v G Ignore a file under current version control system. (vc-ignore).
Many source trees contain some files that do not need to be versioned, such as editor
backups, object or bytecode files, and built programs. You can simply not add them, but
then they’ll always crop up as unknown files. You can also tell the version control system
to ignore these files by adding them to the ignore file at the top of the tree. C-x v G
(vc-ignore) can help you do this. When called with a prefix argument, you can remove a
file from the ignored file list.

25.1.10 VC Directory Mode

The VC Directory buffer is a specialized buffer for viewing the version control statuses of
the files in a directory tree, and performing version control operations on those files. In
particular, it is used to specify multi-file VC filesets for commands like C-x v v to act on
(see Section 25.1.10.2 [VC Directory Commands], page 346).
To use the VC Directory buffer, type C-x v d (vc-dir). This reads a directory’s name
using the minibuffer, and switches to a VC Directory buffer for that directory. By default,
the buffer is named *vc-dir*. Its contents are described below.
The vc-dir command automatically detects the version control system to be used in the
specified directory. In the event that more than one system is being used in the directory,
you should invoke the command with a prefix argument, C-u C-x v d; this prompts for the
version control system which the VC Directory buffer should use.
You can also invoke VC commands from Dired buffers (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378).
In that case, any VC command you invoke considers the marked files as the current fileset
(see Section 25.1.3 [Basic VC Editing], page 337), defaulting to the file on the current line if
no files are marked.

25.1.10.1 The VC Directory Buffer

The VC Directory buffer contains a list of version-controlled files and their version control
statuses. It lists files in the current directory (the one specified when you called C-x v d) and
its subdirectories, but only those with a noteworthy status. Files that are up-to-date (i.e.,
346 GNU Emacs Manual

the same as in the repository) are omitted. If all the files in a subdirectory are up-to-date,
the subdirectory is not listed either. As an exception, if a file has become up-to-date as a
direct result of a VC command, it is listed.
Here is an example of a VC Directory buffer listing:
./
edited configure.ac
* added README
unregistered temp.txt
src/
* edited src/main.c
Two work files have been modified but not committed: configure.ac in the current directory,
and main.c in the src/ subdirectory. The file named README has been added but is not yet
committed, while temp.txt is not under version control (see Section 25.1.5 [Registering],
page 340).
The ‘*’ characters next to the entries for README and src/main.c indicate that the user
has marked these files as the current VC fileset (see below).
The above example is typical for a decentralized version control system like Bazaar,
Git, or Mercurial. Other systems can show other statuses. For instance, CVS shows the
‘needs-update’ status if the repository has changes that have not been applied to the work
file. RCS and SCCS show the name of the user locking a file as its status.
The VC Directory buffer omits subdirectories listed in the variable vc-directory-
exclusion-list. Its default value contains directories that are used internally by version
control systems.

25.1.10.2 VC Directory Commands

Emacs provides several commands for navigating the VC Directory buffer, and for marking
files as belonging to the current VC fileset.
n
SPC Move point to the next entry (vc-dir-next-line).
p Move point to the previous entry (vc-dir-previous-line).
TAB Move to the next directory entry (vc-dir-next-directory).
S-TAB Move to the previous directory entry (vc-dir-previous-directory).
RET
f Visit the file or directory listed on the current line (vc-dir-find-file).
o Visit the file or directory on the current line, in a separate window (vc-dir-
find-file-other-window).
m Mark the file or directory on the current line (vc-dir-mark), putting it in the
current VC fileset. If the region is active, mark all files in the region.
A file cannot be marked with this command if it is already in a marked directory,
or one of its subdirectories. Similarly, a directory cannot be marked with this
command if any file in its tree is marked.
M If point is on a file entry, mark all files with the same status; if point is on a
directory entry, mark all files in that directory tree (vc-dir-mark-all-files).
With a prefix argument, mark all listed files and directories.
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 347

%m
*% You can use this command to mark files by regexp (vc-dir-mark-by-regexp).
If given a prefix, unmark files instead.
*r You can use this command to mark files that are in one of registered states,
including edited, added or removed. (vc-dir-mark-registered-files).
G Add the file under point to the list of files that the VC should ignore (vc-dir-
ignore). For instance, if the VC is Git, it will append this file to the .gitignore
file. If given a prefix, do this with all the marked files.
q Quit the VC Directory buffer, and bury it (quit-window).
u Unmark the file or directory on the current line. If the region is active, unmark
all the files in the region (vc-dir-unmark).
U If point is on a file entry, unmark all files with the same status; if point is on
a directory entry, unmark all files in that directory tree (vc-dir-unmark-all-
files). With a prefix argument, unmark all files and directories.
x Hide files with ‘up-to-date’ or ‘ignored’ status (vc-dir-hide-up-to-date).
With a prefix argument, hide items whose state is that of the item at point.
While in the VC Directory buffer, all the files that you mark with m (vc-dir-mark) or
M (vc-dir-mark-all-files) are in the current VC fileset. If you mark a directory entry
with m, all the listed files in that directory tree are in the current VC fileset. The files and
directories that belong to the current VC fileset are indicated with a ‘*’ character in the VC
Directory buffer, next to their VC status. In this way, you can set up a multi-file VC fileset to
be acted on by VC commands like C-x v v (see Section 25.1.3 [Basic VC Editing], page 337),
C-x v = (see Section 25.1.6 [Old Revisions], page 340), and C-x v u (see Section 25.1.8 [VC
Undo], page 345).
The VC Directory buffer also defines some single-key shortcuts for VC commands with
the C-x v prefix: =, +, l, i, D, L, G, I, O, and v.
For example, you can commit a set of edited files by opening a VC Directory buffer,
where the files are listed with the ‘edited’ status; marking the files; and typing v or C-x v
v (vc-next-action). If the version control system is changeset-based, Emacs will commit
the files in a single revision.
While in the VC Directory buffer, you can also perform search and replace on the current
VC fileset, with the following commands:
S Search the fileset (vc-dir-search).
Q Do a regular expression query replace on the fileset (vc-dir-query-replace-
regexp).
M-s a C-s Do an incremental search on the fileset (vc-dir-isearch).
M-s a C-M-s
Do an incremental regular expression search on the fileset (vc-dir-isearch-
regexp).
Apart from acting on multiple files, these commands behave much like their single-buffer
counterparts (see Chapter 12 [Search], page 104).
348 GNU Emacs Manual

The VC Directory buffer additionally defines some branch-related commands starting

with the prefix b:
bc Create a new branch (vc-create-branch). See Section 25.1.11.4 [Creating
Branches], page 350.
bl Prompt for the name of a branch and display the change history of that branch
(vc-print-branch-log).
bs Switch to a branch (vc-switch-branch). See Section 25.1.11.1 [Switching
Branches], page 348.
d Delete the marked files, or the current file if no marks (vc-dir-clean-delete).
The files will not be marked as deleted in the version control system, so this
function is mostly useful for unregistered files.
The above commands are also available via the menu bar, and via a context menu invoked
by mouse-2. Furthermore, some VC backends use the menu to provide extra backend-specific
commands. For example, Git and Bazaar allow you to manipulate stashes and shelves
(which are a way to temporarily put aside uncommitted changes, and bring them back at a
later time).

25.1.11 Version Control Branches

One use of version control is to support multiple independent lines of development, which
are called branches. Amongst other things, branches can be used for maintaining separate
stable and development versions of a program, and for developing unrelated features in
isolation from one another.
VC’s support for branch operations is currently fairly limited. For decentralized version
control systems, it provides commands for updating one branch with the contents of another,
and for merging the changes made to two different branches (see Section 25.1.11.3 [Merging],
page 350). For centralized version control systems, it supports checking out different branches
and committing into new or different branches.

25.1.11.1 Switching between Branches

The various version control systems differ in how branches are implemented, and these
differences cannot be entirely concealed by VC.
On some decentralized version control systems, including Bazaar and Mercurial in its
normal mode of operation, each branch has its own working directory tree, so switching
between branches just involves switching directories. On Git, branches are normally co-
located in the same directory, and switching between branches is done using the git
checkout command, which changes the contents of the working tree to match the branch
you switch to. Bazaar also supports co-located branches, in which case the bzr switch
command will switch branches in the current directory. With Subversion, you switch to
another branch using the svn switch command. With Mercurial, command hg update is
used to switch to another branch.
The VC command to switch to another branch in the current directory is C-x v b s
branch-name RET (vc-switch-branch).
On centralized version control systems, you can also switch between branches by typing
C-u C-x v v in an up-to-date work file (see Section 25.1.3.3 [Advanced C-x v v], page 338),
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 349

and entering the revision ID for a revision on another branch. On CVS, for instance, revisions
on the trunk (the main line of development) normally have IDs of the form 1.1, 1.2, 1.3,
. . . , while the first branch created from (say) revision 1.2 has revision IDs 1.2.1.1, 1.2.1.2,
. . . , the second branch created from revision 1.2 has revision IDs 1.2.2.1, 1.2.2.2, . . . , and
so forth. You can also specify the branch ID, which is a branch revision ID omitting its final
component (e.g., 1.2.1), to switch to the latest revision on that branch.
On a locking-based system, switching to a different branch also unlocks (write-protects)
the working tree.
Once you have switched to a branch, VC commands will apply to that branch until you
switch away; for instance, any VC filesets that you commit will be committed to that specific
branch.

25.1.11.2 Pulling/Pushing Changes into/from a Branch

C-x v P On a decentralized version control system, update another location with changes
from the current branch (a.k.a. “push” changes). This concept does not exist
for centralized version control systems
C-x v + On a decentralized version control system, update the current branch by “pulling
in” changes from another location.
On a centralized version control system, update the current VC fileset.
On a decentralized version control system, the command C-x v P (vc-push) updates
another location with changes from the current branch. With a prefix argument, it prompts
for the exact version control command to run, which lets you specify where to push changes;
the default is bzr push with Bazaar, git push with Git, and hg push with Mercurial. The
default commands always push to a default location determined by the version control
system from your branch configuration.
Prior to pushing, you can use C-x v O (vc-log-outgoing) to view a log buffer of the
changes to be sent. See Section 25.1.7 [VC Change Log], page 342.
This command is currently supported only by Bazaar, Git, and Mercurial. The concept
of “pushing” does not exist for centralized version control systems, where this operation is
a part of committing a changeset, so invoking this command on a centralized VCS signals
an error. This command also signals an error when attempted in a Bazaar bound branch,
where committing a changeset automatically pushes the changes to the remote repository to
which the local branch is bound.
On a decentralized version control system, the command C-x v + (vc-pull) updates the
current branch and working tree. It is typically used to update a copy of a remote branch. If
you supply a prefix argument, the command prompts for the exact version control command
to use, which lets you specify where to pull changes from. Otherwise, it pulls from a default
location determined by the version control system.
Amongst decentralized version control systems, C-x v + is currently supported only by
Bazaar, Git, and Mercurial. With Bazaar, it calls bzr pull for ordinary branches (to pull
from a master branch into a mirroring branch), and bzr update for a bound branch (to
pull from a central repository). With Git, it calls git pull to fetch changes from a remote
repository and merge it into the current branch. With Mercurial, it calls hg pull -u to
fetch changesets from the default remote repository and update the working directory.
350 GNU Emacs Manual

Prior to pulling, you can use C-x v I (vc-log-incoming) to view a log buffer of the
changes to be applied. See Section 25.1.7 [VC Change Log], page 342.
On a centralized version control system like CVS, C-x v + updates the current VC fileset
from the repository.

25.1.11.3 Merging Branches

C-x v m On a decentralized version control system, merge changes from another branch
into the current one.
On a centralized version control system, merge changes from another branch
into the current VC fileset.
While developing a branch, you may sometimes need to merge in changes that have
already been made in another branch. This is not a trivial operation, as overlapping changes
may have been made to the two branches.
On a decentralized version control system, merging is done with the command C-x v m
(vc-merge). On Bazaar, this prompts for the exact arguments to pass to bzr merge, offering
a sensible default if possible. On Git, this prompts for the name of a branch to merge
from, with completion (based on the branch names known to the current repository). With
Mercurial, this prompts for argument to pass to hg merge. The output from running the
merge command is shown in a separate buffer.
On a centralized version control system like CVS, C-x v m prompts for a branch ID, or
a pair of revision IDs (see Section 25.1.11.1 [Switching Branches], page 348); then it finds
the changes from that branch, or the changes between the two revisions you specified, and
merges those changes into the current VC fileset. If you just type RET, Emacs simply merges
any changes that were made on the same branch since you checked the file out.
Immediately after performing a merge, only the working tree is modified, and you
can review the changes produced by the merge with C-x v D and related commands (see
Section 25.1.6 [Old Revisions], page 340). If the two branches contained overlapping changes,
merging produces a conflict; a warning appears in the output of the merge command,
and conflict markers are inserted into each affected work file, surrounding the two sets of
conflicting changes. You must then resolve the conflict by editing the conflicted files. Once
you are done, the modified files must be committed in the usual way for the merge to take
effect (see Section 25.1.3 [Basic VC Editing], page 337).

25.1.11.4 Creating New Branches

On centralized version control systems like CVS, Emacs supports creating new branches
as part of a commit operation. When committing a modified VC fileset, type C-u C-x v v
(vc-next-action with a prefix argument; see Section 25.1.3.3 [Advanced C-x v v], page 338).
Then Emacs prompts for a revision ID for the new revision. You should specify a suitable
branch ID for a branch starting at the current revision. For example, if the current revision
is 2.5, the branch ID should be 2.5.1, 2.5.2, and so on, depending on the number of existing
branches at that point.
This procedure will not work for distributed version control systems like git
or Mercurial. For those systems you should use the command vc-create-branch
(C-x v b c branch-name RET) instead.
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 351

To create a new branch at an older revision (one that is no longer the head of a branch),
first select that revision (see Section 25.1.11.1 [Switching Branches], page 348). Your
procedure will then differ depending on whether you are using a locking or merging-based
VCS.
On a locking VCS, you will need to lock the old revision branch with C-x v v. You’ll
be asked to confirm, when you lock the old revision, that you really mean to create a new
branch—if you say no, you’ll be offered a chance to lock the latest revision instead. On a
merging-based VCS you will skip this step.
Then make your changes and type C-x v v again to commit a new revision. This creates
a new branch starting from the selected revision.
After the branch is created, subsequent commits create new revisions on that branch. To
leave the branch, you must explicitly select a different revision with C-u C-x v v.

25.2 Working with Projects

A project is a collection of files used for producing one or more programs. Files that belong
to a project are typically stored in a hierarchy of directories; the top-level directory of the
hierarchy is known as the project root.
Whether a given directory is a root of some project is determined by the project-specific
infrastructure, known as project back-end. Emacs currently supports two such back-ends:
VC-aware (see Section 25.1 [Version Control], page 332), whereby a VCS repository is
considered a project; and EDE (see Section 25.5 [EDE], page 368). This is expected to be
extended in the future to support additional types of projects.
Which files do or don’t belong to a project is also determined by the project back-end.
For example, the VC-aware back-end doesn’t consider “ignored” files (see Section 25.1.9
[VC Ignore], page 345) to be part of the project. Also, the VC-aware Project back-end
considers “untracked” files by default. That behavior is controllable with the variable
project-vc-include-untracked.

25.2.1 Project Commands That Operate on Files

C-x p f Visit a file that belongs to the current project (project-find-file).
C-x p g Find matches for a regexp in all files that belong to the current project
(project-find-regexp).
M-x project-search
Interactively search for regexp matches in all files that belong to the current
project.
C-x p r Perform query-replace for a regexp in all files that belong to the current project
(project-query-replace-regexp).
C-x p d Run Dired in the current project’s root directory (project-dired).
C-x p v Run vc-dir in the current project’s root directory (project-vc-dir).
C-x p s Start an inferior shell in the current project’s root directory (project-shell).
C-x p e Start Eshell in the current project’s root directory (project-eshell).
352 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x p c Run compilation in the current project’s root directory (project-compile).

C-x p ! Run shell command in the current project’s root directory (project-shell-
command).
C-x p & Run shell command asynchronously in the current project’s root directory
(project-async-shell-command).
Emacs provides commands for handling project files conveniently. This subsection
describes these commands.
All of the commands described here share the notion of the current project. The current
project is determined by the default-directory (see Section 15.1 [File Names], page 145)
of the buffer that is the current buffer when the command is invoked. If that directory
doesn’t seem to belong to a recognizable project, these commands prompt you for the project
directory.
The command C-x p f (project-find-file) is a convenient way of visiting files (see
Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146) that belong to the current project. Unlike C-x C-f, this
command doesn’t require to type the full file name of the file to visit, you can type only the
file’s base name (i.e., omit the leading directories). In addition, the completion candidates
considered by the command include only the files belonging to the current project, and
nothing else. If there’s a file name at point, this command offers that file as the first element
of the “future history”. If given a prefix, include all files under the project root, except for
VCS directories listed in vc-directory-exclusion-list.
The command C-x p g (project-find-regexp) is similar to rgrep (see Section 24.4
[Grep Searching], page 313), but it searches only the files that belong to the current project.
The command prompts for the regular expression to search, and pops up an Xref mode
buffer with the search results, where you can select a match using the Xref mode commands
(see Section 25.4.1.2 [Xref Commands], page 358). When invoked with a prefix argument,
this command additionally prompts for the base directory from which to start the search;
this allows, for example, to limit the search only to project files under a certain subdirectory
of the project root. The way this command displays the matches is affected by the value of
xref-auto-jump-to-first-xref (see Section 25.4.1.3 [Identifier Search], page 359).
M-x project-search is a sequential variant of project-find-regexp. It prompts for
a regular expression to search in the current project’s files, but instead of finding all the
matches and displaying them, it stops when it finds a match and visits the matched file at
the locus of the match, allowing you to edit the matched file. To find the rest of the matches,
type M-x fileloop-continue RET.
C-x p r (project-query-replace-regexp) is similar to project-search, but it
prompts you for whether to replace each match it finds, like query-replace does (see
Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace], page 124), and continues to the next match after you
respond. If your response causes Emacs to exit the query-replace loop, you can later
continue with M-x fileloop-continue RET.
The command C-x p d (project-find-dir) prompts you to choose a directory inside
the current project, with completion. And opens a Dired buffer (see Chapter 27 [Dired],
page 378) listing the files in it.
The command C-x p D (project-dired) opens a Dired buffer (see Chapter 27 [Dired],
page 378) listing the files in the current project’s root directory.
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 353

The command C-x p v (project-vc-dir) opens a VC Directory buffer (see

Section 25.1.10 [VC Directory Mode], page 345) listing the version control statuses of the
files in a directory tree under the current project’s root directory.
The command C-x p s (project-shell) starts a shell session (see Section 31.5 [Shell],
page 453) in a new buffer with the current project’s root as the working directory.
The command C-x p e (project-eshell) starts an Eshell session in a new buffer with
the current project’s root as the working directory. See Section “Eshell” in Eshell: The
Emacs Shell.
The command C-x p c (project-compile) runs compilation (see Section 24.1 [Compila-
tion], page 309) in the current project’s root directory.
The command C-x p ! (project-shell-command) runs shell-command in the current
project’s root directory.
The command C-x p & (project-async-shell-command) runs async-shell-command
in the current project’s root directory.

25.2.2 Project Commands That Operate on Buffers

C-x p b Switch to another buffer belonging to the current project (project-switch-
to-buffer).
C-x p C-b List the project buffers (project-list-buffers).
C-x p k Kill all live buffers that belong to the current project (project-kill-buffers).
Working on a project could potentially involve having many buffers visiting files that
belong to the project, and also buffers that belong to the project, but don’t visit any
files (like the *compilation* buffer created by project-compile). The command C-x p b
(project-switch-to-buffer) helps you switch between buffers that belong to the current
project by prompting for a buffer to switch and considering only the current project’s buffers
as candidates for completion.
Like the command list-buffers (see Section 16.2 [List Buffers], page 177), the command
C-x p C-b (project-list-buffers) displays a list of existing buffers, but only belonging
to the current project.
When you finish working on the project, you may wish to kill all the buffers that belong
to the project, to keep your Emacs session smaller. The command C-x p k (project-kill-
buffers) accomplishes that: it kills all the buffers that belong to the current project that
satisfy any of project-kill-buffer-conditions. If project-kill-buffers-display-
buffer-list is non-nil, the buffers to be killed will be displayed first.

25.2.3 Switching Projects

C-x p p Run an Emacs command for another project (project-switch-project).
Commands that operate on project files (see Section 25.2.1 [Project File Commands],
page 351) will conveniently prompt you for a project directory when no project is current.
When you are inside some project, but you want to operate on a different project, use the
C-x p p command (project-switch-project). This command prompts you to choose a
directory among known project roots, and then displays the menu of available commands to
354 GNU Emacs Manual

operate on the project you choose. The variable project-switch-commands controls which
commands are available in the menu, and which key invokes each command.
The variable project-list-file names the file in which Emacs records the list of known
projects. It defaults to the file projects in user-emacs-directory (see Section 33.4.4
[Find Init], page 527).

25.2.4 Managing the Project List File

M-x project-forget-project
Remove a known project from the project-list-file.
Normally Emacs automatically adds and removes projects to and from the
project-list-file, but sometimes you may want to manually edit the available projects.
M-x project-forget-project prompts you to choose one of the available projects, and
then removes it from the file.

25.3 Change Logs

Many software projects keep a change log. This is a file, normally named ChangeLog,
containing a chronological record of when and how the program was changed. Sometimes,
these files are automatically generated from the change log entries stored in version control
systems, or are used to generate these change log entries. Sometimes, there are several
change log files, each recording the changes in one directory or directory tree.

25.3.1 Change Log Commands

The Emacs command C-x 4 a adds a new entry to the change log file for the file you are
editing (add-change-log-entry-other-window). If that file is actually a backup file, it
makes an entry appropriate for the file’s parent—that is useful for making log entries for
functions that have been deleted in the current version.
C-x 4 a visits the change log file and creates a new entry unless the most recent entry is
for today’s date and your name. It also creates a new item for the current file. For many
languages, it can even guess the name of the function or other object that was changed.
To find the change log file, Emacs searches up the directory tree from the file you are
editing. By default, it stops if it finds a directory that seems to be the root of a version-control
repository. To change this, customize change-log-directory-files.
When the variable add-log-keep-changes-together is non-nil, C-x 4 a adds to any
existing item for the file, rather than starting a new item.
You can combine multiple changes of the same nature. If you don’t enter any text after
the initial C-x 4 a, any subsequent C-x 4 a adds another symbol to the change log entry.
If add-log-always-start-new-record is non-nil, C-x 4 a always makes a new entry,
even if the last entry was made by you and on the same date.
If the value of the variable change-log-version-info-enabled is non-nil, C-x 4 a adds
the file’s version number to the change log entry. It finds the version number by searching
the first ten percent of the file, using regular expressions from the variable change-log-
version-number-regexp-list.
The change log file is visited in Change Log mode. In this major mode, each bunch of
grouped items counts as one paragraph, and each entry is considered a page. This facilitates
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 355

editing the entries. C-j and auto-fill indent each new line like the previous line; this is
convenient for entering the contents of an entry.
You can use the command change-log-goto-source (by default bound to C-c C-c) to
go to the source location of the change log entry near point, when Change Log mode is
on. Then subsequent invocations of the next-error command (by default bound to M-g
M-n and C-x `) will move between entries in the change log. You will jump to the actual
site in the file that was changed, not just to the next change log entry. You can also use
previous-error to move back through the change log entries.
You can use the command M-x change-log-merge to merge other log files into a buffer
in Change Log Mode, preserving the date ordering of entries.
Version control systems are another way to keep track of changes in your program and
keep a change log. Many projects that use a VCS don’t keep a separate versioned change log
file nowadays, so you may wish to avoid having such a file in the repository. If the value of
add-log-dont-create-changelog-file is non-nil, commands like C-x 4 a (add-change-
log-entry-other-window) will record changes in a suitably named temporary buffer instead
of a file, if such a file does not already exist.
Whether you have a change log file or use a temporary buffer for change logs, you can
type C-c C-a (log-edit-insert-changelog) in the VC Log buffer to insert the relevant
change log entries, if they exist. See Section 25.1.4 [Log Buffer], page 339.

25.3.2 Format of ChangeLog

A change log entry starts with a header line that contains the current date, your name (taken
from the variable add-log-full-name), and your email address (taken from the variable
add-log-mailing-address). Aside from these header lines, every line in the change log
starts with a space or a tab. The bulk of the entry consists of items, each of which starts
with a line starting with whitespace and a star. Here are two entries, both dated in May
1993, with two items and one item respectively.
1993-05-25 Richard Stallman <[email protected]>

* man.el: Rename symbols 'man-*' to 'Man-*'.

(manual-entry): Make prompt string clearer.

* simple.el (blink-matching-paren-distance):
Change default to 12,000.

1993-05-24 Richard Stallman <[email protected]>

* vc.el (minor-mode-map-alist): Don't use it if it's void.

(vc-cancel-version): Doc fix.
One entry can describe several changes; each change should have its own item, or its
own line in an item. Normally there should be a blank line between items. When items are
related (parts of the same change, in different places), group them by leaving no blank line
between them.
You should put a copyright notice and permission notice at the end of the change log file.
Here is an example:
Copyright 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are
permitted provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.
356 GNU Emacs Manual

Of course, you should substitute the proper years and copyright holder.

25.4 Find Identifier References

An identifier is a name of a syntactical subunit of the program: a function, a subroutine, a
method, a class, a data type, a macro, etc. In a programming language, each identifier is a
symbol in the language’s syntax. Identifiers are also known as tags.
Program development and maintenance requires capabilities to quickly find where each
identifier was defined and referenced, to rename identifiers across the entire project, etc.
These capabilities are also useful for finding references in major modes other than those
defined to support programming languages. For example, chapters, sections, appendices, etc.
of a text or a TEX document can be treated as subunits as well, and their names can be
used as identifiers. In this chapter, we use the term “identifiers” to collectively refer to the
names of any kind of subunits, in program source and in other kinds of text alike.
Emacs provides a unified interface to these capabilities, called ‘xref’.
To do its job, xref needs to make use of information and to employ methods specific to
the major mode. What files to search for identifiers, how to find references to identifiers, how
to complete on identifiers—all this and more is mode-specific knowledge. xref delegates the
mode-specific parts of its job to a backend provided by the mode; it also includes defaults
for some of its commands, for those modes that don’t provide their own.
A backend can implement its capabilities in a variety of ways. Here are a few examples:
a. Some major modes provide built-in means for looking up the language symbols. For
example, Emacs Lisp symbols can be identified by searching the package load history,
maintained by the Emacs Lisp interpreter, and by consulting the built-in documentation
strings; the Emacs Lisp mode uses these facilities in its backend to allow finding
definitions of symbols. (One disadvantage of this kind of backend is that it only knows
about subunits that were loaded into the interpreter.)
b. If Eglot is activated for the current buffer’s project (see Section 25.2 [Projects], page 351)
and the current buffer’s major mode, Eglot consults an external language server program
and provides the data supplied by the server regarding the definitions of the identifiers
in the project. See Section “Eglot Features” in Eglot: The Emacs LSP Client.
c. An external program can extract references by scanning the relevant files, and build a
database of these references. A backend can then access this database whenever it needs
to list or look up references. The Emacs distribution includes etags, a command for
tagging identifier definitions in programs, which supports many programming languages
and other major modes, such as HTML, by extracting references into tags tables. See
Section 25.4.2.2 [Create Tags Table], page 364. Major modes for languages supported
by etags can use tags tables as basis for their backend. (One disadvantage of this kind
of backend is that tags tables need to be kept reasonably up to date, by rebuilding them
from time to time.)

25.4.1 Find Identifiers

This subsection describes the commands that find references to identifiers and perform
various queries about identifiers. Each such reference could define an identifier, e.g., provide
the implementation of a program subunit or the text of a document section; or it could
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 357

use the identifier, e.g., call a function or a method, assign a value to a variable, mention a
chapter in a cross-reference, etc.

25.4.1.1 Looking Up Identifiers

The most important thing that xref enables you to do is to find the definition of a specific
identifier.
M-. Find definitions of an identifier (xref-find-definitions).
C-M-. pattern RET
Find all identifiers whose name matches pattern (xref-find-apropos).
C-x 4 . RET
Find definitions of identifier, but display it in another window (xref-find-
definitions-other-window).
C-x 5 . RET
Find definition of identifier, and display it in a new frame (xref-find-
definitions-other-frame).
M-x xref-find-definitions-at-mouse
Find definition of identifier at mouse click.
M-, Go back to where you previously invoked M-. and friends (xref-go-back).
C-M-, Go forward to where you previously invoked M-, (xref-go-forward).
M-x xref-etags-mode
Switch xref to use the etags backend.
M-. (xref-find-definitions) shows the definition of the identifier at point. With a
prefix argument, or if there’s no identifier at point, it prompts for the identifier. (If you
want it to always prompt, customize xref-prompt-for-identifier to t.)
When entering the identifier argument to M-., you can use the usual minibuffer completion
commands (see Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30), with the known identifier names being
the completion candidates.
Like most commands that can switch buffers, xref-find-definitions has a variant
that displays the new buffer in another window, and one that makes a new frame for it.
The former is C-x 4 . (xref-find-definitions-other-window), and the latter is C-x 5 .
(xref-find-definitions-other-frame).
The command xref-find-definitions-at-mouse works like xref-find-definitions,
but it looks for the identifier name at or around the place of a mouse event. This command
is intended to be bound to a mouse event, such as C-M-mouse-1, for example.
The command C-M-. (xref-find-apropos) is like apropos for tags (see Section 7.3
[Apropos], page 45). It displays a list of identifiers in the selected tags table whose names
match the specified regexp. This is just like M-., except that it does regexp matching of
identifiers instead of matching symbol names as fixed strings. By default, the command
pops up the *xref* buffer, like M-., but you can display additional output by customizing
the variable tags-apropos-additional-actions; see its documentation for details.
If any of the above commands finds more than one matching definition, it by default
pops up the *xref* buffer showing the matching candidates. (C-M-. always pops up the
358 GNU Emacs Manual

*xref* buffer if it finds at least one match.) The candidates are normally shown in that
buffer as the name of a file and the matching identifier(s) in that file. In that buffer, you
can select any of the candidates for display, and you have several additional commands,
described in Section 25.4.1.2 [Xref Commands], page 358. However, if the value of the
variable xref-auto-jump-to-first-definition is move, the first of these candidates is
automatically selected in the *xref* buffer, and if it’s t or show, the first candidate is
automatically shown in its own window; t also selects the window showing the first candidate.
The default value is nil, which just shows the candidates in the *xref* buffer, but doesn’t
select any of them.
To go back to places from where you’ve displayed the definition, use M-, (xref-go-back).
It jumps back to the point of the last invocation of M-.. Thus you can find and examine the
definition of something with M-. and then return to where you were with M-,. M-, allows
you to retrace the steps you made forward in the history of places, all the way to the first
place in history, where you first invoked M-., or to any place in-between.
If you previously went back too far with M-,, or want to re-examine a place from which
you went back, you can use C-M-, (xref-go-forward) to go forward again. This is similar
to using M-., except that you don’t need on each step to move point to the identifier whose
definition you want to look up. C-M-, allows you to retrace all the steps you made back in
the history of places, all the way to the last place in history, where you invoked M-,, or to
any place in-between.
Some major modes install xref support facilities that might sometimes fail to find certain
identifiers. For example, in Emacs Lisp mode (see Section 24.9 [Lisp Eval], page 328) M-.
will by default find only functions and variables from Lisp packages which are loaded into
the current Emacs session or are auto-loaded (see Section “Autoload” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual). If M-. fails to find some identifiers, you can try forcing xref to use the
etags backend (see Section 25.4 [Xref], page 356). To this end, turn on the Xref Etags minor
mode with M-x xref-etags-mode, then invoke M-. again. (For this to work, be sure to run
etags to create the tags table in the directory tree of the source files, see Section 25.4.2.2
[Create Tags Table], page 364.)

25.4.1.2 Commands Available in the *xref* Buffer

The following commands are provided in the *xref* buffer by the special XREF mode:
RET
mouse-1 Display the reference on the current line (xref-goto-xref). With prefix argu-
ment, also bury the *xref* buffer.
mouse-2 The same as mouse-1, but make the window displaying the *xref* buffer the
selected window (xref-select-and-show-xref).
n
. Move to the next reference and display it in the other window (xref-next-line).
N Move to the first reference of the next reference group and display it in the other
window (xref-next-group).
p
, Move to the previous reference and display it in the other window (xref-prev-
line).
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 359

P Move to the first reference of the previous reference group and display it in the
other window (xref-prev-group).
C-o Display the reference on the current line in the other window (xref-show-
location-at-point).
r pattern RET replacement RET
Perform interactive query-replace on references that match pattern
(xref-query-replace-in-results), replacing the match with replacement.
This command can only be used in *xref* buffers that show all the matches
for an identifier in all the relevant files. See Section 25.4.1.3 [Identifier Search],
page 359.
g Refresh the contents of the *xref* buffer (xref-revert-buffer).
M-, Quit the window showing the *xref* buffer, and then jump to the previous
Xref stack location (xref-quit-and-pop-marker-stack).
q Quit the window showing the *xref* buffer (xref-quit).
In addition, the usual navigation commands, such as the arrow keys, C-n, and C-p are
available for moving around the buffer without displaying the references.

25.4.1.3 Searching and Replacing with Identifiers

The commands in this section perform various search and replace operations either on
identifiers themselves or on files that reference them.
M-? Find all the references for the identifier at point.
r
M-x xref-query-replace-in-results RET replacement RET
C-u M-x xref-query-replace-in-results RET regexp RET replacement RET
Interactively replace regexp with replacement in the names of all the identifiers
shown in the *xref* buffer.
M-x xref-find-references-and-replace RET from RET to RET
Interactively rename all instances of the identifier from to the new name to.
M-x tags-search RET regexp RET
Search for regexp through the files in the selected tags table.
M-x tags-query-replace RET regexp RET replacement RET
Perform a query-replace-regexp on each file in the selected tags table.
M-x fileloop-continue
Restart one of the last 2 commands above, from the current location of point.
M-? finds all the references for the identifier at point, prompting for the identifier as needed,
with completion. Depending on the current backend (see Section 25.4 [Xref], page 356),
the command may prompt even if it finds a valid identifier at point. When invoked with
a prefix argument, it always prompts for the identifier. (If you want it to prompt always,
customize the value of the variable xref-prompt-for-identifier to t; or set it to nil
to prompt only if there’s no usable identifier at point.) The command then presents the
*xref* buffer with all the references to the identifier, showing the file name and the line
360 GNU Emacs Manual

where the identifier is referenced. The XREF mode commands are available in this buffer,
see Section 25.4.1.2 [Xref Commands], page 358.
If the value of the variable xref-auto-jump-to-first-xref is t, xref-find-
references automatically jumps to the first result and selects the window where it is
displayed. If the value is show, the first result is shown, but the window showing the *xref*
buffer is left selected. If the value is move, the first result is selected in the *xref* buffer,
but is not shown. The default value is nil, which just shows the results in the *xref*
buffer, but doesn’t select any of them.
r (xref-query-replace-in-results) reads a replacement string, just like ordinary M-x
query-replace-regexp. It then renames the identifiers shown in the *xref* buffer in all
the places in all the files where these identifiers are referenced, such that their new name
is replacement. This is useful when you rename your identifiers as part of refactoring.
This command should be invoked in the *xref* buffer generated by M-?. By default, the
command replaces the entire name of each identifier with replacement, but if invoked with a
prefix argument, the command prompts for a regexp to match identifier names, and replaces
only the matches of that regexp in the names of the identifiers with replacement.
M-x xref-find-references-and-replace works similarly to xref-query-replace-in-
results, but is more convenient when you want to rename a single identifier specified by
its name from.
M-x tags-search reads a regexp using the minibuffer, then searches for matches in all
the files in the selected tags table, one file at a time. It displays the name of the file being
searched so you can follow its progress. As soon as it finds an occurrence, tags-search
returns. This command requires tags tables to be available (see Section 25.4.2 [Tags Tables],
page 361).
Having found one match with tags-search, you probably want to find all the rest. M-x
fileloop-continue resumes the tags-search, finding one more match. This searches the
rest of the current buffer, followed by the remaining files of the tags table.
M-x tags-query-replace performs a single query-replace-regexp through all the
files in the tags table. It reads a regexp to search for and a string to replace with, just
like ordinary M-x query-replace-regexp. It searches much like M-x tags-search, but
repeatedly, processing matches according to your input. See Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace],
page 124, for more information on query replace.
You can control the case-sensitivity of tags search commands by customizing the value of
the variable tags-case-fold-search. The default is to use the same setting as the value
of case-fold-search (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119).
It is possible to get through all the files in the tags table with a single invocation of M-x
tags-query-replace. But often it is useful to exit temporarily, which you can do with any
input event that has no special query replace meaning. You can resume the query replace
subsequently by typing M-x fileloop-continue; this command resumes the last tags search
or replace command that you did. For instance, to skip the rest of the current file, you can
type M-> M-x fileloop-continue.
Note that the commands described above carry out much broader searches than the
xref-find-definitions family. The xref-find-definitions commands search only for
definitions of identifiers that match your string or regexp. The commands xref-find-
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 361

references, tags-search, and tags-query-replace find every occurrence of the identifier

or regexp, as ordinary search commands and replace commands do in the current buffer.
As an alternative to xref-find-references and tags-search, you can run grep as a
subprocess and have Emacs show you the matching lines one by one. See Section 24.4 [Grep
Searching], page 313.

25.4.1.4 Identifier Inquiries

C-M-i
M-TAB Perform completion on the text around point, possibly using the selected tags
table if one is loaded (completion-at-point).
M-x list-tags RET file RET
Display a list of the identifiers defined in the program file file.
C-M-. regexp RET
Display a list of all identifiers matching regexp (xref-find-apropos). See
Section 25.4.1.1 [Looking Up Identifiers], page 357.
M-x tags-next-file
Visit files recorded in the selected tags table.
In most programming language modes, you can type C-M-i or M-TAB (completion-at-
point) to complete the symbol at point. Some modes provide specialized completion for
this command tailored to the mode; for those that don’t, if there is a tags table loaded,
this command can use it to generate completion candidates. See Section 23.8 [Symbol
Completion], page 302.
M-x list-tags reads the name of one of the files covered by the selected tags table, and
displays a list of tags defined in that file. Do not include a directory as part of the file name
unless the file name recorded in the tags table includes a directory. This command works
only with the etags backend, and requires a tags table for the project to be available. See
Section 25.4.2 [Tags Tables], page 361. If used interactively, the default tag is file name of
the current buffer if used interactively.
M-x tags-next-file visits files covered by the selected tags table. The first time it is
called, it visits the first file covered by the table. Each subsequent call visits the next covered
file, unless a prefix argument is supplied, in which case it returns to the first file. This
command requires a tags table to be selected.

25.4.2 Tags Tables

A tags table records the tags1 extracted by scanning the source code of a certain program or
a certain document. Tags extracted from generated files reference the original files, rather
than the generated files that were scanned during tag extraction. Examples of generated files
include C files generated from Cweb source files, from a Yacc parser, or from Lex scanner
definitions; .i preprocessed C files; and Fortran files produced by preprocessing .fpp source
files.
To produce a tags table, you run the etags shell command on a document or the source
code file. The ‘etags’ program writes the tags to a tags table file, or tags file in short. The
1
A tag is a synonym for identifier reference. Commands and features based on the etags package
traditionally use “tag” with this meaning, and this subsection follows that tradition.
362 GNU Emacs Manual

conventional name for a tags file is TAGS. See Section 25.4.2.2 [Create Tags Table], page 364.
(It is also possible to create a tags table by using one of the commands from other packages
that can produce such tables in the same format.)
Emacs uses the tags tables via the etags package as one of the supported backends for
xref. Because tags tables are produced by the etags command that is part of an Emacs
distribution, we describe tags tables in more detail here.
The Ebrowse facility is similar to etags but specifically tailored for C++. See Section
“Ebrowse” in Ebrowse User’s Manual. The Semantic package provides another way to generate
and use tags, separate from the etags facility. See Section 23.10 [Semantic], page 303.

25.4.2.1 Source File Tag Syntax

Here is how tag syntax is defined for the most popular languages:
• In C code, any C function or typedef is a tag, and so are definitions of struct, union
and enum. #define macro definitions, #undef and enum constants are also tags, unless
you specify ‘--no-defines’ when making the tags table. Similarly, global variables
are tags, unless you specify ‘--no-globals’, and so are struct members, unless you
specify ‘--no-members’. Use of ‘--no-globals’, ‘--no-defines’ and ‘--no-members’
can make the tags table file much smaller.
You can tag function declarations and external variables in addition to function defini-
tions by giving the ‘--declarations’ option to etags.
• In C++ code, in addition to all the tag constructs of C code, member functions are also
recognized; member variables are also recognized, unless you use the ‘--no-members’
option. operator definitions have tag names like ‘operator+’. If you specify the
‘--class-qualify’ option, tags for variables and functions in classes are named
‘class::variable’ and ‘class::function’. By default, class methods and members
are not class-qualified, which allows to identify their names in the sources more
accurately.
• In Java code, tags include all the constructs recognized in C++, plus the interface,
extends and implements constructs. Tags for variables and functions in classes are
named ‘class.variable’ and ‘class.function’.
• In LATEX documents, the arguments for \chapter, \section, \subsection,
\subsubsection, \eqno, \label, \ref, \cite, \bibitem, \part, \appendix,
\entry, \index, \def, \newcommand, \renewcommand, \newenvironment and
\renewenvironment are tags.
Other commands can make tags as well, if you specify them in the environment variable
TEXTAGS before invoking etags. The value of this environment variable should be a
colon-separated list of command names. For example,
TEXTAGS="mycommand:myothercommand"
export TEXTAGS
specifies (using Bourne shell syntax) that the commands ‘\mycommand’ and
‘\myothercommand’ also define tags.
• In Lisp code, any function defined with defun, any variable defined with defvar or
defconst, and in general the first argument of any expression that starts with ‘(def’
in column zero is a tag. As an exception, expressions of the form (defvar foo) are
treated as declarations, and are only tagged if the ‘--declarations’ option is given.
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 363

• In Scheme code, tags include anything defined with def or with a construct whose name
starts with ‘def’. They also include variables set with set! at top level in the file.
Several other languages are also supported:
• In Ada code, functions, procedures, packages, tasks and types are tags. Use the
‘--packages-only’ option to create tags for packages only.
In Ada, the same name can be used for different kinds of entity (e.g., for a procedure
and for a function). Also, for things like packages, procedures and functions, there is the
spec (i.e., the interface) and the body (i.e., the implementation). To make it easier to
pick the definition you want, Ada tag names have suffixes indicating the type of entity:
‘/b’ package body.
‘/f’ function.
‘/k’ task.
‘/p’ procedure.
‘/s’ package spec.
‘/t’ type.
Thus, M-x find-tag RET bidule/b RET will go directly to the body of the package
bidule, while M-x find-tag RET bidule RET will just search for any tag bidule.
• In assembler code, labels appearing at the start of a line, followed by a colon, are tags.
• In Bison or Yacc input files, each rule defines as a tag the nonterminal it constructs.
The portions of the file that contain C code are parsed as C code.
• In Cobol code, tags are paragraph names; that is, any word starting in column 8 and
followed by a period.
• In Erlang code, the tags are the functions, records and macros defined in the file.
• In Fortran code, functions, subroutines and block data are tags.
• In Go code, packages, functions, and types are tags.
• In HTML input files, the tags are the title and the h1, h2, h3 headers. Also, tags are
name= in anchors and all occurrences of id=.
• In Lua input files, all functions are tags.
• In makefiles, targets are tags; additionally, variables are tags unless you specify
‘--no-globals’.
• In Objective C code, tags include Objective C definitions for classes, class cate-
gories, methods and protocols. Tags for variables and functions in classes are named
‘class::variable’ and ‘class::function’.
• In Pascal code, the tags are the functions and procedures defined in the file.
• In Perl code, the tags are the packages, subroutines and variables defined by the package,
sub, use constant, my, and local keywords. Use ‘--globals’ if you want to tag global
variables. Tags for subroutines are named ‘package::sub’. The name for subroutines
defined in the default package is ‘main::sub’.
• In PHP code, tags are functions, classes and defines. Vars are tags too, unless you use
the ‘--no-members’ option.
364 GNU Emacs Manual

• In PostScript code, the tags are the functions.

• In Prolog code, tags are predicates and rules at the beginning of line.
• In Python code, def or class at the beginning of a line generate a tag.
• In Ruby code, def or class or module at the beginning of a line generate a tag.
Constants also generate tags.
• In Rust code, tags anything defined with fn, enum, struct or macro_rules!.
You can also generate tags based on regexp matching (see Section 25.4.2.3 [Etags Regexps],
page 365) to handle other formats and languages.

25.4.2.2 Creating Tags Tables

The etags program is used to create a tags table file. It knows the syntax of several
languages, as described in the previous section. Here is how to run etags:
etags inputfiles...
The etags program reads the specified files, and writes a tags table named TAGS in the
current working directory. You can optionally specify a different file name for the tags table
by using the ‘--output=file’ option; specifying - as a file name prints the tags table to
standard output. You can also append the newly created tags table to an existing file by
using the ‘--append’ option.
If the specified files don’t exist, etags looks for compressed versions of them and
uncompresses them to read them. Under MS-DOS, etags also looks for file names like
mycode.cgz if it is given ‘mycode.c’ on the command line and mycode.c does not exist.
If the tags table becomes outdated due to changes in the files described in it, you can
update it by running the etags program again. If the tags table does not record a tag, or
records it for the wrong file, then Emacs will not be able to find that definition until you
update the tags table. But if the position recorded in the tags table becomes a little bit
wrong (due to other editing), Emacs will still be able to find the right position, with a slight
delay.
Thus, there is no need to update the tags table after each edit. You should update a
tags table when you define new tags that you want to have listed, or when you move tag
definitions from one file to another, or when changes become substantial.
You can make a tags table include another tags table, by passing the ‘--include=file’
option to etags. It then covers all the files covered by the included tags file, as well as its
own.
If you specify the source files with relative file names when you run etags, the tags file
will contain file names relative to the directory where the tags file was initially written. This
way, you can move an entire directory tree containing both the tags file and the source files,
and the tags file will still refer correctly to the source files. If the tags file is - or is in the
/dev directory, however, the file names are made relative to the current working directory.
This is useful, for example, when writing the tags to the standard output.
When using a relative file name, it should not be a symbolic link pointing to a tags file
in a different directory, because this would generally render the file names invalid.
If you specify absolute file names as arguments to etags, then the tags file will contain
absolute file names. This way, the tags file will still refer to the same files even if you move
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 365

it, as long as the source files remain in the same place. Absolute file names start with ‘/’, or
with ‘device:/’ on MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
When you want to make a tags table from a great number of files, you may have problems
listing them on the command line, because some systems have a limit on its length. You
can circumvent this limit by telling etags to read the file names from its standard input, by
typing a dash in place of the file names, like this:
find . -name "*.[chCH]" -print | etags -
etags recognizes the language used in an input file based on its file name and contents.
It first tries to match the file’s name and extension to the ones commonly used with certain
languages. Some languages have interpreters with known names (e.g., perl for Perl or pl
for Prolog), so etags next looks for an interpreter specification of the form ‘#!interp’ on
the first line of an input file, and matches that against known interpreters. If none of that
works, or if you want to override the automatic detection of the language, you can specify
the language explicitly with the ‘--language=name’ option. You can intermix these options
with file names; each one applies to the file names that follow it. Specify ‘--language=auto’
to tell etags to resume guessing the language from the file names and file contents. Specify
‘--language=none’ to turn off language-specific processing entirely; then etags recognizes
tags by regexp matching alone (see Section 25.4.2.3 [Etags Regexps], page 365). This comes
in handy when an input file uses a language not yet supported by etags, and you want to
avoid having etags fall back on Fortran and C as the default languages.
The option ‘--parse-stdin=file’ is mostly useful when calling etags from programs.
It can be used (only once) in place of a file name on the command line. etags will read
from standard input and mark the produced tags as belonging to the file file.
For C and C++, if the source files don’t observe the GNU Coding Standards’ convention
if having braces (‘{’ and ‘}’) in column zero only for top-level definitions, like functions and
struct definitions, we advise that you use the ‘--ignore-indentation’ option, to prevent
etags from incorrectly interpreting closing braces in column zero.
‘etags --help’ outputs the list of the languages etags knows, and the file name rules
for guessing the language. It also prints a list of all the available etags options, together
with a short explanation. If followed by one or more ‘--language=lang’ options, it outputs
detailed information about how tags are generated for lang.

25.4.2.3 Etags Regexps

The ‘--regex’ option to etags allows tags to be recognized by regular expression matching.
You can intermix this option with file names; each one applies to the source files that follow
it. If you specify multiple ‘--regex’ options, all of them are used in parallel. The syntax is:
--regex=[{language}]/tagregexp/[nameregexp/]modifiers
The essential part of the option value is tagregexp, the regexp for matching tags. It is always
used anchored, that is, it only matches at the beginning of a line. If you want to allow
indented tags, use a regexp that matches initial whitespace; start it with ‘[ \t]*’.
In these regular expressions, ‘\’ quotes the next character, and all the C character escape
sequences are supported: ‘\a’ for bell, ‘\b’ for back space, ‘\e’ for escape, ‘\f’ for formfeed,
‘\n’ for newline, ‘\r’ for carriage return, ‘\t’ for tab, and ‘\v’ for vertical tab. In addition,
‘\d’ stands for the DEL character.
366 GNU Emacs Manual

Ideally, tagregexp should not match more characters than are needed to recognize what
you want to tag. If the syntax requires you to write tagregexp so it matches more characters
beyond the tag itself, you should add a nameregexp, to pick out just the tag. This will
enable Emacs to find tags more accurately and to do completion on tag names more reliably.
In nameregexp, it is frequently convenient to use “back references” (see Section 12.7 [Regexp
Backslash], page 117) to parenthesized groupings ‘\( ... \)’ in tagregexp. For example, ‘\1’
refers to the first such parenthesized grouping. You can find some examples of this below.
The modifiers are a sequence of zero or more characters that modify the way etags does
the matching. A regexp with no modifiers is applied sequentially to each line of the input
file, in a case-sensitive way. The modifiers and their meanings are:
‘i’ Ignore case when matching this regexp.
‘m’ Match this regular expression against the whole file, so that multi-line matches
are possible.
‘s’ Match this regular expression against the whole file, and allow ‘.’ in tagregexp
to match newlines.
The ‘-R’ option cancels all the regexps defined by preceding ‘--regex’ options. It too
applies to the file names following it. Here’s an example:
etags --regex=/reg1/i voo.doo --regex=/reg2/m \
bar.ber -R --lang=lisp los.er
Here etags chooses the parsing language for voo.doo and bar.ber according to their
contents. etags also uses reg1 to recognize additional tags in voo.doo, and both reg1 and
reg2 to recognize additional tags in bar.ber. reg1 is checked against each line of voo.doo
and bar.ber, in a case-insensitive way, while reg2 is checked against the whole bar.ber file,
permitting multi-line matches, in a case-sensitive way. etags uses only the Lisp tags rules,
with no user-specified regexp matching, to recognize tags in los.er.
You can restrict a ‘--regex’ option to match only files of a given language by using
the optional prefix {language}. (‘etags --help’ prints the list of languages recognized by
etags.) This is particularly useful when storing many predefined regular expressions for
etags in a file. The following example tags the DEFVAR macros in the Emacs source files, for
the C language only:
--regex='{c}/[ \t]*DEFVAR_[A-Z_ \t(]+"\([^"]+\)"/\1/'
When you have complex regular expressions, you can store the list of them in a file. The
following option syntax instructs etags to read two files of regular expressions. The regular
expressions contained in the second file are matched without regard to case.
--regex=@case-sensitive-file --ignore-case-regex=@ignore-case-file
A regex file for etags contains one regular expression per line. Empty lines, and lines
beginning with space or tab are ignored. When the first character in a line is ‘@’, etags
assumes that the rest of the line is the name of another file of regular expressions; thus, one
such file can include another file. All the other lines are taken to be regular expressions. If
the first non-whitespace text on the line is ‘--’, that line is a comment.
For example, we can create a file called ‘emacs.tags’ with the following contents:
-- This is for GNU Emacs C source files
{c}/[ \t]*DEFVAR_[A-Z_ \t(]+"\([^"]+\)"/\1/
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 367

and then use it like this:

etags [email protected] *.[ch] */*.[ch]
Here are some more examples. The regexps are quoted to protect them from shell
interpretation.
• Tag Octave files:
etags --language=none \
--regex='/[ \t]*function.*=[ \t]*\([^ \t]*\)[ \t]*(/\1/' \
--regex='/###key \(.*\)/\1/' \
--regex='/[ \t]*global[ \t].*/' \
*.m
Note that tags are not generated for scripts, so that you have to add a line by yourself
of the form ‘###key scriptname’ if you want to jump to it.
• Tag Tcl files:
etags --language=none --regex='/proc[ \t]+\([^ \t]+\)/\1/' *.tcl
• Tag VHDL files:
etags --language=none \
--regex='/[ \t]*\(ARCHITECTURE\|CONFIGURATION\) +[^ ]* +OF/' \
--regex='/[ \t]*\(ATTRIBUTE\|ENTITY\|FUNCTION\|PACKAGE\
\( BODY\)?\|PROCEDURE\|PROCESS\|TYPE\)[ \t]+\([^ \t(]+\)/\3/'

25.4.3 Selecting a Tags Table

Emacs has at any time at most one selected tags table. All the commands for working with
tags tables use the selected one first. To select a tags table, type M-x visit-tags-table,
which reads the tags table file name as an argument, with TAGS defaulting to the first
directory that contains a file named TAGS encountered when recursively searching upward
from the default directory.
Emacs does not actually read in the tags table contents until you try to use them; all
visit-tags-table does is store the file name in the variable tags-file-name, and not
much more. The variable’s initial value is nil; that value tells all the commands for working
with tags tables that they must ask for a tags table file name to use.
In addition to the selected tags table, Emacs maintains the list of several tags tables that
you use together. For example, if you are working on a program that uses a library, you may
wish to have the tags tables of both the program and the library available, so that Emacs
could easily find identifiers from both. If the selected tags table doesn’t have the identifier
or doesn’t mention the source file a tags command needs, the command will try using all
the other tags tables in the current list of tags tables.
Using visit-tags-table to load a new tags table when another tags table is already
loaded gives you a choice: you can add the new tags table to the current list of tags tables,
or discard the current list and start a new list. If you start a new list, the new tags table is
used instead of others. If you add the new table to the current list, it is used as well as the
others.
You can specify a precise list of tags tables by setting the variable tags-table-list to
a list of directory names, like this:
(setq tags-table-list
'("~/.emacs.d" "/usr/local/lib/emacs/src"))
368 GNU Emacs Manual

This tells the tags commands to look at the TAGS files in your ~/.emacs.d directory and in
the /usr/local/lib/emacs/src directory. The order depends on which file you are in and
which tags table mentions that file.
Do not set both tags-file-name and tags-table-list.

25.5 Emacs Development Environment

EDE (Emacs Development Environment) is a package that simplifies the task of creating,
building, and debugging large programs with Emacs. It provides some of the features of an
IDE, or Integrated Development Environment, in Emacs.
This section provides a brief description of EDE usage. For full details on Ede, type C-h
i and then select the EDE manual.
EDE is implemented as a global minor mode (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242).
To enable it, type M-x global-ede-mode or click on the ‘Project Support (EDE)’ item in
the ‘Tools’ menu. You can also enable EDE each time you start Emacs, by adding the
following line to your initialization file:
(global-ede-mode t)
Activating EDE adds a menu named ‘Development’ to the menu bar. Many EDE commands,
including the ones described below, can be invoked from this menu.
EDE organizes files into projects, which correspond to directory trees. The project root
is the topmost directory of a project. To define a new project, visit a file in the desired
project root and type M-x ede-new. This command prompts for a project type, which refers
to the underlying method that EDE will use to manage the project (see Section “Creating a
project” in Emacs Development Environment). The most common project types are ‘Make’,
which uses Makefiles, and ‘Automake’, which uses GNU Automake (see Automake). In both
cases, EDE also creates a file named Project.ede, which stores information about the
project.
A project may contain one or more targets. A target can be an object file, executable
program, or some other type of file, which is built from one or more of the files in the project.
To add a new target to a project, type C-c . t (M-x ede-new-target). This command
also asks if you wish to add the current file to that target, which means that the target is
to be built from that file. After you have defined a target, you can add more files to it by
typing C-c . a (ede-add-file).
To build a target, type C-c . c (ede-compile-target). To build all the targets in the
project, type C-c . C (ede-compile-project). EDE uses the file types to guess how the
target should be built.

25.6 Bug Reference

Most projects with a certain amount of users track bug reports in some issue tracking
software which assigns each report a unique and short number or identifier. Those are used
to reference a given bug, e.g., in a source code comment above the code fixing some bug, in
documentation files, or in discussions on some mailing list or IRC channel.
The minor modes bug-reference-mode and bug-reference-prog-mode highlight such
bug references and make it possible to follow them to the corresponding bug report on
Chapter 25: Maintaining Large Programs 369

the project’s issue tracker. bug-reference-prog-mode is a variant of bug-reference-mode

which highlights bug references only inside source code comments and strings.
For its working, bug reference mode needs to know the syntax of bug references
(bug-reference-bug-regexp), and the URL of the tracker where bug reports can be
looked up (bug-reference-url-format). Since those are typically different from project to
project, it makes sense to specify them in see Section 33.2.5 [Directory Variables], page 510,
or see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507.
For example, let’s assume in our project, we usually write references to bug reports as
bug#1234, or Bug-1234 and that this bug’s page on the issue tracker is https://project.
org/issues/1234, then these local variables section would do.
;; Local Variables:
;; bug-reference-bug-regexp: "\\([Bb]ug[#-]\\([0-9]+\\)\\)"
;; bug-reference-url-format: "https://project.org/issues/%s"
;; End:
The string captured by the first regexp group defines the bounds of the overlay bug-
reference creates, i.e., the part which is highlighted and made clickable.
The string captured by the second regexp group in bug-reference-bug-regexp is used
to replace the %s template in the bug-reference-url-format.
Note that bug-reference-url-format may also be a function in order to cater for
more complex scenarios, e.g., when different parts of the bug reference have to be used to
distinguish between issues and merge requests resulting in different URLs.

Automatic Setup
If bug-reference-mode is activated, bug-reference-mode-hook has been run and still
bug-reference-bug-regexp, and bug-reference-url-format aren’t both set, it’ll try to
setup suitable values for these two variables itself by calling the functions in bug-reference-
auto-setup-functions one after the other until one is able to set the variables.
Right now, there are three types of setup functions.
1. Setup for version-controlled files configurable by the variables bug-reference-forge-
alist, and bug-reference-setup-from-vc-alist. The defaults are able to setup
GNU projects where https://debbugs.gnu.org is used as issue tracker and issues are
usually referenced as bug#13 (but many different notations are considered, too), and
several kinds of modern software forges such as GitLab, Gitea, SourceHut, or GitHub.
If you deploy a self-hosted instance of such a forge, the easiest way to tell bug-reference
about it is through bug-reference-forge-alist.
2. Setup for email guessing from mail folder/mbox names, and mail header values con-
figurable by the variable bug-reference-setup-from-mail-alist. The built-in news-
and mailreader Section 31.1 [Gnus], page 446, and Chapter 30 [Rmail], page 426, are
supported.
3. Setup for IRC channels configurable by the variable bug-reference-setup-from-irc-
alist. The built-in IRC clients Rcirc, See The Rcirc Manual, and ERC, See The ERC
Manual, are supported.
For almost all of those modes, it’s enough to simply enable bug-reference-mode, only
Rmail requires a slightly different setup.
;; Use VC-based setup if file is under version control.
370 GNU Emacs Manual

(add-hook 'prog-mode-hook #'bug-reference-prog-mode)

;; Gnus (summary & article buffers)

(add-hook 'gnus-mode-hook #'bug-reference-mode)

;; Rmail
(add-hook 'rmail-show-message-hook #'bug-reference-mode-force-auto-setup)

;; Rcirc
(add-hook 'rcirc-mode-hook #'bug-reference-mode)

;; ERC
(add-hook 'erc-mode-hook #'bug-reference-mode)
In the Rmail case, instead of the mode hook, the rmail-show-message-hook has to
be used in combination with the function bug-reference-mode-force-auto-setup which
activates bug-reference-mode and forces auto-setup. The reason is that with Rmail all
messages reside in the same buffer but the setup needs to be performed whenever another
messages is displayed.

Adding support for third-party packages

Adding support for bug-reference’ auto-setup is usually quite straight-forward: write a setup
function of zero arguments which gathers the required information (e.g., List-Id/To/From/Cc
mail header values in the case of a MUA), and then calls one of the following helper functions:
• bug-reference-maybe-setup-from-vc which does the setup according to
bug-reference-setup-from-vc-alist,
• bug-reference-maybe-setup-from-mail which does the setup according to
bug-reference-setup-from-mail-alist,
• and bug-reference-maybe-setup-from-irc which does the setup according to
bug-reference-setup-from-irc-alist.
A setup function should return non-nil if it could setup bug-reference mode which is the
case if the last thing the function does is calling one of the helper functions above.
Finally, the setup function has to be added to bug-reference-auto-setup-functions.
Note that these auto-setup functions should check as a first step if they are applicable,
e.g., by checking the major-mode value.

Integration with the debbugs package

If your project’s issues are tracked on the server https://debbugs.gnu.org, you can browse
and reply to reports directly in Emacs using the debbugs package, which can be downloaded
via the Package Menu (see Chapter 32 [Packages], page 485). This package adds the minor
mode debbugs-browse-mode, which can be activated on top of bug-reference-mode and
bug-reference-prog-mode as follows:
(add-hook 'bug-reference-mode-hook 'debbugs-browse-mode)
(add-hook 'bug-reference-prog-mode-hook 'debbugs-browse-mode)
 371

26 Abbrevs
A defined abbrev is a word which expands, if you insert it, into some different text. Abbrevs
are defined by the user to expand in specific ways. For example, you might define ‘foo’ as
an abbrev expanding to ‘find outer otter’. Then you could insert ‘find outer otter ’
into the buffer by typing f o o SPC.
A second kind of abbreviation facility is called dynamic abbrev expansion. You use
dynamic abbrev expansion with an explicit command to expand the letters in the buffer
before point by looking for other words in the buffer that start with those letters. See
Section 26.7 [Dynamic Abbrevs], page 375.
A third kind, hippie expansion, generalizes abbreviation expansion. See Section “Hippie
Expansion” in Features for Automatic Typing.

26.1 Abbrev Concepts

An abbrev is a word that has been defined to expand into a specified expansion. When you
insert a word-separator character following the abbrev, that expands the abbrev—replacing
the abbrev with its expansion. For example, if ‘foo’ is defined as an abbrev expanding to
‘find outer otter’, then typing f o o . will insert ‘find outer otter.’.
Abbrevs expand only when Abbrev mode, a buffer-local minor mode, is enabled. Disabling
Abbrev mode does not cause abbrev definitions to be forgotten, but they do not expand
until Abbrev mode is enabled again. The command M-x abbrev-mode toggles Abbrev mode;
with a numeric argument, it turns Abbrev mode on if the argument is positive, off otherwise.
See Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242.
Abbrevs can have mode-specific definitions, active only in one major mode. Abbrevs
can also have global definitions that are active in all major modes. The same abbrev can
have a global definition and various mode-specific definitions for different major modes. A
mode-specific definition for the current major mode overrides a global definition.
You can define abbrevs interactively during the editing session, irrespective of whether
Abbrev mode is enabled. You can also save lists of abbrev definitions in files, which you can
then reload for use in later sessions.

26.2 Defining Abbrevs

C-x a g Define an abbrev, using one or more words before point as its expansion
(add-global-abbrev).
C-x a l Similar, but define an abbrev specific to the current major mode (add-mode-
abbrev).
C-x a i g Define a word in the buffer as an abbrev (inverse-add-global-abbrev).
C-x a i l Define a word in the buffer as a mode-specific abbrev (inverse-add-mode-
abbrev).
M-x define-global-abbrev RET abbrev RET exp RET
Define abbrev as an abbrev expanding into exp.
M-x define-mode-abbrev RET abbrev RET exp RET
Define abbrev as a mode-specific abbrev expanding into exp.
372 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x kill-all-abbrevs
Discard all abbrev definitions, leaving a blank slate.
The usual way to define an abbrev is to enter the text you want the abbrev to expand
to, position point after it, and type C-x a g (add-global-abbrev). This reads the abbrev
itself using the minibuffer, and then defines it as an abbrev for one or more words before
point. Use a numeric argument to say how many words before point should be taken as
the expansion. For example, to define the abbrev ‘foo’ as mentioned above, insert the text
‘find outer otter’ and then type C-u 3 C-x a g f o o RET.
If you’re using transient-mark-mode (which is the default), the active region will be
used as the expansion of the abbrev being defined. If not, an argument of zero to C-x a g
means to use the contents of the region.
The command C-x a l (add-mode-abbrev) is similar, but defines a mode-specific abbrev
for the current major mode. The arguments work the same as for C-x a g.
C-x a i g (inverse-add-global-abbrev) and C-x a i l (inverse-add-mode-abbrev)
perform the opposite task: if the abbrev text is already in the buffer, you use these commands
to define an abbrev by specifying the expansion in the minibuffer. These commands will
expand the abbrev text used for the definition.
You can define an abbrev without inserting either the abbrev or its expansion in the
buffer using the command define-global-abbrev. It reads two arguments—the abbrev,
and its expansion. The command define-mode-abbrev does likewise for a mode-specific
abbrev.
To change the definition of an abbrev, just make a new definition. When an abbrev has
a prior definition, the abbrev definition commands ask for confirmation before replacing it.
To remove an abbrev definition, give a negative argument to the abbrev definition
command: C-u - C-x a g or C-u - C-x a l. The former removes a global definition, while
the latter removes a mode-specific definition. M-x kill-all-abbrevs removes all abbrev
definitions, both global and local.

26.3 Controlling Abbrev Expansion

When Abbrev mode is enabled, an abbrev expands whenever it is present in the buffer just
before point and you type a self-inserting whitespace or punctuation character (SPC, comma,
etc.). More precisely, any character that is not a word constituent expands an abbrev, and
any word-constituent character can be part of an abbrev. The most common way to use an
abbrev is to insert it and then insert a punctuation or whitespace character to expand it.
Abbrev expansion preserves case: ‘foo’ expands to ‘find outer otter’, and ‘Foo’ to
‘Find outer otter’. ‘FOO’ expands to ‘Find Outer Otter’ by default, but if you change the
variable abbrev-all-caps to a non-nil value, it expands to ‘FIND OUTER OTTER’.
These commands are used to control abbrev expansion:
M-' Separate a prefix from a following abbrev to be expanded (abbrev-prefix-
mark).
C-x a e Expand the abbrev before point (expand-abbrev). This is effective even when
Abbrev mode is not enabled.
Chapter 26: Abbrevs 373

M-x unexpand-abbrev
Undo the expansion of the last expanded abbrev.
M-x expand-region-abbrevs
Expand some or all abbrevs found in the region.
You may wish to expand an abbrev and attach a prefix to the expansion; for example, if
‘cnst’ expands into ‘construction’, you might want to use it to enter ‘reconstruction’. It
does not work to type recnst, because that is not necessarily a defined abbrev. What you
can do is use the command M-' (abbrev-prefix-mark) in between the prefix ‘re’ and the
abbrev ‘cnst’. First, insert ‘re’. Then type M-'; this inserts a hyphen in the buffer to indicate
that it has done its work. Then insert the abbrev ‘cnst’; the buffer now contains ‘re-cnst’.
Now insert a non-word character to expand the abbrev ‘cnst’ into ‘construction’. This
expansion step also deletes the hyphen that indicated M-' had been used. The result is the
desired ‘reconstruction’.
If you actually want the text of the abbrev in the buffer, rather than its expansion, you
can accomplish this by inserting the following punctuation with C-q. Thus, foo C-q , leaves
‘foo,’ in the buffer, not expanding it.
If you expand an abbrev by mistake, you can undo the expansion by typing C-/ (undo).
See Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131. This undoes the insertion of the abbrev expansion and
brings back the abbrev text. If the result you want is the terminating non-word character
plus the unexpanded abbrev, you must reinsert the terminating character, quoting it with
C-q. You can also use the command M-x unexpand-abbrev to cancel the last expansion
without deleting the terminating character.
M-x expand-region-abbrevs searches through the region for defined abbrevs, and for
each one found offers to replace it with its expansion. This command is useful if you have
typed in text using abbrevs but forgot to turn on Abbrev mode first. It may also be useful
together with a special set of abbrev definitions for making several global replacements at
once. This command is effective even if Abbrev mode is not enabled.
The function expand-abbrev performs the expansion by calling the function that
abbrev-expand-function specifies. By changing this function you can make arbitrary
changes to the abbrev expansion. See Section “Abbrev Expansion” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual.

26.4 Abbrevs Suggestions

You can get abbrev suggestions when you manually type text for which there is currently an
active defined abbrev. For example, if there is an abbrev ‘foo’ with the expansion ‘find
outer otter’, and you manually type ‘find outer otter’, Emacs can notice this and show
a hint in the echo area when you have stopped typing.
To enable the abbrev suggestion feature, customize the option abbrev-suggest to a
non-nil value.
The variable abbrev-suggest-hint-threshold controls when to suggest an abbrev to
the user. This variable defines the minimum savings (in terms of the number of characters
the user will not have to type) required for Emacs to suggest using an abbrev. For example,
if the user types ‘foo bar’ (seven characters) and there is an abbrev ‘fubar’ defined (five
characters), the user will not get any suggestion unless the threshold is set to the number 2
374 GNU Emacs Manual

or lower. With the default value 3, the user would not get any suggestion in this example,
because the savings in using the abbrev are below the threshold. If you always want to get
abbrev suggestions, set this variable’s value to zero.
The command abbrev-suggest-show-report displays a buffer with all the abbrev
suggestions shown during the current editing session. This can be useful if you get several
abbrev suggestions and don’t remember them all.

26.5 Examining and Editing Abbrevs

M-x list-abbrevs
Display a list of all abbrev definitions. With a numeric argument, list only local
abbrevs.

M-x edit-abbrevs
Edit a list of abbrevs; you can add, alter or remove definitions.

The output from M-x list-abbrevs looks like this:

various other tables...
(lisp-mode-abbrev-table)
"ks" 0 "keymap-set"
(global-abbrev-table)
"dfn" 0 "definition"
(Some blank lines of no semantic significance, and some other abbrev tables, have been
omitted.)
A line containing a name in parentheses is the header for abbrevs in a particular abbrev
table; global-abbrev-table contains all the global abbrevs, and the other abbrev tables
that are named after major modes contain the mode-specific abbrevs.
Within each abbrev table, each nonblank line defines one abbrev. The word at the
beginning of the line is the abbrev. The number that follows is the number of times the
abbrev has been expanded. Emacs keeps track of this to help you see which abbrevs you
actually use, so that you can eliminate those that you don’t use often. The string at the end
of the line is the expansion.
Some abbrevs are marked with ‘(sys)’. These system abbrevs (see Section “Abbrevs” in
The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) are pre-defined by various modes, and are not saved
to your abbrev file. To disable a system abbrev, define an abbrev of the same name that
expands to itself, and save it to your abbrev file.
M-x edit-abbrevs allows you to add, change or kill abbrev definitions by editing a list
of them in an Emacs buffer. The list has the same format described above. The buffer of
abbrevs is called *Abbrevs*, and is in Edit-Abbrevs mode. Type C-c C-c in this buffer to
install the abbrev definitions as specified in the buffer—and delete any abbrev definitions
not listed.
The command edit-abbrevs is actually the same as list-abbrevs except that it selects
the buffer *Abbrevs* whereas list-abbrevs merely displays it in another window.
Chapter 26: Abbrevs 375

26.6 Saving Abbrevs

These commands allow you to keep abbrev definitions between editing sessions.
M-x write-abbrev-file RET file RET
Write a file file describing all defined abbrevs.
M-x read-abbrev-file RET file RET
Read the file file and define abbrevs as specified therein.
M-x define-abbrevs
Define abbrevs from definitions in current buffer.
M-x insert-abbrevs
Insert all abbrevs and their expansions into current buffer.
M-x write-abbrev-file reads a file name using the minibuffer and then writes a descrip-
tion of all current abbrev definitions into that file. This is used to save abbrev definitions for
use in a later session. The text stored in the file is a series of Lisp expressions that, when
executed, define the same abbrevs that you currently have.
M-x read-abbrev-file reads a file name using the minibuffer and then reads the file,
defining abbrevs according to the contents of the file. The function quietly-read-abbrev-
file is similar except that it does not display a message in the echo area; you cannot invoke
it interactively, and it is used primarily in your init file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522).
If either of these functions is called with nil as the argument, it uses the file given by the
variable abbrev-file-name, which is ~/.emacs.d/abbrev_defs by default. This is your
standard abbrev definition file, and Emacs loads abbrevs from it automatically when it
starts up. (As an exception, Emacs does not load the abbrev file when it is started in batch
mode. See Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570, for a description of batch mode.)
Emacs will offer to save abbrevs automatically if you have changed any of them, whenever
it offers to save all files (for C-x s or C-x C-c). It saves them in the file specified by
abbrev-file-name. This feature can be inhibited by setting the variable save-abbrevs to
nil; setting it to silently will save the abbrevs automatically without asking.
The commands M-x insert-abbrevs and M-x define-abbrevs are similar to the previ-
ous commands but work on text in an Emacs buffer. M-x insert-abbrevs inserts text into
the current buffer after point, describing all current abbrev definitions; M-x define-abbrevs
parses the entire current buffer and defines abbrevs accordingly.

26.7 Dynamic Abbrev Expansion

The abbrev facility described above operates automatically as you insert text, but all
abbrevs must be defined explicitly. By contrast, dynamic abbrevs allow the meanings of
abbreviations to be determined automatically from the contents of the buffer, but dynamic
abbrev expansion happens only when you request it explicitly.
M-/ Expand the word in the buffer before point as a dynamic abbrev, by searching
for words starting with that abbreviation (dabbrev-expand).
C-M-/ Complete the word before point as a dynamic abbrev (dabbrev-completion).
For example, if the buffer contains ‘does this follow ’ and you type f o M-/, the effect
is to insert ‘follow’ because that is the last word in the buffer that starts with ‘fo’. A
376 GNU Emacs Manual

numeric argument to M-/ says to take the second, third, etc. distinct expansion found looking
backward from point. Repeating M-/ searches for an alternative expansion by looking farther
back. After scanning all the text before point, it searches the text after point. The variable
dabbrev-limit, if non-nil, specifies how far away in the buffer to search for an expansion.
After scanning the current buffer, M-/ normally searches other buffers. The variables
dabbrev-check-all-buffers and dabbrev-check-other-buffers can be used to deter-
mine which other buffers, if any, are searched. Buffers that have major modes derived from
any of the modes in dabbrev-ignored-buffer-modes are ignored.
For finer control over which buffers to scan, customize the variables dabbrev-ignored-
buffer-names and dabbrev-ignored-buffer-regexps. The value of the former is a list of
buffer names to skip. The value of the latter is a list of regular expressions; if a buffer’s
name matches any of these regular expressions, dynamic abbrev expansion skips that buffer.
A negative argument to M-/, as in C-u - M-/, says to search first for expansions after
point, then other buffers, and consider expansions before point only as a last resort. If you
repeat the M-/ to look for another expansion, do not specify an argument. Repeating M-/
cycles through all the expansions after point and then the expansions before point.
After you have expanded a dynamic abbrev, you can copy additional words that follow
the expansion in its original context. Simply type SPC M-/ for each additional word you
want to copy. The spacing and punctuation between words is copied along with the words.
You can control the way M-/ determines the word to expand and how to expand it, see
Section 26.8 [Dabbrev Customization], page 376.
The command C-M-/ (dabbrev-completion) performs completion of a dynamic abbrev.
Instead of trying the possible expansions one by one, it finds all of them, then inserts the
text that they have in common. If they have nothing in common, C-M-/ displays a list
of completions, from which you can select a choice in the usual manner. See Section 5.4
[Completion], page 30.
Dynamic abbrev expansion is completely independent of Abbrev mode; the expansion
of a word with M-/ is completely independent of whether it has a definition as an ordinary
abbrev.

26.8 Customizing Dynamic Abbreviation

Normally, dynamic abbrev expansion ignores case when searching for expansions. That is,
the expansion need not agree in case with the word you are expanding.
This feature is controlled by the variable dabbrev-case-fold-search. If it is t, case is
ignored in this search; if it is nil, the word and the expansion must match in case. If the value
is case-fold-search (the default), then the variable case-fold-search controls whether
to ignore case while searching for expansions (see Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119).
Normally, dynamic abbrev expansion preserves the case pattern of the dynamic abbrev
you are expanding, by converting the expansion to that case pattern.
The variable dabbrev-case-replace controls whether to preserve the case pattern of
the dynamic abbrev. If it is t, the dynamic abbrev’s case pattern is preserved in most cases;
if it is nil, the expansion is always copied verbatim. If the value is case-replace (the
default), then the variable case-replace controls whether to copy the expansion verbatim
(see Section 12.10.3 [Replacement and Lax Matches], page 123).
Chapter 26: Abbrevs 377

However, if the expansion contains a complex mixed case pattern, and the dynamic abbrev
matches this pattern as far as it goes, then the expansion is always copied verbatim, regardless
of those variables. Thus, for example, if the buffer contains variableWithSillyCasePattern,
and you type v a M-/, it copies the expansion verbatim including its case pattern.
The variable dabbrev-abbrev-char-regexp, if non-nil, controls which characters are
considered part of a word, for dynamic expansion purposes. The regular expression must
match just one character, never two or more. The same regular expression also determines
which characters are part of an expansion. The (default) value nil has a special meaning:
dynamic abbrevs (i.e. the word at point) are made of word characters, but their expansions
are looked for as sequences of word and symbol characters. This is generally appropriate for
expanding symbols in a program source and also for human-readable text in many languages,
but may not be what you want in a text buffer that includes unusual punctuation characters;
in that case, the value "\\sw" might produce better results.
In shell scripts and makefiles, a variable name is sometimes prefixed with ‘$’ and
sometimes not. Major modes for this kind of text can customize dynamic abbrev expansion
to handle optional prefixes by setting the variable dabbrev-abbrev-skip-leading-regexp.
Its value should be a regular expression that matches the optional prefix that dynamic
abbrev expression should ignore. The default is nil, which means no characters should be
skipped.
378 GNU Emacs Manual

27 Dired, the Directory Editor

Dired makes an Emacs buffer containing a listing of a directory, and optionally some of its
subdirectories as well. You can use the normal Emacs commands to move around in this
buffer, and special Dired commands to operate on the listed files. Dired works with both
local and remote directories.
The Dired buffer is normally read-only, and inserting text in it is not allowed (however,
the Wdired mode allows that, see Section 27.17 [Wdired], page 395). Ordinary printing
characters such as d and x are redefined for special Dired commands. Some Dired commands
mark or flag the current file (that is, the file on the current line); other commands operate
on the marked files or on the flagged files. You first mark certain files in order to operate on
all of them with one command.
The Dired-X package provides various extra features for Dired mode. See Dired Extra
User’s Manual.
You can also view a list of files in a directory with C-x C-d (list-directory). Unlike
Dired, this command does not allow you to operate on the listed files. See Section 15.8
[Directories], page 162.

27.1 Entering Dired

To invoke Dired, type C-x d (dired). This reads a directory’s name using the minibuffer,
and opens a Dired buffer listing the files in that directory. You can also supply a wildcard
file name pattern as the minibuffer argument, in which case the Dired buffer lists all files
matching that pattern. A wildcard may appear in the directory part as well. For instance,
C-x d ~/foo/*.el RET
C-x d ~/foo/*/*.el RET
The former lists all the files with extension ‘.el’ in directory ‘foo’. The latter lists the
files with extension ‘.el’ in all the subdirectories of ‘foo’.
On Posix systems, when the system shell supports globstar, a recursive globbing feature,
and that support is enabled, you can use recursive globbing in Dired:
C-x d ~/foo/**/*.el RET
This command produces a directory listing with all the files with extension ‘.el’, de-
scending recursively in all the subdirectories of ‘foo’. Note that there are small differences
in the implementation of globstar between different shells. Check your shell manual to know
the expected behavior.
If the shell supports globstar, but that support is disabled by default, you can still
let Dired use this feature by customizing dired-maybe-use-globstar to a non-nil value;
then Dired will enable globstar for those shells for which it knows how (see dired-enable-
globstar-in-shell for the list of those shells).
The usual history and completion commands can be used in the minibuffer; in particular,
M-n puts the name of the visited file (if any) in the minibuffer (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer
History], page 35).
You can also invoke Dired by giving C-x C-f (find-file) a directory’s name.
You can ask Emacs to invoke Dired on the default-directory (see Section 15.1 [File Names],
page 145) of any buffer, by typing C-x C-j (dired-jump). If the buffer visits a file, this
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 379

command will move point to that file’s line in the Dired buffer it shows; otherwise, point
will end up on the first file in the directory listing. As an exception, if you type C-x C-j in
a Dired buffer, Emacs displays the directory listing of the parent directory and places point
on the line that corresponds to the directory where you invoked dired-jump. Typing C-x
4 C-j (dired-jump-other-window) has the same effect, but displays the Dired buffer in a
new window.
The variable dired-listing-switches specifies the options to give to ls for listing
the directory; this string must contain ‘-l’. If you use a prefix argument with the dired
command, you can specify the ls switches with the minibuffer before you enter the directory
specification. No matter how they are specified, the ls switches can include short options
(that is, single characters) requiring no arguments, and long options (starting with ‘--’)
whose arguments are specified with ‘=’.
Dired does not handle files that have names with embedded newline characters well. If
you have many such files, you may consider adding ‘-b’ to dired-listing-switches. This
will quote all special characters and allow Dired to handle them better. (You can also use
the C-u C-x d command to add ‘-b’ temporarily.)
Dired displays in the mode line an indication of what were the switches used to invoke
ls. By default, Dired will try to determine whether the switches indicate sorting by name
or date, and will say so in the mode line. If the dired-switches-in-mode-line variable is
as-is, the switches will be shown verbatim. If this variable’s value is an integer, the switch
display will be truncated to that length. This variable can also be a function, which will be
called with dired-actual-switches as the only parameter, and should return a string to
display in the mode line.
If your ls program supports the ‘--dired’ option, Dired automatically passes it that
option; this causes ls to emit special escape sequences for certain unusual file names, without
which Dired will not be able to parse those names. The first time you run Dired in an Emacs
session, it checks whether ls supports the ‘--dired’ option by calling it once with that
option. If the exit code is 0, Dired will subsequently use the ‘--dired’ option; otherwise
it will not. You can inhibit this check by customizing the variable dired-use-ls-dired.
The value unspecified (the default) means to perform the check; any other non-nil value
means to use the ‘--dired’ option; and nil means not to use the ‘--dired’ option.
On MS-Windows and MS-DOS systems, and also on some remote systems, Emacs
emulates ls. See Section H.4 [ls in Lisp], page 603, for options and peculiarities of this
emulation.
To display the Dired buffer in another window, use C-x 4 d (dired-other-window). C-x
5 d (dired-other-frame) displays the Dired buffer in a separate frame.
Typing q (quit-window) buries the Dired buffer, and deletes its window if the window
was created just for that buffer.

27.2 Navigation in the Dired Buffer

All the usual Emacs cursor motion commands are available in Dired buffers. The keys C-n
and C-p are redefined to run dired-next-line and dired-previous-line, respectively,
and they put the cursor at the beginning of the file name on the line, rather than at the
beginning of the line.
380 GNU Emacs Manual

For extra convenience, SPC and n in Dired are equivalent to C-n. p is equivalent to C-p.
(Moving by lines is so common in Dired that it deserves to be easy to type.) DEL (move
up and unflag) is also often useful simply for moving up (see Section 27.3 [Dired Deletion],
page 380).
j (dired-goto-file) prompts for a file name using the minibuffer, and moves point to
the line in the Dired buffer describing that file.
M-s f C-s (dired-isearch-filenames) performs a forward incremental search in the
Dired buffer, looking for matches only amongst the file names and ignoring the rest of
the text in the buffer. M-s f M-C-s (dired-isearch-filenames-regexp) does the same,
using a regular expression search. If you change the variable dired-isearch-filenames
to t, then the usual search commands also limit themselves to the file names; for instance,
C-s behaves like M-s f C-s. If the value is dwim, then search commands match the file
names only when point was on a file name initially. See Chapter 12 [Search], page 104, for
information about incremental search.
Some additional navigation commands are available when the Dired buffer includes
several directories. See Section 27.13 [Subdirectory Motion], page 392.

27.3 Deleting Files with Dired

One of the most frequent uses of Dired is to first flag files for deletion, then delete the files
that were flagged.
d Flag this file for deletion (dired-flag-file-deletion).
u Remove the deletion flag (dired-unmark).
DEL Move point to previous line and remove the deletion flag on that line
(dired-unmark-backward).
x Delete files flagged for deletion (dired-do-flagged-delete).
You can flag a file for deletion by moving to the line describing the file and typing
d (dired-flag-file-deletion). The deletion flag is visible as a ‘D’ at the beginning of
the line. This command moves point to the next line, so that repeated d commands flag
successive files. A numeric prefix argument serves as a repeat count; a negative count means
to flag preceding files.
If the region is active, the d command flags all files in the region for deletion; in this case,
the command does not move point, and ignores any prefix argument.
The reason for flagging files for deletion, rather than deleting files immediately, is to
reduce the danger of deleting a file accidentally. Until you direct Dired to delete the flagged
files, you can remove deletion flags using the commands u and DEL. u (dired-unmark) works
just like d, but removes flags rather than making flags. DEL (dired-unmark-backward)
moves upward, removing flags; it is like u with argument −1. A numeric prefix argument
to either command serves as a repeat count, with a negative count meaning to unflag in
the opposite direction. If the region is active, these commands instead unflag all files in the
region, without moving point.
To delete flagged files, type x (dired-do-flagged-delete). This command displays a
list of all the file names flagged for deletion, and requests confirmation with yes. If you
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 381

confirm, Dired deletes the flagged files, then deletes their lines from the text of the Dired
buffer. The Dired buffer, with somewhat fewer lines, remains selected.
If you answer no or quit with C-g when asked to confirm, you return immediately to
Dired, with the deletion flags still present in the buffer, and no files actually deleted.
You can delete empty directories just like other files, but normally Dired cannot delete
directories that are nonempty. However, if the variable dired-recursive-deletes is non-
nil, then Dired is allowed to delete nonempty directories including all their contents. That
can be somewhat risky. If the value of the variable is always, Dired will delete nonempty
directories recursively, which is even more risky.
Even if you have set dired-recursive-deletes to nil, you might want sometimes to
delete directories recursively without being asked for confirmation for all of them. For
example, you may want that when you have marked many directories for deletion and you
are very sure that all of them can safely be deleted. For every nonempty directory you are
asked for confirmation to delete, if you answer all, then all the remaining directories will
be deleted without any further questions.
If you change the variable delete-by-moving-to-trash to t, the above deletion com-
mands will move the affected files or directories into the operating system’s Trash, instead
of deleting them outright. See Section 15.12 [Misc File Ops], page 167.
An alternative way of deleting files is to mark them with m and delete with D, see
Section 27.7 [Operating on Files], page 385.

27.4 Flagging Many Files at Once

The #, ~, ., % &, and % d commands flag many files for deletion, based on their file names:
# Flag all auto-save files (files whose names start and end with ‘#’) for deletion
(see Section 15.6 [Auto Save], page 159).
~ Flag all backup files (files whose names end with ‘~’) for deletion (see
Section 15.3.2 [Backup], page 151).
. (Period) Flag excess numeric backup files for deletion. The oldest and newest few backup
files of any one file are exempt; the middle ones are flagged.
%& Flag for deletion all files with certain kinds of names which suggest you could
easily create those files again.
% d regexp RET
Flag for deletion all files whose names match the regular expression regexp.
# (dired-flag-auto-save-files) flags all files whose names look like auto-save files—
that is, files whose names begin and end with ‘#’. See Section 15.6 [Auto Save], page 159.
~ (dired-flag-backup-files) flags all files whose names say they are backup files—that
is, files whose names end in ‘~’. See Section 15.3.2 [Backup], page 151.
. (period, dired-clean-directory) flags just some of the backup files for deletion: all
but the oldest few and newest few backups of any one file. Normally, the number of newest
versions kept for each file is given by the variable dired-kept-versions (not kept-new-
versions; that applies only when saving). The number of oldest versions to keep is given
by the variable kept-old-versions.
382 GNU Emacs Manual

Period with a positive numeric argument, as in C-u 3 ., specifies the number of newest
versions to keep, overriding dired-kept-versions. A negative numeric argument overrides
kept-old-versions, using minus the value of the argument to specify the number of oldest
versions of each file to keep.
% & (dired-flag-garbage-files) flags files whose names match the regular expression
specified by the variable dired-garbage-files-regexp. By default, this matches certain
files produced by TEX, ‘.bak’ files, and the ‘.orig’ and ‘.rej’ files produced by patch.
% d flags all files whose names match a specified regular expression (dired-flag-files-
regexp). Only the non-directory part of the file name is used in matching. You can use ‘^’
and ‘$’ to anchor matches. You can exclude certain subdirectories from marking by hiding
them while you use % d. See Section 27.14 [Hiding Subdirectories], page 393.

27.5 Visiting Files in Dired

There are several Dired commands for visiting or examining the files listed in the Dired
buffer. All of them apply to the current line’s file; if that file is really a directory, these
commands invoke Dired on that subdirectory (making a separate Dired buffer).

f Visit the file described on the current line, like typing C-x C-f and supplying
that file name (dired-find-file). See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.

RET
e Equivalent to f.

o Like f, but uses another window to display the file’s buffer (dired-find-file-
other-window). The Dired buffer remains visible in the first window. This is
like using C-x 4 C-f to visit the file. See Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185.

C-o Visit the file described on the current line, and display the buffer in another
window, but do not select that window (dired-display-file).

mouse-1
mouse-2 Visit the file whose name you clicked on (dired-mouse-find-file-other-
window). This uses another window to display the file, like the o command.

v View the file described on the current line, with View mode (dired-view-file).
View mode provides convenient commands to navigate the buffer but forbids
changing it; See Section 11.6 [View Mode], page 81.

^ Visit the parent directory of the current directory (dired-up-directory). This

is equivalent to moving to the line for .. and typing f there.

dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer [User Option]

When visiting a new sub-directory in Dired, Emacs will (by default) open a new buffer
to display this new directory, and leave the old Dired buffer as is. If this user option
is non-nil, the old Dired buffer will be killed after selecting the new directory. This
means that if you’re traversing a directory structure in Dired, you won’t end up with
more than a single Dired buffer.
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 383

27.6 Dired Marks vs. Flags

Instead of flagging a file with ‘D’, you can mark the file with some other character (usually
‘*’). Most Dired commands to operate on files use the files marked with ‘*’. The only
command that operates on flagged files is x, which deletes them.
Here are some commands for marking with ‘*’, for unmarking, and for operating on
marks. (See Section 27.3 [Dired Deletion], page 380, for commands to flag and unflag files.)
m
*m Mark the current file with ‘*’ (dired-mark). If the region is active, mark all
files in the region instead; otherwise, if a numeric argument n is supplied, mark
the next n files instead, starting with the current file (if n is negative, mark the
previous −n files). If invoked on a subdirectory header line (see Section 27.12
[Subdirectories in Dired], page 392), this command marks all the files in that
subdirectory.
*N Report what the number and size of the marked files are (dired-number-of-
marked-files).
** Mark all executable files with ‘*’ (dired-mark-executables). With a numeric
argument, unmark all those files.
*@ Mark all symbolic links with ‘*’ (dired-mark-symlinks). With a numeric
argument, unmark all those files.
*/ Mark with ‘*’ all files which are directories, except for . and .. (dired-mark-
directories). With a numeric argument, unmark all those files.
*s Mark all the files in the current subdirectory, aside from . and .. (dired-mark-
subdir-files).
u
*u Remove any mark on this line (dired-unmark). If the region is active, unmark
all files in the region instead; otherwise, if a numeric argument n is supplied,
unmark the next n files instead, starting with the current file (if n is negative,
unmark the previous −n files).
DEL
* DEL Move point to previous line and remove any mark on that line (dired-unmark-
backward). If the region is active, unmark all files in the region instead; otherwise,
if a numeric argument n is supplied, unmark the n preceding files instead, starting
with the current file (if n is negative, unmark the next −n files).
*!
U Remove all marks from all the files in this Dired buffer (dired-unmark-all-
marks).
* ? markchar
M-DEL Remove all marks that use the character markchar (dired-unmark-all-files).
If invoked with M-DEL, the command prompts for markchar. That markchar is
a single character—do not use RET to terminate it. See the description of the *
c command below, which lets you replace one mark character with another.
384 GNU Emacs Manual

With a numeric argument, this command queries about each marked file, asking
whether to remove its mark. You can answer y meaning yes, n meaning no, or !
to remove the marks from the remaining files without asking about them.
* C-n
M-} Move down to the next marked file (dired-next-marked-file). A file is
“marked” if it has any kind of mark.
* C-p
M-{ Move up to the previous marked file (dired-prev-marked-file).
t
*t Toggle all marks (dired-toggle-marks): files marked with ‘*’ become un-
marked, and unmarked files are marked with ‘*’. Files marked in any other way
are not affected.
* c old-markchar new-markchar
Replace all marks that use the character old-markchar with marks that use the
character new-markchar (dired-change-marks). This command is the primary
way to create or use marks other than ‘*’ or ‘D’. The arguments are single
characters—do not use RET to terminate them.
You can use almost any character as a mark character by means of this command,
to distinguish various classes of files. If old-markchar is a space (‘ ’), then the
command operates on all unmarked files; if new-markchar is a space, then the
command unmarks the files it acts on.
To illustrate the power of this command, here is how to put ‘D’ flags on all the
files that have no marks, while unflagging all those that already have ‘D’ flags:
* c D t * c SPC D * c t SPC
This assumes that no files were already marked with ‘t’.
% m regexp RET
* % regexp RET
Mark (with ‘*’) all files whose names match the regular expression regexp
(dired-mark-files-regexp). This command is like % d, except that it marks
files with ‘*’ instead of flagging with ‘D’.
Only the non-directory part of the file name is used in matching. Use ‘^’ and ‘$’
to anchor matches. You can exclude subdirectories by temporarily hiding them
(see Section 27.14 [Hiding Subdirectories], page 393).
% g regexp RET
Mark (with ‘*’) all files whose contents contain a match for the regular expression
regexp (dired-mark-files-containing-regexp). This command is like % m,
except that it searches the file contents instead of the file name. Note that
if a file is visited in an Emacs buffer, and dired-always-read-filesystem is
nil (the default), this command will look in the buffer without revisiting the
file, so the results might be inconsistent with the file on disk if its contents
have changed since it was last visited. If you don’t want this, you may wish to
revert the files you have visited in your buffers, or to turn on Auto-Revert mode
in those buffers, before invoking this command. See Section 15.4 [Reverting],
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 385

page 157. If you prefer that this command should always revisit the file, without
you having to revert the file or enable Auto-Revert mode, you might want to
set dired-always-read-filesystem to non-nil.
C-/
C-x u
C-_ Undo changes in the Dired buffer, such as adding or removing marks
(dired-undo). This command does not revert the actual file operations, nor
recover lost files! It just undoes changes in the buffer itself.
In some cases, using this after commands that operate on files can cause trouble.
For example, after renaming one or more files, dired-undo restores the original
names in the Dired buffer, which gets the Dired buffer out of sync with the
actual contents of the directory.

27.7 Operating on Files

This section describes the basic Dired commands to operate on one file or several files. All
of these commands are capital letters; all of them use the minibuffer, either to read an
argument or to ask for confirmation, before they act. All of them let you specify the files to
manipulate in these ways:
• If you give the command a numeric prefix argument n, it operates on the next n files,
starting with the current file. (If n is negative, the command operates on the −n files
preceding the current line.)
• Otherwise, if some files are marked with ‘*’, the command operates on all those files.
• Otherwise, the command operates on the current file only.
Certain other Dired commands, such as ! and the ‘%’ commands, use the same conventions
to decide which files to work on.
In addition to Dired commands described here, you can also invoke Version Control (VC)
commands on one or more files shown in a Dired buffer. See Section 25.1 [Version Control],
page 332.
Commands which ask for a destination directory, such as those which copy and rename
files or create links for them, try to guess the default target directory for the operation.
Normally, they suggest the Dired buffer’s default directory, but if the option dired-dwim-
target is non-nil, and if there is another Dired buffer displayed in some window, that other
buffer’s directory is suggested instead. You can customize dired-dwim-target to prefer
either the next window with a Dired buffer, or the most recently used window with a Dired
buffer, or to use any other function. When the value is a function, it will be called with no
arguments and is expected to return a list of directories which will be used as defaults (i.e.
default target and “future history”).
Here are the file-manipulating Dired commands that operate on files.
C new RET Copy the specified files (dired-do-copy). The argument new is the directory
to copy into, or (if copying a single file) the new name. This is like the shell
command cp.
The option dired-create-destination-dirs controls whether Dired should
create non-existent directories in the destination while copying/renaming files.
386 GNU Emacs Manual

The default value nil means Dired never creates such missing directories; the
value always, means Dired automatically creates them; the value ask means
Dired asks you for confirmation before creating them.
If the option dired-create-destination-dirs-on-trailing-dirsep is non-
nil in addition to dired-create-destination-dirs, a trailing directory sepa-
rator at the destination directory is treated specially. In that case, when copying
to ‘test/’ and no directory ‘test’ exists already, it will be created and the
specified source files or directories are copied into the newly created directory.
If dired-copy-preserve-time is non-nil, then copying with this command
preserves the modification time of the old file in the copy, like ‘cp -p’.
The variable dired-recursive-copies controls whether to copy directories re-
cursively (like ‘cp -r’). The default is top, which means to ask before recursively
copying a directory.
The variable dired-copy-dereference controls whether to copy symbolic links
as links or after dereferencing (like ‘cp -L’). The default is nil, which means
that the symbolic links are copied by creating new ones.
The dired-keep-marker-copy user option controls how this command handles
file marking. The default is to mark all new copies of files with a ‘C’ mark.
D Delete the specified files (dired-do-delete). This is like the shell command
rm.
Like the other commands in this section, this command operates on the marked
files, or the next n files. By contrast, x (dired-do-flagged-delete) deletes all
flagged files.
R new RET Rename the specified files (dired-do-rename). If you rename a single file, the
argument new is the new name of the file. If you rename several files, the
argument new is the directory into which to move the files (this is like the shell
command mv).
The option dired-create-destination-dirs controls whether Dired should
create non-existent directories in new.
The option dired-create-destination-dirs-on-trailing-dirsep, when set
in addition to dired-create-destination-dirs, controls whether a trailing
directory separator at the destination is treated specially. In that case, when
renaming a directory ‘old’ to ‘new/’ and no directory ‘new’ exists already, it
will be created and ‘old’ is moved into the newly created directory. Otherwise,
‘old’ is renamed to ‘new’.
Dired automatically changes the visited file name of buffers associated with
renamed files so that they refer to the new names.
If the value of the variable dired-vc-rename-file is non-nil, files are re-
named using the commands of the underlying VCS, via vc-rename-file (see
Section “Deleting and Renaming Version-Controlled Files” in Specialized Emacs
Features).
H new RET Make hard links to the specified files (dired-do-hardlink). This is like the
shell command ln. The argument new is the directory to make the links in, or
(if making just one link) the name to give the link.
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 387

S new RET Make symbolic links to the specified files (dired-do-symlink). This is like ‘ln
-s’. The argument new is the directory to make the links in, or (if making just
one link) the name to give the link.
Y new RET Make relative symbolic links to the specified files (dired-do-relsymlink). The
argument new is the directory to make the links in, or (if making just one link)
the name to give the link. This is like dired-do-symlink but creates relative
symbolic links. For example:
foo -> ../bar/foo
It does not create absolute ones like:
foo -> /path/that/may/change/any/day/bar/foo
M modespec RET
Change the mode (also called permission bits) of the specified files (dired-do-
chmod). modespec can be in octal or symbolic notation, like arguments handled
by the chmod program. This command does not follow symbolic links, so it
reports an error if you try to change the mode of a symbolic link on a platform
where such modes are immutable.
G newgroup RET
Change the group of the specified files to newgroup (dired-do-chgrp).
O newowner RET
Change the owner of the specified files to newowner (dired-do-chown). (On
most systems, only the superuser can do this.)
The variable dired-chown-program specifies the name of the program to use
to do the work. (This variable is necessary because different systems put chown
in different places).
T timestamp RET
Touch the specified files (dired-do-touch). This means updating their modifi-
cation times to timestamp, which defaults to the present time. This is like the
shell command touch.
P command RET
Print the specified files (dired-do-print). You must specify the command
to print them with, but the minibuffer starts out with a suitable guess made
using the variables lpr-command and lpr-switches (the same variables that
lpr-buffer uses; see Section 31.7 [Printing], page 471).
Z Compress the specified files (dired-do-compress). If the file appears to be a
compressed file already, uncompress it instead. Each marked file is compressed
into its own archive; this uses the gzip program if it is available, otherwise it
uses compress.
On a directory name, this command produces a compressed archive depending
on the dired-compress-directory-default-suffix user option. The default
is a .tar.gz archive containing all of the directory’s files, by running the tar
command with output piped to gzip. To allow decompression of compressed
directories, typing Z on a .tar.gz or .tgz archive file unpacks all the files in
388 GNU Emacs Manual

the archive into a directory whose name is the archive name with the extension
removed.
c Compress the specified files (dired-do-compress-to) into a single archive
anywhere on the file system. The default archive is controlled by the
dired-compress-directory-default-suffix user option. Also see
dired-compress-files-alist.
:d Decrypt the specified files (epa-dired-do-decrypt). See Section “Dired inte-
gration” in EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual.
:v Verify digital signatures on the specified files (epa-dired-do-verify). See
Section “Dired integration” in EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual.
:s Digitally sign the specified files (epa-dired-do-sign). See Section “Dired
integration” in EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual.
:e Encrypt the specified files (epa-dired-do-encrypt). See Section “Dired inte-
gration” in EasyPG Assistant User’s Manual.
L Load the specified Emacs Lisp files (dired-do-load). See Section 24.8 [Lisp
Libraries], page 326.
B Byte compile the specified Emacs Lisp files (dired-do-byte-compile). See
Section “Byte Compilation” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
I Run Info on this file (assumed to be a file in Info format).
N Run man on this file (assumed to be a file in nroff format).
A regexp RET
Search all the specified files for the regular expression regexp (dired-do-find-
regexp).
This command is a variant of xref-find-references (see Section 25.4.1.3
[Identifier Search], page 359), it displays the *xref* buffer, where you can
navigate between matches and display them as needed using the commands
described in Section 25.4.1.2 [Xref Commands], page 358.
If any of the marked files are directories, then this command searches all of
the files in those directories, and any of their subdirectories, recursively, except
files whose names match grep-find-ignored-files and subdirectories whose
names match grep-find-ignored-directories.
Q regexp RET to RET
Perform query-replace-regexp on each of the specified files, replacing matches
for regexp with the string to (dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace).
This command is a variant of xref-query-replace-in-results. It presents
an *xref* buffer that lists all the matches of regexp, and you can use the special
commands in that buffer (see Section 25.4.1.2 [Xref Commands], page 358). In
particular, if you exit the query replace loop, you can use r in that buffer to
replace more matches. See Section 25.4.1.3 [Identifier Search], page 359.
Like with dired-do-find-regexp, if any of the marked files are directories,
this command performs replacements in all of the files in those directories, and
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 389

in any of their subdirectories, recursively, except for files whose names match
grep-find-ignored-files and subdirectories whose names match grep-find-
ignored-directories.

27.8 Shell Commands in Dired

The Dired command ! (dired-do-shell-command) reads a shell command string in the
minibuffer, and runs that shell command on one or more files. The files that the shell
command operates on are determined in the usual way for Dired commands (see Section 27.7
[Operating on Files], page 385). The command X is a synonym for !.
The command & (dired-do-async-shell-command) does the same, except that it runs
the shell command asynchronously. (You can also do this with !, by appending a ‘&’ character
to the end of the shell command.) When the command operates on more than one file,
it runs multiple parallel copies of the specified shell command, one for each file. As an
exception, if the specified shell command ends in ‘;’ or ‘;&’, the shell command is run in
the background on each file sequentially; Emacs waits for each invoked shell command to
terminate before running the next one.
For both ! and &, the working directory for the shell command is the top-level directory
of the Dired buffer.
If you tell ! or & to operate on more than one file, the shell command string determines
how those files are passed to the shell command:
• If you use ‘*’ surrounded by whitespace in the command string, then the command
runs just once, with the list of file names substituted for the ‘*’. The order of file names
is the order of appearance in the Dired buffer.
Thus, ! tar cf foo.tar * RET runs tar on the entire list of file names, putting them
into one tar file foo.tar.
If you want to use ‘*’ as a shell wildcard with whitespace around it, write ‘*""’. In the
shell, this is equivalent to ‘*’; but since the ‘*’ is not surrounded by whitespace, Dired
does not treat it specially. Emacs will prompt for confirmation if you do this, unless
dired-confirm-shell-command is nil.
• Otherwise, if the command string contains ‘?’ surrounded by whitespace or ‘`?`’, Emacs
runs the shell command once for each file, substituting the current file name for ‘?’ and
‘`?`’ each time. You can use both ‘?’ and ‘`?`’ more than once in the command; the
same file name replaces each occurrence. If you mix them with ‘*’ the command signals
an error.
• If the command string contains neither ‘*’ nor ‘?’ nor ‘`?`’, Emacs runs the shell
command once for each file, adding the file name at the end. For example, ! uudecode
RET runs uudecode on each file.
To iterate over the file names in a more complicated fashion, you might prefer to use an
explicit shell loop. For example, here is how to uuencode each file, making the output file
name by appending ‘.uu’ to the input file name:
for file in * ; do uuencode "$file" "$file" >"$file".uu; done
The same example with ‘`?`’ notation:
uuencode ? ? > `?`.uu
390 GNU Emacs Manual

The ! and & commands do not attempt to update the Dired buffer to show new or
modified files, because they don’t know what files will be changed. Use the g command to
update the Dired buffer (see Section 27.15 [Dired Updating], page 393).
See Section 31.5.1 [Single Shell], page 453, for information about running shell commands
outside Dired.

27.9 Shell Command Guessing

Based upon the name of a file, Dired tries to guess what shell command you might want to
apply to it. For example, if you have point on a file named foo.tar and you press !, Dired
will guess that you want to run ‘tar xvf’, and suggest that as the default shell command.
You can type M-n to get the default into the minibuffer for editing. If there are several
commands for a given file, type M-n several times to see each matching command in order.
Dired only tries to guess a command for a single file, never for a list of marked files.

dired-guess-shell-alist-default [Variable]
This variable specifies the predefined rules for guessing shell commands suitable for
certain files. Set this to nil to turn guessing off. The elements of dired-guess-
shell-alist-user (defined by the user) will override these rules.

dired-guess-shell-alist-user [Variable]
If non-nil, this variable specifies the user-defined alist of file regexps and their suggested
commands. These rules take precedence over the predefined rules in the variable
dired-guess-shell-alist-default when dired-do-shell-command is run). The
default is nil.
Each element of the alist looks like
(regexp command...)
where each command can either be a string or a Lisp expression that evaluates to a
string. If several commands are given, all of them will temporarily be pushed onto the
history.
A ‘*’ in the shell command stands for the file name that matched regexp. When
Emacs invokes the command, it replaces each instance of ‘*’ with the matched file
name.
To add rules for ‘.foo’ and ‘.bar’ file extensions, add this to your Init file:
(setq dired-guess-shell-alist-user
(list
(list "\\.foo$" "foo-command") ; fixed rule
;; possibly more rules...
(list "\\.bar$" ; rule with condition test
'(if condition
"bar-command-1"
"bar-command-2"))))
This will override any predefined rules for the same extensions.

You can find more user options with M-x customize-group RET dired-guess RET.
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 391

27.10 Transforming File Names in Dired

This section describes Dired commands which alter file names in a systematic way. Each
command operates on some or all of the marked files, using a new name made by transforming
the existing name.
Like the basic Dired file-manipulation commands (see Section 27.7 [Operating on Files],
page 385), the commands described here operate either on the next n files, or on all files
marked with ‘*’, or on the current file. (To mark files, use the commands described in
Section 27.6 [Marks vs Flags], page 383.)
All of the commands described in this section work interactively: they ask you to confirm
the operation for each candidate file. Thus, you can select more files than you actually need
to operate on (e.g., with a regexp that matches many files), and then filter the selected
names by typing y or n when the command prompts for confirmation.
%u Rename each of the selected files to an upper-case name (dired-upcase). If
the old file names are Foo and bar, the new names are FOO and BAR.
%l Rename each of the selected files to a lower-case name (dired-downcase). If
the old file names are Foo and bar, the new names are foo and bar.
% R from RET to RET
% C from RET to RET
% H from RET to RET
% S from RET to RET
% Y from RET to RET
These five commands rename, copy, make hard links, make soft links, and make
relative soft links, in each case computing the new name by regular-expression
substitution from the name of the old file.
The four regular-expression substitution commands effectively perform a search-and-
replace on the selected file names. They read two arguments: a regular expression from, and
a substitution pattern to; they match each old file name against from, and then replace
the matching part with to. You can use ‘\&’ and ‘\digit’ in to to refer to all or part of
what the pattern matched in the old file name, as in replace-regexp (see Section 12.10.2
[Regexp Replace], page 122). If the regular expression matches more than once in a file
name, only the first match is replaced.
For example, % R ^.*$ RET x-\& RET renames each selected file by prepending ‘x-’ to its
name. The inverse of this, removing ‘x-’ from the front of each file name, is also possible:
one method is % R ^x-\(.*\)$ RET \1 RET; another is % R ^x- RET RET. (Use ‘^’ and ‘$’ to
anchor matches that should span the whole file name.)
Normally, the replacement process does not consider the files’ directory names; it operates
on the file name within the directory. If you specify a numeric argument of zero, then
replacement affects the entire absolute file name including directory name. (A non-zero
argument specifies the number of files to operate on.)
You may want to select the set of files to operate on using the same regexp from that
you will use to operate on them. To do this, mark those files with % m from RET, then use
the same regular expression in the command to operate on the files. To make this more
convenient, the % commands to operate on files use the last regular expression specified in
any % command as a default.
392 GNU Emacs Manual

27.11 File Comparison with Dired

The = (dired-diff) command compares the current file (the file at point) with another file
(read using the minibuffer) using the diff program. The file specified with the minibuffer is
the first argument of diff, and file at point is the second argument. The output of the diff
program is shown in a buffer using Diff mode (see Section 15.9 [Comparing Files], page 163).
If the region is active, the default for the file read using the minibuffer is the file at the
mark (i.e., the ordinary Emacs mark, not a Dired mark; see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark],
page 51). Otherwise, if the file at point has a backup file (see Section 15.3.2 [Backup],
page 151), that is the default.
You could also compare files using ediff-files, see Section “Major Entry Points” in
Ediff User’s Manual.

27.12 Subdirectories in Dired

A Dired buffer usually displays just one directory, but you can optionally include its
subdirectories as well.
The simplest way to include multiple directories in one Dired buffer is to specify the
options ‘-lR’ for running ls. (If you give a numeric argument when you run Dired, then
you can specify these options in the minibuffer.) That produces a recursive directory listing
showing all subdirectories at all levels.
More often, you will want to show only specific subdirectories. You can do this with i
(dired-maybe-insert-subdir):
i Insert the contents of a subdirectory later in the buffer.
If you use this command on a line that describes a file which is a directory, it inserts the
contents of that directory into the same Dired buffer, and moves there. Inserted subdirectory
contents follow the top-level directory of the Dired buffer, just as they do in ‘ls -lR’ output.
If the subdirectory’s contents are already present in the buffer, the i command just moves
to it.
In either case, i sets the Emacs mark before moving, so C-u C-SPC returns to your
previous position in the Dired buffer (see Section 8.1 [Setting Mark], page 51). You can also
use ‘^’ to return to the parent directory in the same Dired buffer (see Section 27.5 [Dired
Visiting], page 382).
Use the l command (dired-do-redisplay) to update the subdirectory’s contents, and use
C-u k on the subdirectory header line to remove the subdirectory listing (see Section 27.15
[Dired Updating], page 393). You can also hide and show inserted subdirectories (see
Section 27.14 [Hiding Subdirectories], page 393).

27.13 Moving Over Subdirectories

When a Dired buffer lists subdirectories, you can use the page motion commands C-x [ and
C-x ] to move by entire directories (see Section 22.4 [Pages], page 254).
The following commands move across, up and down in the tree of directories within one
Dired buffer. They move to directory header lines, which are the lines that give a directory’s
name, at the beginning of the directory’s contents.
C-M-n Go to next subdirectory header line, regardless of level (dired-next-subdir).
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 393

C-M-p Go to previous subdirectory header line, regardless of level (dired-prev-

subdir).
C-M-u Go up to the parent directory’s header line (dired-tree-up).
C-M-d Go down in the directory tree, to the first subdirectory’s header line
(dired-tree-down).
< Move up to the previous directory-file line (dired-prev-dirline). These lines
are the ones that describe a directory as a file in its parent directory.
> Move down to the next directory-file line (dired-next-dirline).
M-G Prompt for a directory and move to its directory-file line (dired-goto-subdir).

27.14 Hiding Subdirectories

Hiding a subdirectory means to make it invisible, except for its header line.
$ Hide or show the subdirectory that point is in, and move point to the next
subdirectory (dired-hide-subdir). This is a toggle. A numeric argument
serves as a repeat count.
M-$ Hide all subdirectories in this Dired buffer, leaving only their header lines
(dired-hide-all). Or, if any subdirectory is currently hidden, make all subdi-
rectories visible again. You can use this command to get an overview in very
deep directory trees or to move quickly to subdirectories far away.
Ordinary Dired commands never consider files inside a hidden subdirectory. For example,
the commands to operate on marked files ignore files in hidden directories even if they are
marked. Thus you can use hiding to temporarily exclude subdirectories from operations
without having to remove the Dired marks on files in those subdirectories.
See Section 27.12 [Subdirectories in Dired], page 392, for how to insert a subdirectory
listing, and see Section 27.15 [Dired Updating], page 393, for how to delete it.

27.15 Updating the Dired Buffer

This section describes commands to update the Dired buffer to reflect outside (non-Dired)
changes in the directories and files, and to delete part of the Dired buffer.
g Update the entire contents of the Dired buffer (revert-buffer).
l Update the specified files (dired-do-redisplay). You specify the files for l in
the same way as for file operations.
k Delete the specified file lines—not the files, just the lines (dired-do-kill-
lines).
s Toggle between alphabetical order and date/time order (dired-sort-toggle-
or-edit).
C-u s switches RET
Refresh the Dired buffer using switches as dired-listing-switches.
394 GNU Emacs Manual

Type g (revert-buffer) to update the contents of the Dired buffer, based on changes
in the files and directories listed. This preserves all marks except for those on files that have
vanished. Hidden subdirectories are updated but remain hidden.
To update only some of the files, type l (dired-do-redisplay). Like the Dired file-
operating commands, this command operates on the next n files (or previous −n files), or on
the marked files if any, or on the current file. Updating the files means reading their current
status, then updating their lines in the buffer to indicate that status.
If you use l on a subdirectory header line, it updates the contents of the corresponding
subdirectory.
If you use C-x d or some other Dired command to visit a directory that is already being
shown in a Dired buffer, Dired switches to that buffer but does not update it. If the buffer is
not up-to-date, Dired displays a warning telling you to type g to update it. You can also tell
Emacs to revert each Dired buffer automatically when you revisit it, by setting the variable
dired-auto-revert-buffer to a non-nil value.
To delete file lines from the buffer—without actually deleting the files—type k (dired-do-
kill-lines). Like the file-operating commands, this command operates on the next n files,
or on the marked files if any. However, it does not operate on the current file, since otherwise
mistyping k could be annoying.
If you use k to kill the line for a directory file which you had inserted in the Dired buffer
as a subdirectory (see Section 27.12 [Subdirectories in Dired], page 392), it removes the
subdirectory listing as well. Typing C-u k on the header line for a subdirectory also removes
the subdirectory line from the Dired buffer.
The g command brings back any individual lines that you have killed in this way, but
not subdirectories—you must use i to reinsert a subdirectory.
The files in a Dired buffers are normally listed in alphabetical order by file names.
Alternatively Dired can sort them by date/time. The Dired command s (dired-sort-
toggle-or-edit) switches between these two sorting modes. The mode line in a Dired
buffer indicates which way it is currently sorted—by name, or by date.
C-u s switches RET lets you specify a new value for dired-listing-switches.

27.16 Dired and find

You can select a set of files for display in a Dired buffer more flexibly by using the find
utility to choose the files.
To search for files with names matching a wildcard pattern use M-x find-name-dired.
It reads arguments directory and pattern, and chooses all the files in directory or its
subdirectories whose individual names match pattern.
The files thus chosen are displayed in a Dired buffer, in which the ordinary Dired
commands are available.
If you want to test the contents of files, rather than their names, use M-x
find-grep-dired. This command reads two minibuffer arguments, directory and regexp; it
chooses all the files in directory or its subdirectories that contain a match for regexp. It
works by running the programs find and grep. See also M-x grep-find, in Section 24.4
[Grep Searching], page 313. Remember to write the regular expression for grep, not for
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 395

Emacs. (An alternative method of showing files whose contents match a given regexp is the
% g regexp command, see Section 27.6 [Marks vs Flags], page 383.)
The most general command in this series is M-x find-dired, which lets you specify any
condition that find can test. It takes two minibuffer arguments, directory and find-args; it
runs find in directory, passing find-args to tell find what condition to test. To use this
command, you need to know how to use find.
The format of listing produced by these commands is controlled by the variable find-ls-
option. This is a pair of options; the first specifying how to call find to produce the file
listing, and the second telling Dired to parse the output.
The command M-x locate provides a similar interface to the locate program. M-x
locate-with-filter is similar, but keeps only files whose names match a given regular
expression.
These buffers don’t work entirely like ordinary Dired buffers: file operations work, but do
not always automatically update the buffer. Reverting the buffer with g deletes all inserted
subdirectories, and erases all flags and marks.

27.17 Editing the Dired Buffer

Wdired is a special mode that allows you to perform file operations by editing the Dired buffer
directly (the “W” in “Wdired” stands for “writable”). To enter Wdired mode, type C-x
C-q (dired-toggle-read-only) while in a Dired buffer. Alternatively, use the ‘Immediate
/ Edit File Names’ menu item.
While in Wdired mode, you can rename files by editing the file names displayed in the
Dired buffer. All the ordinary Emacs editing commands, including rectangle operations
and query-replace, are available for this. Once you are done editing, type C-c C-c
(wdired-finish-edit). This applies your changes and switches back to ordinary Dired
mode.
Apart from simply renaming files, you can move a file to another directory by typing in
the new file name (either absolute or relative). To mark a file for deletion, delete the entire
file name. To change the target of a symbolic link, edit the link target name which appears
next to the link name.
If you edit the file names to create a new subdirectory, Wdired will automatically create
these new directories. To inhibit this behavior, set wdired-create-parent-directories
to nil.
The rest of the text in the buffer, such as the file sizes and modification dates, is marked
read-only, so you can’t edit it. However, if you set wdired-allow-to-change-permissions
to t, you can edit the file permissions. For example, you can change ‘-rw-r--r--’ to
‘-rw-rw-rw-’ to make a file world-writable. These changes also take effect when you type
C-c C-c.

27.18 Viewing Image Thumbnails in Dired

Image-Dired is a facility for browsing image files. It provides viewing the images either
as thumbnails or in full size, either inside Emacs or through an external viewer. This is
different from Image mode (see Section 15.19 [Image Mode], page 171) for visiting an image
file in the Emacs buffer.
396 GNU Emacs Manual

To enter Image-Dired, mark the image files you want to look at in the Dired buffer, using
m as usual. Then type C-t d (image-dired-display-thumbs). This creates and switches
to a buffer containing Image-Dired, corresponding to the marked files.
You can also enter Image-Dired directly by typing M-x image-dired. This prompts for a
directory; specify one that has image files. This creates thumbnails for all the images in
that directory, and displays them all in the thumbnail buffer. The thumbnails are generated
in the background and are loaded as they become available.
With point in the thumbnail buffer, you can type RET (image-dired-display-this)
to display the image in another window. Use the standard Emacs movement key bind-
ings or the arrow keys to move around in the thumbnail buffer. For easy browsing, use
SPC (image-dired-display-next) to advance and display the next image. Typing DEL
(image-dired-display-previous) backs up to the previous thumbnail and displays that
instead.
Type C-RET (image-dired-thumbnail-display-external) to display the image in an
external viewer. You must first configure image-dired-external-viewer.
You can delete images through Image-Dired also. Type d (image-dired-flag-thumb-
original-file) to flag the image file for deletion in the Dired buffer. Alternatively, you
can remove an image’s thumbnail from the thumbnail buffer without flagging the image for
deletion, by typing C-d (image-dired-delete-char).
You could also use Image-Dired for “inline” operations (i.e., right into the Dired buffer).
Type C-t C-t, and the thumbnails of the selected images in Dired will appear in front of
their names (image-dired-dired-toggle-marked-thumbs). C-t i and C-t x will display
the image under the point in Emacs or with the external viewer, respectively.
More advanced features include image tags, which are metadata used to categorize image
files. The tags are stored in a plain text file configured by image-dired-tags-db-file.
To tag image files, mark them in the Dired buffer (you can also mark files in Dired
from the thumbnail buffer by typing m) and type C-t t (image-dired-tag-files). This
reads the tag name in the minibuffer. To mark files having a certain tag, type C-t f
(image-dired-mark-tagged-files). After marking image files with a certain tag, you can
use C-t d to view them.
You can also tag a file directly from the thumbnail buffer by typing t t, and you can
remove a tag by typing t r. There is also a special tag called “comment” for each file (it is
not a tag in the exact same sense as the other tags, it is handled slightly differently). That
is used to enter a comment or description about the image. You comment a file from the
thumbnail buffer by typing c. You will be prompted for a comment. Type C-t c to add a
comment from Dired (image-dired-dired-comment-files). C-t e will bring a buffer to
edit comment and tags (image-dired-dired-edit-comment-and-tags).
Files that are marked in Dired will also be marked in Image-Dired if image-dired-
thumb-visible-marks is non-nil (which is the default).
Image-Dired also provides simple image manipulation. In the thumbnail buffer, type L to
rotate the original image 90 degrees anti clockwise, and R to rotate it 90 degrees clockwise.
This rotation is lossless, and uses an external utility called jpegtran, which you need to
install first.
Chapter 27: Dired, the Directory Editor 397

27.19 Other Dired Features

By default, Dired will display the available space on the disk in the first line. This is the
first value of the dired-free-space variable. If you set this to separate instead, Dired
will display this on a separate line (including the space the files in the current directory
takes). If you set this to nil, the free space isn’t displayed at all.
The command + (dired-create-directory) reads a directory’s name, and creates that
directory. It signals an error if the directory already exists.
The command (dired-create-empty-file) reads a file name, and creates that file. It
signals an error if the file already exists.
The command M-s a C-s (dired-do-isearch) begins a multi-file incremental search on
the marked files. If a search fails at the end of a file, typing C-s advances to the next marked
file and repeats the search; at the end of the last marked file, the search wraps around to
the first marked file. The command M-s a M-C-s (dired-do-isearch-regexp) does the
same with a regular expression search. See Section 12.1.2 [Repeat Isearch], page 105, for
information about search repetition.
The command w (dired-copy-filename-as-kill) puts the names of the marked (or
next n) files into the kill ring, as if you had killed them with C-w. The names are separated
by a space.
With a zero prefix argument, this uses the absolute file name of each marked file. With
just C-u as the prefix argument, it uses file names relative to the Dired buffer’s default
directory. (This can still contain slashes if in a subdirectory.) As a special case, if point
is on a directory header line, w gives you the absolute name of that directory. Any prefix
argument or marked files are ignored in this case.
The main purpose of this command is so that you can yank the file names into arguments
for other Emacs commands. It also displays what it added to the kill ring, so you can use it
to display the list of currently marked files in the echo area.
If you have an HTML file in the file listing, it can be useful to view that file with a
browser. The W (browse-url-of-dired-file) command will use the standard configured
browser to view that file.
The command ( (dired-hide-details-mode) toggles whether details, such as ownership
or file permissions, are visible in the current Dired buffer. By default, it also hides the
targets of symbolic links, and all lines other than the header line and file/directory listings.
To change this, customize the options dired-hide-details-hide-symlink-targets and
dired-hide-details-hide-information-lines, respectively.
If the directory you are visiting is under version control (see Section 25.1 [Version Control],
page 332), then the normal VC diff and log commands will operate on the selected files.
The command M-x dired-compare-directories is used to compare the current Dired
buffer with another directory. It marks all the files that differ between the two directories.
It puts these marks in all Dired buffers where these files are listed, which of course includes
the current buffer.
The default comparison method (used if you type RET at the prompt) is to compare just
the file names—file names differ if they do not appear in the other directory. You can specify
more stringent comparisons by entering a Lisp expression, which can refer to the variables
size1 and size2, the respective file sizes; mtime1 and mtime2, the last modification times
398 GNU Emacs Manual

in seconds, as floating point numbers; and fa1 and fa2, the respective file attribute lists (as
returned by the function file-attributes). This expression is evaluated for each pair of
like-named files, and files differ if the expression’s value is non-nil.
For instance, the sequence M-x dired-compare-directories RET (> mtime1 mtime2)
RET marks files newer in this directory than in the other, and marks files older in the other
directory than in this one. It also marks files with no counterpart, in both directories, as
always.
On the X Window System, Emacs supports the drag and drop protocol. You can drag a
file object from another program, and drop it onto a Dired buffer; this either moves, copies,
or creates a link to the file in that directory. Precisely which action is taken is determined by
the originating program. Dragging files out of a Dired buffer is also supported, by enabling
the user option dired-mouse-drag-files, the mouse can be used to drag files onto other
programs. When set to link, it will make the other program (typically a file manager)
create a symbolic link to the file; when set to move, it will make the other program move the
file to a new location, and setting it to any other non-nil value will make the other program
open or create a copy of the file. The keyboard modifiers pressed during the drag-and-drop
operation can also control what action the other program takes towards the file.
 399

28 The Calendar and the Diary

Emacs provides the functions of a desk calendar, with a diary of planned or past events. It
also has facilities for managing your appointments, and keeping track of how much time you
spend working on certain projects.
To enter the calendar, type M-x calendar. This displays a three-month calendar centered
on the current month, with point on the current date. With a numeric argument, as in C-u
M-x calendar, it prompts you for the month and year to be the center of the three-month
calendar. The calendar uses its own buffer, whose major mode is Calendar mode.
mouse-3 in the calendar brings up a menu of operations on a particular date; mouse-2
brings up a menu of commonly used calendar features that are independent of any particular
date. To exit the calendar, type q.
This chapter describes the basic calendar features. For more advanced topics, see Section
“Advanced Calendar/Diary Usage” in Specialized Emacs Features.

28.1 Movement in the Calendar

Calendar mode provides commands to move through the calendar in logical units of time
such as days, weeks, months, and years. If you move outside the three months originally
displayed, the calendar display scrolls automatically through time to make the selected date
visible. Moving to a date lets you view its holidays or diary entries, or convert it to other
calendars; moving by long time periods is also useful simply to scroll the calendar.

28.1.1 Motion by Standard Lengths of Time

The commands for movement in the calendar buffer parallel the commands for movement in
text. You can move forward and backward by days, weeks, months, and years.
C-f Move point one day forward (calendar-forward-day).
C-b Move point one day backward (calendar-backward-day).
C-n Move point one week forward (calendar-forward-week).
C-p Move point one week backward (calendar-backward-week).
M-} Move point one month forward (calendar-forward-month).
M-{ Move point one month backward (calendar-backward-month).
C-x ] Move point one year forward (calendar-forward-year).
C-x [ Move point one year backward (calendar-backward-year).
The day and week commands are natural analogues of the usual Emacs commands for
moving by characters and by lines. Just as C-n usually moves to the same column in the
following line, in Calendar mode it moves to the same day in the following week. And C-p
moves to the same day in the previous week.
The arrow keys are equivalent to C-f, C-b, C-n and C-p, just as they normally are in
other modes.
The commands for motion by months and years work like those for weeks, but move a
larger distance. The month commands M-} and M-{ move forward or backward by an entire
month. The year commands C-x ] and C-x [ move forward or backward a whole year.
400 GNU Emacs Manual

The easiest way to remember these commands is to consider months and years analogous
to paragraphs and pages of text, respectively. But the calendar movement commands
themselves do not quite parallel those for movement through text: the ordinary Emacs
paragraph commands move to the beginning or end of a paragraph, whereas these month
and year commands move by an entire month or an entire year, keeping the same date
within the month or year.
All these commands accept a numeric argument as a repeat count. For convenience, the
digit keys and the minus sign specify numeric arguments in Calendar mode even without
the Meta modifier. For example, 100 C-f moves point 100 days forward from its present
location.

28.1.2 Beginning or End of Week, Month or Year

A week (or month, or year) is not just a quantity of days; we think of weeks (months, years)
as starting on particular dates. So Calendar mode provides commands to move to the start
or end of a week, month or year:
C-a Move point to start of week (calendar-beginning-of-week).
C-e Move point to end of week (calendar-end-of-week).
M-a Move point to start of month (calendar-beginning-of-month).
M-e Move point to end of month (calendar-end-of-month).
M-< Move point to start of year (calendar-beginning-of-year).
M-> Move point to end of year (calendar-end-of-year).
These commands also take numeric arguments as repeat counts, with the repeat count
indicating how many weeks, months, or years to move backward or forward.
By default, weeks begin on Sunday. To make them begin on Monday instead, set the
variable calendar-week-start-day to 1. To change which day headers are highlighted as
weekend days, set the variable calendar-weekend-days.

28.1.3 Specified Dates

Calendar mode provides commands for moving to a particular date specified in various ways.
gd Move point to specified date (calendar-goto-date).
gD Move point to specified day of year (calendar-goto-day-of-year).
gw Move point to specified week of year (calendar-iso-goto-week).
o Center calendar around specified month (calendar-other-month).
. Move point to today’s date (calendar-goto-today).
g d (calendar-goto-date) prompts for a year, a month, and a day of the month, and
then moves to that date. Because the calendar includes all dates from the beginning of the
current era, you must type the year in its entirety; that is, type ‘2010’, not ‘10’.
g D (calendar-goto-day-of-year) prompts for a year and day number, and moves
to that date. Negative day numbers count backward from the end of the year. g w
(calendar-iso-goto-week) prompts for a year and week number, and moves to that week.
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 401

o (calendar-other-month) prompts for a month and year, then centers the three-month
calendar around that month.
You can return to today’s date with . (calendar-goto-today).

28.2 Scrolling in the Calendar

The calendar display scrolls automatically through time when you move out of the visible
portion. You can also scroll it manually. Imagine that the calendar window contains a
long strip of paper with the months on it. Scrolling the calendar means moving the strip
horizontally, so that new months become visible in the window.
> Scroll calendar one month forward (calendar-scroll-left).
< Scroll calendar one month backward (calendar-scroll-right).
C-v
PageDown
next Scroll forward by three months (calendar-scroll-left-three-months).
M-v
PageUp
prior Scroll backward by three months (calendar-scroll-right-three-months).
The most basic calendar scroll commands scroll by one month at a time. This means that
there are two months of overlap between the display before the command and the display
after. > scrolls the calendar contents one month forward in time. < scrolls the contents one
month backwards in time.
The commands C-v and M-v scroll the calendar by an entire screenful—three months—in
analogy with the usual meaning of these commands. C-v makes later dates visible and M-v
makes earlier dates visible. These commands take a numeric argument as a repeat count;
in particular, since C-u multiplies the next command by four, typing C-u C-v scrolls the
calendar forward by a year and typing C-u M-v scrolls the calendar backward by a year.
The function keys PageDown (or next) and PageUp (or prior) are equivalent to C-v and
M-v, just as they are in other modes.

28.3 Counting Days

M-= Display the number of days in the current region (calendar-count-days-
region).
To determine the number of days in a range, set the mark on one date using C-SPC,
move point to another date, and type M-= (calendar-count-days-region). The numbers
of days shown is inclusive; that is, it includes the days specified by mark and point.

28.4 Miscellaneous Calendar Commands

pd Display day-in-year (calendar-print-day-of-year).
C-c C-l Regenerate the calendar window (calendar-redraw).
SPC Scroll the next window up (scroll-other-window).
402 GNU Emacs Manual

DEL
S-SPC Scroll the next window down (scroll-other-window-down).
q Exit from calendar (calendar-exit).
To display the number of days elapsed since the start of the year, or the number of
days remaining in the year, type the p d command (calendar-print-day-of-year). This
displays both of those numbers in the echo area. The count of days elapsed includes the
selected date. The count of days remaining does not include that date.
If the calendar window text gets corrupted, type C-c C-l (calendar-redraw) to redraw
it. (This can only happen if you use non-Calendar-mode editing commands.)
In Calendar mode, you can use SPC (scroll-other-window) and DEL (scroll-other-
window-down) to scroll the other window (if there is one) up or down, respectively. This is
handy when you display a list of holidays or diary entries in another window.
To exit from the calendar, type q (calendar-exit). This buries all buffers related to the
calendar, selecting other buffers. (If a frame contains a dedicated calendar window, exiting
from the calendar deletes or iconifies that frame depending on the value of calendar-remove-
frame-by-deleting.)

28.5 Writing Calendar Files

You can write calendars and diary entries to HTML and LATEX files.
The Calendar HTML commands produce files of HTML code that contain calendar,
holiday, and diary entries. Each file applies to one month, and has a name of the format
yyyy-mm.html, where yyyy and mm are the four-digit year and two-digit month, respectively.
The variable cal-html-directory specifies the default output directory for the HTML files.
To prevent holidays from being shown, customize cal-html-holidays.
Diary entries enclosed by < and > are interpreted as HTML tags (for example: this is
a diary entry with <font color=”red”>some red text</font>). You can change the overall
appearance of the displayed HTML pages (for example, the color of various page elements,
header styles) via a stylesheet cal.css in the directory containing the HTML files (see the
value of the variable cal-html-css-default for relevant style settings).
Hm Generate a one-month calendar (cal-html-cursor-month).
Hy Generate a calendar file for each month of a year, as well as an index page
(cal-html-cursor-year). By default, this command writes files to a yyyy
subdirectory—if this is altered some hyperlinks between years will not work.
If the variable cal-html-print-day-number-flag is non-nil, then the monthly calen-
dars show the day-of-the-year number. The variable cal-html-year-index-cols specifies
the number of columns in the yearly index page.
The Calendar LATEX commands produce a buffer of LATEX code that prints as a calendar.
Depending on the command you use, the printed calendar covers the day, week, month or
year that point is in.
tm Generate a one-month calendar (cal-tex-cursor-month).
tM Generate a sideways-printing one-month calendar (cal-tex-cursor-month-
landscape).
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 403

td Generate a one-day calendar (cal-tex-cursor-day).

tw1 Generate a one-page calendar for one week, with hours (cal-tex-cursor-week).
tw2 Generate a two-page calendar for one week, with hours (cal-tex-cursor-
week2).
tw3 Generate an ISO-style calendar for one week, without hours (cal-tex-cursor-
week-iso).
tw4 Generate a calendar for one Monday-starting week, with hours (cal-tex-
cursor-week-monday).
twW Generate a two-page calendar for one week, without hours (cal-tex-cursor-
week2-summary).
tfw Generate a Filofax-style two-weeks-at-a-glance calendar (cal-tex-cursor-
filofax-2week).
tfW Generate a Filofax-style one-week-at-a-glance calendar (cal-tex-cursor-
filofax-week).
ty Generate a calendar for one year (cal-tex-cursor-year).
tY Generate a sideways-printing calendar for one year (cal-tex-cursor-year-
landscape).
tfy Generate a Filofax-style calendar for one year (cal-tex-cursor-filofax-
year).
Some of these commands print the calendar sideways (in landscape mode), so it can be
wider than it is long. Some of them use Filofax paper size (3.75in x 6.75in). All of these
commands accept a prefix argument, which specifies how many days, weeks, months or years
to print (starting always with the selected one).
If the variable cal-tex-holidays is non-nil (the default), then the printed calendars
show the holidays in calendar-holidays. If the variable cal-tex-diary is non-nil (the
default is nil), diary entries are included also (in monthly, Filofax, and iso-week calendars
only). If the variable cal-tex-rules is non-nil (the default is nil), the calendar displays
ruled pages in styles that have sufficient room. Consult the documentation of the individual
cal-tex functions to see which calendars support which features.
You can use the variable cal-tex-preamble-extra to insert extra LATEX commands in
the preamble of the generated document if you need to.

28.6 Holidays
The Emacs calendar knows about many major and minor holidays, and can display them.
You can add your own holidays to the default list.
mouse-3 Holidays
h Display holidays for the selected date (calendar-cursor-holidays).
x Mark holidays in the calendar window (calendar-mark-holidays).
u Unmark calendar window (calendar-unmark).
404 GNU Emacs Manual

a List all holidays for the displayed three months in another window
(calendar-list-holidays).
M-x holidays
List all holidays for three months around today’s date in another window.
M-x list-holidays
List holidays in another window for a specified range of years.
To see if any holidays fall on a given date, position point on that date in the calendar
window and use the h command. Alternatively, click on that date with mouse-3 and then
choose Holidays from the menu that appears. Either way, this displays the holidays for
that date, in the echo area if they fit there, otherwise in a separate window.
To view the distribution of holidays for all the dates shown in the calendar, use the x
command. This displays the dates that are holidays in a different face. See Section “Calendar
Customizing” in Specialized Emacs Features. The command applies both to the currently
visible months and to other months that subsequently become visible by scrolling. To turn
marking off and erase the current marks, type u, which also erases any diary marks (see
Section 28.10 [Diary], page 409). If the variable calendar-mark-holidays-flag is non-nil,
creating or updating the calendar marks holidays automatically.
To get even more detailed information, use the a command, which displays a separate
buffer containing a list of all holidays in the current three-month range. You can use SPC
and DEL in the calendar window to scroll that list up and down, respectively.
The command M-x holidays displays the list of holidays for the current month and the
preceding and succeeding months; this works even if you don’t have a calendar window. If
the variable calendar-view-holidays-initially-flag is non-nil, creating the calendar
displays holidays in this way. If you want the list of holidays centered around a different
month, use C-u M-x holidays, which prompts for the month and year.
The holidays known to Emacs include United States holidays and the major Bahá’ı́,
Chinese, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish holidays; also the solstices and equinoxes.
The command M-x holiday-list displays the list of holidays for a range of years. This
function asks you for the starting and stopping years, and allows you to choose all the
holidays or one of several categories of holidays. You can use this command even if you
don’t have a calendar window.
The dates used by Emacs for holidays are based on current practice, not historical fact.
For example Veteran’s Day began in 1919, but is shown in earlier years.

28.7 Times of Sunrise and Sunset

Special calendar commands can tell you, to within a minute or two, the times of sunrise and
sunset for any date.
mouse-3 Sunrise/sunset
S Display times of sunrise and sunset for the selected date (calendar-sunrise-
sunset).
M-x sunrise-sunset
Display times of sunrise and sunset for today’s date.
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 405

C-u M-x sunrise-sunset

Display times of sunrise and sunset for a specified date.
M-x calendar-sunrise-sunset-month
Display times of sunrise and sunset for the selected month.
Within the calendar, to display the local times of sunrise and sunset in the echo area,
move point to the date you want, and type S. Alternatively, click mouse-3 on the date, then
choose ‘Sunrise/sunset’ from the menu that appears. The command M-x sunrise-sunset
is available outside the calendar to display this information for today’s date or a specified
date. To specify a date other than today, use C-u M-x sunrise-sunset, which prompts for
the year, month, and day.
You can display the times of sunrise and sunset for any location and any date with
C-u C-u M-x sunrise-sunset. This asks you for a longitude, latitude, number of minutes
difference from Coordinated Universal Time, and date, and then tells you the times of
sunrise and sunset for that location on that date.
Because the times of sunrise and sunset depend on the location on earth, you need to
tell Emacs your latitude, longitude, and location name before using these commands. Here
is an example of what to set:
(setq calendar-latitude 40.1)
(setq calendar-longitude -88.2)
(setq calendar-location-name "Urbana, IL")
Use one decimal place in the values of calendar-latitude and calendar-longitude.
Your time zone also affects the local time of sunrise and sunset. Emacs usually gets
time zone information from the operating system, but if these values are not what you want
(or if the operating system does not supply them), you must set them yourself. Here is an
example:
(setq calendar-time-zone -360)
(setq calendar-standard-time-zone-name "CST")
(setq calendar-daylight-time-zone-name "CDT")
The value of calendar-time-zone is the number of minutes difference between your lo-
cal standard time and Coordinated Universal Time (Greenwich time). The values of
calendar-standard-time-zone-name and calendar-daylight-time-zone-name are the
abbreviations used in your time zone. Emacs displays the times of sunrise and sunset
corrected for daylight saving time. See Section 28.11 [Daylight Saving], page 415, for how
daylight saving time is determined.
If you want to display numerical time zones (like ‘"+0100"’) instead of symbolic ones
(like ‘"CET"’), set this to numeric.
As a user, you might find it convenient to set the calendar location variables for your
usual physical location in your .emacs file. If you are a system administrator, you may want
to set these variables for all users in a default.el file. See Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522.

28.8 Phases of the Moon

These calendar commands display the dates and times of the phases of the moon (new moon,
first quarter, full moon, last quarter). This feature is useful for debugging problems that
depend on the phase of the moon.
406 GNU Emacs Manual

M Display the dates and times for all the quarters of the moon for the three-month
period shown (calendar-lunar-phases).
M-x lunar-phases
Display dates and times of the quarters of the moon for three months around
today’s date.
Within the calendar, use the M command to display a separate buffer of the phases of the
moon for the current three-month range. The dates and times listed are accurate to within
a few minutes.
Outside the calendar, use the command M-x lunar-phases to display the list of the
phases of the moon for the current month and the preceding and succeeding months. For
information about a different month, use C-u M-x lunar-phases, which prompts for the
month and year.
The dates and times given for the phases of the moon are given in local time (corrected
for daylight saving, when appropriate). See the discussion in the previous section. See
Section 28.7 [Sunrise/Sunset], page 404.

28.9 Conversion To and From Other Calendars

The Emacs calendar displayed is always the Gregorian calendar, sometimes called the New
Style calendar, which is used in most of the world today. However, this calendar did not
exist before the sixteenth century and was not widely used before the eighteenth century;
it did not fully displace the Julian calendar and gain universal acceptance until the early
twentieth century. The Emacs calendar can display any month since January, year 1 of the
current era, but the calendar displayed is always the Gregorian, even for a date at which the
Gregorian calendar did not exist.
While Emacs cannot display other calendars, it can convert dates to and from several
other calendars.

28.9.1 Supported Calendar Systems

The ISO commercial calendar is often used in business.
The Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar, was the one used in Europe throughout
medieval times, and in many countries up until the nineteenth century.
Astronomers use a simple counting of days elapsed since noon, Monday, January 1, 4713
BC on the Julian calendar. The number of days elapsed is called the Julian day number or
the Astronomical day number.
The Hebrew calendar is used by tradition in the Jewish religion. The Emacs calendar
program uses the Hebrew calendar to determine the dates of Jewish holidays. Hebrew
calendar dates begin and end at sunset.
The Islamic calendar is used in many predominantly Islamic countries. Emacs uses it
to determine the dates of Islamic holidays. There is no universal agreement in the Islamic
world about the calendar; Emacs uses a widely accepted version, but the precise dates of
Islamic holidays often depend on proclamation by religious authorities, not on calculations.
As a consequence, the actual dates of observance can vary slightly from the dates computed
by Emacs. Islamic calendar dates begin and end at sunset.
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 407

The French Revolutionary calendar was created by the Jacobins after the 1789 revolution,
to represent a more secular and nature-based view of the annual cycle, and to install a 10-day
week in a rationalization measure similar to the metric system. The French government
officially abandoned this calendar at the end of 1805.
The Maya of Central America used three separate, overlapping calendar systems, the long
count, the tzolkin, and the haab. Emacs knows about all three of these calendars. Experts
dispute the exact correlation between the Mayan calendar and our calendar; Emacs uses the
Goodman-Martinez-Thompson correlation in its calculations.
The Copts use a calendar based on the ancient Egyptian solar calendar. Their calendar
consists of twelve 30-day months followed by an extra five-day period. Once every fourth
year they add a leap day to this extra period to make it six days. The Ethiopic calendar is
identical in structure, but has different year numbers and month names.
The Persians use a solar calendar based on a design of Omar Khayyam. Their calendar
consists of twelve months of which the first six have 31 days, the next five have 30 days, and
the last has 29 in ordinary years and 30 in leap years. Leap years occur in a complicated
pattern every four or five years. The calendar implemented here is the arithmetical Persian
calendar championed by Birashk, based on a 2,820-year cycle. It differs from the astronomical
Persian calendar, which is based on astronomical events. As of this writing the first future
discrepancy is projected to occur on March 20, 2025. It is currently not clear what the
official calendar of Iran will be at that time.
The Chinese calendar is a complicated system of lunar months arranged into solar years.
The years go in cycles of sixty, each year containing either twelve months in an ordinary
year or thirteen months in a leap year; each month has either 29 or 30 days. Years, ordinary
months, and days are named by combining one of ten celestial stems with one of twelve
terrestrial branches for a total of sixty names that are repeated in a cycle of sixty.
The Bahá’ı́ calendar system is based on a solar cycle of 19 months with 19 days each.
The four remaining intercalary days are placed between the 18th and 19th months.

28.9.2 Converting To Other Calendars

The following commands describe the selected date (the date at point) in various other
calendar systems:
mouse-3 Other calendars
po Display the selected date in various other calendars. (calendar-print-other-
dates).
pc Display ISO commercial calendar equivalent for selected day (calendar-iso-
print-date).
pj Display Julian date for selected day (calendar-julian-print-date).
pa Display astronomical (Julian) day number for selected day (calendar-astro-
print-day-number).
ph Display Hebrew date for selected day (calendar-hebrew-print-date).
pi Display Islamic date for selected day (calendar-islamic-print-date).
pf Display French Revolutionary date for selected day (calendar-french-print-
date).
408 GNU Emacs Manual

pb Display Bahá’ı́ date for selected day (calendar-bahai-print-date).

pC Display Chinese date for selected day (calendar-chinese-print-date).
pk Display Coptic date for selected day (calendar-coptic-print-date).
pe Display Ethiopic date for selected day (calendar-ethiopic-print-date).
pp Display Persian date for selected day (calendar-persian-print-date).
pm Display Mayan date for selected day (calendar-mayan-print-date).
Otherwise, move point to the date you want to convert, then type the appropriate
command starting with p from the table above. The prefix p is a mnemonic for “print”,
since Emacs “prints” the equivalent date in the echo area. p o displays the date in all forms
known to Emacs. You can also use mouse-3 and then choose Other calendars from the
menu that appears. This displays the equivalent forms of the date in all the calendars
Emacs understands, in the form of a menu. (Choosing an alternative from this menu doesn’t
actually do anything—the menu is used only for display.)

28.9.3 Converting From Other Calendars

You can use the other supported calendars to specify a date to move to. This section
describes the commands for doing this using calendars other than Mayan; for the Mayan
calendar, see the following section.
gc Move to a date specified in the ISO commercial calendar (calendar-iso-goto-
date).
gw Move to a week specified in the ISO commercial calendar (calendar-iso-goto-
week).
gj Move to a date specified in the Julian calendar (calendar-julian-goto-date).
ga Move to a date specified with an astronomical (Julian) day number
(calendar-astro-goto-day-number).
gb Move to a date specified in the Bahá’ı́ calendar (calendar-bahai-goto-date).
gh Move to a date specified in the Hebrew calendar (calendar-hebrew-goto-
date).
gi Move to a date specified in the Islamic calendar (calendar-islamic-goto-
date).
gf Move to a date specified in the French Revolutionary calendar
(calendar-french-goto-date).
gC Move to a date specified in the Chinese calendar (calendar-chinese-goto-
date).
gp Move to a date specified in the Persian calendar (calendar-persian-goto-
date).
gk Move to a date specified in the Coptic calendar (calendar-coptic-goto-date).
ge Move to a date specified in the Ethiopic calendar (calendar-ethiopic-goto-
date).
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 409

These commands ask you for a date on the other calendar, move point to the Gregorian
calendar date equivalent to that date, and display the other calendar’s date in the echo area.
Emacs uses strict completion (see Section 5.4.3 [Completion Exit], page 32) whenever it
asks you to type a month name, so you don’t have to worry about the spelling of Hebrew,
Islamic, or French names.
One common issue concerning the Hebrew calendar is the computation of the anniversary
of a date of death, called a yahrzeit. The Emacs calendar includes a facility for such calcu-
lations. If you are in the calendar, the command M-x calendar-hebrew-list-yahrzeits
asks you for a range of years and then displays a list of the yahrzeit dates for those years for
the date given by point. If you are not in the calendar, this command first asks you for the
date of death and the range of years, and then displays the list of yahrzeit dates.

28.10 The Diary

The Emacs diary keeps track of appointments or other events on a daily basis, in conjunction
with the calendar. To use the diary feature, you must first create a diary file containing
a list of events and their dates. Then Emacs can automatically pick out and display the
events for today, for the immediate future, or for any specified date.
Although you probably will start by creating a diary manually, Emacs provides a number
of commands to let you view, add, and change diary entries.

28.10.1 The Diary File

Your diary file is a file that records events associated with particular dates. The name of
the diary file is specified by the variable diary-file. The default is ~/.emacs.d/diary,
though for compatibility with older versions Emacs will use ~/diary if it exists.
Each entry in the diary file describes one event and consists of one or more lines. An
entry always begins with a date specification at the left margin. The rest of the entry is
simply text to describe the event. If the entry has more than one line, then the lines after
the first must begin with whitespace to indicate they continue a previous entry. Lines that
do not begin with valid dates and do not continue a preceding entry are ignored. Here’s an
example:
12/22/2015 Twentieth wedding anniversary!
10/22 Ruth's birthday.
* 21, *: Payday
Tuesday--weekly meeting with grad students at 10am
Supowit, Shen, Bitner, and Kapoor to attend.
1/13/89 Friday the thirteenth!!
thu 4pm squash game with Lloyd.
mar 16 Dad's birthday
April 15, 2016 Income tax due.
* 15 time cards due.
This example uses extra spaces to align the event descriptions of most of the entries. Such
formatting is purely a matter of taste.
You can also use a format where the first line of a diary entry consists only of the date
or day name (with no following blanks or punctuation). For example:
02/11/2012
410 GNU Emacs Manual

Bill B. visits Princeton today

2pm Cognitive Studies Committee meeting
2:30-5:30 Liz at Lawrenceville
4:00pm Dentist appt
7:30pm Dinner at George's
8:00-10:00pm concert
This entry will have a different appearance if you use the simple diary display (see Section
“Diary Display” in Specialized Emacs Features). The simple diary display omits the date
line at the beginning; only the continuation lines appear. This style of entry looks neater
when you display just a single day’s entries, but can cause confusion if you ask for more
than one day’s entries.

28.10.2 Displaying the Diary

Once you have created a diary file, you can use the calendar to view it. You can also view
today’s events outside of Calendar mode. In the following, key bindings refer to the Calendar
buffer.
mouse-3 Diary
d Display all diary entries for the selected date (diary-view-entries).
s Display the entire diary file (diary-show-all-entries).
m Mark all visible dates that have diary entries (diary-mark-entries).
u Unmark the calendar window (calendar-unmark).
M-x diary-print-entries
Print hard copy of the diary display as it appears.
M-x diary Display all diary entries for today’s date.
M-x diary-mail-entries
Mail yourself email reminders about upcoming diary entries.
Displaying the diary entries with d shows in a separate buffer the diary entries for the
selected date in the calendar. The mode line of the new buffer shows the date of the diary
entries. Holidays are shown either in the buffer or in the mode line, depending on the display
method you choose (see Section “Diary Display” in Specialized Emacs Features). If you
specify a numeric argument with d, it shows all the diary entries for that many successive
days. Thus, 2 d displays all the entries for the selected date and for the following day.
Another way to display the diary entries for a date is to click mouse-3 on the date, and
then choose Diary entries from the menu that appears. If the variable calendar-view-
diary-initially-flag is non-nil, creating the calendar lists the diary entries for the
current date (provided the current date is visible).
To get a broader view of which days are mentioned in the diary, use the m command.
This marks the dates that have diary entries in a different face. See Section “Calendar
Customizing” in Specialized Emacs Features.
This command applies both to the months that are currently visible and to those that
subsequently become visible after scrolling. To turn marking off and erase the current
marks, type u, which also turns off holiday marks (see Section 28.6 [Holidays], page 403).
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 411

If the variable calendar-mark-diary-entries-flag is non-nil, creating or updating the

calendar marks diary dates automatically.
To prevent an individual diary entry from being marked in the calendar, insert the string
that diary-nonmarking-symbol specifies (the default is ‘&’) at the beginning of the entry,
before the date. This has no effect on display of the entry in the diary buffer; it only affects
marks on dates in the calendar. Nonmarking entries can be useful for generic entries that
would otherwise mark many different dates.
To see the full diary file, rather than just some of the entries, use the s command.
The command M-x diary displays the diary entries for the current date, independently of
the calendar display, and optionally for the next few days as well; the variable diary-number-
of-entries specifies how many days to include. See Section “Diary Customizing” in
Specialized Emacs Features.
If you put (diary) in your .emacs file, this automatically displays a window with the
day’s diary entries when you start Emacs.
Some people like to receive email notifications of events in their diary. To send such mail
to yourself, use the command M-x diary-mail-entries. A prefix argument specifies how
many days (starting with today) to check; otherwise, the variable diary-mail-days says
how many days.

28.10.3 Date Formats

Here are some sample diary entries, illustrating different ways of formatting a date. The
examples all show dates in American order (month, day, year), but Calendar mode supports
European order (day, month, year) and ISO order (year, month, day) as options.
4/20/12 Switch-over to new tabulation system
apr. 25 Start tabulating annual results
4/30 Results for April are due
*/25 Monthly cycle finishes
Friday Don't leave without backing up files
The first entry appears only once, on April 20, 2012. The second and third appear every
year on the specified dates, and the fourth uses a wildcard (asterisk) for the month, so it
appears on the 25th of every month. The final entry appears every week on Friday.
You can use just numbers to express a date, as in ‘month/day’ or ‘month/day/year’.
This must be followed by a nondigit. In the date itself, month and day are numbers of one
or two digits. The optional year is also a number, and may be abbreviated to the last two
digits; that is, you can use ‘11/12/2012’ or ‘11/12/12’.
Dates can also have the form ‘monthname day’ or ‘monthname day, year’, where the
month’s name can be spelled in full or abbreviated (with or without a period). The preferred
abbreviations for month and day names can be set using the variables calendar-abbrev-
length, calendar-month-abbrev-array, and calendar-day-abbrev-array. The default
is to use the first three letters of a name as its abbreviation. Case is not significant.
A date may be generic; that is, partially unspecified. Then the entry applies to all dates
that match the specification. If the date does not contain a year, it is generic and applies to
any year. Alternatively, month, day, or year can be ‘*’; this matches any month, day, or
year, respectively. Thus, a diary entry ‘3/*/*’ matches any day in March of any year; so
does ‘march *’.
412 GNU Emacs Manual

If you prefer the European style of writing dates (in which the day comes
before the month), or the ISO style (in which the order is year, month, day), type
M-x calendar-set-date-style while in the calendar, or customize the variable
calendar-date-style. This affects how diary dates are interpreted, date display, and the
order in which some commands expect their arguments to be given.
You can use the name of a day of the week as a generic date which applies to any date
falling on that day of the week. You can abbreviate the day of the week as described above,
or spell it in full; case is not significant.

28.10.4 Commands to Add to the Diary

While in the calendar, there are several commands to create diary entries. The basic
commands are listed here; more sophisticated commands are in the next section (see
Section 28.10.5 [Special Diary Entries], page 412). Entries can also be based on non-
Gregorian calendars. See Section “Non-Gregorian Diary” in Specialized Emacs Features.
id Add a diary entry for the selected date (diary-insert-entry).
iw Add a diary entry for the selected day of the week (diary-insert-weekly-
entry).
im Add a diary entry for the selected day of the month (diary-insert-monthly-
entry).
iy Add a diary entry for the selected day of the year (diary-insert-yearly-
entry).
You can make a diary entry for a specific date by selecting that date in the calendar
window and typing the i d command. This command displays the end of your diary file in
another window and inserts the date; you can then type the rest of the diary entry.
If you want to make a diary entry that applies to a specific day of the week, select that
day of the week (any occurrence will do) and type i w. This inserts the day-of-week as a
generic date; you can then type the rest of the diary entry. You can make a monthly diary
entry in the same fashion: select the day of the month, use the i m command, and type the
rest of the entry. Similarly, you can insert a yearly diary entry with the i y command.
All of the above commands make marking diary entries by default. To make a nonmarking
diary entry, give a prefix argument to the command. For example, C-u i w makes a
nonmarking weekly diary entry.
When you modify the diary file, be sure to save the file before exiting Emacs. Saving the
diary file after using any of the above insertion commands will automatically update the diary
marks in the calendar window, if appropriate. You can use the command calendar-redraw
to force an update at any time.

28.10.5 Special Diary Entries

In addition to entries based on calendar dates, the diary file can contain sexp entries for
regular events such as anniversaries. These entries are based on Lisp expressions (sexps)
that Emacs evaluates as it scans the diary file. Instead of a date, a sexp entry contains
‘%%’ followed by a Lisp expression which must begin and end with parentheses. The Lisp
expression determines which dates the entry applies to.
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 413

Calendar mode provides commands to insert certain commonly used sexp entries:
ia Add an anniversary diary entry for the selected date (diary-insert-
anniversary-entry).
ib Add a block diary entry for the current region (diary-insert-block-entry).
ic Add a cyclic diary entry starting at the date (diary-insert-cyclic-entry).
If you want to make a diary entry that applies to the anniversary of a specific date, move
point to that date and use the i a command. This displays the end of your diary file in
another window and inserts the anniversary description; you can then type the rest of the
diary entry. The entry looks like this:
%%(diary-anniversary 10 31 1988) Arthur's birthday
This entry applies to October 31 in any year after 1988; ‘10 31 1988’ specifies the date. (If
you are using the European or ISO calendar style, the input order of month, day and year
is different.) The reason this expression requires a beginning year is that advanced diary
functions can use it to calculate the number of elapsed years.
A block diary entry applies to a specified range of consecutive dates. Here is a block
diary entry that applies to all dates from June 24, 2012 through July 10, 2012:
%%(diary-block 6 24 2012 7 10 2012) Vacation
The ‘6 24 2012’ indicates the starting date and the ‘7 10 2012’ indicates the stopping date.
(Again, if you are using the European or ISO calendar style, the input order of month, day
and year is different.)
To insert a block entry, place point and the mark on the two dates that begin and end the
range, and type i b. This command displays the end of your diary file in another window
and inserts the block description; you can then type the diary entry.
Cyclic diary entries repeat after a fixed interval of days. To create one, select the starting
date and use the i c command. The command prompts for the length of interval, then
inserts the entry, which looks like this:
%%(diary-cyclic 50 3 1 2012) Renew medication
This entry applies to March 1, 2012 and every 50th day following; ‘3 1 2012’ specifies the
starting date. (If you are using the European or ISO calendar style, the input order of
month, day and year is different.)
All three of these commands make marking diary entries. To insert a nonmarking
entry, give a prefix argument to the command. For example, C-u i a makes a nonmarking
anniversary diary entry.
Marking sexp diary entries in the calendar can be time-consuming, since every date
visible in the calendar window must be individually checked. So it’s a good idea to make
sexp diary entries nonmarking (with ‘&’) when possible.
Another sophisticated kind of sexp entry, a floating diary entry, specifies a regularly
occurring event by offsets specified in days, weeks, and months. It is comparable to a crontab
entry interpreted by the cron utility. Here is a nonmarking, floating diary entry that applies
to the fourth Thursday in November:
&%%(diary-float 11 4 4) American Thanksgiving
414 GNU Emacs Manual

The 11 specifies November (the eleventh month), the 4 specifies Thursday (the fourth day of
the week, where Sunday is numbered zero), and the second 4 specifies the fourth Thursday
(1 would mean “first”, 2 would mean “second”, −2 would mean “second-to-last”, and so
on). The month can be a single month or a list of months. Thus you could change the 11
above to ‘'(1 2 3)’ and have the entry apply to the last Thursday of January, February,
and March. If the month is t, the entry applies to all months of the year.
%%(diary-offset '(diary-float t 3 4) 2) Monthly committee meeting
This entry applies to the Saturday after the third Thursday of each month. The 2 specifies
number of days after when the sexp '(diary-float t 3 4) would evaluate to t. This is
useful when for example your organization has a committee meeting two days after every
monthly meeting which takes place on the third Thursday, or if you would like to attend a
virtual meeting scheduled in a different timezone causing a difference in the date.
Each of the standard sexp diary entries takes an optional parameter specifying the name
of a face or a single-character string to use when marking the entry in the calendar. Most
generally, sexp diary entries can perform arbitrary computations to determine when they
apply. See Section “Sexp Diary Entries” in Specialized Emacs Features.

28.10.6 Appointments
If you have a diary entry for an appointment, and that diary entry begins with a recognizable
time of day, Emacs can warn you in advance that an appointment is pending. Emacs alerts
you to the appointment by displaying a message in your chosen format, as specified by
the variable appt-display-format. If the value of appt-audible is non-nil, the warning
includes an audible reminder. In addition, if appt-display-mode-line is non-nil, Emacs
displays the number of minutes to the appointment on the mode line.
If appt-display-format has the value window, then the variable appt-display-
duration controls how long the reminder window is visible for; and the variables
appt-disp-window-function and appt-delete-window-function give the names of
functions used to create and destroy the window, respectively.
To enable appointment notification, type M-x appt-activate. With a positive argument,
it enables notification; with a negative argument, it disables notification; with no argument,
it toggles. Enabling notification also sets up an appointment list for today from the diary file,
giving all diary entries found with recognizable times of day, and reminds you just before
each of them.
For example, suppose the diary file contains these lines:
Monday
9:30am Coffee break
12:00pm Lunch
Then on Mondays, you will be reminded at around 9:20am about your coffee break and
at around 11:50am about lunch. The variable appt-message-warning-time specifies how
many minutes (default 12) in advance to warn you. This is a default warning time. Each
appointment can specify a different warning time by adding a piece matching appt-warning-
time-regexp (see that variable’s documentation for details).
You can write times in am/pm style (with ‘12:00am’ standing for midnight and ‘12:00pm’
standing for noon), or 24-hour European/military style. You need not be consistent; your
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 415

diary file can have a mixture of the two styles. Times must be at the beginning of diary
entries if they are to be recognized.
Emacs updates the appointments list from the diary file automatically just after midnight.
You can force an update at any time by re-enabling appointment notification. Both these
actions also display the day’s diary buffer, unless you set appt-display-diary to nil. The
appointments list is also updated whenever the diary file (or a file it includes; see Section
“Fancy Diary Display” in Specialized Emacs Features) is saved. If you use the Org Mode
and keep appointments in your Org agenda files, you can add those appointments to the list
using the org-agenda-to-appt command. See Section “Weekly/daily agenda” in The Org
Manual, for more about that command.
You can also use the appointment notification facility like an alarm clock. The command
M-x appt-add adds entries to the appointment list without affecting your diary file. You
delete entries from the appointment list with M-x appt-delete.

28.10.7 Importing and Exporting Diary Entries

You can transfer diary entries between Emacs diary files and a variety of other formats.
You can import diary entries from Outlook-generated appointment messages. While
viewing such a message in Rmail or Gnus, do M-x diary-from-outlook to import the
entry. You can make this command recognize additional appointment message formats by
customizing the variable diary-outlook-formats. Other mail clients can set diary-from-
outlook-function to an appropriate value.
The icalendar package allows you to transfer data between your Emacs diary file and
iCalendar files, which are defined in RFC 2445—Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core
Object Specification (iCalendar) (as well as the earlier vCalendar format).
The command icalendar-import-buffer extracts iCalendar data from the current
buffer and adds it to your diary file. This function is also suitable for automatic extraction
of iCalendar data; for example with the Rmail mail client one could use:
(add-hook 'rmail-show-message-hook 'icalendar-import-buffer)
The command icalendar-import-file imports an iCalendar file and adds the results
to an Emacs diary file. For example:
(icalendar-import-file "/here/is/calendar.ics"
"/there/goes/ical-diary")
You can use an #include directive to add the import file contents to the main diary file, if
these are different files. See Section “Fancy Diary Display” in Specialized Emacs Features.
Use icalendar-export-file to interactively export an entire Emacs diary file to iCal-
endar format. To export only a part of a diary file, mark the relevant area, and call
icalendar-export-region. In both cases, Emacs appends the result to the target file.

28.11 Daylight Saving Time

Emacs understands the difference between standard time and daylight saving time—the
times given for sunrise, sunset, solstices, equinoxes, and the phases of the moon take that
into account. The rules for daylight saving time vary from place to place and have also
varied historically from year to year. To do the job properly, Emacs needs to know which
rules to use.
416 GNU Emacs Manual

Some operating systems keep track of the rules that apply to the place where you are; on
these systems, Emacs gets the information it needs from the system automatically. If some
or all of this information is missing, Emacs fills in the gaps with the rules currently used
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If the resulting rules are not what you want, you can tell
Emacs the rules to use by setting certain variables: calendar-daylight-savings-starts
and calendar-daylight-savings-ends.
These values should be Lisp expressions that refer to the variable year, and evaluate to
the Gregorian date on which daylight saving time starts or (respectively) ends, in the form
of a list (month day year). The values should be nil if your area does not use daylight
saving time.
Emacs uses these expressions to determine the starting date of daylight saving time for
the holiday list and for correcting times of day in the solar and lunar calculations.
The values for Cambridge, Massachusetts are as follows:
(calendar-nth-named-day 2 0 3 year)
(calendar-nth-named-day 1 0 11 year)
That is, the second 0th day (Sunday) of the third month (March) in the year specified by year,
and the first Sunday of the eleventh month (November) of that year. If daylight saving time
were changed to start on October 1, you would set calendar-daylight-savings-starts
to this:
(list 10 1 year)
If there is no daylight saving time at your location, or if you want all times in standard
time, set calendar-daylight-savings-starts and calendar-daylight-savings-ends
to nil.
The variable calendar-daylight-time-offset specifies the difference between daylight
saving time and standard time, measured in minutes. The value for Cambridge, Massachusetts
is 60.
Finally, the two variables calendar-daylight-savings-starts-time and
calendar-daylight-savings-ends-time specify the number of minutes after midnight
local time when the transition to and from daylight saving time should occur. For
Cambridge, Massachusetts both variables’ values are 120.

28.12 Summing Time Intervals

The timeclock package adds up time intervals, so you can (for instance) keep track of how
much time you spend working on particular projects. (A more advanced alternative is to
use the Org Mode’s facilities for clocking time, see Section “Clocking Work Time” in The
Org Manual).
Use the M-x timeclock-in command when you start working on a project, and M-x
timeclock-out command when you’re done. Each time you do this, it adds one time
interval to the record of the project. You can change to working on a different project with
M-x timeclock-change.
Once you’ve collected data from a number of time intervals, you can use M-x
timeclock-workday-remaining to see how much time is left to work today (assuming a
typical average of 8 hours a day), and M-x timeclock-when-to-leave which will calculate
when you’re done.
Chapter 28: The Calendar and the Diary 417

If you want Emacs to display the amount of time left of your workday in the mode
line, either customize the timeclock-mode-line-display variable and set its value to t,
or invoke the M-x timeclock-mode-line-display command.
Terminating the current Emacs session might or might not mean that you have stopped
working on the project and, by default, Emacs asks you. You can, however, customize
the value of the variable timeclock-ask-before-exiting to nil to avoid the question;
then, only an explicit M-x timeclock-out or M-x timeclock-change will tell Emacs that
the current interval is over.
The timeclock functions work by accumulating the data in a file called
~/.emacs.d/timelog. You can specify a different name for this file by customizing the
variable timeclock-file. If you edit the timeclock file manually, or if you change the
value of any of timeclock’s customizable variables, you should run the command M-x
timeclock-reread-log to update the data in Emacs from the file.
418 GNU Emacs Manual

29 Sending Mail
To send an email message from Emacs, type C-x m. This switches to a buffer named *unsent
mail*, where you can edit the text and headers of the message. When done, type C-c C-s
or C-c C-c to send it.
C-x m Begin composing mail (compose-mail).
C-x 4 m Likewise, in another window (compose-mail-other-window).
C-x 5 m Likewise, but in a new frame (compose-mail-other-frame).
C-c C-s In the mail buffer, send the message (message-send).
C-c C-c In the mail buffer, send the message and bury the buffer (message-send-and-
exit).
The mail buffer is an ordinary Emacs buffer, so you can switch to other buffers while
composing the mail. If you want to send another message before finishing the current one,
type C-x m again to open a new mail buffer whose name has a different numeric suffix (see
Section 16.3 [Misc Buffer], page 177). (This only works if you use the default Message mode
to compose email; see Section 29.4 [Mail Commands], page 421.) If you know that you’d
like to continue composing the unsent message you were editing, invoke this command with
a prefix argument, C-u C-x m, and Emacs will switch to the last mail buffer you used and
let you pick up editing the message where you left off.
The command C-x 4 m (compose-mail-other-window) does the same as C-x m, except
it displays the mail buffer in a different window. The command C-x 5 m (compose-mail-
other-frame) does it in a new frame.
When you type C-c C-c or C-c C-s to send the mail, Emacs may ask you how it should
deliver the mail—either directly via SMTP, or using some other method. See Section 29.4.1
[Mail Sending], page 421, for details.

29.1 The Format of the Mail Buffer

Here is an example of the contents of a mail buffer:
To: [email protected]
CC: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: What is best in life?
From: [email protected]
--text follows this line--
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to
hear the lamentation of their women.
At the top of the mail buffer is a set of header fields, which are used for specifying information
about the email’s recipient(s), subject, and so on. The above buffer contains header fields
for ‘To’, ‘CC’, ‘Subject’, and ‘From’. Some header fields are automatically pre-initialized in
the mail buffer, when appropriate.
The line that says ‘--text follows this line--’ separates the header fields from the
body (or text) of the message. Everything above that line is treated as part of the headers;
everything below it is treated as the body. The delimiter line itself does not appear in the
message actually sent.
Chapter 29: Sending Mail 419

You can insert and edit header fields using ordinary editing commands. See Section 29.4.2
[Header Editing], page 422, for commands specific to editing header fields. Certain headers,
such as ‘Date’ and ‘Message-Id’, are normally omitted from the mail buffer and are created
automatically when the message is sent.

29.2 Mail Header Fields

A header field in the mail buffer starts with a field name at the beginning of a line, terminated
by a colon. Upper and lower case are equivalent in field names. After the colon and optional
whitespace comes the contents of the field.
You can use any name you like for a header field, but normally people use only standard
field names with accepted meanings.
The ‘From’ header field identifies the person sending the email (i.e., you). This should
be a valid mailing address, as replies are normally sent there. The default contents of
this header field are computed from the variables user-full-name (which specifies your
full name) and user-mail-address (your email address). On some operating systems,
Emacs initializes these two variables using environment variables (see Section C.4.1 [General
Variables], page 574). If this information is unavailable or wrong, you should customize the
variables yourself (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494).
Apart from ‘From’, here is a table of commonly-used fields:
‘To’ The mailing address(es) to which the message is addressed. To list more than
one address, use commas to separate them.
‘Subject’ The subject of the message.
‘CC’ Additional mailing address(es) to send the message to. This is like ‘To’, except
that these readers should not regard the message as directed at them.
‘BCC’ Additional mailing address(es) to send the message to, which should not appear
in the header of the message actually sent. ‘BCC’ stands for blind carbon copies.
‘FCC’ The name of a file, to which a copy of the sent message should be appended.
Emacs writes the message in mbox format, unless the file is in Babyl format
(used by Rmail before Emacs 23), in which case Emacs writes in Babyl format.
If an Rmail buffer is visiting the file, Emacs updates it accordingly. To specify
more than one file, use several ‘FCC’ fields, with one file name in each field.
‘Reply-To’
An address to which replies should be sent, instead of ‘From’. This is used if,
for some reason, your ‘From’ address cannot receive replies.
‘Mail-Reply-To’
This field takes precedence over ‘Reply-To’. It is used because some mailing
lists set the ‘Reply-To’ field for their own purposes (a somewhat controversial
practice).
‘Mail-Followup-To’
One of more address(es) to use as default recipient(s) for follow-up messages.
This is typically used when you reply to a message from a mailing list that you
are subscribed to, and want replies to go to the list without sending an extra
copy to you.
420 GNU Emacs Manual

‘In-Reply-To’
An identifier for the message you are replying to. Most mail readers use this
information to group related messages together. Normally, this header is filled
in automatically when you reply to a message in any mail program built into
Emacs.
‘References’
Identifiers for previous related messages. Like ‘In-Reply-To’, this is normally
filled in automatically for you.
The ‘To’, ‘CC’, and ‘BCC’ fields can appear any number of times, and each such header field
can contain multiple addresses, separated by commas. This way, you can specify any number
of places to send the message. These fields can also have continuation lines: one or more
lines starting with whitespace, following the starting line of the field, are considered part of
the field. Here’s an example of a ‘To’ field with a continuation line:
To: [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected]
You can direct Emacs to insert certain default headers into the mail buffer by setting the
variable mail-default-headers to a string. Then C-x m inserts this string into the message
headers. For example, here is how to add a ‘Reply-To’ and ‘FCC’ header to each message:
(setq mail-default-headers
"Reply-To: [email protected]\nFCC: ~/Mail/sent")
If the default header fields are not appropriate for a particular message, edit them as
necessary before sending the message.

29.3 Mail Aliases

You can define mail aliases, which are short mnemonic names that stand for one or more
mailing addresses. By default, mail aliases are defined in the file ~/.mailrc. You can specify
a different file name to use, by setting the variable mail-personal-alias-file.
To define an alias in ~/.mailrc, write a line like this:
alias nick fulladdresses
This means that nick should expand into fulladdresses, where fulladdresses can be either a
single address, or multiple addresses separated with spaces. For instance, to make maingnu
stand for [email protected] plus a local address of your own, put in this line:
alias maingnu [email protected] local-gnu
If an address contains a space, quote the whole address with a pair of double quotes, like
this:
alias jsmith "John Q. Smith <[email protected]>"
Note that you need not include double quotes around individual parts of the address, such
as the person’s full name. Emacs puts them in if they are needed. For instance, it inserts
the above address as ‘"John Q. Smith" <[email protected]>’.
Emacs also recognizes include commands in ~/.mailrc. They look like this:
source filename
Chapter 29: Sending Mail 421

The ~/.mailrc file is not unique to Emacs; many other mail-reading programs use it for
mail aliases, and it can contain various other commands. However, Emacs ignores everything
except alias definitions and include commands.
Mail aliases expand as abbrevs—that is to say, as soon as you type a word-separator
character after an alias (see Chapter 26 [Abbrevs], page 371). This expansion takes place
only within the ‘To’, ‘From’, ‘CC’, ‘BCC’, and ‘Reply-To’ header fields (plus their ‘Resent-’
variants); it does not take place in other header fields, such as ‘Subject’.
You can also insert an aliased address directly, using the command M-x
mail-abbrev-insert-alias. This reads an alias name, with completion, and inserts its
definition at point.

29.4 Mail Commands

The default major mode for the *mail* buffer is called Message mode. It behaves like Text
mode in many ways, but provides several additional commands on the C-c prefix, which
make editing a message more convenient.
In this section, we will describe some of the most commonly-used commands available in
Message mode.

29.4.1 Mail Sending

C-c C-c Send the message, and bury the mail buffer (message-send-and-exit).
C-c C-s Send the message, and leave the mail buffer selected (message-send).
The usual command to send a message is C-c C-c (message-send-and-exit). This
sends the message and then buries the mail buffer, putting it at the lowest priority for
reselection. If you want it to kill the mail buffer instead, change the variable message-kill-
buffer-on-exit to t.
The command C-c C-s (message-send) sends the message and leaves the buffer selected.
Use this command if you want to modify the message (perhaps with new recipients) and
send it again.
Sending a message runs the hook message-send-hook. It also marks the mail buffer as
unmodified, except if the mail buffer is also a file-visiting buffer (in that case, only saving
the file does that, and you don’t get a warning if you try to send the same message twice).
The variable message-send-mail-function controls how the message is delivered
(send-mail-function is used for Mail mode). The value of send-mail-function should
be one of the following functions:
sendmail-query-once
Query for a delivery method (one of the other entries in this list), and use that
method for this message; then save the method to send-mail-function, so
that it is used for future deliveries. This is the default, unless you have already
set the variables for sending mail via smtpmail-send-it (see below).
smtpmail-send-it
Send mail through an external mail host, such as your Internet service provider’s
outgoing SMTP mail server. If you have not told Emacs how to contact
the SMTP server, it prompts for this information, which is saved in the
422 GNU Emacs Manual

smtpmail-smtp-server variable and the file ~/.authinfo. See Section “Emacs

SMTP Library” in Sending mail via SMTP.
sendmail-send-it
Send mail using the system’s default sendmail program, or equivalent. This
requires the system to be set up for delivering mail directly via SMTP.
mailclient-send-it
Pass the mail buffer on to the system’s designated mail client. See the commen-
tary section in the file mailclient.el for details.
feedmail-send-it
This is similar to sendmail-send-it, but allows you to queue messages for later
sending. See the commentary section in the file feedmail.el for details.
When you send a message containing non-ASCII characters, they need to be encoded
with a coding system (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223). Usually the coding
system is specified automatically by your chosen language environment (see Section 19.2
[Language Environments], page 218). You can explicitly specify the coding system for
outgoing mail by setting the variable sendmail-coding-system (see Section 19.6 [Recognize
Coding], page 225). If the coding system thus determined does not handle the characters in
a particular message, Emacs asks you to select the coding system to use, showing a list of
possible coding systems. See Section 19.8 [Output Coding], page 227.

29.4.2 Mail Header Editing

Message mode provides the following special commands to move to particular header fields
and to complete addresses in headers.
C-c C-f C-t
Move to the ‘To’ header (message-goto-to).
C-c C-f C-s
Move to the ‘Subject’ header (message-goto-subject).
C-c C-f C-c
Move to the ‘CC’ header (message-goto-cc).
C-c C-f C-b
Move to the ‘BCC’ header (message-goto-bcc).
C-c C-f C-r
Move to the ‘Reply-To’ header (message-goto-reply-to).
C-c C-f C-f
Move to the ‘Mail-Followup-To’ header field (message-goto-followup-to).
C-c C-f C-w
Add a new ‘FCC’ header field, with file-name completion (message-goto-fcc).
C-c C-b Move to the start of the message body (message-goto-body).
TAB Complete a mailing address (message-tab).
Chapter 29: Sending Mail 423

The commands to move point to particular header fields are all based on the prefix C-c
C-f (‘C-f’ is for “field”). If the field in question does not exist, the command creates one
(the exception is mail-fcc, which creates a new field each time).
The command C-c C-b (message-goto-body) moves point to just after the header
separator line—that is, to the beginning of the body.
While editing a header field that contains addresses, such as ‘To:’, ‘CC:’ and ‘BCC:’, you
can complete an address by typing TAB (message-tab). This attempts to insert the full
name corresponding to the address based on a couple of methods, including EUDC, a library
that recognizes a number of directory server protocols (see Section “EUDC” in The Emacs
Unified Directory Client). Failing that, it attempts to expand the address as a mail alias
(see Section 29.3 [Mail Aliases], page 420). If point is on a header field that does not take
addresses, or if it is in the message body, then TAB just inserts a tab character.

29.4.3 Citing Mail

C-c C-y Yank the selected message from the mail reader, as a citation (message-yank-
original).
C-c C-q Fill each paragraph cited from another message (message-fill-yanked-
message).
You can use the command C-c C-y (message-yank-original) to cite a message that
you are replying to. This inserts the text of that message into the mail buffer. This command
works only if the mail buffer is invoked from a mail reader running in Emacs, such as Rmail.
By default, Emacs inserts the string ‘>’ in front of each line of the cited text; this
prefix string is specified by the variable message-yank-prefix. If you call message-yank-
original with a prefix argument, the citation prefix is not inserted.
After using C-c C-y, you can type C-c C-q (message-fill-yanked-message) to fill the
paragraphs of the cited message. One use of C-c C-q fills all such paragraphs, each one
individually. To fill a single paragraph of the quoted message, use M-q. If filling does not
automatically handle the type of citation prefix you use, try setting the fill prefix explicitly.
See Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256.
You can customize mail citation through the hook mail-citation-hook. For example,
you can use the Supercite package, which provides more flexible citation (see Section
“Introduction” in Supercite).

29.4.4 Mail Miscellany

You can attach a file to an outgoing message by typing C-c C-a (mml-attach-file) in the
mail buffer. Attaching is done using the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)
standard.
The mml-attach-file command prompts for the name of the file, and for the attach-
ment’s content type, description, and disposition. The content type is normally detected
automatically; just type RET to accept the default. The description is a single line of text
that the recipient will see next to the attachment; you may also choose to leave this empty.
The disposition is either ‘inline’, which means the recipient will see a link to the attachment
within the message body, or ‘attachment’, which means the link will be separate from the
body.
424 GNU Emacs Manual

The mml-attach-file command is specific to Message mode; in Mail mode use

mail-add-attachment instead. It will prompt only for the name of the file, and will
determine the content type and the disposition automatically. If you want to include some
description of the attached file, type that in the message body.
The actual contents of the attached file are not inserted into the mail buffer. Instead,
some placeholder text is inserted into the mail buffer, like this:
<#part type="text/plain" filename="~/foo.txt" disposition=inline>
<#/part>
When you type C-c C-c or C-c C-s to send the message, the attached file will be delivered
with it.
While composing a message, you can do spelling correction on the message text by typing
M-x ispell-message. If you have yanked an incoming message into the outgoing draft, this
command skips what was yanked, but it checks the text that you yourself inserted (it looks
for indentation or mail-yank-prefix to distinguish the cited lines from your input). See
Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134.
Turning on Message mode (which C-x m does automatically) runs the normal hooks
text-mode-hook and message-mode-hook. Initializing a new outgoing message runs the
normal hook message-setup-hook; you can use this hook if you want to make changes to
the appearance of the mail buffer. See Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.
The main difference between these hooks is just when they are invoked. Whenever
you type C-x m, message-mode-hook runs as soon as the mail buffer is created. Then the
message-setup function inserts the default contents of the buffer. After these default
contents are inserted, message-setup-hook runs.
If you use C-x m to continue an existing composition, message-mode-hook runs immedi-
ately after switching to the mail buffer. If the buffer is unmodified, or if you decide to erase
it and start again, message-setup-hook runs after the default contents are inserted.

29.5 Mail Signature

You can add a standard piece of text—your mail signature—to the end of every message. This
signature may contain information such as your telephone number or your physical location.
The variable message-signature determines how Emacs handles the mail signature.
The default value of message-signature is t; this means to look for your mail signature in
the file ~/.signature. If this file exists, its contents are automatically inserted into the end of
the mail buffer. You can change the signature file via the variable message-signature-file.
If you change message-signature to a string, that specifies the text of the signature
directly.
If you change message-signature to nil, Emacs will not insert your mail signature
automatically. You can insert your mail signature by typing C-c C-w (message-insert-
signature) in the mail buffer. Emacs will look for your signature in the signature file.
If you use Mail mode rather than Message mode for composing your mail, the corre-
sponding variables that determine how your signature is sent are mail-signature and
mail-signature-file instead.
By convention, a mail signature should be marked by a line whose contents are ‘-- ’. If
your signature lacks this prefix, it is added for you. The remainder of your signature should
be no more than four lines.
Chapter 29: Sending Mail 425

29.6 Mail Amusements

M-x spook adds a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The
keywords are chosen from a list of words that suggest you are discussing something subversive.
The idea behind this feature is the suspicion that the NSA1 and other intelligence agencies
snoop on all electronic mail messages that contain keywords suggesting they might find
them interesting. (The agencies say that they don’t, but that’s what they would say.) The
idea is that if lots of people add suspicious words to their messages, the agencies will get so
busy with spurious input that they will have to give up reading it all. Whether or not this
is true, it at least amuses some people.
You can use the fortune program to put a fortune cookie message into outgoing mail.
To do this, add fortune-to-signature to mail-setup-hook:
(add-hook 'mail-setup-hook 'fortune-to-signature)
You will probably need to set the variable fortune-file before using this.

29.7 Mail-Composition Methods

In this chapter we have described the usual Emacs mode for editing and sending mail—
Message mode. This is only one of several available modes. Prior to Emacs 23.2, the default
mode was Mail mode, which is similar to Message mode in many respects but lacks features
such as MIME support. Another available mode is MH-E (see Section “MH-E” in The
Emacs Interface to MH ).
You can choose any of these mail user agents as your preferred method for editing and
sending mail. The commands C-x m, C-x 4 m and C-x 5 m use whichever agent you have
specified; so do various other parts of Emacs that send mail, such as the bug reporter
(see Section 34.3 [Bugs], page 536). To specify a mail user agent, customize the variable
mail-user-agent. Currently, legitimate values include message-user-agent (Message
mode) sendmail-user-agent (Mail mode), gnus-user-agent, and mh-e-user-agent. Ad-
ditional options may be available; check in the manual of your mail user agent package for
details. You may also define another mail user agent using define-mail-user-agent.
If you select a different mail-composition method, the information in this chapter about
the mail buffer and Message mode does not apply; the other methods use a different format
of text in a different buffer, and their commands are different as well.
Similarly, to specify your preferred method for reading mail, customize the variable
read-mail-command. The default is rmail (see Chapter 30 [Rmail], page 426).

1
The US National Security Agency.
426 GNU Emacs Manual

30 Reading Mail with Rmail

Rmail is an Emacs subsystem for reading and disposing of mail that you receive. Rmail
stores mail messages in files called Rmail files. Reading the messages in an Rmail file is done
in a special major mode, Rmail mode, which redefines most letters to run commands for
managing mail.
Emacs also comes with a much more sophisticated and flexible subsystem for reading
mail, called Gnus. Gnus is a very large package, and is therefore described in its own manual,
see The Gnus Newsreader.

30.1 Basic Concepts of Rmail

Using Rmail in the simplest fashion, you have one Rmail file ~/RMAIL in which all of your
mail is saved. It is called your primary Rmail file. The command M-x rmail reads your
primary Rmail file, merges new mail in from your inboxes, displays the first message you
haven’t read yet, and lets you begin reading. The variable rmail-file-name specifies the
name of the primary Rmail file.
Rmail displays only one message in the Rmail file at a time. The message that is shown
is called the current message. Rmail mode’s special commands can do such things as delete
the current message, copy it into another file, send a reply, or move to another message.
You can also create multiple Rmail files (see Chapter 15 [Files], page 145) and use Rmail to
move messages between them (see Section 30.7 [Rmail Output], page 431).
Within the Rmail file, messages are normally arranged sequentially in order of receipt; you
can specify other ways to sort them (see Section 30.12 [Rmail Sorting], page 439). Messages
are identified by consecutive integers which are their message numbers. The number of the
current message is displayed in Rmail’s mode line, followed by the total number of messages
in the file. You can move to a message by specifying its message number with the j key (see
Section 30.3 [Rmail Motion], page 427).
Following the usual conventions of Emacs, changes in an Rmail file become permanent
only when you save the file. You can save it with s (rmail-expunge-and-save), which also
expunges deleted messages from the file first (see Section 30.4 [Rmail Deletion], page 428).
To save the file without expunging, use C-x C-s. Rmail automatically saves the Rmail file
after merging new mail from an inbox file (see Section 30.5 [Rmail Inbox], page 429).
You can exit Rmail with q (rmail-quit); this expunges and saves the Rmail file, then
buries the Rmail buffer as well as its summary buffer, if present (see Section 30.11 [Rmail
Summary], page 436). But there is no need to exit formally. If you switch from Rmail to
editing in other buffers, and never switch back, you have exited. Just make sure to save the
Rmail file eventually (like any other file you have changed). C-x s is a suitable way to do
this (see Section 15.3.1 [Save Commands], page 149). The Rmail command b, rmail-bury,
buries the Rmail buffer and its summary without expunging and saving the Rmail file.

30.2 Scrolling Within a Message

When Rmail displays a message that does not fit on the screen, you must scroll through it
to read the rest. You could do this with the usual scrolling commands: C-v, M-v and M-<
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 427

(see Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 76), but in Rmail scrolling is so frequent that it deserves
to be easier.
SPC Scroll forward (scroll-up-command).
DEL
S-SPC Scroll backward (scroll-down-command).
. Scroll to start of message (rmail-beginning-of-message).
/ Scroll to end of message (rmail-end-of-message).
Since the most common thing to do while reading a message is to scroll through it by
screenfuls, Rmail makes SPC and DEL (or S-SPC) do the same as C-v (scroll-up-command)
and M-v (scroll-down-command) respectively.
The command . (rmail-beginning-of-message) scrolls back to the beginning of the
selected message. This is not quite the same as M-<: for one thing, it does not set the mark;
for another, it resets the buffer boundaries of the current message if you have changed them
(e.g., by editing, see Section 30.15 [Rmail Editing], page 442). Similarly, the command /
(rmail-end-of-message) scrolls forward to the end of the selected message.

30.3 Moving Among Messages

The most basic thing to do with a message is to read it. The way to do this in Rmail is to
make the message current. The usual practice is to move sequentially through the file, since
this is the order of receipt of messages. When you enter Rmail, you are positioned at the
first message that you have not yet made current (that is, the first one that has the ‘unseen’
attribute; see Section 30.9 [Rmail Attributes], page 434). Move forward to see the other new
messages; move backward to re-examine old messages.
n Move to the next nondeleted message, skipping any intervening deleted messages
(rmail-next-undeleted-message).
p Move to the previous nondeleted message (rmail-previous-undeleted-
message).
M-n Move to the next message, including deleted messages (rmail-next-message).
M-p Move to the previous message, including deleted messages (rmail-previous-
message).
C-c C-n Move to the next message with the same subject as the current one (rmail-next-
same-subject).
C-c C-p Move to the previous message with the same subject as the current one
(rmail-previous-same-subject).
j Move to the first message. With argument n, move to message number n
(rmail-show-message).
> Move to the last message (rmail-last-message).
< Move to the first message (rmail-first-message).
M-s regexp RET
Move to the next message containing a match for regexp (rmail-search).
428 GNU Emacs Manual

- M-s regexp RET

Move to the previous message containing a match for regexp. (This is M-s with
a negative argument.)
n and p are the usual way of moving among messages in Rmail. They move through
the messages sequentially, but skip over deleted messages, which is usually what you
want to do. Their command definitions are named rmail-next-undeleted-message and
rmail-previous-undeleted-message. If you do not want to skip deleted messages—for
example, if you want to move to a message to undelete it—use the variants M-n and M-p
(rmail-next-message and rmail-previous-message). A numeric argument to any of these
commands serves as a repeat count.
In Rmail, you can specify a numeric argument by typing just the digits. You don’t need
to type C-u first. You can also specify a negative argument by typing just -.
The M-s (rmail-search) command is Rmail’s version of search. The usual incremental
search command C-s works in Rmail, but it searches only within the current message.
The purpose of M-s is to search for another message. It reads a regular expression (see
Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114) nonincrementally, then searches starting at the beginning
of the following message for a match. It then selects that message. If regexp is empty, M-s
reuses the regexp used the previous time.
To search backward in the file for another message, give M-s a negative argument. In
Rmail you can do this with - M-s. This begins searching from the end of the previous
message.
It is also possible to search for a message based on labels. See Section 30.8 [Rmail Labels],
page 433.
The C-c C-n (rmail-next-same-subject) command moves to the next message with
the same subject as the current one. A prefix argument serves as a repeat count. With a
negative argument, this command moves backward, acting like C-c C-p (rmail-previous-
same-subject). When comparing subjects, these commands ignore the prefixes typically
added to the subjects of replies. These commands are useful for reading all of the messages
pertaining to the same subject, a.k.a. thread.
To move to a message specified by absolute message number, use j (rmail-show-message)
with the message number as argument. With no argument, j selects the first message. <
(rmail-first-message) also selects the first message. > (rmail-last-message) selects the
last message.

30.4 Deleting Messages

When you no longer need to keep a message, you can delete it. This flags it as ignorable,
and some Rmail commands pretend it is no longer present; but it still has its place in the
Rmail file, and still has its message number.
Expunging the Rmail file actually removes the deleted messages. The remaining messages
are renumbered consecutively.
d Delete the current message, and move to the next nondeleted message
(rmail-delete-forward).
C-d Delete the current message, and move to the previous nondeleted message
(rmail-delete-backward).
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 429

u Undelete the current message, or move back to the previous deleted message
and undelete it (rmail-undelete-previous-message).
x Expunge the Rmail file (rmail-expunge).
There are two Rmail commands for deleting messages. Both delete the current message
and select another. d (rmail-delete-forward) moves to the following message, skipping
messages already deleted, while C-d (rmail-delete-backward) moves to the previous
nondeleted message. If there is no nondeleted message to move to in the specified direction,
the message that was just deleted remains current. A numeric prefix argument serves as
a repeat count, to allow deletion of several messages in a single command. A negative
argument reverses the meaning of d and C-d.
Whenever Rmail deletes a message, it runs the hook rmail-delete-message-hook.
When the hook functions are invoked, the message has been marked deleted, but it is still
the current message in the Rmail buffer.
To make all the deleted messages finally vanish from the Rmail file, type x
(rmail-expunge). Until you do this, you can still undelete the deleted messages. The
undeletion command, u (rmail-undelete-previous-message), is designed to cancel the
effect of a d command in most cases. It undeletes the current message if the current message
is deleted. Otherwise it moves backward to previous messages until a deleted message is
found, and undeletes that message. A numeric prefix argument serves as a repeat count, to
allow undeletion of several messages in a single command.
You can usually undo a d with a u because the u moves back to and undeletes the
message that the d deleted. But this does not work when the d skips a few already-deleted
messages that follow the message being deleted; then the u command undeletes the last of
the messages that were skipped. There is no clean way to avoid this problem. However, by
repeating the u command, you can eventually get back to the message that you intend to
undelete. You can also select a particular deleted message with the M-p command, then
type u to undelete it.
A deleted message has the ‘deleted’ attribute, and as a result ‘deleted’ appears in the
mode line when the current message is deleted. In fact, deleting or undeleting a message is
nothing more than adding or removing this attribute. See Section 30.9 [Rmail Attributes],
page 434.

30.5 Rmail Files and Inboxes

When you receive mail locally, the operating system places incoming mail for you in a file
that we call your inbox. When you start up Rmail, it runs a C program called movemail to
copy the new messages from your inbox into your primary Rmail file, which also contains
other messages saved from previous Rmail sessions. It is in this file that you actually read
the mail with Rmail. This operation is called getting new mail. You can get new mail at
any time in Rmail by typing g.
The variable rmail-primary-inbox-list contains a list of the files that are inboxes
for your primary Rmail file. If you don’t set this variable explicitly, Rmail uses the MAIL
environment variable, or, as a last resort, a default inbox based on rmail-spool-directory.
The default inbox file depends on your operating system; often it is /var/mail/username,
/var/spool/mail/username, or /usr/spool/mail/username.
430 GNU Emacs Manual

You can specify the inbox file(s) for any Rmail file for the current session with the
command set-rmail-inbox-list; see Section 30.6 [Rmail Files], page 430.
There are two reasons for having separate Rmail files and inboxes.
1. The inbox file format varies between operating systems and according to the other mail
software in use. Only one part of Rmail needs to know about the alternatives, and it
need only understand how to convert all of them to Rmail’s own format.
2. It is very cumbersome to access an inbox file without danger of losing mail, because it
is necessary to interlock with mail delivery. Moreover, different operating systems use
different interlocking techniques. The strategy of moving mail out of the inbox once
and for all into a separate Rmail file avoids the need for interlocking in all the rest of
Rmail, since only Rmail operates on the Rmail file.
Rmail uses the standard ‘mbox’ format, introduced by Unix and GNU systems for inbox
files, as its internal format of Rmail files. (In fact, there are a few slightly different mbox
formats. The differences are not very important, but you can set the variable rmail-mbox-
format to tell Rmail which form your system uses. See that variable’s documentation for
more details.)
When getting new mail, Rmail first copies the new mail from the inbox file to the Rmail
file; then it saves the Rmail file; then it clears out the inbox file. This way, a system crash
may cause duplication of mail between the inbox and the Rmail file, but cannot lose mail.
If rmail-preserve-inbox is non-nil, then Rmail does not clear out the inbox file when it
gets new mail. You may wish to set this, for example, on a portable computer you use to
check your mail via POP while traveling, so that your mail will remain on the server and
you can save it later on your main desktop workstation.
In some cases, Rmail copies the new mail from the inbox file indirectly. First it runs
the movemail program to move the mail from the inbox to an intermediate file called
.newmail-inboxname, in the same directory as the Rmail file. Then Rmail merges the new
mail from that file, saves the Rmail file, and only then deletes the intermediate file. If there
is a crash at the wrong time, this file continues to exist, and Rmail will use it again the next
time it gets new mail from that inbox.
If Rmail is unable to convert the data in .newmail-inboxname into mbox format, it
renames the file to RMAILOSE.n (n is an integer chosen to make the name unique) so that
Rmail will not have trouble with the data again. You should look at the file, find whatever
message confuses Rmail (probably one that includes the control-underscore character, octal
code 037), and delete it. Then you can use 1 g to get new mail from the corrected file.

30.6 Multiple Rmail Files

Rmail operates by default on your primary Rmail file, which is named ~/RMAIL and receives
your incoming mail from your system inbox file. But you can also have other Rmail files and
edit them with Rmail. These files can receive mail through their own inboxes, or you can
move messages into them with explicit Rmail commands (see Section 30.7 [Rmail Output],
page 431).
i file RET
Read file into Emacs and run Rmail on it (rmail-input).
g Merge new mail from current Rmail file’s inboxes (rmail-get-new-mail).
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 431

C-u g file RET

Merge new mail from inbox file file.
To run Rmail on a file other than your primary Rmail file, you can use the i (rmail-input)
command in Rmail. This visits the file in Rmail mode. You can use M-x rmail-input even
when not in Rmail, but it is easier to type C-u M-x rmail, which does the same thing.
The file you read with i should normally be a valid mbox file. If it is not, Rmail tries to
convert its text to mbox format, and visits the converted text in the buffer. If you save the
buffer, that converts the file.
If you specify a file name that doesn’t exist, i initializes a new buffer for creating a new
Rmail file.
You can also select an Rmail file from a menu. In the Classify menu, choose the Input
Rmail File item; then choose the Rmail file you want. The variables rmail-secondary-
file-directory and rmail-secondary-file-regexp specify which files to offer in the
menu: the first variable says which directory to find them in; the second says which files in
that directory to offer (all those that match the regular expression). If no files match, you
cannot select this menu item. These variables also apply to choosing a file for output (see
Section 30.7 [Rmail Output], page 431).
The inbox files to use are specified by the variable rmail-inbox-list, which is buffer-
local in Rmail mode. As a special exception, if you have specified no inbox files for your
primary Rmail file, it uses the MAIL environment variable, or your standard system inbox.
The g command (rmail-get-new-mail) merges mail into the current Rmail file from its
inboxes. If the Rmail file has no inboxes, g does nothing. The command M-x rmail also
merges new mail into your primary Rmail file.
To merge mail from a file that is not the usual inbox, give the g key a numeric argument,
as in C-u g. Then it reads a file name and merges mail from that file. The inbox file is
not deleted or changed in any way when g with an argument is used. This is, therefore, a
general way of merging one file of messages into another.

30.7 Copying Messages Out to Files

These commands copy messages from an Rmail file into another file.
o file RET
Append a full copy of the current message to the file file (rmail-output).
C-o file RET
Append a copy of the current message, as displayed, to the file file
(rmail-output-as-seen).
w file RET
Output just the message body to the file file, taking the default file name from
the message ‘Subject’ header.
The commands o and C-o copy the current message into a specified file, adding it at
the end. A positive prefix argument serves as a repeat count: that many consecutive
messages will be copied to the specified file, starting with the current one and ignoring
deleted messages.
432 GNU Emacs Manual

The two commands differ mainly in how much to copy: o copies the full message headers,
even if they are not all visible, while C-o copies exactly the headers currently displayed and
no more. See Section 30.13 [Rmail Display], page 440. In addition, o converts the message to
Babyl format (used by Rmail in Emacs version 22 and before) if the file is in Babyl format;
C-o cannot output to Babyl files at all.
If the output file is currently visited in an Emacs buffer, the output commands append
the message to that buffer. It is up to you to save the buffer eventually in its file.
Sometimes you may receive a message whose body holds the contents of a file. You can
save the body to a file (excluding the message header) with the w command (rmail-output-
body-to-file). Often these messages contain the intended file name in the ‘Subject’ field,
so the w command uses the ‘Subject’ field as the default for the output file name (after
replacing some characters that cannot be portably used in file names). However, the file
name is read using the minibuffer, so you can specify a different name if you wish.
You can also output a message to an Rmail file chosen with a menu. In the Classify menu,
choose the Output Rmail File menu item; then choose the Rmail file you want. This outputs
the current message to that file, like the o command. The variables rmail-secondary-
file-directory and rmail-secondary-file-regexp specify which files to offer in the
menu: the first variable says which directory to find them in; the second says which files in
that directory to offer (all those that match the regular expression). If no files match, you
cannot select this menu item.
Copying a message with o or C-o gives the original copy of the message the ‘filed’
attribute, so that ‘filed’ appears in the mode line when such a message is current.
If you like to keep just a single copy of every mail message, set the variable rmail-delete-
after-output to t; then the o, C-o and w commands delete the original message after copying
it. (You can undelete it afterward if you wish, see Section 30.4 [Rmail Deletion], page 428.)
By default, o will leave the deleted status of a message it outputs as it was on the original
message; thus, a message deleted before it was output will appear as deleted in the output file.
Setting the variable rmail-output-reset-deleted-flag to a non-nil value countermands
that: the copy of the message will have its deleted status reset, so the message will appear as
undeleted in the output file. In addition, when this variable is non-nil, specifying a positive
argument to o will not ignore deleted messages when looking for consecutive messages to
output.
The variable rmail-output-file-alist lets you specify intelligent defaults for the
output file, based on the contents of the current message. The value should be a list whose
elements have this form:
(regexp . name-exp)
If there’s a match for regexp in the current message, then the default file name for output
is name-exp. If multiple elements match the message, the first matching element decides
the default file name. The subexpression name-exp may be a string constant giving the file
name to use, or more generally it may be any Lisp expression that yields a file name as a
string. rmail-output-file-alist applies to both o and C-o.
Rmail can automatically save messages from your primary Rmail file (the one
that rmail-file-name specifies) to other files, based on the value of the variable
rmail-automatic-folder-directives. This variable is a list of elements (‘directives’)
that say which messages to save where. Each directive is a list consisting of an output file,
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 433

followed by one or more pairs of a header name and a regular expression. If a message has a
header matching the specified regular expression, that message is saved to the given file. If
the directive has more than one header entry, all must match. Rmail checks directives when
it shows a message from the file rmail-file-name, and applies the first that matches (if
any). If the output file is nil, the message is deleted, not saved. For example, you can use
this feature to save messages from a particular address, or with a particular subject, to a
dedicated file.

30.8 Labels
Each message can have various labels assigned to it as a means of classification. Each
label has a name; different names are different labels. Any given label is either present or
absent on a particular message. A few label names have standard meanings and are given to
messages automatically by Rmail when appropriate; these special labels are called attributes.
All other labels are assigned only by users.
a label RET
Assign the label label to the current message (rmail-add-label).
k label RET
Remove the label label from the current message (rmail-kill-label).
C-M-n labels RET
Move to the next message that has one of the labels labels (rmail-next-
labeled-message).
C-M-p labels RET
Move to the previous message that has one of the labels labels (rmail-previous-
labeled-message).
l labels RET
C-M-l labels RET
Make a summary of all messages containing any of the labels labels
(rmail-summary-by-labels).
The a (rmail-add-label) and k (rmail-kill-label) commands allow you to assign or
remove any label on the current message. If the label argument is empty, it means to assign
or remove the label most recently assigned or removed.
Once you have given messages labels to classify them as you wish, there are three ways
to use the labels: in moving, in summaries, and in sorting.
C-M-n labels RET (rmail-next-labeled-message) moves to the next message that has
one of the labels labels. The argument labels specifies one or more label names, separated
by commas. C-M-p (rmail-previous-labeled-message) is similar, but moves backwards
to previous messages. A numeric argument to either command serves as a repeat count.
The command C-M-l labels RET (rmail-summary-by-labels) displays a summary con-
taining only the messages that have at least one of a specified set of labels. The argument
labels is one or more label names, separated by commas. See Section 30.11 [Rmail Summary],
page 436, for information on summaries.
If the labels argument to C-M-n, C-M-p or C-M-l is empty, it means to use the last set of
labels specified for any of these commands.
434 GNU Emacs Manual

See Section 30.12 [Rmail Sorting], page 439, for information on sorting messages with
labels.

30.9 Rmail Attributes

Some labels such as ‘deleted’ and ‘filed’ have built-in meanings, and Rmail assigns them
to messages automatically at appropriate times; these labels are called attributes. Here is a
list of Rmail attributes:
‘unseen’ Means the message has never been current. Assigned to messages when they
come from an inbox file, and removed when a message is made current. When
you start Rmail, it initially shows the first message that has this attribute.
‘deleted’ Means the message is deleted. Assigned by deletion commands and removed by
undeletion commands (see Section 30.4 [Rmail Deletion], page 428).
‘filed’ Means the message has been copied to some other file. Assigned by the o and
C-o file output commands (see Section 30.7 [Rmail Output], page 431).
‘answered’
Means you have mailed an answer to the message. Assigned by the r command
(rmail-reply). See Section 30.10 [Rmail Reply], page 434.
‘forwarded’
Means you have forwarded the message. Assigned by the f command
(rmail-forward). See Section 30.10 [Rmail Reply], page 434.
‘edited’ Means you have edited the text of the message within Rmail. See Section 30.15
[Rmail Editing], page 442.
‘resent’ Means you have resent the message. Assigned by the command M-x
rmail-resend. See Section 30.10 [Rmail Reply], page 434.
‘retried’ Means you have retried a failed outgoing message. Assigned by the command
M-x rmail-retry-failure. See Section 30.10 [Rmail Reply], page 434.
All other labels are assigned or removed only by users, and have no standard meaning.

30.10 Sending Replies

Rmail has several commands to send outgoing mail. See Chapter 29 [Sending Mail], page 418,
for information on using Message mode, including certain features meant to work with Rmail.
What this section documents are the special commands of Rmail for entering the mail buffer
used to compose the outgoing message. Note that the usual keys for sending mail—C-x m,
C-x 4 m, and C-x 5 m—also work normally in Rmail mode.
m Send a message (rmail-mail).
c Continue editing the already started outgoing message (rmail-continue).
r Send a reply to the current Rmail message (rmail-reply).
f Forward the current message to other users (rmail-forward).
C-u f Resend the current message to other users (rmail-resend).
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 435

M-m Try sending a bounced message a second time (rmail-retry-failure).

The most common reason to send a message while in Rmail is to reply to the message
you are reading. To do this, type r (rmail-reply). This displays a mail composition
buffer in another window, much like C-x 4 m, but preinitializes the ‘Subject’, ‘To’, ‘CC’,
‘In-Reply-To’ and ‘References’ header fields based on the message you are replying to.
The ‘To’ field starts out as the address of the person who sent the message you received,
and the ‘CC’ field starts out with all the other recipients of that message.
You can exclude certain recipients from being included automatically in replies, using
the variable mail-dont-reply-to-names. Its value should be a regular expression; any
recipients that match are excluded from the ‘CC’ field. They are also excluded from the ‘To’
field, unless this would leave the field empty. If this variable is nil, then the first time you
compose a reply it is initialized to a default value that matches your own address.
To reply only to the sender of the original message, enter the reply command with a
numeric argument: C-u r or 1 r. This omits the ‘CC’ field completely for a particular reply.
Once the mail composition buffer has been initialized, editing and sending the mail goes
as usual (see Chapter 29 [Sending Mail], page 418). You can edit the presupplied header
fields if they are not what you want. You can also use commands such as C-c C-y, which
yanks in the message that you are replying to (see Section 29.4 [Mail Commands], page 421).
You can also switch to the Rmail buffer, select a different message there, switch back, and
yank the new current message.
Sometimes a message does not reach its destination. Mailers usually send the failed
message back to you, enclosed in a failure message. The Rmail command M-m (rmail-retry-
failure) prepares to send the same message a second time: it sets up a mail composition
buffer with the same text and header fields as before. If you type C-c C-c right away, you
send the message again exactly the same as the first time. Alternatively, you can edit the
text or headers and then send it. The variable rmail-retry-ignored-headers, in the same
format as rmail-ignored-headers (see Section 30.13 [Rmail Display], page 440), controls
which headers are stripped from the failed message when retrying it.
Another frequent reason to send mail in Rmail is to forward the current message to other
users. f (rmail-forward) makes this easy by preinitializing the mail composition buffer
with the current message as the text, and a subject of the form [from: subject], where
from and subject are the sender and subject of the original message. All you have to do is
fill in the recipients and send. When you forward a message, recipients get a message which
is from you, and which has the original message in its contents.
Rmail offers two formats for forwarded messages. The default is to use the MIME format
(see Section 30.13 [Rmail Display], page 440). This includes the original message as a separate
part. You can use a simpler format if you prefer, by setting the variable rmail-enable-
mime-composing to nil. In this case, Rmail just includes the original message enclosed
between two delimiter lines. It also modifies every line that starts with a dash, by inserting
‘- ’ at the start of the line. When you receive a forwarded message in this format, if it
contains something besides ordinary text—for example, program source code—you might
find it useful to undo that transformation. You can do this by selecting the forwarded
message and typing M-x unforward-rmail-message. This command extracts the original
forwarded message, deleting the inserted ‘- ’ strings, and inserts it into the Rmail file as a
separate message immediately following the current one.
436 GNU Emacs Manual

Resending is an alternative similar to forwarding; the difference is that resending sends a

message that is from the original sender, just as it reached you—with a few added header
fields (‘Resent-From’ and ‘Resent-To’) to indicate that it came via you. To resend a message
in Rmail, use C-u f. (f runs rmail-forward, which invokes rmail-resend if you provide a
numeric argument.)
Use the m (rmail-mail) command to start editing an outgoing message that is not a
reply. It leaves the header fields empty. Its only difference from C-x 4 m is that it makes the
Rmail buffer accessible for C-c C-y, just as r does.
The c (rmail-continue) command resumes editing the mail composition buffer, to finish
editing an outgoing message you were already composing, or to alter a message you have
sent.
If you set the variable rmail-mail-new-frame to a non-nil value, then all the Rmail
commands to start sending a message create a new frame to edit it in. This frame is deleted
when you send the message.
All the Rmail commands to send a message use the mail-composition method that you
have chosen (see Section 29.7 [Mail Methods], page 425).

30.11 Summaries
A summary is a buffer containing one line per message to give you an overview of the mail in
an Rmail file. Each line shows the message number and date, the sender, the line count, the
labels, and the subject. Moving point in the summary buffer selects messages as you move
to their summary lines. Almost all Rmail commands are valid in the summary buffer also;
when used there, they apply to the message described by the current line of the summary.
A summary buffer applies to a single Rmail file only; if you are editing multiple Rmail
files, each one can have its own summary buffer. The summary buffer name is made by
appending ‘-summary’ to the Rmail buffer’s name. Normally only one summary buffer is
displayed at a time.

30.11.1 Making Summaries

Here are the commands to create a summary for the current Rmail buffer. Once the Rmail
buffer has a summary, changes in the Rmail buffer (such as deleting or expunging messages,
and getting new mail) automatically update the summary.
h
C-M-h Summarize all messages (rmail-summary).
l labels RET
C-M-l labels RET
Summarize messages that have one or more of the specified labels
(rmail-summary-by-labels).
C-M-r rcpts RET
Summarize messages that match the specified recipients (rmail-summary-by-
recipients).
C-M-t topic RET
Summarize messages that have a match for the specified regexp topic in their
subjects (rmail-summary-by-topic).
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 437

C-M-s regexp RET

Summarize messages whose headers match the specified regular expression
regexp (rmail-summary-by-regexp).
C-M-f senders RET
Summarize messages that match the specified senders. (rmail-summary-by-
senders).
The h or C-M-h (rmail-summary) command fills the summary buffer for the current
Rmail buffer with a summary of all the messages in the buffer. It then displays and selects
the summary buffer in another window.
C-M-l labels RET (rmail-summary-by-labels) makes a partial summary mentioning
only the messages that have one or more of the labels labels. labels should contain label
names separated by commas.
C-M-r rcpts RET (rmail-summary-by-recipients) makes a partial summary mention-
ing only the messages that have one or more recipients matching the regular expression
rcpts. This is matched against the ‘To’, ‘From’, and ‘CC’ headers (supply a prefix argument
to exclude the ‘CC’ header).
C-M-t topic RET (rmail-summary-by-topic) makes a partial summary mentioning only
the messages whose subjects have a match for the regular expression topic. With a prefix
argument, the match is against the whole message, not just the subject.
C-M-s regexp RET (rmail-summary-by-regexp) makes a partial summary that mentions
only the messages whose headers (including the date and the subject lines) match the regular
expression regexp.
C-M-f senders RET (rmail-summary-by-senders) makes a partial summary that men-
tions only the messages whose ‘From’ fields match the regular expression senders.
Note that there is only one summary buffer for any Rmail buffer; making any kind of
summary discards any previous summary.
The variable rmail-summary-window-size says how many lines to use for the summary
window. The variable rmail-summary-line-count-flag controls whether the summary
line for a message should include the line count of the message. Setting this option to nil
might speed up the generation of summaries.

30.11.2 Editing in Summaries

You can use the Rmail summary buffer to do almost anything you can do in the Rmail
buffer itself. In fact, once you have a summary buffer, there’s no need to switch back to the
Rmail buffer.
You can select and display various messages in the Rmail buffer, from the summary
buffer, just by moving point in the summary buffer to different lines. It doesn’t matter
what Emacs command you use to move point; whichever line point is on at the end of the
command, that message is selected in the Rmail buffer.
Almost all Rmail commands work in the summary buffer as well as in the Rmail buffer.
Thus, d in the summary buffer deletes the current message, u undeletes, and x expunges.
(However, in the summary buffer, if there are no more undeleted messages in the relevant
direction, the delete commands go to the first or last message, rather than staying on the
current message.) o and C-o output the current message to a FILE; r starts a reply to
438 GNU Emacs Manual

it; etc. You can scroll the current message while remaining in the summary buffer using
SPC and DEL. However, in the summary buffer scrolling past the end or the beginning of
a message with SPC or DEL goes, respectively, to the next or previous undeleted message.
Customize the rmail-summary-scroll-between-messages option to nil to disable scrolling
to next/previous messages.
M-u (rmail-summary-undelete-many) undeletes all deleted messages in the summary.
A prefix argument means to undelete that many of the previous deleted messages.
The Rmail commands to move between messages also work in the summary buffer, but
with a twist: they move through the set of messages included in the summary. They also
ensure the Rmail buffer appears on the screen (unlike cursor motion commands, which
update the contents of the Rmail buffer but don’t display it in a window unless it already
appears). Here is a list of these commands:
n Move to next line, skipping lines saying “deleted”, and select its message
(rmail-summary-next-msg).
p Move to previous line, skipping lines saying “deleted”, and select its message
(rmail-summary-previous-msg).
M-n Move to next line and select its message (rmail-summary-next-all).
M-p Move to previous line and select its message (rmail-summary-previous-all).
> Move to the last line, and select its message (rmail-summary-last-message).
< Move to the first line, and select its message (rmail-summary-first-message).
j
RET Select the message on the current line (ensuring that the Rmail buffer appears
on the screen; rmail-summary-goto-msg). With argument n, select message
number n and move to its line in the summary buffer; this signals an error if
the message is not listed in the summary buffer.
M-s pattern RET
Search through messages for pattern starting with the current message; select
the message found, and move point in the summary buffer to that message’s
line (rmail-summary-search). A prefix argument acts as a repeat count; a
negative argument means search backward (equivalent to rmail-summary-
search-backward.)
C-M-n labels RET
Move to the next message with at least one of the specified labels
(rmail-summary-next-labeled-message). labels is a comma-separated list of
labels. A prefix argument acts as a repeat count.
C-M-p labels RET
Move to the previous message with at least one of the specified labels
(rmail-summary-previous-labeled-message).
C-c C-n RET
Move to the next message with the same subject as the current message
(rmail-summary-next-same-subject). A prefix argument acts as a repeat
count.
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 439

C-c C-p RET

Move to the previous message with the same subject as the current message
(rmail-summary-previous-same-subject).
Deletion, undeletion, and getting new mail, and even selection of a different message
all update the summary buffer when you do them in the Rmail buffer. If the variable
rmail-redisplay-summary is non-nil, these actions also bring the summary buffer back
onto the screen.
When you are finished using the summary, type Q (rmail-summary-wipe) to delete
the summary buffer’s window. You can also exit Rmail while in the summary: q
(rmail-summary-quit) deletes the summary window, then exits from Rmail by saving the
Rmail file and switching to another buffer. Alternatively, b (rmail-summary-bury) simply
buries the Rmail summary and buffer.

30.12 Sorting the Rmail File

C-c C-s C-d
M-x rmail-sort-by-date
Sort messages of current Rmail buffer by date.
C-c C-s C-s
M-x rmail-sort-by-subject
Sort messages of current Rmail buffer by subject.
C-c C-s C-a
M-x rmail-sort-by-author
Sort messages of current Rmail buffer by author’s name.
C-c C-s C-r
M-x rmail-sort-by-recipient
Sort messages of current Rmail buffer by recipient’s name.
C-c C-s C-c
M-x rmail-sort-by-correspondent
Sort messages of current Rmail buffer by the name of the other correspondent.
C-c C-s C-l
M-x rmail-sort-by-lines
Sort messages of current Rmail buffer by number of lines.
C-c C-s C-k RET labels RET
M-x rmail-sort-by-labels RET labels RET
Sort messages of current Rmail buffer by labels. The argument labels should be
a comma-separated list of labels. The order of these labels specifies the order
of messages; messages with the first label come first, messages with the second
label come second, and so on. Messages that have none of these labels come
last.
The Rmail sort commands perform a stable sort: if there is no reason to prefer either one
of two messages, their order remains unchanged. You can use this to sort by more than one
criterion. For example, if you use rmail-sort-by-date and then rmail-sort-by-author,
messages from the same author appear in order by date.
440 GNU Emacs Manual

With a prefix argument, all these commands reverse the order of comparison. This means
they sort messages from newest to oldest, from biggest to smallest, or in reverse alphabetical
order.
The same keys in the summary buffer run similar functions; for example, C-c C-s C-l
runs rmail-summary-sort-by-lines. These commands always sort the whole Rmail buffer,
even if the summary is only showing a subset of messages.
Note that you cannot undo a sort, so you may wish to save the Rmail buffer before
sorting it.

30.13 Display of Messages

This section describes how Rmail displays mail headers, MIME sections and attachments,
URLs, and encrypted messages.
t Toggle display of complete header (rmail-toggle-header).
Before displaying each message for the first time, Rmail reformats its header, hiding
uninteresting header fields to reduce clutter. The t (rmail-toggle-header) command
toggles this, switching between showing the reformatted header fields and showing the
complete, original header. With a positive prefix argument, the command shows the
reformatted header; with a zero or negative prefix argument, it shows the full header.
Selecting the message again also reformats it if necessary.
The variable rmail-ignored-headers holds a regular expression specifying the header
fields to hide; any matching header line will be hidden. The variable rmail-nonignored-
headers overrides this: any header field matching that regular expression is shown even
if it matches rmail-ignored-headers too. The variable rmail-displayed-headers is an
alternative to these two variables; if non-nil, this should be a regular expression specifying
which headers to display (the default is nil).
Rmail highlights certain header fields that are especially interesting—by default, the
‘From’ and ‘Subject’ fields. This highlighting uses the rmail-highlight face. The variable
rmail-highlighted-headers holds a regular expression specifying the header fields to
highlight; if it matches the beginning of a header field, that whole field is highlighted. To
disable this feature, set rmail-highlighted-headers to nil.
If a message is in MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) format and contains
multiple parts (MIME entities), Rmail displays each part with a tagline. The tagline
summarizes the part’s index, size, and content type. Depending on the content type, it may
also contain one or more buttons; these perform actions such as saving the part into a file.
RET Hide or show the MIME part at point (rmail-mime-toggle-hidden).
TAB Move point to the next MIME tagline button. (rmail-mime-next-item).
S-TAB Move point to the previous MIME part (rmail-mime-previous-item).
v Toggle between MIME display and raw message (rmail-mime).
Each plain-text MIME part is initially displayed immediately after its tagline, as part
of the Rmail buffer (unless the message has an HTML part, see below), while MIME parts
of other types are represented only by their taglines, with their actual contents hidden. In
either case, you can toggle a MIME part between its displayed and hidden states by typing
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 441

RET anywhere in the part—or anywhere in its tagline (except for buttons for other actions,
if there are any). Type RET (or click with the mouse) to activate a tagline button, and TAB
to cycle point between tagline buttons.
The v (rmail-mime) command toggles between the default MIME display described
above, and a raw display showing the undecoded MIME data. With a prefix argument, this
command toggles the display of only an entity at point.
If the message has an HTML MIME part, Rmail displays it in preference to the plain-text
part, if Emacs can render HTML1 . To prevent that, and have the plain-text part displayed
instead, customize the variable rmail-mime-prefer-html to a nil value.
To prevent Rmail from handling MIME decoded messages, change the variable
rmail-enable-mime to nil. When this is the case, the v (rmail-mime) command instead
creates a temporary buffer to display the current MIME message.
If the current message is an encrypted one, use the command C-c C-d (rmail-epa-
decrypt) to decrypt it, using the EasyPG library (see Section “EasyPG” in EasyPG
Assistant User’s Manual).
You can highlight and activate URLs in the Rmail buffer using Goto Address mode:
(add-hook 'rmail-show-message-hook 'goto-address-mode)
Then you can browse these URLs by clicking on them with mouse-2 (or mouse-1 quickly)
or by moving to one and typing C-c RET. See Section 31.12.4 [Activating URLs], page 482.

30.14 Rmail and Coding Systems

Rmail automatically decodes messages which contain non-ASCII characters, just as
Emacs does with files you visit and with subprocess output. Rmail uses the standard
‘charset=charset’ header in the message, if any, to determine how the message was
encoded by the sender. It maps charset into the corresponding Emacs coding system (see
Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223), and uses that coding system to decode message
text. If the message header doesn’t have the ‘charset’ specification, or if charset is not
recognized, Rmail chooses the coding system with the usual Emacs heuristics and defaults
(see Section 19.6 [Recognize Coding], page 225).
Occasionally, a message is decoded incorrectly, either because Emacs guessed the wrong
coding system in the absence of the ‘charset’ specification, or because the specifica-
tion was inaccurate. For example, a misconfigured mailer could send a message with
a ‘charset=iso-8859-1’ header when the message is actually encoded in koi8-r. When
you see the message text garbled, or some of its characters displayed as hex codes or empty
boxes, this may have happened.
You can correct the problem by decoding the message again using the right coding
system, if you can figure out or guess which one is right. To do this, invoke the M-x
rmail-redecode-body command. It reads the name of a coding system, and then redecodes
the message using the coding system you specified. If you specified the right coding system,
the result should be readable.
When you get new mail in Rmail, each message is translated automatically from the
coding system it is written in, as if it were a separate file. This uses the priority list of
1
This capability requires that Emacs be built with libxml2 support or that you have the Lynx browser
installed.
442 GNU Emacs Manual

coding systems that you have specified. If a MIME message specifies a character set, Rmail
obeys that specification. For reading and saving Rmail files themselves, Emacs uses the
coding system specified by the variable rmail-file-coding-system. The default value is
nil, which means that Rmail files are not translated (they are read and written in the
Emacs internal character code).

30.15 Editing Within a Message

Most of the usual Emacs key bindings are available in Rmail mode, though a few, such as
C-M-n and C-M-h, are redefined by Rmail for other purposes. However, the Rmail buffer is
normally read only, and most of the letters are redefined as Rmail commands. If you want
to edit the text of a message, you must use the Rmail command e.
e Edit the current message as ordinary text.
The e command (rmail-edit-current-message) switches from Rmail mode into Rmail
Edit mode, another major mode which is nearly the same as Text mode. The mode line
indicates this change.
In Rmail Edit mode, letters insert themselves as usual and the Rmail commands are
not available. You can edit the message body and header fields. When you are finished
editing the message, type C-c C-c (rmail-cease-edit) to switch back to Rmail mode.
Alternatively, you can return to Rmail mode but cancel any editing that you have done, by
typing C-c C-] (rmail-abort-edit).
Entering Rmail Edit mode runs the hook text-mode-hook; then it runs the hook
rmail-edit-mode-hook (see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504). Returning to ordinary
Rmail mode adds the attribute ‘edited’ to the message, if you have made any changes in it
(see Section 30.9 [Rmail Attributes], page 434).

30.16 Digest Messages

A digest message is a message which exists to contain and carry several other messages.
Digests are used on some mailing lists; all the messages that arrive for the list during a period
of time such as one day are put inside a single digest which is then sent to the subscribers.
Transmitting the single digest uses less computer time than transmitting the individual
messages even though the total size is the same, because of the per-message overhead in
network mail transmission.
When you receive a digest message, the most convenient way to read it is to undigestify it:
to turn it back into many individual messages. Then you can read and delete the individual
messages as it suits you. To do this, select the digest message and type the command M-x
undigestify-rmail-message. This extracts the submessages as separate Rmail messages,
and inserts them following the digest. The digest message itself is flagged as deleted.

30.17 Reading Rot13 Messages

Mailing list messages that might offend or annoy some readers are sometimes encoded in a
simple code called rot13—so named because it rotates the alphabet by 13 letters. This code
is not for secrecy, as it provides none; rather, it enables those who wish to avoid seeing the
real text of the message. For example, a review of a film might use rot13 to hide important
plot points.
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 443

To view a buffer that uses the rot13 code, use the command M-x rot13-other-window.
This displays the current buffer in another window which applies the code when displaying
the text.
If you are only interested in a region, the command M-x rot13-region might be preferable.
This will encrypt/decrypt the active region in-place. If the buffer is read-only, it will attempt
to display the plain text in the echo area. If the text is too long for the echo area, the
command will pop up a temporary buffer with the encrypted/decrypted text.

30.18 movemail program

Rmail uses the movemail program to move mail from your inbox to your Rmail file (see
Section 30.5 [Rmail Inbox], page 429). When loaded for the first time, Rmail attempts
to locate the movemail program and determine its version. There are two versions of the
movemail program: the GNU Mailutils version (see Section “movemail” in GNU mailutils),
and an Emacs-specific version that is built and installed unless Emacs was configured
--with-mailutils in effect. The two movemail versions support the same command line
syntax and the same basic subset of options. However, the Mailutils version offers additional
features and is more secure.
The Emacs version of movemail can retrieve mail from the usual Unix mailbox formats.
Warning: Although it can also use the POP3 protocol, this is not recommended because it
does not support POP3 via encrypted TLS channels.
The Mailutils version is able to handle a wide set of mailbox formats, such as plain Unix
mailboxes, maildir and MH mailboxes, etc. It is able to access remote mailboxes using the
POP3 or IMAP4 protocol, and can retrieve mail from them using a TLS encrypted channel.
It also accepts mailbox arguments in URL form. The detailed description of mailbox URLs
can be found in Section “URL” in Mailbox URL Formats. In short, a URL is:
proto://[user[:password]@]host-or-file-name[:port]
where square brackets denote optional elements.
proto Specifies the mailbox protocol, or format to use. The exact semantics of the
rest of URL elements depends on the actual value of proto (see below).
user User name to access the remote mailbox.
password User password to access the remote mailbox.
host-or-file-name
Hostname of the remote server for remote mailboxes or file name of a local
mailbox.
port Optional port number, if not the default for that protocol.
proto can be one of:
mbox Usual Unix mailbox format. In this case, user, pass and port are not
used, and host-or-file-name denotes the file name of the mailbox file, e.g.,
mbox:///var/spool/mail/smith.
mh A local mailbox in the MH format. user, pass and port are not used. host-or-
file-name denotes the name of MH folder, e.g., mh:///Mail/inbox.
444 GNU Emacs Manual

maildir A local mailbox in the maildir format. user, pass and port are not
used, and host-or-file-name denotes the name of maildir mailbox, e.g.,
maildir:///mail/inbox.
file Any local file in mailbox format. Its actual format is detected automatically by
movemail.
pop
pops A remote mailbox to be accessed via POP3 protocol. user specifies the remote
user name to use, pass may be used to specify the user password, host-or-file-
name is the name or IP address of the remote mail server to connect to, and
port is the port number; e.g., pop://smith:[email protected]:995.
If the server supports it, movemail tries to use an encrypted connection—use
the ‘pops’ form to require one.
imap
imaps A remote mailbox to be accessed via IMAP4 protocol. user specifies the remote
user name to use, pass may be used to specify the user password, host-or-file-
name is the name or IP address of the remote mail server to connect to, and port
is the port number; e.g., imap://smith:[email protected]:993. If
the server supports it, movemail tries to use an encrypted connection—use the
‘imaps’ form to require one.
Alternatively, you can specify the file name of the mailbox to use. This is equivalent to
specifying the ‘file’ protocol:
/var/spool/mail/user ≡ file:///var/spool/mail/user
The variable rmail-movemail-program controls which version of movemail to use. If
that is a string, it specifies the absolute file name of the movemail executable. If it is
nil, Rmail searches for movemail in the directories listed in rmail-movemail-search-path,
then in exec-path (see Section 31.5 [Shell], page 453), then in exec-directory.

30.19 Retrieving Mail from Remote Mailboxes

Some sites use a method called POP3 for accessing users’ inbox data instead of storing the
data in inbox files. The Mailutils movemail by default supports POP3 with TLS encryption.
Warning: Although the Emacs movemail supports POP3, its use for this is not recommended
since it does not support encrypted connections—the Mailutils version does. Both versions
of movemail work only with POP3, not with older versions of POP.
You can specify a POP3 inbox by using a POP3 URL (see Section 30.18 [Movemail],
page 443). A POP3 URL is of the form ‘pop://username@hostname:port’, where hostname
and port are the host name (or IP address) and port number of the remote mail server
and username is the user name on that server. Additionally, you may specify the password
in the mailbox URL: ‘pop://username:password@hostname:port’. In this case, password
takes preference over the one set by rmail-remote-password (see below). This is especially
useful if you have several remote mailboxes with different passwords. If using Mailutils
movemail, you may wish to use ‘pops’ in place of ‘pop’.
For backward compatibility, Rmail also supports an alternative way of specifying remote
POP3 mailboxes. Specifying an inbox name in the form ‘po:username:hostname:port’
Chapter 30: Reading Mail with Rmail 445

is equivalent to ‘pop://username@hostname:port’. If you omit the :hostname part, the

MAILHOST environment variable specifies the machine on which to look for the POP3 server.
Another method for accessing remote mailboxes is IMAP. This method is supported
only by the Mailutils movemail. To specify an IMAP mailbox in the inbox list, use the
following mailbox URL: ‘imap://username[:password]@hostname:port’. The password
part is optional, as described above. You may wish to use ‘imaps’ in place of ‘imap’.
Accessing a remote mailbox may require a password. Rmail uses the following algorithm
to retrieve it:
1. If a password is present in the mailbox URL (see above), it is used.
2. If the variable rmail-remote-password-required is nil, Rmail assumes no password
is required.
3. If the variable rmail-remote-password is non-nil, its value is used.
4. Otherwise, Rmail will ask you for the password to use.
On some mail servers the usernames include domain information, which can mean they
contain the ‘@’ character. The inbox specifier string uses ‘@’ to signal the start of the
mailserver name. This creates confusion for movemail. If your username contains ‘@’ and
you’re using Mailutils movemail then you can fix this: Replace @ in the user name with its
URL encoding ‘%40’.
If you need to pass additional command-line flags to movemail, set the variable
rmail-movemail-flags a list of the flags you wish to use. Do not use this variable to pass
the ‘-p’ flag to preserve your inbox contents; use rmail-preserve-inbox instead.
The movemail program installed at your site may support Kerberos authentication. If
it is supported, it is used by default whenever you attempt to retrieve POP3 mail when
rmail-remote-password and rmail-remote-password-required are unset.
Some POP3 servers store messages in reverse order. If your server does this, and you
would rather read your mail in the order in which it was received, you can tell movemail to
reverse the order of downloaded messages by adding the ‘-r’ flag to rmail-movemail-flags.
Mailutils movemail supports TLS encryption. If you wish to use it, add the ‘--tls’ flag
to rmail-movemail-flags.

30.20 Retrieving Mail from Local Mailboxes in Various

Formats
If your incoming mail is stored on a local machine in a format other than Unix mailbox, you
will need the Mailutils movemail to retrieve it. See Section 30.18 [Movemail], page 443, for
the detailed description of movemail versions. For example, to access mail from an inbox
in maildir format located in /var/spool/mail/in, you would include the following in the
Rmail inbox list:
maildir:///var/spool/mail/in
446 GNU Emacs Manual

31 Miscellaneous Commands
This chapter contains several brief topics that do not fit anywhere else: reading Usenet
news, host and network security, viewing PDFs and other such documents, web browsing,
running shell commands and shell subprocesses, using a single shared Emacs for utilities that
expect to run an editor as a subprocess, printing, sorting text, editing binary files, saving an
Emacs session for later resumption, recursive editing level, following hyperlinks, and various
diversions and amusements.

31.1 Email and Usenet News with Gnus

Gnus is an Emacs package primarily designed for reading and posting Usenet news. It can
also be used to read and respond to messages from a number of other sources—email, remote
directories, digests, and so on. Here we introduce Gnus and describe several basic features.
For full details on Gnus, type C-h i and then select the Gnus manual.

31.1.1 Gnus Buffers

Gnus uses several buffers to display information and to receive commands. The three most
commonly-used Gnus buffers are the group buffer, the summary buffer and the article buffer.
The group buffer contains a list of article sources (e.g., newsgroups and email inboxes),
which are collectively referred to as groups. This is the first buffer Gnus displays when it
starts up. It normally displays only the groups to which you subscribe and that contain
unread articles. From this buffer, you can select a group to read.
The summary buffer lists the articles in a single group, showing one article per line. By
default, it displays each article’s author, subject, and line number. The summary buffer is
created when you select a group in the group buffer, and is killed when you exit the group.
From the summary buffer, you can choose an article to view. The article is displayed
in the article buffer. In normal Gnus usage, you view this buffer but do not select it—all
useful Gnus commands can be invoked from the summary buffer. But you can select the
article buffer, and execute Gnus commands from it, if you wish.

31.1.2 When Gnus Starts Up

If your system has been set up for reading Usenet news, getting started with Gnus is
easy—just type M-x gnus.
On starting up, Gnus reads your news initialization file: a file named .newsrc in your
home directory which lists your Usenet newsgroups and subscriptions (this file is not unique
to Gnus; it is used by many other newsreader programs). It then tries to contact the system’s
default news server, which is typically specified by the NNTPSERVER environment variable.
If your system does not have a default news server, or if you wish to use Gnus for reading
email, then before invoking M-x gnus you need to tell Gnus where to get news and/or mail.
To do this, customize the variables gnus-select-method and/or gnus-secondary-select-
methods. See the Gnus manual for details.
Once Gnus has started up, it displays the group buffer. By default, the group buffer
shows only a small number of subscribed groups. Groups with other statuses—unsubscribed,
killed, or zombie—are hidden. The first time you start Gnus, any group to which you are
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 447

not subscribed is made into a killed group; any group that subsequently appears on the
news server becomes a zombie group.
To proceed, you must select a group in the group buffer to open the summary buffer
for that group; then, select an article in the summary buffer to view its article buffer in a
separate window. The following sections explain how to use the group and summary buffers
to do this.
To quit Gnus, type q in the group buffer. This automatically records your group statuses
in the files .newsrc and .newsrc.eld, so that they take effect in subsequent Gnus sessions.

31.1.3 Using the Gnus Group Buffer

The following commands are available in the Gnus group buffer:
SPC Switch to the summary buffer for the group on the current line (gnus-group-
read-group).
l
As In the group buffer, list only the groups to which you subscribe and which
contain unread articles (gnus-group-list-groups; this is the default listing).
L
Au List all subscribed and unsubscribed groups, but not killed or zombie groups
(gnus-group-list-all-groups).
Ak List killed groups (gnus-group-list-killed).
Az List zombie groups (gnus-group-list-zombies).
u Toggle the subscription status of the group (gnus-group-toggle-
subscription-at-point) on the current line. Invoking this on a killed or
zombie group turns it into an unsubscribed group.
C-k Kill the group on the current line (gnus-group-kill-group). Killed groups are
not recorded in the .newsrc file, and they are not shown in the l or L listings.
DEL Move point to the previous group containing unread articles (gnus-group-
prev-unread-group).
n Move point to the next unread group (gnus-group-next-unread-group).
p Move point to the previous unread group (gnus-group-prev-unread-group).
q Update your Gnus settings, and quit Gnus (gnus-group-exit).

31.1.4 Using the Gnus Summary Buffer

The following commands are available in the Gnus summary buffer:
SPC If there is no article selected, select the article on the current line and display its
article buffer. Otherwise, try scrolling the selected article buffer in its window;
on reaching the end of the buffer, select the next unread article (gnus-summary-
next-page).
Thus, you can read through all articles by repeatedly typing SPC.
DEL Scroll the text of the article backwards (gnus-summary-prev-page).
448 GNU Emacs Manual

n Select the next unread article (gnus-summary-next-unread-article).

p Select the previous unread article (gnus-summary-prev-unread-article).
s Do an incremental search on the selected article buffer (gnus-summary-isearch-
article), as if you switched to the buffer and typed C-s (see Section 12.1
[Incremental Search], page 104).
M-s M-s regexp RET
Search forward for articles containing a match for regexp (gnus-summary-
search-article-forward).
M-r regexp RET
Search back for articles containing a match for regexp (gnus-summary-search-
article-backward).
q Exit the summary buffer and return to the group buffer (gnus-summary-exit).

31.2 Host Security

Emacs runs inside an operating system such as GNU/Linux, and relies on the operating
system to check security constraints such as accesses to files. The default settings for Emacs
are designed for typical use; they may require some tailoring in environments where security
is more of a concern, or less of a concern, than usual. For example, file-local variables
can be risky, and you can set the variable enable-local-variables to :safe or (even
more conservatively) to nil; conversely, if your files can all be trusted and the default
checking for these variables is irritating, you can set enable-local-variables to :all. See
Section 33.2.4.2 [Safe File Variables], page 509.
See Section “Security Considerations” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for more
information about security considerations when using Emacs as part of a larger application.

31.3 Network Security

Whenever Emacs establishes any network connection, it passes the established connection
to the Network Security Manager (NSM). NSM is responsible for enforcing the network
security under your control. Currently, this works by using the Transport Layer Security
(TLS) features.
The network-security-level variable determines the security level that NSM enforces.
If its value is low, no security checks are performed. This is not recommended, and will
basically mean that your network connections can’t be trusted. However, the setting can be
useful in limited circumstances, as when testing network issues.
If this variable is medium (which is the default), a number of checks will be performed.
If as result NSM determines that the network connection might not be trustworthy, it will
make you aware of that, and will ask you what to do about the network connection.
You can decide to register a permanent security exception for an unverified connection, a
temporary exception, or refuse the connection entirely.
In addition to the basic certificate correctness checks, several TLS algorithm checks are
available. Some encryption technologies that were previously thought to be secure have
shown themselves to be fragile, so Emacs (by default) warns you about some of these
problems.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 449

The protocol network checks is controlled via the network-security-protocol-checks

variable.
It’s an alist where the first element of each association is the name of the check, and the
second element is the security level where the check should be used.
An element like (rc4 medium) will result in the function nsm-protocol-check--rc4
being called like thus: (nsm-protocol-check--rc4 host port status settings). The
function should return non-nil if the connection should proceed and nil otherwise.
Below is a list of the checks done on the default medium level.
unable to verify a TLS certificate
If the connection is a TLS, SSL or STARTTLS connection, NSM will check whether
the certificate used to establish the identity of the server we’re connecting to
can be verified.
While an invalid certificate is often the cause for concern (there could be a Man-
in-the-Middle hijacking your network connection and stealing your password),
there may be valid reasons for going ahead with the connection anyway. For
instance, the server may be using a self-signed certificate, or the certificate may
have expired. It’s up to you to determine whether it’s acceptable to continue
with the connection.
a self-signed certificate has changed
If you’ve previously accepted a self-signed certificate, but it has now changed,
that could mean that the server has just changed the certificate, but it might
also mean that the network connection has been hijacked.
previously encrypted connection now unencrypted
If the connection is unencrypted, but it was encrypted in previous sessions, this
might mean that there is a proxy between you and the server that strips away
STARTTLS announcements, leaving the connection unencrypted. This is usually
very suspicious.
talking to an unencrypted service when sending a password
When connecting to an IMAP or POP3 server, these should usually be encrypted,
because it’s common to send passwords over these connections. Similarly, if
you’re sending email via SMTP that requires a password, you usually want that
connection to be encrypted. If the connection isn’t encrypted, NSM will warn
you.
Diffie-Hellman low prime bits
When doing the public key exchange, the number of prime bits should be high
enough to ensure that the channel can’t be eavesdropped on by third parties. If
this number is too low, Emacs will warn you. (This is the diffie-hellman-
prime-bits check in network-security-protocol-checks).
RC4 stream cipher
The RC4 stream cipher is believed to be of low quality and may allow eavesdrop-
ping by third parties. (This is the rc4 check in network-security-protocol-
checks).
450 GNU Emacs Manual

SHA1 in the host certificate or in intermediate certificates

It is believed that if an intermediate certificate uses the SHA1 hashing algo-
rithm, then third parties can issue certificates pretending to be that issuing
instance. These connections are therefore vulnerable to man-in-the-middle
attacks. (These are the signature-sha1 and intermediate-sha1 checks in
network-security-protocol-checks).
SSL1, SSL2 and SSL3
The protocols older than TLS1.0 are believed to be vulnerable to a variety of at-
tacks, and you may want to avoid using these if what you’re doing requires higher
security. (This is the ssl check in network-security-protocol-checks).

If network-security-level is high, the following checks will be made, in addition to

the above:

3DES cipher
The 3DES stream cipher provides at most 112 bits of effective security,
which is considered to be towards the low end. (This is the 3des check in
network-security-protocol-checks).
a validated certificate changes the public key
Servers change their keys occasionally, and that is normally nothing to be
concerned about. However, if you are worried that your network connections
are being hijacked by agencies who have access to pliable Certificate Authorities
which issue new certificates for third-party services, you may want to keep track
of these changes.

Finally, if network-security-level is paranoid, you will also be notified the first time
NSM sees any new certificate. This will allow you to inspect all the certificates from all the
connections that Emacs makes.
The following additional variables can be used to control details of NSM operation:

nsm-settings-file
This is the file where NSM stores details about connections. It defaults to
~/.emacs.d/network-security.data.
nsm-save-host-names
By default, host names will not be saved for non-STARTTLS connections. Instead
a host/port hash is used to identify connections. This means that one can’t
casually read the settings file to see what servers the user has connected to. If
this variable is t, NSM will also save host names in the nsm-settings-file.

31.4 Document Viewing

DocView mode is a major mode for viewing DVI, PostScript (PS), PDF, OpenDocument,
Microsoft Office, EPUB, CBZ, FB2, XPS and OXPS documents. It provides features such as
slicing, zooming, and searching inside documents. It works by converting the document to
a set of images using the gs (GhostScript) or pdfdraw/mutool draw (MuPDF) commands
and other external tools, and then displays those converted images.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 451

When you visit a document file that can be displayed with DocView mode, Emacs
automatically uses that mode1 . As an exception, when you visit a PostScript file, Emacs
switches to PS mode, a major mode for editing PostScript files as text; however, it also
enables DocView minor mode, so you can type C-c C-c to view the document with DocView.
In either DocView mode or DocView minor mode, repeating C-c C-c (doc-view-toggle-
display) toggles between DocView and the underlying file contents.
When you visit a file which would normally be handled by DocView mode but some
requirement is not met (e.g., you operate in a terminal frame or Emacs has no PNG support),
you are queried if you want to view the document’s contents as plain text. If you confirm,
the buffer is put in text mode and DocView minor mode is activated. Thus, by typing C-c
C-c you switch to the fallback mode. With another C-c C-c you return to DocView mode.
The plain text contents can also be displayed from within DocView mode by typing C-c
C-t (doc-view-open-text).
You can explicitly enable DocView mode with the command M-x doc-view-mode. You
can toggle DocView minor mode with M-x doc-view-minor-mode.
When DocView mode starts, it displays a welcome screen and begins formatting the file,
page by page. It displays the first page once that has been formatted.
To kill the DocView buffer, type k (doc-view-kill-proc-and-buffer). To bury it, type
q (quit-window).

31.4.1 DocView Navigation

In DocView mode, you can scroll the current page using the usual Emacs movement keys:
C-p, C-n, C-b, C-f, and the arrow keys.
By default, the line-motion keys C-p and C-n stop scrolling at the beginning and end of
the current page, respectively. However, if you change the variable doc-view-continuous
to a non-nil value, then C-p displays the previous page if you are already at the beginning
of the current page, and C-n displays the next page if you are at the end of the current page.
You can also display the next page by typing n, PageDown, next or C-x ] (doc-view-
next-page). To display the previous page, type p, PageUp, prior or C-x [ (doc-view-
previous-page).
SPC (doc-view-scroll-up-or-next-page) is a convenient way to advance through the
document. It scrolls within the current page or advances to the next. DEL moves backwards
in a similar way (doc-view-scroll-down-or-previous-page).
To go to the first page, type M-< (doc-view-first-page); to go to the last one, type
M-> (doc-view-last-page). To jump to a page by its number, type M-g M-g or M-g g
(doc-view-goto-page).
You can enlarge or shrink the document with + (doc-view-enlarge) and - (doc-view-
shrink). By default, these commands just rescale the already-rendered image. If you instead
want the image to be re-rendered at the new size, set doc-view-scale-internally to nil.
To specify the default size for DocView, customize the variable doc-view-resolution.
When the mutool program is available, DocView will use it to generate entries for an
outline menu, making it accessible via the imenu facility (see Section 23.2.3 [Imenu], page 287).
1
The needed external tools for the document type must be available, and Emacs must be running in a
graphical frame and have PNG image support. If these requirements is not fulfilled, Emacs falls back to
another major mode.
452 GNU Emacs Manual

To disable this functionality even when mutool can be found on your system, customize
the variable doc-view-imenu-enabled to the nil value. You can further customize how
imenu items are formatted and displayed using the variables doc-view-imenu-format and
doc-view-flatten.

31.4.2 DocView Searching

In DocView mode, you can search the file’s text for a regular expression (see Section 12.6
[Regexps], page 114). The interface for searching is inspired by isearch (see Section 12.1
[Incremental Search], page 104).
To begin a search, type C-s (doc-view-search) or C-r (doc-view-search-backward).
This reads a regular expression using a minibuffer, then echoes the number of matches found
within the document. You can move forward and back among the matches by typing C-s
and C-r. DocView mode has no way to show the match inside the page image; instead, it
displays a tooltip (at the mouse position) listing all matching lines in the current page. To
force display of this tooltip, type C-t (doc-view-show-tooltip).
To start a new search, use the search command with a prefix argument; i.e., C-u C-s for
a forward search or C-u C-r for a backward search.

31.4.3 DocView Slicing

Documents often have wide margins for printing. They are annoying when reading the
document on the screen, because they use up screen space and can cause inconvenient
scrolling.
With DocView you can hide these margins by selecting a slice of pages to display. A
slice is a rectangle within the page area; once you specify a slice in DocView, it applies to
whichever page you look at.
To specify the slice numerically, type c s (doc-view-set-slice); then enter the top left
pixel position and the slice’s width and height.
A more convenient graphical way to specify the slice is with c m (doc-view-set-slice-
using-mouse), where you use the mouse to select the slice. Simply press and hold the left
mouse button at the upper-left corner of the region you want to have in the slice, then move
the mouse pointer to the lower-right corner and release the button.
The most convenient way is to set the optimal slice by using BoundingBox information
automatically determined from the document by typing c b (doc-view-set-slice-from-
bounding-box).
To cancel the selected slice, type c r (doc-view-reset-slice). Then DocView shows
the entire page including its entire margins.

31.4.4 DocView Conversion

For efficiency, DocView caches the images produced by gs. The name of the directory where
it caches images is given by the variable doc-view-cache-directory. You can clear the
cache directory by typing M-x doc-view-clear-cache.
To force reconversion of the currently viewed document, type r or g (revert-buffer). To
kill the converter process associated with the current buffer, type K (doc-view-kill-proc).
The command k (doc-view-kill-proc-and-buffer) kills the converter process and the
DocView buffer.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 453

31.5 Running Shell Commands from Emacs

Emacs has commands for passing single command lines to shell subprocesses, and for running
a shell interactively with input and output to an Emacs buffer, and for running a shell in a
terminal emulator window.
M-! cmd RET
Run the shell command cmd and display the output (shell-command).
M-| cmd RET
Run the shell command cmd with region contents as input; optionally replace
the region with the output (shell-command-on-region).
M-& cmd RET
Run the shell command cmd asynchronously, and display the output
(async-shell-command).
M-x shell Run a subshell with input and output through an Emacs buffer. You can then
give commands interactively.
M-x term Run a subshell with input and output through an Emacs buffer. You can then
give commands interactively. Full terminal emulation is available.
Whenever you specify a relative file name for an executable program (either in the cmd
argument to one of the above commands, or in other contexts), Emacs searches for the
program in the directories specified by the variable exec-path. The value of this variable
must be a list of directories; the default value is initialized from the environment variable
PATH when Emacs is started (see Section C.4.1 [General Variables], page 574).
M-x eshell invokes a shell implemented entirely in Emacs. It is documented in its own
manual. See the Eshell Info manual, which is distributed with Emacs.

31.5.1 Single Shell Commands

M-! (shell-command) reads a line of text using the minibuffer and executes it as a shell
command, in a subshell made just for that command. Standard input for the command comes
from the null device. If the shell command produces any output, the output appears either
in the echo area (if it is short), or in the ‘"*Shell Command Output*"’ (shell-command-
buffer-name) buffer (if the output is long). The variables resize-mini-windows and
max-mini-window-height (see Section 5.3 [Minibuffer Edit], page 29) control when Emacs
should consider the output to be too long for the echo area. Note that customizing
shell-command-dont-erase-buffer, described below, can affect what is displayed in the
echo area.
For instance, one way to decompress a file named foo.gz is to type M-! gunzip foo.gz
RET. That shell command normally creates the file foo and produces no terminal output.
A numeric argument to shell-command, e.g., M-1 M-!, causes it to insert terminal output
into the current buffer instead of a separate buffer. By default, it puts point before the
output, and sets the mark after the output (but a non-default value of shell-command-
dont-erase-buffer can change that, see below). For instance, M-1 M-! gunzip < foo.gz
RET would insert the uncompressed form of the file foo.gz into the current buffer.
Provided the specified shell command does not end with ‘&’, it runs synchronously, and
you must wait for it to exit before continuing to use Emacs. To stop waiting, type C-g to
454 GNU Emacs Manual

quit; this sends a SIGINT signal to terminate the shell command (this is the same signal
that C-c normally generates in the shell). Emacs then waits until the command actually
terminates. If the shell command doesn’t stop (because it ignores the SIGINT signal), type
C-g again; this sends the command a SIGKILL signal, which is impossible to ignore.
A shell command that ends in ‘&’ is executed asynchronously, and you can continue to
use Emacs as it runs. You can also type M-& (async-shell-command) to execute a shell
command asynchronously; this is exactly like calling M-! with a trailing ‘&’, except that
you do not need the ‘&’. The output from asynchronous shell commands, by default, goes
into the ‘"*Async Shell Command*"’ buffer (shell-command-buffer-name-async). Emacs
inserts the output into this buffer as it comes in, whether or not the buffer is visible in a
window.
If you want to run more than one asynchronous shell command at the same time, they
could end up competing for the output buffer. The option async-shell-command-buffer
specifies what to do about this; e.g., whether to rename the pre-existing output buffer, or to
use a different buffer for the new command. Consult the variable’s documentation for more
possibilities.
If you want the output buffer for asynchronous shell commands to be displayed only
when the command generates output, set async-shell-command-display-buffer to nil.
The option async-shell-command-width defines the number of display columns available
for output of asynchronous shell commands. A positive integer tells the shell to use that
number of columns for command output. The default value is nil that means to use the
same number of columns as provided by the shell.
To make the above commands show the current directory in their prompts, customize
the variable shell-command-prompt-show-cwd to a non-nil value.
M-| (shell-command-on-region) is like M-!, but passes the contents of the region as
the standard input to the shell command, instead of no input. With a numeric argument, it
deletes the old region and replaces it with the output from the shell command.
For example, you can use M-| with the gpg program to see what keys are in the buffer.
If the buffer contains a GnuPG key, type C-x h M-| gpg RET to feed the entire buffer
contents to gpg. This will output the list of keys to the buffer whose name is the value of
shell-command-buffer-name.
The above commands use the shell specified by the variable shell-file-name. Its default
value is determined by the SHELL environment variable when Emacs is started. If the file
name is relative, Emacs searches the directories listed in exec-path (see Section 31.5 [Shell],
page 453).
If the default directory is remote (see Section 15.15 [Remote Files], page 169), the default
value is /bin/sh. This can be changed by declaring shell-file-name connection-local (see
Section 33.2.6 [Connection Variables], page 512).
To specify a coding system for M-! or M-|, use the command C-x RET c immediately
beforehand. See Section 19.10 [Communication Coding], page 229.
By default, error output is intermixed with the regular output in the output buffer. But
if you change the value of the variable shell-command-default-error-buffer to a string,
error output is inserted into a buffer of that name.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 455

By default, the output buffer is erased between shell commands, except when the output
goes to the current buffer. If you change the value of the option shell-command-dont-
erase-buffer to erase, then the output buffer is always erased. Other non-nil values
prevent erasing of the output buffer, and—if the output buffer is not the current buffer—also
control where to put point after inserting the output of the shell command:
beg-last-out
Puts point at the beginning of the last shell-command output.
end-last-out
Puts point at the end of the last shell-command output, i.e. at the end of the
output buffer.
save-point
Restores the position of point as it was before inserting the shell-command
output.
Note that if this option is non-nil, the output shown in the echo area could be from
more than just the last command, since the echo area just displays a portion of the output
buffer.
In case the output buffer is not the current buffer, shell command output is appended at
the end of this buffer.

31.5.2 Interactive Subshell

To run a subshell interactively, type M-x shell. This creates (or reuses) a buffer named
*shell*, and runs a shell subprocess with input coming from and output going to that
buffer. That is to say, any terminal output from the subshell goes into the buffer, advancing
point, and any terminal input for the subshell comes from text in the buffer. To give input
to the subshell, go to the end of the buffer and type the input, terminated by RET.
By default, when the subshell is invoked interactively, the *shell* buffer is displayed in a
new window, unless the current window already shows the *shell* buffer. This behavior can
be customized via display-buffer-alist (see Section 17.6.1 [Window Choice], page 190).
While the subshell is waiting or running a command, you can switch windows or buffers
and perform other editing in Emacs. Emacs inserts the output from the subshell into the
Shell buffer whenever it has time to process it (e.g., while waiting for keyboard input).
In the Shell buffer, prompts are displayed with the face comint-highlight-prompt, and
submitted input lines are displayed with the face comint-highlight-input. This makes it
easier to distinguish input lines from the shell output. See Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82.
To make multiple subshells, invoke M-x shell with a prefix argument (e.g., C-u M-x
shell). Then the command will read a buffer name, and create (or reuse) a subshell in that
buffer. You can also rename the *shell* buffer using M-x rename-uniquely, then create a
new *shell* buffer using plain M-x shell. Subshells in different buffers run independently
and in parallel.
Emacs attempts to keep track of what the current directory is by looking at the commands
you enter, looking for ‘cd’ commands and the like. This is an error-prone solution, since
there are many ways to change the current directory, so Emacs also looks for special OSC
(Operating System Commands) escape codes that are designed to convey this information
456 GNU Emacs Manual

in a more reliable fashion. You should arrange for your shell to print the appropriate escape
sequence at each prompt, for instance with the following command:
printf "\e]7;file://%s%s\e\\" "$HOSTNAME" "$PWD"
To specify the shell file name used by M-x shell, customize the variable explicit-shell-
file-name. If this is nil (the default), Emacs uses the environment variable ESHELL if it
exists. Otherwise, it usually uses the variable shell-file-name (see Section 31.5.1 [Single
Shell], page 453); but if the default directory is remote (see Section 15.15 [Remote Files],
page 169), it prompts you for the shell file name. See Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 27,
for hints how to type remote file names effectively.
Emacs sends the new shell the contents of the file ~/.emacs_shellname as input, if it
exists, where shellname is the name of the file that the shell was loaded from. For example,
if you use bash, the file sent to it is ~/.emacs_bash. If this file is not found, Emacs tries
with ~/.emacs.d/init_shellname.sh.
To specify a coding system for the shell, you can use the command C-x RET c immediately
before M-x shell. You can also change the coding system for a running subshell by typing
C-x RET p in the shell buffer. See Section 19.10 [Communication Coding], page 229.
Emacs sets the environment variable INSIDE_EMACS in the subshell to ‘version,comint’,
where version is the Emacs version (e.g., ‘28.1’). Programs can check this variable to
determine whether they are running inside an Emacs subshell.

31.5.3 Shell Mode

The major mode for Shell buffers is Shell mode. Many of its special commands are bound to
the C-c prefix, and resemble the usual editing and job control characters present in ordinary
shells, except that you must type C-c first. Here is a list of Shell mode commands:
RET Send the current line as input to the subshell (comint-send-input). Any shell
prompt at the beginning of the line is omitted (see Section 31.5.4 [Shell Prompts],
page 459). If point is at the end of buffer, this is like submitting the command
line in an ordinary interactive shell. However, you can also invoke RET elsewhere
in the shell buffer to submit the current line as input.
TAB Complete the command name or file name before point in the shell buffer
(completion-at-point). This uses the usual Emacs completion rules (see
Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30), with the completion alternatives being file
names, environment variable names, the shell command history, and history
references (see Section 31.5.5.3 [History References], page 461). For options
controlling the completion, see Section 31.5.7 [Shell Options], page 462.
M-? Display temporarily a list of the possible completions of the file name before
point (comint-dynamic-list-filename-completions).
C-d Either delete a character or send EOF (comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof). Typed
at the end of the shell buffer, this sends EOF to the subshell. Typed at any
other position in the buffer, this deletes a character as usual.
C-c C-a Move to the beginning of the line, but after the prompt if any (comint-bol-
or-process-mark). If you repeat this command twice in a row, the second time
it moves back to the process mark, which is the beginning of the input that you
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 457

have not yet sent to the subshell. (Normally that is the same place—the end
of the prompt on this line—but after C-c SPC the process mark may be in a
previous line.)
C-c SPC Accumulate multiple lines of input, then send them together
(comint-accumulate). This command inserts a newline before
point, but does not send the preceding text as input to the subshell—at least,
not yet. Both lines, the one before this newline and the one after, will be sent
together (along with the newline that separates them), when you type RET.
C-c C-u Kill all text pending at end of buffer to be sent as input (comint-kill-input).
If point is not at end of buffer, this only kills the part of this text that precedes
point.
C-c C-w Kill a word before point (backward-kill-word).
C-c C-c Interrupt the shell or its current subjob if any (comint-interrupt-subjob).
This command also kills any shell input pending in the shell buffer and not yet
sent.
C-c C-z Stop the shell or its current subjob if any (comint-stop-subjob). This com-
mand also kills any shell input pending in the shell buffer and not yet sent.
C-c C-\ Send quit signal to the shell or its current subjob if any (comint-quit-subjob).
This command also kills any shell input pending in the shell buffer and not yet
sent.
C-c C-o Delete the last batch of output from a shell command (comint-delete-output).
This is useful if a shell command spews out lots of output that just gets in
the way. With a prefix argument, this command saves the deleted text in the
kill-ring (see Section 9.2.1 [Kill Ring], page 62), so that you could later yank
it (see Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 61) elsewhere.
C-c C-s Write the last batch of output from a shell command to a file (comint-write-
output). With a prefix argument, the file is appended to instead. Any prompt
at the end of the output is not written.
C-c C-r
C-M-l Scroll to display the beginning of the last batch of output at the top of the
window; also move the cursor there (comint-show-output).
C-c C-e Scroll to put the last line of the buffer at the bottom of the window
(comint-show-maximum-output).
C-c C-f Move forward across one shell command, but not beyond the current line
(shell-forward-command). The variable shell-command-regexp specifies how
to recognize the end of a command.
C-c C-b Move backward across one shell command, but not beyond the current line
(shell-backward-command).
M-x dirs Ask the shell for its working directory, and update the Shell buffer’s default
directory. See Section 31.5.6 [Directory Tracking], page 461.
458 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x comint-send-invisible RET text RET

Send text as input to the shell, after reading it without echoing. This is useful
when a shell command runs a program that asks for a password.
Please note that Emacs will not echo passwords by default. If you really want
them to be echoed, evaluate (see Section 24.9 [Lisp Eval], page 328) the following
Lisp expression:
(remove-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions
'comint-watch-for-password-prompt)
M-x comint-continue-subjob
Continue the shell process. This is useful if you accidentally suspend the shell
process.2
M-x comint-strip-ctrl-m
Discard all control-M characters from the current group of shell output. The
most convenient way to use this command is to make it run automatically when
you get output from the subshell. To do that, evaluate this Lisp expression:
(add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions
'comint-strip-ctrl-m)
M-x comint-truncate-buffer
This command truncates the shell buffer to a certain maximum number of lines,
specified by the variable comint-buffer-maximum-size. Here’s how to do this
automatically each time you get output from the subshell:
(add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions
'comint-truncate-buffer)
By default, Shell mode handles common ANSI escape codes (for instance, for changing
the color of text). Emacs also optionally supports some extend escape codes, like some of
the OSC (Operating System Codes) if you put the following in your init file:
(add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions 'comint-osc-process-output)
With this enabled, the output from, for instance, ls --hyperlink will be made into
clickable buttons in the Shell mode buffer.
Shell mode is a derivative of Comint mode, a general-purpose mode for communicating
with interactive subprocesses. Most of the features of Shell mode actually come from Comint
mode, as you can see from the command names listed above. The special features of Shell
mode include the directory tracking feature, and a few user commands.
Other Emacs features that use variants of Comint mode include GUD (see Section 24.6
[Debuggers], page 315) and M-x run-lisp (see Section 24.11 [External Lisp], page 330).
You can use M-x comint-run to execute any program of your choice in a subprocess using
unmodified Comint mode—without the specializations of Shell mode. To pass arguments to
the program, use C-u M-x comint-run.

2
You should not suspend the shell process. Suspending a subjob of the shell is a completely different
matter—that is normal practice, but you must use the shell to continue the subjob; this command won’t
do it.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 459

31.5.4 Shell Prompts

A prompt is text output by a program to show that it is ready to accept new user input.
Normally, Comint mode (and thus Shell mode) automatically figures out which part of the
buffer is a prompt, based on the output of the subprocess. (Specifically, it assumes that any
received output line which doesn’t end with a newline is a prompt.)
Comint mode divides the buffer into two types of fields: input fields (where user input
is typed) and output fields (everywhere else). Prompts are part of the output fields. Most
Emacs motion commands do not cross field boundaries, unless they move over multiple lines.
For instance, when point is in the input field on a shell command line, C-a puts point at
the beginning of the input field, after the prompt. Internally, the fields are implemented
using the field text property (see Section “Text Properties” in the Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual).
If you change the variable comint-use-prompt-regexp to a non-nil value, then Comint
mode will recognize prompts using a regular expression (see Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114).
In Shell mode, the regular expression is specified by the variable shell-prompt-pattern.
The default value of comint-use-prompt-regexp is nil, because this method for recognizing
prompts is unreliable, but you may want to set it to a non-nil value in unusual circumstances.
In that case, Emacs does not divide the Comint buffer into fields, so the general motion
commands behave as they normally do in buffers without special text properties. However,
you can use the paragraph motion commands to conveniently navigate the buffer (see
Section 22.3 [Paragraphs], page 253); in Shell mode, Emacs uses shell-prompt-pattern as
paragraph boundaries.

31.5.5 Shell Command History

Shell buffers support three ways of repeating earlier commands. You can use keys like those
used for the minibuffer history; these work much as they do in the minibuffer, inserting text
from prior commands while point remains always at the end of the buffer. You can move
through the buffer to previous inputs in their original place, then resubmit them or copy
them to the end. Or you can use a ‘!’-style history reference.

31.5.5.1 Shell History Ring

M-p
C-UP Fetch the next earlier old shell command (comint-previous-input).
M-n
C-DOWN Fetch the next later old shell command (comint-next-input).
M-r Begin an incremental regexp search of old shell commands (comint-history-
isearch-backward-regexp).
C-c C-x Fetch the next subsequent command from the history (comint-get-next-from-
history).
C-c . Fetch one argument from an old shell command (comint-input-previous-
argument).
C-c C-l Display the buffer’s history of shell commands in another window
(comint-dynamic-list-input-ring).
460 GNU Emacs Manual

Shell buffers provide a history of previously entered shell commands. To reuse shell
commands from the history, use the editing commands M-p, M-n, and M-r. These work
similar to the minibuffer history commands (see Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35),
except that they operate within the Shell buffer rather than the minibuffer, and M-r in a
Shell buffer invokes incremental search through shell command history.
M-p fetches an earlier shell command to the end of the shell buffer. Successive use of M-p
fetches successively earlier shell commands, each replacing any text that was already present
as potential shell input. M-n does likewise except that it finds successively more recent shell
commands from the buffer. C-UP works like M-p, and C-DOWN like M-n.
The history search command M-r begins an incremental regular expression search of
previous shell commands. After typing M-r, start typing the desired string or regular
expression; the last matching shell command will be displayed in the current line. Incremental
search commands have their usual effects—for instance, C-s and C-r search forward and
backward for the next match (see Section 12.1 [Incremental Search], page 104). When you
find the desired input, type RET to terminate the search. This puts the input in the command
line. Any partial input you were composing before navigating the history list is restored
when you go to the beginning or end of the history ring.
Often it is useful to reexecute several successive shell commands that were previously
executed in sequence. To do this, first find and reexecute the first command of the sequence.
Then type C-c C-x; that will fetch the following command—the one that follows the command
you just repeated. Then type RET to reexecute this command. You can reexecute several
successive commands by typing C-c C-x RET over and over.
The command C-c . (comint-insert-previous-argument) copies an individual argu-
ment from a previous command, like ESC . in Bash and zsh. The simplest use copies the
last argument from the previous shell command. With a prefix argument n, it copies the
nth argument instead. Repeating C-c . copies from an earlier shell commands, always using
the same value of n (don’t give a prefix argument when you repeat the C-c . command).
If you set comint-insert-previous-argument-from-end to a non-nil value, C-c . will
instead copy the nth argument counting from the last one; this emulates ESC . in zsh.
These commands get the text of previous shell commands from a special history list, not
from the shell buffer itself. Thus, editing the shell buffer, or even killing large parts of it,
does not affect the history that these commands access.
Some shells store their command histories in files so that you can refer to commands
from previous shell sessions. Emacs reads the command history file for your chosen shell,
to initialize its own command history. The file name is ~/.bash_history for bash, ~/.sh_
history for ksh, and ~/.history for other shells.
If you run the shell on a remote host, this setting might be overwritten by the variable
tramp-histfile-override. It is recommended to set this variable to nil.

31.5.5.2 Shell History Copying

C-c C-p Move point to the previous prompt (comint-previous-prompt).
C-c C-n Move point to the following prompt (comint-next-prompt).
C-c RET Copy the input command at point, inserting the copy at the end of the buffer
(comint-copy-old-input). This is useful if you move point back to a previous
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 461

command. After you copy the command, you can submit the copy as input with
RET. If you wish, you can edit the copy before resubmitting it. If you use this
command on an output line, it copies that line to the end of the buffer.
mouse-2 If comint-use-prompt-regexp is nil (the default), copy the old input command
that you click on, inserting the copy at the end of the buffer (comint-insert-
input). If comint-use-prompt-regexp is non-nil, or if the click is not over
old input, just yank as usual.
Moving to a previous input and then copying it with C-c RET or mouse-2 produces the
same results—the same buffer contents—that you would get by using M-p enough times to
fetch that previous input from the history list. However, C-c RET copies the text from the
buffer, which can be different from what is in the history list if you edit the input text in
the buffer after it has been sent.

31.5.5.3 Shell History References

Various shells, including csh and bash, support history references that begin with ‘!’ and ‘^’.
Shell mode recognizes these constructs, and can perform the history substitution for you.
If you insert a history reference and type TAB, this searches the input history for a
matching command, performs substitution if necessary, and places the result in the buffer
in place of the history reference. For example, you can fetch the most recent command
beginning with ‘mv’ with ! m v TAB. You can edit the command if you wish, and then
resubmit the command to the shell by typing RET.
Shell mode can optionally expand history references in the buffer when you send them to
the shell. To request this, set the variable comint-input-autoexpand to input. You can
make SPC perform history expansion by binding SPC to the command comint-magic-space.
See Section 33.3.5 [Rebinding], page 515.
Shell mode recognizes history references when they follow a prompt. See Section 31.5.4
[Shell Prompts], page 459, for how Shell mode recognizes prompts.

31.5.6 Directory Tracking

Shell mode keeps track of ‘cd’, ‘pushd’ and ‘popd’ commands given to the subshell, in order
to keep the Shell buffer’s default directory (see Section 15.1 [File Names], page 145) the
same as the shell’s working directory. It recognizes these commands by examining lines of
input that you send.
If you use aliases for these commands, you can tell Emacs to recognize them also, by
setting the variables shell-pushd-regexp, shell-popd-regexp, and shell-cd-regexp to
the appropriate regular expressions (see Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114). For example, if
shell-pushd-regexp matches the beginning of a shell command line, that line is regarded
as a pushd command. These commands are recognized only at the beginning of a shell
command line.
If Emacs gets confused about changes in the working directory of the subshell, type
M-x dirs. This command asks the shell for its working directory and updates the default
directory accordingly. It works for shells that support the most common command syntax,
but may not work for unusual shells.
You can also use Dirtrack mode, a buffer-local minor mode that implements an alternative
method of tracking the shell’s working directory. To use this method, your shell prompt
462 GNU Emacs Manual

must contain the working directory at all times, and you must supply a regular expression for
recognizing which part of the prompt contains the working directory; see the documentation
of the variable dirtrack-list for details. To use Dirtrack mode, type M-x dirtrack-mode
in the Shell buffer, or add dirtrack-mode to shell-mode-hook (see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks],
page 504).

31.5.7 Shell Mode Options

If the variable comint-scroll-to-bottom-on-input is non-nil, insertion and yank com-
mands scroll the selected window to the bottom before inserting. The default is nil.
If comint-scroll-show-maximum-output is non-nil, then arrival of output when point
is at the end tries to scroll the last line of text to the bottom line of the window, showing as
much useful text as possible. (This mimics the scrolling behavior of most terminals.) The
default is t.
By setting comint-move-point-for-output, you can opt for having point jump to the
end of the buffer whenever output arrives—no matter where in the buffer point was before.
If the value is this, point jumps in the selected window. If the value is all, point jumps
in each window that shows the Comint buffer. If the value is other, point jumps in all
nonselected windows that show the current buffer. The default value is nil, which means
point does not jump to the end.
If you set comint-prompt-read-only, the prompts in the Comint buffer are read-only.
The variable comint-input-ignoredups controls whether successive identical inputs are
stored in the input history. A non-nil value means to omit an input that is the same as the
previous input. The default is nil, which means to store each input even if it is equal to
the previous input.
Three variables customize file name completion. The variable comint-completion-
addsuffix controls whether completion inserts a space or a slash to indicate a fully completed
file or directory name (non-nil means do insert a space or slash). comint-completion-
recexact, if non-nil, directs TAB to choose the shortest possible completion if the usual
Emacs completion algorithm cannot add even a single character. comint-completion-
autolist, if non-nil, says to list all the possible completions whenever completion is not
exact.
Command completion normally considers only executable files. If you set
shell-completion-execonly to nil, it considers nonexecutable files as well.
The variable shell-completion-fignore specifies a list of file name extensions to ignore
in Shell mode completion. The default setting is nil, but some users prefer ("~" "#" "%")
to ignore file names ending in ‘~’, ‘#’ or ‘%’. Other related Comint modes use the variable
comint-completion-fignore instead.
Some implementation details of the shell command completion may also be found in the
lisp documentation of the shell-dynamic-complete-command function.
You can configure the behavior of ‘pushd’. Variables control whether ‘pushd’ behaves like
‘cd’ if no argument is given (shell-pushd-tohome), pop rather than rotate with a numeric
argument (shell-pushd-dextract), and only add directories to the directory stack if they
are not already on it (shell-pushd-dunique). The values you choose should match the
underlying shell, of course.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 463

Comint mode sets the TERM environment variable to a safe default value, but this value
disables some useful features. For example, color is disabled in applications that use TERM
to determine if color is supported. Therefore, Emacs provides an option comint-terminfo-
terminal to let you choose a terminal with more advanced features, as defined in your
system’s terminfo database. Emacs will use this option as the value for TERM so long as
system-uses-terminfo is non-nil.
Both comint-terminfo-terminal and system-uses-terminfo can be declared as
connection-local variables to adjust these options to match what a remote system expects
(see Section 33.2.6 [Connection Variables], page 512).

31.5.8 Emacs Terminal Emulator

To run a subshell in a text terminal emulator, use M-x term. This creates (or reuses) a
buffer named *terminal*, and runs a subshell with input coming from your keyboard, and
output going to that buffer.
The terminal emulator uses Term mode, which has two input modes. In line mode, Term
basically acts like Shell mode (see Section 31.5.3 [Shell Mode], page 456). In char mode, each
character is sent directly to the subshell, as terminal input; the sole exception is the terminal
escape character, which by default is C-c (see Section 31.5.9 [Term Mode], page 463). Any
echoing of your input is the responsibility of the subshell; any terminal output from the
subshell goes into the buffer, advancing point.
Some programs (such as Emacs itself) need to control the appearance of the terminal
screen in detail. They do this by emitting special control codes. Term mode recognizes and
handles ANSI-standard VT100-style escape sequences, which are accepted by most modern
terminals, including xterm. (Hence, you can actually run Emacs inside an Emacs Term
window.)
The term face specifies the default appearance of text in the terminal emulator (the
default is the same appearance as the default face). When terminal control codes
are used to change the appearance of text, these are represented in the terminal emu-
lator by the faces term-color-black, term-color-red, term-color-green, term-color-
yellow term-color-blue, term-color-magenta, term-color-cyan, term-color-white,
term-color-underline, and term-color-bold. See Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82.
You can also use Term mode to communicate with a device connected to a serial port.
See Section 31.5.11 [Serial Terminal], page 464.
The file name used to load the subshell is determined the same way as for Shell mode.
To make multiple terminal emulators, rename the buffer *terminal* to something different
using M-x rename-uniquely, just as with Shell mode.
Unlike Shell mode, Term mode does not track the current directory by examining your
input. But some shells can tell Term what the current directory is. This is done automatically
by bash version 1.15 and later.

31.5.9 Term Mode

To switch between line and char mode in Term mode, use these commands:
C-c C-j Switch to line mode (term-line-mode). Do nothing if already in line mode.
C-c C-k Switch to char mode (term-char-mode). Do nothing if already in char mode.
464 GNU Emacs Manual

The following commands are only available in char mode:

C-c C-c Send a literal C-c to the sub-shell (term-interrupt-subjob).
C-c char This is equivalent to C-x char in normal Emacs. For example, C-c o invokes
the global binding of C-x o, which is normally ‘other-window’.
Term mode has a page-at-a-time feature. When enabled, it makes output pause at the
end of each screenful:
C-c C-q Toggle the page-at-a-time feature (term-pager-toggle). This command works
in both line and char modes. When the feature is enabled, the mode-line displays
the word ‘page’, and each time Term receives more than a screenful of output,
it pauses and displays ‘**MORE**’ in the mode-line. Type SPC to display the
next screenful of output, or ? to see your other options. The interface is similar
to the more program.

31.5.10 Remote Host Shell

You can login to a remote computer, using whatever commands you would from a regular
terminal (e.g., the ssh command), from a Term window.
A program that asks you for a password will normally suppress echoing of the password,
so the password will not show up in the buffer. This will happen just as if you were using a
real terminal, if the buffer is in char mode. If it is in line mode, the password is temporarily
visible, but will be erased when you hit return. (This happens automatically; there is no
special password processing.)
When you log in to a different machine, you need to specify the type of terminal you’re
using, by setting the TERM environment variable in the environment for the remote login
command. (If you use bash, you do that by writing the variable assignment before the
remote login command, without a separating comma.) Terminal types ‘ansi’ or ‘vt100’ will
work on most systems.

31.5.11 Serial Terminal

If you have a device connected to a serial port of your computer, you can communicate with
it by typing M-x serial-term. This command asks for a serial port name and speed, and
switches to a new Term mode buffer. Emacs communicates with the serial device through
this buffer just like it does with a terminal in ordinary Term mode.
The speed of the serial port is measured in bits per second. The most common speed is
9600 bits per second. You can change the speed interactively by clicking on the mode line.
A serial port can be configured even more by clicking on ‘8N1’ in the mode line. By
default, a serial port is configured as ‘8N1’, which means that each byte consists of 8 data
bits, No parity check bit, and 1 stopbit.
If the speed or the configuration is wrong, you cannot communicate with your device
and will probably only see garbage output in the window.

31.6 Using Emacs as a Server

Various programs can invoke your choice of editor to edit a particular piece of text. For in-
stance, version control programs invoke an editor to enter version control logs (see Section 25.1
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 465

[Version Control], page 332), and the Unix mail utility invokes an editor to enter a message
to send. By convention, your choice of editor is specified by the environment variable EDITOR.
If you set EDITOR to ‘emacs’, Emacs would be invoked, but in an inconvenient way—by
starting a new Emacs process. This is inconvenient because the new Emacs process doesn’t
share buffers, a command history, or other kinds of information with any existing Emacs
process.
You can solve this problem by setting up Emacs as an edit server, so that it “listens” for
external edit requests and acts accordingly. There are various ways to start an Emacs server:
• Run the command server-start in an existing Emacs process: either type M-x
server-start, or put the expression (server-start) in your init file (see Section 33.4
[Init File], page 522). The existing Emacs process is the server; when you exit Emacs,
the server dies with the Emacs process.
• Run Emacs as a daemon, using one of the ‘--daemon’ command-line options. See
Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570. When Emacs is started this way, it calls
server-start after initialization and does not open an initial frame. It then waits for
edit requests from clients.
• Run the command emacsclient with the ‘--alternate-editor=""’ command-line
option. This starts an Emacs daemon only if no Emacs daemon is already running.
• If your operating system uses systemd to manage startup, you can automatically start
Emacs in daemon mode when you login using the supplied systemd unit file. To activate
this:
systemctl --user enable emacs
(If your Emacs was installed into a non-standard location, you may need to copy the
emacs.service file to a standard directory such as ~/.config/systemd/user/.)
• An external process can invoke the Emacs server when a connection event occurs upon a
specified socket and pass the socket to the new Emacs server process. An instance of this
is the socket functionality of systemd: the systemd service creates a socket and listens
for connections on it; when emacsclient connects to it for the first time, systemd
can launch the Emacs server and hand over the socket to it for servicing emacsclient
connections. A setup to use this functionality could be:
~/.config/systemd/user/emacs.socket:
[Socket]
ListenStream=/path/to/.emacs.socket
DirectoryMode=0700

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target
(The emacs.service file described above must also be installed.)
The ListenStream path will be the path that Emacs listens for connections from
emacsclient; this is a file of your choice.

Once an Emacs server is started, you can use a shell command called emacsclient
to connect to the Emacs process and tell it to visit a file. You can then set the EDITOR
466 GNU Emacs Manual

environment variable to ‘emacsclient’, so that external programs will use the existing
Emacs process for editing.3
You can run multiple Emacs servers on the same machine by giving each one a unique
server name, using the variable server-name. For example, M-x set-variable RET server-
name RET "foo" RET sets the server name to ‘foo’. The emacsclient program can specify
a server by name, using the ‘-s’ or the ‘-f’ option (see Section 31.6.3 [emacsclient Options],
page 468), depending on whether or not the server uses a TCP socket (see Section 31.6.1
[TCP Emacs server], page 466).
If you want to run multiple Emacs daemons (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570),
you can give each daemon its own server name like this:
emacs --daemon=foo
The Emacs server can optionally be stopped automatically when certain conditions
are met. To do this, call the function server-stop-automatically in your init file (see
Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522), with one of the following arguments:
• With the argument empty, the server is stopped when it has no clients, no unsaved
file-visiting buffers and no running processes anymore.
• With the argument delete-frame, when the last client frame is being closed, you
are asked whether each unsaved file-visiting buffer must be saved and each unfinished
process can be stopped, and if so, the server is stopped.
• With the argument kill-terminal, when the last client frame is being closed with C-x
C-c (save-buffers-kill-terminal), you are asked whether each unsaved file-visiting
buffer must be saved and each unfinished process can be stopped, and if so, the server
is stopped.
If you have defined a server by a unique server name, it is possible to connect to the
server from another Emacs instance and evaluate Lisp expressions on the server, using the
server-eval-at function. For instance, (server-eval-at "foo" '(+ 1 2)) evaluates the
expression (+ 1 2) on the ‘foo’ server, and returns 3. (If there is no server with that name,
an error is signaled.) Currently, this feature is mainly useful for developers.
If your operating system’s desktop environment is freedesktop.org-compatible (which
is true of most GNU/Linux and other recent Unix-like GUIs), you may use the ‘Emacs
(Client)’ menu entry to connect to an Emacs server with emacsclient. The daemon starts
if not already running.

31.6.1 TCP Emacs server

An Emacs server usually listens to connections on a local Unix domain socket. Some
operating systems, such as MS-Windows, do not support local sockets; in that case, the
server uses TCP sockets instead. In some cases it is useful to have the server listen on a
TCP socket even if local sockets are supported, e.g., if you need to contact the Emacs server
from a remote machine. You can set server-use-tcp to non-nil to have Emacs listen on a
TCP socket instead of a local socket. This is the default if your OS does not support local
sockets.
3
Some programs use a different environment variable; for example, to make TEX use ‘emacsclient’, set
the TEXEDIT environment variable to ‘emacsclient +%d %s’.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 467

If the Emacs server is set to use TCP, it will by default listen on a random port on the
localhost interface. This can be changed to another interface and/or a fixed port using the
variables server-host and server-port.
A TCP socket is not subject to file system permissions. To retain some control over
which users can talk to an Emacs server over TCP sockets, the emacsclient program must
send an authorization key to the server. This key is normally randomly generated by the
Emacs server. This is the recommended mode of operation.
If needed, you can set the authorization key to a static value by setting the server-auth-
key variable. The key must consist of 64 ASCII printable characters except for space (this
means characters from ‘!’ to ‘~’, or from decimal code 33 to 126). You can use M-x
server-generate-key to get a random key.
When you start a TCP Emacs server, Emacs creates a server file containing the
TCP information to be used by emacsclient to connect to the server. The variable
server-auth-dir specifies the default directory containing the server file; by default, this is
~/.emacs.d/server/. In the absence of a local socket with file permissions, the permissions
of this directory determine which users can have their emacsclient processes talk to the
Emacs server. If server-name is an absolute file name, the server file is created where
specified by that file name.
To tell emacsclient to connect to the server over TCP with a specific server file, use the
‘-f’ or ‘--server-file’ option, or set the EMACS_SERVER_FILE environment variable (see
Section 31.6.3 [emacsclient Options], page 468). If server-auth-dir is set to a non-standard
value, or if server-name is set to an absolute file name, emacsclient needs an absolute file
name to the server file, as the default server-auth-dir is hard-coded in emacsclient to
be used as the directory for resolving relative filenames.

31.6.2 Invoking emacsclient

The simplest way to use the emacsclient program is to run the shell command ‘emacsclient
file’, where file is a file name. This connects to an Emacs server, and tells that Emacs
process to visit file in one of its existing frames—either a graphical frame, or one in a text
terminal (see Chapter 18 [Frames], page 194). You can then select that frame to begin
editing.
If there is no Emacs server, the emacsclient program halts with an error message
(you can prevent this from happening by using the ‘--alternate-editor=""’ option to
emacsclient, see Section 31.6.3 [emacsclient Options], page 468). If the Emacs process
has no existing frame—which can happen if it was started as a daemon (see Section 31.6
[Emacs Server], page 464)—then Emacs opens a frame on the terminal in which you called
emacsclient.
You can also force emacsclient to open a new frame on a graphical display using the ‘-c’
option, or on a text terminal using the ‘-t’ option. See Section 31.6.3 [emacsclient Options],
page 468.
If you are running on a single text terminal, you can switch between emacsclient’s shell
and the Emacs server using one of two methods: (i) run the Emacs server and emacsclient
on different virtual terminals, and switch to the Emacs server’s virtual terminal after calling
emacsclient; or (ii) call emacsclient from within the Emacs server itself, using Shell mode
(see Section 31.5.2 [Interactive Shell], page 455) or Term mode (see Section 31.5.9 [Term
468 GNU Emacs Manual

Mode], page 463); emacsclient blocks only the subshell under Emacs, and you can still use
Emacs to edit the file.
When you finish editing file in the Emacs server, type C-x # (server-edit) in its buffer.
This saves the file and sends a message back to the emacsclient program, telling it to exit.
Programs that use EDITOR usually wait for the editor—in this case emacsclient—to exit
before doing something else.
If you want to abandon the edit instead, use the M-x server-edit-abort command.
This sends a message back to the emacsclient program, telling it to exit with abnormal
exit status, and doesn’t save any buffers.
You can also call emacsclient with multiple file name arguments: ‘emacsclient file1
file2 ...’ tells the Emacs server to visit file1, file2, and so forth. Emacs selects the buffer
visiting file1, and buries the other buffers at the bottom of the buffer list (see Chapter 16
[Buffers], page 175). The emacsclient program exits once all the specified files are finished
(i.e., once you have typed C-x # in each server buffer).
Finishing with a server buffer also kills the buffer, unless it already existed in the Emacs
session before the server was asked to create it. However, if you set server-kill-new-
buffers to nil, then a different criterion is used: finishing with a server buffer kills it if
the file name matches the regular expression server-temp-file-regexp. This is set up to
distinguish certain temporary files.
Each C-x # checks for other pending external requests to edit various files, and selects
the next such file. You can switch to a server buffer manually if you wish; you don’t have to
arrive at it with C-x #. But C-x # is the way to tell emacsclient that you are finished.
If you set the value of the variable server-window to a window or a frame, C-x # always
displays the next server buffer in that window or in that frame.
When emacsclient connects, the server will normally output a message that says how
to exit the client frame. If server-client-instructions is set to nil, this message is
inhibited.

31.6.3 emacsclient Options

You can pass some optional arguments to the emacsclient program, such as:
emacsclient -c +12 file1 +4:3 file2
The ‘+line’ or ‘+line:column’ arguments specify line numbers, or line and column numbers,
for the next file argument. These behave like the command line arguments for Emacs itself.
See Section C.1 [Action Arguments], page 568.
The other optional arguments recognized by emacsclient are listed below:
‘-a command’
‘--alternate-editor=command’
Specify a shell command to run if emacsclient fails to contact Emacs. This
is useful when running emacsclient in a script. The command may include
arguments, which may be quoted "like this". Currently, escaping of quotes is
not supported.
As a special exception, if command is the empty string, then emacsclient starts
Emacs in daemon mode (as ‘emacs --daemon’) and then tries connecting again.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 469

The environment variable ALTERNATE_EDITOR has the same effect as the ‘-a’
option. If both are present, the latter takes precedence.
‘-c’
‘--create-frame’
Create a new graphical client frame, instead of using an existing Emacs frame.
See below for the special behavior of C-x C-c in a client frame. If Emacs cannot
create a new graphical frame (e.g., if it cannot connect to the X server), it
tries to create a text terminal client frame, as though you had supplied the ‘-t’
option instead.
On MS-Windows, a single Emacs session cannot display frames on both graphical
and text terminals, nor on multiple text terminals. Thus, if the Emacs server is
running on a text terminal, the ‘-c’ option, like the ‘-t’ option, creates a new
frame in the server’s current text terminal. See Section H.1 [Windows Startup],
page 600.
If you omit a filename argument while supplying the ‘-c’ option, the new frame
displays the *scratch* buffer by default. You can customize this behavior
with the variable initial-buffer-choice (see Section 3.1 [Entering Emacs],
page 14).
‘-r’
‘--reuse-frame’
Create a new graphical client frame if none exists, otherwise use an existing
Emacs frame.
‘-F alist’
‘--frame-parameters=alist’
Set the parameters for a newly-created graphical frame (see Section 18.11 [Frame
Parameters], page 205).
‘-d display’
‘--display=display’
Tell Emacs to open the given files on the X display display (assuming there is
more than one X display available).
‘-e’
‘--eval’ Tell Emacs to evaluate some Emacs Lisp code, instead of visiting some files.
When this option is given, the arguments to emacsclient are interpreted as a
list of expressions to evaluate, not as a list of files to visit.
‘-f server-file’
‘--server-file=server-file’
Specify a server file (see Section 31.6.1 [TCP Emacs server], page 466) for
connecting to an Emacs server via TCP. Alternatively, you can set the EMACS_
SERVER_FILE environment variable to point to the server file. (The command-line
option overrides the environment variable.)
An Emacs server usually uses a local socket to listen for connections, but
also supports connections over TCP. To connect to a TCP Emacs server,
emacsclient needs to read a server file containing the connection details of
the Emacs server. The name of this file is specified with this option, either as
470 GNU Emacs Manual

a file name relative to ~/.emacs.d/server or as an absolute file name. See

Section 31.6.1 [TCP Emacs server], page 466.

‘-n’
‘--no-wait’
Let emacsclient exit immediately, instead of waiting until all server buffers
are finished. You can take as long as you like to edit the server buffers within
Emacs, and they are not killed when you type C-x # in them.

‘-w’
‘--timeout=N’
Wait for a response from Emacs for N seconds before giving up. If there is no
response within that time, emacsclient will display a warning and exit. The
default is ‘0’, which means to wait forever.

‘--parent-id=id’
Open an emacsclient frame as a client frame in the parent X window with id id,
via the XEmbed protocol. Currently, this option is mainly useful for developers.

‘-q’
‘--quiet’ Do not let emacsclient display messages about waiting for Emacs or connecting
to remote server sockets.

‘-u’
‘--suppress-output’
Do not let emacsclient display results returned from the server. Mostly useful
in combination with ‘-e’ when the evaluation performed is for side-effect rather
than result.

‘-s server-name’
‘--socket-name=server-name’
Connect to the Emacs server named server-name. (This option is not supported
on MS-Windows.) The server name is given by the variable server-name on the
Emacs server. If this option is omitted, emacsclient connects to the default
socket. If you set server-name of the Emacs server to an absolute file name,
give the same absolute file name as server-name to this option to instruct
emacsclient to connect to that server. You need to use this option if you
started Emacs as daemon (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570) and
specified the name for the server started by the daemon.
Alternatively, you can set the EMACS_SOCKET_NAME environment variable to
point to the server socket. (The command-line option overrides the environment
variable.)

‘-t’
‘--tty’
‘-nw’ Create a new client frame on the current text terminal, instead of using an
existing Emacs frame. This behaves just like the ‘-c’ option, described above,
except that it creates a text terminal frame (see Section 18.21 [Non-Window
Terminals], page 214).
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 471

On MS-Windows, ‘-t’ behaves just like ‘-c’ if the Emacs server is using the
graphical display, but if the Emacs server is running on a text terminal, it creates
a new frame in the current text terminal.
‘-T tramp-prefix’
‘--tramp-prefix=tramp-prefix’
Set the prefix to add to filenames for Emacs to locate files on remote machines
(see Section 15.15 [Remote Files], page 169) using TRAMP (see The Tramp
Manual). This is mostly useful in combination with using the Emacs server over
TCP (see Section 31.6.1 [TCP Emacs server], page 466). By ssh-forwarding
the listening port and making the server-file available on a remote machine,
programs on the remote machine can use emacsclient as the value for the
EDITOR and similar environment variables, but instead of talking to an Emacs
server on the remote machine, the files will be visited in the local Emacs session
using TRAMP.
Setting the environment variable EMACSCLIENT_TRAMP has the same effect as
using the ‘-T’ option. If both are specified, the command-line option takes
precedence.
For example, assume two hosts, ‘local’ and ‘remote’, and that the local Emacs
listens on tcp port 12345. Assume further that /home is on a shared file system,
so that the server file ~/.emacs.d/server/server is readable on both hosts.
local$ ssh -R12345:localhost:12345 remote
remote$ export EDITOR="emacsclient \
--server-file=server \
--tramp=/ssh:remote:"
remote$ $EDITOR /tmp/foo.txt #Should open in local emacs.
The new graphical or text terminal frames created by the ‘-c’ or ‘-t’ options are
considered client frames. Any new frame that you create from a client frame is also
considered a client frame. If you type C-x C-c (save-buffers-kill-terminal) in a client
frame, that command does not kill the Emacs session as it normally does (see Section 3.2
[Exiting], page 15). Instead, Emacs deletes the client frame; furthermore, if the client frame
has an emacsclient waiting to regain control (i.e., if you did not supply the ‘-n’ option),
Emacs deletes all other frames of the same client, and marks the client’s server buffers as
finished, as though you had typed C-x # in all of them. If it so happens that there are no
remaining frames after the client frame(s) are deleted, the Emacs session exits.
As an exception, when Emacs is started as a daemon, all frames are considered client
frames, and C-x C-c never kills Emacs. To kill a daemon session, type M-x kill-emacs.
Note that the ‘-t’ and ‘-n’ options are contradictory: ‘-t’ says to take control of the
current text terminal to create a new client frame, while ‘-n’ says not to take control of the
text terminal. If you supply both options, Emacs visits the specified files(s) in an existing
frame rather than a new client frame, negating the effect of ‘-t’.

31.7 Printing Hard Copies

Emacs provides commands for printing hardcopies of either an entire buffer or part of one.
You can invoke the printing commands directly, as detailed below, or using the ‘File’ menu
on the menu bar.
472 GNU Emacs Manual

Aside from the commands described in this section, you can also print hardcopies from
Dired (see Section 27.7 [Operating on Files], page 385) and the diary (see Section 28.10.2
[Displaying the Diary], page 410). You can also “print” an Emacs buffer to HTML with
the command M-x htmlfontify-buffer, which converts the current buffer to a HTML file,
replacing Emacs faces with CSS-based markup. Furthermore, Org mode allows you to print
Org files to a variety of formats, such as PDF (see Section 22.10 [Org Mode], page 267).
M-x print-buffer
Print hardcopy of current buffer with page headings containing the file name
and page number.
M-x lpr-buffer
Print hardcopy of current buffer without page headings.
M-x print-region
Like print-buffer but print only the current region.
M-x lpr-region
Like lpr-buffer but print only the current region.
On most operating systems, the above hardcopy commands submit files for printing
by calling the lpr program. To change the printer program, customize the variable
lpr-command. To specify extra switches to give the printer program, customize the list
variable lpr-switches. Its value should be a list of option strings, each of which should
start with ‘-’ (e.g., the option string "-w80" specifies a line width of 80 columns). The
default is the empty list, nil.
To specify the printer to use, set the variable printer-name. The default, nil, specifies
the default printer. If you set it to a printer name (a string), that name is passed to
lpr with the ‘-P’ switch; if you are not using lpr, you should specify the switch with
lpr-printer-switch.
The variable lpr-headers-switches similarly specifies the extra switches to use to make
page headers. The variable lpr-add-switches controls whether to supply ‘-T’ and ‘-J’
options (suitable for lpr) to the printer program: nil means don’t add them (this should
be the value if your printer program is not compatible with lpr).

31.7.1 PostScript Hardcopy

These commands convert buffer contents to PostScript, either printing it or leaving it in
another Emacs buffer.
M-x ps-print-buffer
Print hardcopy of the current buffer in PostScript form.
M-x ps-print-region
Print hardcopy of the current region in PostScript form.
M-x ps-print-buffer-with-faces
Print hardcopy of the current buffer in PostScript form, showing the faces used
in the text by means of PostScript features.
M-x ps-print-region-with-faces
Print hardcopy of the current region in PostScript form, showing the faces used
in the text.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 473

M-x ps-spool-buffer
Generate and spool a PostScript image for the current buffer text.
M-x ps-spool-region
Generate and spool a PostScript image for the current region.
M-x ps-spool-buffer-with-faces
Generate and spool a PostScript image for the current buffer, showing the faces
used.
M-x ps-spool-region-with-faces
Generate and spool a PostScript image for the current region, showing the faces
used.
M-x ps-despool
Send the spooled PostScript to the printer.
M-x handwrite
Generate/print PostScript for the current buffer as if handwritten.
The ps-print-buffer and ps-print-region commands print buffer contents in Post-
Script form. One command prints the entire buffer; the other, just the region. The commands
ps-print-buffer-with-faces and ps-print-region-with-faces behave similarly, but
use PostScript features to show the faces (fonts and colors) of the buffer text.
Interactively, when you use a prefix argument (C-u), these commands prompt the user
for a file name, and save the PostScript image in that file instead of sending it to the printer.
The commands whose names have ‘spool’ instead of ‘print’, generate the PostScript
output in an Emacs buffer instead of sending it to the printer.
Use the command ps-despool to send the spooled images to the printer. This command
sends the PostScript generated by ‘-spool-’ commands (see commands above) to the printer.
With a prefix argument (C-u), it prompts for a file name, and saves the spooled PostScript
image in that file instead of sending it to the printer.
M-x handwrite is more frivolous. It generates a PostScript rendition of the current buffer
as a cursive handwritten document. It can be customized in group handwrite. This function
only supports ISO 8859-1 characters.

31.7.2 Variables for PostScript Hardcopy

All the PostScript hardcopy commands use the variables ps-lpr-command and ps-lpr-
switches to specify how to print the output. ps-lpr-command specifies the command name
to run, ps-lpr-switches specifies command line options to use, and ps-printer-name
specifies the printer. If you don’t set the first two variables yourself, they take their initial
values from lpr-command and lpr-switches. If ps-printer-name is nil, printer-name
is used.
The variable ps-print-header controls whether these commands add header lines to
each page—set it to nil to turn headers off.
If your printer doesn’t support colors, you should turn off color processing by setting
ps-print-color-p to nil. By default, if the display supports colors, Emacs produces
hardcopy output with color information; on black-and-white printers, colors are emulated
474 GNU Emacs Manual

with shades of gray. This might produce barely-readable or even illegible output, even if
your screen colors only use shades of gray.
Alternatively, you can set ps-print-color-p to black-white to have colors display
better on black/white printers. This works by using information in ps-black-white-faces
to express colors by customizable list of shades of gray, augmented by bold and italic face
attributes.
By default, PostScript printing ignores the background colors of the faces, unless the
variable ps-use-face-background is non-nil. This is to avoid unwanted interference with
the zebra stripes and background image/text.
The variable ps-paper-type specifies which size of paper to format for; legitimate
values include a4, a3, a4small, b4, b5, executive, ledger, legal, letter, letter-small,
statement, tabloid. The default is letter. You can define additional paper sizes by
changing the variable ps-page-dimensions-database.
The variable ps-landscape-mode specifies the orientation of printing on the page. The
default is nil, which stands for portrait mode. Any non-nil value specifies landscape mode.
The variable ps-number-of-columns specifies the number of columns; it takes effect in
both landscape and portrait mode. The default is 1.
The variable ps-font-family specifies which font family to use for printing ordinary text.
Legitimate values include Courier, Helvetica, NewCenturySchlbk, Palatino and Times.
The variable ps-font-size specifies the size of the font for ordinary text and defaults to
8.5 points. The value of ps-font-size can also be a cons of 2 floats: one for landscape
mode, the other for portrait mode.
Emacs supports more scripts and characters than a typical PostScript printer. Thus,
some of the characters in your buffer might not be printable using the fonts built into your
printer. You can augment the fonts supplied with the printer with those from the GNU
Intlfonts package, or you can instruct Emacs to use Intlfonts exclusively. The variable
ps-multibyte-buffer controls this: the default value, nil, is appropriate for printing
ASCII and Latin-1 characters; a value of non-latin-printer is for printers which have
the fonts for ASCII, Latin-1, Japanese, and Korean characters built into them. A value of
bdf-font arranges for the BDF fonts from the Intlfonts package to be used for all characters.
Finally, a value of bdf-font-except-latin instructs the printer to use built-in fonts for
ASCII and Latin-1 characters, and Intlfonts BDF fonts for the rest.
To be able to use the BDF fonts, Emacs needs to know where to find them. The variable
bdf-directory-list holds the list of directories where Emacs should look for the fonts;
the default value includes a single directory /usr/local/share/emacs/fonts/bdf.
Many other customization variables for these commands are defined and described in the
Lisp files ps-print.el and ps-mule.el.

31.7.3 Printing Package

The basic Emacs facilities for printing hardcopy can be extended using the Printing package.
This provides an easy-to-use interface for choosing what to print, previewing PostScript files
before printing, and setting various printing options such as print headers, landscape or
portrait modes, duplex modes, and so forth. On GNU/Linux or Unix systems, the Printing
package relies on the gs and gv utilities, which are distributed as part of the GhostScript
program. On MS-Windows, the gstools port of Ghostscript can be used.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 475

To use the Printing package, add (require 'printing) to your init file (see Section 33.4
[Init File], page 522), followed by (pr-update-menus). This function replaces the usual
printing commands in the menu bar with a ‘Printing’ submenu that contains various printing
options. You can also type M-x pr-interface RET; this creates a *Printing Interface*
buffer, similar to a customization buffer, where you can set the printing options. After
selecting what and how to print, you start the print job using the ‘Print’ button (click
mouse-2 on it, or move point over it and type RET). For further information on the various
options, use the ‘Interface Help’ button.

31.8 Sorting Text

Emacs provides several commands for sorting text in the buffer. All operate on the contents
of the region. They divide the text of the region into many sort records, identify a sort
key for each record, and then reorder the records into the order determined by the sort
keys. The records are ordered so that their keys are in alphabetical order, or, for numeric
sorting, in numeric order. In alphabetic sorting, all upper-case letters ‘A’ through ‘Z’ come
before lower-case ‘a’, in accordance with the ASCII character sequence (but sort-fold-case,
described below, can change that).
The various sort commands differ in how they divide the text into sort records and in
which part of each record is used as the sort key. Most of the commands make each line a
separate sort record, but some commands use paragraphs or pages as sort records. Most
of the sort commands use each entire sort record as its own sort key, but some use only a
portion of the record as the sort key.

M-x sort-lines
Divide the region into lines, and sort by comparing the entire text of a line. A
numeric argument means sort into descending order.
M-x sort-paragraphs
Divide the region into paragraphs, and sort by comparing the entire text of a
paragraph (except for leading blank lines). A numeric argument means sort into
descending order.
M-x sort-pages
Divide the region into pages, and sort by comparing the entire text of a page
(except for leading blank lines). A numeric argument means sort into descending
order.
M-x sort-fields
Divide the region into lines, and sort by comparing the contents of one field
in each line. Fields are defined as separated by whitespace, so the first run of
consecutive non-whitespace characters in a line constitutes field 1, the second
such run constitutes field 2, etc.
Specify which field to sort by with a numeric argument: 1 to sort by field 1, etc.;
the default is 1. A negative argument means count fields from the right instead
of from the left; thus, minus 1 means sort by the last field. If several lines have
identical contents in the field being sorted, they keep the same relative order
that they had in the original buffer.
476 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x sort-numeric-fields
Like M-x sort-fields except the specified field is converted to an integer for
each line, and the numbers are compared. ‘10’ comes before ‘2’ when considered
as text, but after it when considered as a number. By default, numbers are
interpreted according to sort-numeric-base, but numbers beginning with ‘0x’
or ‘0’ are interpreted as hexadecimal and octal, respectively.
M-x sort-columns
Like M-x sort-fields except that the text within each line used for comparison
comes from a fixed range of columns. With a prefix argument, sort in reverse
order. See below for more details on this command.
M-x reverse-region
Reverse the order of the lines in the region. This is useful for sorting into
descending order by fields, since those sort commands do not have a feature for
doing that.
For example, if the buffer contains this:
On systems where clash detection (locking of files being edited) is
implemented, Emacs also checks the first time you modify a buffer
whether the file has changed on disk since it was last visited or
saved. If it has, you are asked to confirm that you want to change
the buffer.
applying M-x sort-lines to the entire buffer produces this:
On systems where clash detection (locking of files being edited) is
implemented, Emacs also checks the first time you modify a buffer
saved. If it has, you are asked to confirm that you want to change
the buffer.
whether the file has changed on disk since it was last visited or
where the upper-case ‘O’ sorts before all lower-case letters. If you use C-u 2 M-x sort-fields
instead, you get this:
implemented, Emacs also checks the first time you modify a buffer
saved. If it has, you are asked to confirm that you want to change
the buffer.
On systems where clash detection (locking of files being edited) is
whether the file has changed on disk since it was last visited or
where the sort keys were ‘Emacs’, ‘If’, ‘buffer’, ‘systems’ and ‘the’.
M-x sort-columns requires more explanation. You specify the columns by putting point
at one of the columns and the mark at the other column. Because this means you cannot
put point or the mark at the beginning of the first line of the text you want to sort, this
command uses an unusual definition of “region”: all of the line point is in is considered part
of the region, and so is all of the line the mark is in, as well as all the lines in between.
For example, to sort a table by information found in columns 10 to 15, you could put the
mark on column 10 in the first line of the table, and point on column 15 in the last line of
the table, and then run sort-columns. Equivalently, you could run it with the mark on
column 15 in the first line and point on column 10 in the last line.
This can be thought of as sorting the rectangle specified by point and the mark, except
that the text on each line to the left or right of the rectangle moves along with the text
inside the rectangle. See Section 9.5 [Rectangles], page 67.
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 477

Many of the sort commands ignore case differences when comparing, if sort-fold-case
is non-nil.

31.9 Editing Binary Files

There is a special major mode for editing binary files: Hexl mode. To use it, use M-x
hexl-find-file instead of C-x C-f to visit the file. This command converts the file’s
contents to hexadecimal and lets you edit the translation. When you save the file, it is
converted automatically back to binary.
You can also use M-x hexl-mode to translate an existing buffer into hex. This is useful if
you visit a file normally and then discover it is a binary file.
Inserting text always overwrites in Hexl mode. This is to reduce the risk of accidentally
spoiling the alignment of data in the file. Ordinary text characters insert themselves (i.e.,
overwrite with themselves). There are commands for insertion of special characters by their
code. Most cursor motion keys, as well as C-x C-s, are bound in Hexl mode to commands
that produce the same effect. Here is a list of other important commands special to Hexl
mode:

C-M-d Insert a byte with a code typed in decimal.

C-M-o Insert a byte with a code typed in octal.

C-M-x Insert a byte with a code typed in hex.

C-M-a Move to the beginning of a 512-byte page.

C-M-e Move to the end of a 512-byte page.

C-x [ Move to the beginning of a 1k-byte page.

C-x ] Move to the end of a 1k-byte page.

M-g Move to an address specified in hex.

M-j Move to an address specified in decimal.

C-c C-c Leave Hexl mode, going back to the major mode this buffer had before you
invoked hexl-mode.

Other Hexl commands let you insert strings (sequences) of binary bytes, move by shorts or
ints, etc.; type C-h a hexl- TAB for details.
Hexl mode can also be used for editing text files. This could come in handy if the text
file includes unusual characters or uses unusual encoding (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 223). For this purpose, Hexl commands that insert bytes can also insert ASCII and
non-ASCII characters, including multibyte characters. To edit a text file with Hexl, visit the
file as usual, and then type M-x hexl-mode RET to switch to Hexl mode. You can now insert
text characters by typing them. However, inserting multibyte characters requires special
care, to avoid the danger of creating invalid multibyte sequences: you should start typing
such characters when point is on the first byte of a multibyte sequence in the file.
478 GNU Emacs Manual

31.10 Saving Emacs Sessions

You can use the desktop library to save the state of Emacs from one session to another.
The saved Emacs desktop configuration includes the buffers, their file names, major modes,
buffer positions, window and frame configuration, and some important global variables.
To enable this feature, use the Customization buffer (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization],
page 494) to set desktop-save-mode to t for future sessions, or add this line in your init
file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522):
(desktop-save-mode 1)
If you turn on desktop-save-mode in your init file, then when Emacs starts, it looks for
a saved desktop in desktop-path (which defaults to user-emacs-directory and then your
home directory) and uses the first desktop it finds. While Emacs runs with desktop-save-
mode turned on, it by default auto-saves the desktop whenever any of the desktop configura-
tion changes. The variable desktop-auto-save-timeout determines how frequently Emacs
checks for modifications to your desktop. The desktop is also saved when you exit Emacs.
Specify the option ‘--no-desktop’ on the Emacs command line when you don’t want
it to reload any saved desktop configurations. This turns off desktop-save-mode for the
current session. Starting Emacs with the ‘--no-init-file’ option also disables desktop
reloading, since it bypasses the init file, where desktop-save-mode is usually turned on.
You can have separate saved desktop configurations in different directories; starting Emacs
from a directory where you have a saved desktop configuration will restore that configuration,
provided that you customize desktop-path to prepend . (the current directory) to the other
directories there. You can save the current desktop and reload the one saved in another
directory by typing M-x desktop-change-dir. Typing M-x desktop-revert reverts to the
previously reloaded desktop.
The file in which Emacs saves the desktop is locked while the session runs, to avoid
inadvertently overwriting it from another Emacs session. That lock is normally removed
when Emacs exits, but if Emacs or your system crashes, the lock stays, and when you restart
Emacs, it will by default ask you whether to use the locked desktop file. You can avoid the
question by customizing the variable desktop-load-locked-desktop to either nil, which
means never load the desktop in this case, or t, which means load the desktop without
asking. You can also customize the variable to the special value check-pid, which means to
load the file if the Emacs process that has locked the desktop is not running on the local
machine. This should not be used in circumstances where the locking Emacs might still be
running on another machine, which could be the case in multi-user environments where your
home directory is mounted remotely using NFS or similar.
When Emacs starts in daemon mode, it cannot ask you any questions, so if it finds the
desktop file locked, it will not load it, unless desktop-load-locked-desktop is t. Note that
restoring the desktop in daemon mode is somewhat problematic for other reasons: e.g., the
daemon cannot use GUI features, so parameters such as frame position, size, and decorations
cannot be restored. For that reason, you may wish to delay restoring the desktop in daemon
mode until the first client connects, by calling desktop-read (see below) in a hook function
that you add to server-after-make-frame-hook (see Section “Creating Frames” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
Whenever you want, you can use the command M-x desktop-save to force immediate
saving of the current desktop. This is useful either if you do not want to use the automatic
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 479

desktop restoration, and thus don’t turn on desktop-save-mode, or when you have made
significant changes to the desktop, and want to make sure the configuration doesn’t get lost if
Emacs or your system crashes. You can use M-x desktop-read to restore a previously-saved
desktop if the current Emacs session didn’t load any desktop yet.
By default, the desktop tries to save and restore the frame and window configuration. To
disable this, set desktop-restore-frames to nil. (See that variable’s documentation for
some related options that you can customize to fine-tune this behavior.)
When the desktop restores the frame and window configuration, it uses the recorded
values of frame parameters, disregarding any settings for those parameters you have in your
init file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522). This means that frame parameters such as
fonts and faces for the restored frames will come from the desktop file, where they were saved
when you exited your previous Emacs session; any settings for those parameters in your init
file will be ignored. To disable this, customize the value of frameset-filter-alist to filter
out the frame parameters you don’t want to be restored; they will then be set according to
your customizations in the init file.
Information about buffers visiting remote files is not saved by default. Customize the
variable desktop-files-not-to-save to change this.
By default, all the buffers in the desktop are restored in one go. However, this may be
slow if there are a lot of buffers in the desktop. You can specify the maximum number of
buffers to restore immediately with the variable desktop-restore-eager; the remaining
buffers are restored lazily, when Emacs is idle.
Type M-x desktop-clear to empty the Emacs desktop; this can be useful, for exam-
ple, if you want to switch to another desktop by invoking M-x desktop-read next. The
desktop-clear command kills all buffers except for internal ones, and clears the global
variables listed in desktop-globals-to-clear. If you want it to preserve certain buffers,
customize the variable desktop-clear-preserve-buffers-regexp, whose value is a regular
expression matching the names of buffers not to kill.
If you want to save minibuffer history from one session to another, use the savehist
library.

31.11 Recursive Editing Levels

A recursive edit is a situation in which you are using Emacs commands to perform arbitrary
editing while in the middle of another Emacs command. For example, when you type
C-r inside of a query-replace, you enter a recursive edit in which you can change the
current buffer. On exiting from the recursive edit, you go back to the query-replace. See
Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace], page 124.
Exiting the recursive edit means returning to the unfinished command, which continues
execution. The command to exit is C-M-c (exit-recursive-edit).
You can also abort the recursive edit. This is like exiting, but also quits the unfinished
command immediately. Use the command C-] (abort-recursive-edit) to do this. See
Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 530.
The mode line shows you when you are in a recursive edit by displaying square brackets
around the parentheses that always surround the major and minor mode names. Every
480 GNU Emacs Manual

window’s mode line shows this in the same way, since being in a recursive edit is true of
Emacs as a whole rather than any particular window or buffer.
It is possible to be in recursive edits within recursive edits. For example, after typing
C-r in a query-replace, you may type a command that enters the debugger. This begins
a recursive editing level for the debugger, within the recursive editing level for C-r. Mode
lines display a pair of square brackets for each recursive editing level currently in progress.
Exiting the inner recursive edit (such as with the debugger c command) resumes the
command running in the next level up. When that command finishes, you can then use
C-M-c to exit another recursive editing level, and so on. Exiting applies to the innermost
level only. Aborting also gets out of only one level of recursive edit; it returns immediately
to the command level of the previous recursive edit. If you wish, you can then abort the
next recursive editing level.
Alternatively, the command M-x top-level aborts all levels of recursive edits, returning
immediately to the top-level command reader. It also exits the minibuffer, if it is active.
The text being edited inside the recursive edit need not be the same text that you were
editing at top level. It depends on what the recursive edit is for. If the command that invokes
the recursive edit selects a different buffer first, that is the buffer you will edit recursively. In
any case, you can switch buffers within the recursive edit in the normal manner (as long as
the buffer-switching keys have not been rebound). You could probably do all the rest of your
editing inside the recursive edit, visiting files and all. But this could have surprising effects
(such as stack overflow) from time to time. So remember to exit or abort the recursive edit
when you no longer need it.
In general, we try to minimize the use of recursive editing levels in GNU Emacs. This
is because they constrain you to go back in a particular order—from the innermost level
toward the top level. When possible, we present different activities in separate buffers so
that you can switch between them as you please. Some commands switch to a new major
mode which provides a command to switch back. These approaches give you more flexibility
to go back to unfinished tasks in the order you choose.

31.12 Hyperlinking and Web Navigation Features

The following subsections describe convenience features for handling URLs and other types
of links occurring in Emacs buffer text.

31.12.1 Web Browsing with EWW

EWW, the Emacs Web Wowser, is a web browser package for Emacs. It allows browsing
URLs within an Emacs buffer. The command M-x eww will open a URL or search the web.
You can open a file using the command M-x eww-open-file. You can use EWW as the web
browser for browse-url, see Section 31.12.3 [Browse-URL], page 481. For full details, see
The Emacs Web Wowser Manual.

31.12.2 Embedded WebKit Widgets

If Emacs was compiled with the appropriate support packages, it is able to show browser
widgets in its buffers. The command M-x xwidget-webkit-browse-url asks for a URL to
display in the browser widget. The URL normally defaults to the URL at or before point,
but if there is an active region (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51), the default URL comes from
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 481

the region instead, after removing any whitespace from it. The command then creates a
new buffer with the embedded browser showing the specified URL. The buffer is put in the
Xwidget-WebKit mode (similar to Image mode, see Section 15.19 [Image Mode], page 171),
which provides one-key commands for scrolling the widget, changing its size, and reloading
it. Type C-h b in that buffer to see the key bindings.
By default, typing a self-inserting character inside an xwidget webkit buffer will do
nothing, or trigger some special action. To make those characters and other common editing
keys insert themselves when pressed, you can enable xwidget-webkit-edit-mode, which
redefines them to be passed through to the WebKit xwidget.
You can also enable xwidget-webkit-edit-mode by typing e inside the xwidget webkit
buffer.
xwidget-webkit-isearch-mode is a minor mode that behaves similarly to incremental
search (see Section 12.1 [Incremental Search], page 104), but operates on the contents of
a WebKit widget instead of the current buffer. It is bound to C-s and C-r inside xwidget-
webkit buffers. When it is invoked by C-r, the initial search will be performed in reverse
direction.
Typing any self-inserting character will cause the character to be inserted into the current
search query. Typing C-s will cause the WebKit widget to display the next search result,
while typing C-r will cause it to display the previous one.
To leave incremental search, you can type C-g.
The command xwidget-webkit-browse-history displays a buffer containing a list of
pages previously loaded by the current WebKit buffer, and lets you navigate to those pages
by hitting RET.
It is bound to H.

31.12.3 Following URLs

M-x browse-url RET url RET
Load a URL into a Web browser.
The Browse-URL package allows you to easily follow URLs from within Emacs. Most
URLs are followed by invoking a web browser; ‘mailto:’ URLs are followed by invoking
the compose-mail Emacs command to send mail to the specified address (see Chapter 29
[Sending Mail], page 418).
The command M-x browse-url prompts for a URL, and follows it. If point is located near
a plausible URL, that URL is offered as the default. The Browse-URL package also provides
other commands which you might like to bind to keys, such as browse-url-at-point and
browse-url-at-mouse.
You can customize Browse-URL’s behavior via various options in the browse-url Cus-
tomize group. In particular, the option browse-url-mailto-function lets you define
how to follow ‘mailto:’ URLs, while browse-url-browser-function specifies your default
browser.
You can define that certain URLs are browsed with other functions by customizing
browse-url-handlers, an alist of regular expressions or predicates paired with functions
to browse matching URLs.
For more information, view the package commentary by typing C-h P browse-url RET.
482 GNU Emacs Manual

Emacs also has a minor mode that has some support for handling URLs as if they were
files. url-handler-mode is a global minor mode that affects most of the Emacs commands
and primitives that deal with file names. After switching on this mode, you can say, for
instance, C-x C-f https://www.gnu.org/ RET to see the HTML for that web page, and you
can then edit it and save it to a local file, for instance.

31.12.4 Activating URLs

M-x goto-address-mode
Activate URLs and e-mail addresses in the current buffer.
M-x global-goto-address-mode
Activate goto-address-mode in all buffers.
You can make Emacs mark out URLs specially in the current buffer, by typing M-x
goto-address-mode. When this buffer-local minor mode is enabled, it finds all the URLs in
the buffer, highlights them, and turns them into clickable buttons. You can follow the URL
by typing C-c RET (goto-address-at-point) while point is on its text; or by clicking with
mouse-2, or by clicking mouse-1 quickly (see Section 18.3 [Mouse References], page 197).
Following a URL is done by calling browse-url as a subroutine (see Section 31.12.3 [Browse-
URL], page 481).
It can be useful to add goto-address-mode to mode hooks and hooks for displaying an
incoming message (e.g., rmail-show-message-hook for Rmail). This is not needed for Gnus
or MH-E, which have similar features of their own.

31.12.5 Finding Files and URLs at Point

The FFAP package replaces certain key bindings for finding files, such as C-x C-f, with
commands that provide more sensible defaults. These commands behave like the ordinary
ones when given a prefix argument. Otherwise, they get the default file name or URL from
the text around point. If what is found in the buffer has the form of a URL rather than
a file name, the commands use browse-url to view it (see Section 31.12.3 [Browse-URL],
page 481).
This feature is useful for following references in mail or news buffers, README files,
MANIFEST files, and so on. For more information, view the package commentary by typing
C-h P ffap RET.
To enable FFAP, type M-x ffap-bindings. This makes the following key bindings, and
also installs hooks for additional FFAP functionality in Rmail, Gnus and VM article buffers.
C-x C-f filename RET
Find filename, guessing a default from text around point (find-file-at-point).
C-x C-r filename RET
ffap-read-only, analogous to find-file-read-only.
C-x C-v filename RET
ffap-alternate-file, analogous to find-alternate-file.
C-x d directory RET
Start Dired on directory, defaulting to the directory at point (dired-at-point).
Chapter 31: Miscellaneous Commands 483

C-x C-d directory RET

ffap-list-directory, analogous to list-directory.
C-x 4 f filename RET
ffap-other-window, analogous to find-file-other-window.
C-x 4 r filename RET
ffap-read-only-other-window, analogous to find-file-read-only-other-
window.
C-x 4 d directory RET
ffap-dired-other-window, like dired-other-window.
C-x 5 f filename RET
ffap-other-frame, analogous to find-file-other-frame.
C-x 5 r filename RET
ffap-read-only-other-frame, analogous to find-file-read-only-other-
frame.
C-x 5 d directory RET
ffap-dired-other-frame, analogous to dired-other-frame.
C-x t C-f filename return
ffap-other-tab, analogous to find-file-other-tab.
C-x t C-r filename return
ffap-read-only-other-tab, analogous to find-file-read-only-other-tab.
M-x ffap-next
Search buffer for next file name or URL, then find that file or URL.
S-mouse-3
ffap-at-mouse finds the file guessed from text around the position of a mouse
click.
C-S-mouse-3
Display a menu of files and URLs mentioned in current buffer, then find the
one you select (ffap-menu).

31.13 Games and Other Amusements

The animate package makes text dance (e.g., M-x animate-birthday-present).
M-x blackbox, M-x mpuz and M-x 5x5 are puzzles. blackbox challenges you to determine
the location of objects inside a box by tomography. mpuz displays a multiplication puzzle
with letters standing for digits in a code that you must guess—to guess a value, type a letter
and then the digit you think it stands for. The aim of 5x5 is to fill in all the squares.
M-x bubbles is a game in which the object is to remove as many bubbles as you can in
the smallest number of moves.
M-x decipher helps you to cryptanalyze a buffer which is encrypted in a simple monoal-
phabetic substitution cipher.
M-x dissociated-press scrambles the text in the current Emacs buffer, word by word
or character by character, writing its output to a buffer named *Dissociation*. A positive
484 GNU Emacs Manual

argument tells it to operate character by character, and specifies the number of overlap
characters. A negative argument tells it to operate word by word, and specifies the number of
overlap words. Dissociated Press produces results fairly like those of a Markov chain, but is
however, an independent, ignoriginal invention; it techniquitously copies several consecutive
characters from the sample text between random jumps, unlike a Markov chain which would
jump randomly after each word or character. Keep dissociwords out of your documentation,
if you want it to be well userenced and properbose.
M-x dunnet runs a text-based adventure game.
If you want a little more personal involvement, try M-x gomoku, which plays the game
Go Moku with you.
If you are a little bit bored, you can try M-x hanoi. If you are considerably bored, give it
a numeric argument. If you are very, very bored, try an argument of 9. Sit back and watch.
M-x life runs Conway’s Game of Life cellular automaton.
M-x morse-region converts the text in the region to Morse code; M-x unmorse-region
converts it back. M-x nato-region converts the text in the region to NATO phonetic
alphabet; M-x denato-region converts it back.
M-x pong, M-x snake and M-x tetris are implementations of the well-known Pong, Snake
and Tetris games.
M-x solitaire plays a game of solitaire in which you jump pegs across other pegs.
The command M-x zone plays games with the display when Emacs is idle.
“Real Programmers” deploy M-x butterfly, which uses butterflies to flip a bit on the
drive platter, see https://xkcd.com/378.
Finally, if you find yourself frustrated, try describing your problems to the famous
psychotherapist Eliza. Just do M-x doctor. End each input by typing RET twice.
 485

32 Emacs Lisp Packages

Emacs is extended by implementing additional features in packages, which are Emacs Lisp
libraries. These could be written by you or provided by someone else. If you want to install
such a package so it is available in your future Emacs session, you need to compile it and
put it in a directory where Emacs looks for Lisp libraries. See Section 24.8 [Lisp Libraries],
page 326, for more details about this manual installation method. Many packages provide
installation and usage instructions in the large commentary near the beginning of the Lisp
file; you can use those instructions for installing and fine-tuning your use of the package.
Packages can also be provided by package archives, which are large collections of Emacs
Lisp packages. Each package is a separate Emacs Lisp program, sometimes including other
components such as an Info manual. Emacs includes a facility that lets you easily download
and install packages from such archives. The rest of this chapter describes this facility.
To list the packages available for installation from package archives, type
M-x list-packages RET. It brings up a buffer named *Packages* with a list of all
packages. You can install or uninstall packages via this buffer. See Section 32.1 [Package
Menu], page 485.
The command C-h P (describe-package) prompts for the name of a package, and
displays a help buffer describing the attributes of the package and the features that it
implements.
By default, Emacs downloads packages from a package archive maintained by the Emacs
developers and hosted by the GNU project. Optionally, you can also download packages
from archives maintained by third parties. See Section 32.3 [Package Installation], page 488.
For information about turning an Emacs Lisp program into an installable package, See
Section “Packaging” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

32.1 The Package Menu Buffer

The command M-x list-packages brings up the package menu. This is a buffer listing all
the packages that Emacs knows about, one on each line, with the following information:
• The package name (e.g., ‘auctex’).
• The package’s version number (e.g., ‘11.86’).
• The package’s status—normally one of ‘available’ (can be downloaded from the
package archive), ‘installed’, or ‘built-in’ (included in Emacs by default). See
Section 32.2 [Package Statuses], page 487.
• Which package archive this package is from, if you have more than one package archive
enabled.
• A short description of the package.
The list-packages command accesses the network, to retrieve the list of available packages
from package archive servers. If the network is unavailable, it falls back on the most recently
retrieved list.
The main command to use in the package list buffer is the x command. If the package
under point isn’t installed already, this command will install it. If the package under point
is already installed, this command will delete it.
486 GNU Emacs Manual

The following commands are available in the package menu:

h Print a short message summarizing how to use the package menu
(package-menu-quick-help).
?
RET Display a help buffer for the package on the current line (package-menu-
describe-package), similar to the help window displayed by the C-h P com-
mand (see Chapter 32 [Packages], page 485).
i Mark the package on the current line for installation (package-menu-mark-
install). If the package status is ‘available’, this adds an ‘I’ character to
the start of the line; typing x (see below) will download and install the package.
d Mark the package on the current line for deletion (package-menu-mark-delete).
If the package status is ‘installed’, this adds a ‘D’ character to the start of
the line; typing x (see below) will delete the package. See Section 32.4 [Package
Files], page 491, for information about what package deletion entails.
w Open the package website on the current line in a browser (package-browse-
url). browse-url is used to open the browser.
~ Mark all obsolete packages for deletion (package-menu-mark-obsolete-for-
deletion). This marks for deletion all the packages whose status is ‘obsolete’.
u
DEL Remove any installation or deletion mark previously added to the current line
by an i or d command (package-menu-mark-unmark).
U Mark all package with a newer available version for upgrading (package-menu-
mark-upgrades). This places an installation mark on the new available versions,
and a deletion mark on the old installed versions (marked with status ‘obsolete’).
By default, this won’t mark built-in packages for which a newer version is
available, but customizing package-install-upgrade-built-in can change
that. See Section 32.3 [Package Installation], page 488. If you customize
package-install-upgrade-built-in to a non-nil value, be sure to review all
the built-in packages the U command marks, to avoid updating built-in packages
you don’t want to overwrite.
x Download and install all packages marked with i, and their dependencies; also,
delete all packages marked with d (package-menu-execute). This also removes
the marks. If no packages are marked, this command will install the package
under point (if it isn’t installed already), or delete the package under point (if
it’s already installed).
g
r Refresh the package list (revert-buffer). This fetches the list of available
packages from the package archive again, and redisplays the package list.
H Hide packages whose names match a regexp (package-menu-hide-package).
This prompts for a regexp, and then hides the packages with matching names.
The default value of the regexp will hide only the package whose name is at
point, so just pressing RET to the prompt will hide the current package.
Chapter 32: Emacs Lisp Packages 487

( Toggle visibility of old versions of packages and also of versions from lower-
priority archives (package-menu-toggle-hiding).
/a Filter package list by archive (package-menu-filter-by-archive). This
prompts for a package archive (e.g., ‘gnu’), then shows only packages from that
archive. You can specify several archives by typing their names separated by
commas.
/d Filter package list by description (package-menu-filter-by-description).
This prompts for a regular expression, then shows only packages with descriptions
matching that regexp.
/k Filter package list by keyword (package-menu-filter-by-keyword). This
prompts for a keyword (e.g., ‘games’), then shows only packages with that
keyword. You can specify several keywords by typing them separated by
commas.
/N Filter package list by name or description (package-menu-filter-by-name-
or-description). This prompts for a regular expression, then shows only
packages with a name or description matching that regexp.
/n Filter package list by name (package-menu-filter-by-name). This prompts
for a regular expression, then shows only packages with names matching that
regexp.
/s Filter package list by status (package-menu-filter-by-status). This prompts
for one or more statuses (e.g., ‘available’, see Section 32.2 [Package Statuses],
page 487), then shows only packages with matching status. You can specify
several status values by typing them separated by commas.
/v Filter package list by version (package-menu-filter-by-version). This
prompts first for one of the comparison symbols ‘<’, ‘>’ or ‘=’ and for a version
string, and then shows packages whose versions are correspondingly lower, equal
or higher than the version you typed.
/m Filter package list by non-empty mark (package-menu-filter-marked). This
shows only the packages that have been marked to be installed or deleted.
/u Filter package list to show only packages for which there are available up-
grades (package-menu-filter-upgradable). By default, this filter excludes
the built-in packages for which a newer version is available, but customizing
package-install-upgrade-built-in can change that. See Section 32.3 [Pack-
age Installation], page 488.
// Clear filter currently applied to the package list (package-menu-filter-clear).
For example, you can install a package by typing i on the line listing that package, followed
by x.

32.2 Package Statuses

A package can have one of the following statuses:
488 GNU Emacs Manual

‘available’
The package is not installed, but can be downloaded and installed from the
package archive.
‘avail-obso’
The package is available for installation, but a newer version is also available.
Packages with this status are hidden by default.
‘built-in’
The package is included in Emacs by default. It cannot be deleted through the
package menu, and by default is not considered for upgrading (but you can change
that by customizing package-install-upgrade-built-in, see Section 32.3
[Package Installation], page 488).
‘dependency’
The package was installed automatically to satisfy a dependency of another
package.
‘disabled’
The package has been disabled using the package-load-list variable.
‘external’
The package is not built-in and not from the directory specified by
package-user-dir (see Section 32.4 [Package Files], page 491). External
packages are treated much like ‘built-in’ packages and cannot be deleted.
‘held’ The package is held, See Section 32.3 [Package Installation], page 488.
‘incompat’
The package cannot be installed for some reason, for example because it depends
on uninstallable packages.
‘installed’
The package is installed.
‘new’ Equivalent to ‘available’, except that the package became newly available on
the package archive after your last invocation of M-x list-packages.
‘obsolete’
The package is an outdated installed version; in addition to this version of the
package, a newer version is also installed.

32.3 Package Installation

Packages are most conveniently installed using the package menu (see Section 32.1 [Package
Menu], page 485), but you can also use the command M-x package-install. This prompts
for the name of a package with the ‘available’ status, then downloads and installs it.
Similarly, if you want to upgrade a package, you can use the M-x package-upgrade command,
and if you want to upgrade all the packages, you can use the M-x package-upgrade-all
command.
By default, package-install doesn’t consider built-in packages for which new versions
are available from the archives. (A package is built-in if it is included in the Emacs
distribution.) In particular, it will not show built-in packages in the list of completion
Chapter 32: Emacs Lisp Packages 489

candidates when you type at its prompt. But if you invoke package-install with a prefix
argument, it will also consider built-in packages that can be upgraded. You can make this
behavior the default by customizing the variable package-install-upgrade-built-in: if
its value is non-nil, package-install will consider built-in packages even when invoked
without a prefix argument. Note that the package-menu commands (see Section 32.1 [Package
Menu], page 485) are also affected by package-install-upgrade-built-in.
By contrast, package-upgrade and package-upgrade-all never consider built-in pack-
ages. If you want to use these commands for upgrading some built-in packages, you need
to upgrade each of those packages, once, either via C-u M-x package-install RET, or by
customizing package-install-upgrade-built-in to a non-nil value, and then upgrading
the package once via the package menu or by package-install.
If you customize package-install-upgrade-built-in to a non-nil value, be very
careful when using commands that update many packages at once, like package-upgrade-
all and U in the package menu: those might overwrite built-in packages that you didn’t
intent to replace with newer versions from the archives. Don’t use these bulk commands if
you want to update only a small number of built-in packages.
A package may require certain other packages to be installed, because it relies on
functionality provided by them. When Emacs installs such a package, it also automatically
downloads and installs any required package that is not already installed. (If a required
package is somehow unavailable, Emacs signals an error and stops installation.) A package’s
requirements list is shown in its help buffer.
By default, packages are downloaded from a single package archive maintained by the
Emacs developers. This is controlled by the variable package-archives, whose value is
a list of package archives known to Emacs. Each list element must have the form (id .
location), where id is the name of a package archive and location is the URL or name of
the package archive directory. You can alter this list if you wish to use third party package
archives—but do so at your own risk, and use only third parties that you think you can
trust!
The maintainers of package archives can increase the trust that you can have in their
packages by signing them. They generate a private/public pair of cryptographic keys, and
use the private key to create a signature file for each package. With the public key, you can
use the signature files to verify the package creator and make sure the package has not been
tampered with. Signature verification uses the GnuPG package (https://www.gnupg.org/
) via the EasyPG interface (see Section “EasyPG” in Emacs EasyPG Assistant Manual). A
valid signature is not a cast-iron guarantee that a package is not malicious, so you should still
exercise caution. Package archives should provide instructions on how you can obtain their
public key. One way is to download the key from a server such as https://pgp.mit.edu/
. Use M-x package-import-keyring to import the key into Emacs. Emacs stores package
keys in the directory specified by the variable package-gnupghome-dir, by default in the
gnupg subdirectory of package-user-dir, which causes Emacs to invoke GnuPG with the
option ‘--homedir’ when verifying signatures. If package-gnupghome-dir is nil, GnuPG’s
option ‘--homedir’ is omitted. The public key for the GNU package archive is distributed
with Emacs, in the etc/package-keyring.gpg. Emacs uses it automatically.
If the user option package-check-signature is non-nil, Emacs attempts to verify
signatures when you install packages. If the option has the value allow-unsigned, and a
490 GNU Emacs Manual

usable OpenPGP configuration is found, signed packages will be checked, but you can still
install a package that is not signed. If you use some archives that do not sign their packages,
you can add them to the list package-unsigned-archives. (If the value is allow-unsigned
and no usable OpenPGP is found, this option is treated as if its value was nil.) If the value
is t, at least one signature must be valid; if the value is all, all of them must be valid.
For more information on cryptographic keys and signing, see Section “GnuPG” in The
GNU Privacy Guard Manual. Emacs comes with an interface to GNU Privacy Guard, see
Section “EasyPG” in Emacs EasyPG Assistant Manual.
If you have more than one package archive enabled, and some of them offer different
versions of the same package, you may find the option package-pinned-packages useful.
You can add package/archive pairs to this list, to ensure that the specified package is only
ever downloaded from the specified archive.
Another option that is useful when you have several package archives enabled is
package-archive-priorities. It specifies the priority of each archive (higher numbers
specify higher priority archives). By default, archives have the priority of zero, unless
specified otherwise by this option’s value. Packages from lower-priority archives will not be
shown in the menu, if the same package is available from a higher-priority archive. (This is
controlled by the value of package-menu-hide-low-priority.)
Once a package is downloaded, byte-compiled and installed, it is made available to the
current Emacs session. Making a package available adds its directory to load-path and
loads its autoloads. The effect of a package’s autoloads varies from package to package. Most
packages just make some new commands available, while others have more wide-ranging
effects on the Emacs session. For such information, consult the package’s help buffer.
Installed packages are automatically made available by Emacs in all subsequent sessions.
This happens at startup, before processing the init file but after processing the early init
file (see Section 33.4.6 [Early Init File], page 528). As an exception, Emacs does not make
packages available at startup if invoked with the ‘-q’ or ‘--no-init-file’ options (see
Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570).
To keep Emacs from automatically making packages available at startup, change the
variable package-enable-at-startup to nil. You must do this in the early init file, as the
variable is read before loading the regular init file. Currently this variable cannot be set via
Customize.
If you have many packages installed, you can improve startup times by setting the
user option package-quickstart to t. Setting this option will make Emacs precompute
many things instead of re-computing them on every Emacs startup. However, if you do
this, then you have to manually run the command package-quickstart-refresh when the
activations need to be changed, such as when you change the value of package-load-list.
If you have set package-enable-at-startup to nil, you can still make packages available
either during or after startup. To make installed packages available during startup, call the
function package-activate-all in your init file. To make installed packages available after
startup, invoke the command M-: (package-activate-all) RET.
For finer control over which packages are made available at startup, you can use the
variable package-load-list. Its value should be a list. A list element of the form
(name version) tells Emacs to make available version version of the package named name.
Here, version should be a version string (corresponding to a specific version of the package),
Chapter 32: Emacs Lisp Packages 491

or t (which means to make available any installed version), or nil (which means no version;
this disables the package, preventing it from being made available). A list element can also
be the symbol all, which means to make available the latest installed version of any package
not named by the other list elements. The default value is just '(all).
For example, if you set package-load-list to '((muse "3.20") all), then Emacs only
makes available version 3.20 of the ‘muse’ package, plus any installed version of packages
other than ‘muse’. Any other version of ‘muse’ that happens to be installed will be ignored.
The ‘muse’ package will be listed in the package menu with the ‘held’ status.
Emacs byte code is quite stable, but it’s possible for byte code to become outdated,
or for the compiled files to rely on macros that have changed in new versions of Emacs.
You can use the command M-x package-recompile to recompile a particular package, or
M-x package-recompile-all to recompile all the packages. (The latter command might
take quite a while to run if you have many installed packages.)

32.4 Package Files and Directory Layout

Each package is downloaded from the package archive in the form of a single package
file—either an Emacs Lisp source file, or a tar file containing multiple Emacs Lisp source
and other files. Package files are automatically retrieved, processed, and disposed of by
the Emacs commands that install packages. Normally, you will not need to deal directly
with them, unless you are making a package (see Section “Packaging” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual). Should you ever need to install a package directly from a package file,
use the command M-x package-install-file.
Once installed, the contents of a package are placed in a subdirectory of
~/.emacs.d/elpa/ (you can change the name of that directory by changing the variable
package-user-dir). The package subdirectory is named name-version, where name is
the package name and version is its version string.
In addition to package-user-dir, Emacs looks for installed packages in the directories
listed in package-directory-list. These directories are meant for system administrators
to make Emacs packages available system-wide; Emacs itself never installs packages there.
The package subdirectories for package-directory-list are laid out in the same way as
in package-user-dir.
Deleting a package (see Section 32.1 [Package Menu], page 485) involves deleting the
corresponding package subdirectory. This only works for packages installed in package-user-
dir; if told to act on a package in a system-wide package directory, the deletion command
signals an error.

32.5 Fetching Package Sources

By default package-install downloads a Tarball from a package archive and installs its
files. This might be inadequate if you wish to hack on the package sources and share your
changes with others. In that case, you may prefer to directly fetch and work on the upstream
source. This often makes it easier to develop patches and report bugs.
One way to do this is to use package-vc-install, to fetch the source code for a
package directly from source. The command will also automatically ensure that all files are
byte-compiled and auto-loaded, just like with a regular package. Packages installed this
492 GNU Emacs Manual

way behave just like any other package. You can upgrade them using package-upgrade
or package-upgrade-all and delete them again using package-delete. They are even
displayed in the regular package listing. If you just wish to clone the source of a package,
without adding it to the package list, use package-vc-checkout.
With the source checkout, you might want to reproduce a bug against the current
development head or implement a new feature to scratch an itch. If the package metadata
indicates how to contact the maintainer, you can use the command package-report-bug to
report a bug via Email. This report will include all the user options that you have customized.
If you have made a change you wish to share with the maintainers, first commit your changes
then use the command package-vc-prepare-patch to share it. See hundefinedi [Preparing
Patches], page hundefinedi.
If you maintain your own packages you might want to use a local checkout instead of
cloning a remote repository. You can do this by using package-vc-install-from-checkout,
which creates a symbolic link from the package directory (see Section 32.4 [Package Files],
page 491) to your checkout and initializes the code. Note that you might have to use
package-vc-rebuild to repeat the initialization and update the autoloads.

32.5.1 Specifying Package Sources

To install a package from source, Emacs must know where to get the package’s source code
(such as a code repository) and basic information about the structure of the code (such as
the main file in a multi-file package). A package specification describes these properties.
When supported by a package archive (see Section “Package Archives” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual), Emacs can automatically download a package’s specification from
said archive. If the first argument passed to package-vc-install is a symbol naming a
package, then Emacs will use the specification provided by the archive for that package.
;; Emacs will download BBDB's specification from GNU ELPA:
(package-vc-install 'bbdb)
The first argument to package-vc-install may also be a package specification. This
allows you to install source packages from locations other than the known archives listed in
the user option package-archives. A package specification is a list of the form (name .
spec), in which spec should be a property list using any of the keys in the table below.
For definitions of basic terms for working with code repositories and version control
systems, see Section “VCS Concepts” in The GNU Emacs Manual.
:url A string providing the URL that specifies the repository from which to fetch
the package’s source code.
:branch A string providing the revision of the code to install. Do not confuse this with
a package’s version number.
:lisp-dir
A string providing the repository-relative name of the directory to use for loading
the Lisp sources, which defaults to the root directory of the repository.
:main-file
A string providing the main file of the project, from which to gather package
metadata. If not given, the default is the package name with ".el" appended to
it.
Chapter 32: Emacs Lisp Packages 493

:doc A string providing the repository-relative name of the documentation file from
which to build an Info file. This can be a Texinfo file or an Org file.
:vc-backend
A symbol naming the VC backend to use for downloading a copy of the package’s
repository (see Section “Version Control Systems” in The GNU Emacs Manual).
If omitted, Emacs will attempt to make a guess based on the provided URL, or,
failing that, the process will fall back onto the value of package-vc-default-
backend.
;; Specifying information manually:
(package-vc-install
'(bbdb :url "https://git.savannah.nongnu.org/git/bbdb.git"
:lisp-dir "lisp"
:doc "doc/bbdb.texi"))
494 GNU Emacs Manual

33 Customization
This chapter describes some simple methods to customize the behavior of Emacs.
Apart from the methods described here, see Appendix D [X Resources], page 584, for
information about using X resources to customize Emacs, and see Chapter 14 [Keyboard
Macros], page 137, for information about recording and replaying keyboard macros. Making
more far-reaching and open-ended changes involves writing Emacs Lisp code; see The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual.

33.1 Easy Customization Interface

Emacs has many settings which you can change. Most settings are customizable variables
(see Section 33.2 [Variables], page 502), which are also called user options. There is a huge
number of customizable variables, controlling numerous aspects of Emacs behavior; the
variables documented in this manual are listed in [Variable Index], page 670. A separate
class of settings are the faces, which determine the fonts, colors, and other attributes of text
(see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82).
To browse and alter settings (both variables and faces), type M-x customize. This creates
a customization buffer, which lets you navigate through a logically organized list of settings,
edit and set their values, and save them permanently.

33.1.1 Customization Groups

Customization settings are organized into customization groups. These groups are collected
into bigger groups, all the way up to a master group called Emacs.
M-x customize creates a customization buffer that shows the top-level Emacs group. It
looks like this, in part:
For help using this buffer, see [Easy Customization] in the [Emacs manual].

________________________________________ [ Search ]

Operate on all settings in this buffer:

[ Revert... ] [ Apply ] [ Apply and Save ]

Emacs group: Customization of the One True Editor.

[State]: visible group members are all at standard values.
See also [Manual].

[Editing] Basic text editing facilities.

[Convenience] Convenience features for faster editing.

...more second-level groups...

The main part of this buffer shows the ‘Emacs’ customization group, which contains several
other groups (‘Editing’, ‘Convenience’, etc.). The contents of those groups are not listed
here, only one line of documentation each.
The state of the group indicates whether setting in that group has been edited, set, or
saved. See Section 33.1.3 [Changing a Variable], page 495.
Most of the customization buffer is read-only, but it includes some editable fields that
you can edit. For example, at the top of the customization buffer is an editable field for
Chapter 33: Customization 495

searching for settings (see Section 33.1.2 [Browsing Custom], page 495). There are also
buttons and links, which you can activate by either clicking with the mouse, or moving point
there and typing RET. For example, the group names like ‘[Editing]’ are links; activating
one of these links brings up the customization buffer for that group.
In the customization buffer, you can type TAB (widget-forward) to move forward to the
next button or editable field. S-TAB (widget-backward) moves back to the previous button
or editable field.

33.1.2 Browsing and Searching for Settings

From the top-level customization buffer created by M-x customize, you can follow the links
to the subgroups of the ‘Emacs’ customization group. These subgroups may contain settings
for you to customize; they may also contain further subgroups, dealing with yet more
specialized subsystems of Emacs. As you navigate the hierarchy of customization groups,
you should find some settings that you want to customize.
If you are interested in customizing a particular setting or customization group, you
can go straight there with the commands M-x customize-option, M-x customize-face, or
M-x customize-group. See Section 33.1.6 [Specific Customization], page 499.
If you don’t know exactly what groups or settings you want to customize, you can search
for them using the editable search field at the top of each customization buffer. Here, you
can type in a search term—either one or more words separated by spaces, or a regular
expression (see Section 12.6 [Regexps], page 114). Then type RET in the field, or activate
the ‘Search’ button next to it, to switch to a customization buffer containing groups and
settings that match those terms. Note, however, that this feature only finds groups and
settings that are loaded in the current Emacs session.
If you don’t want customization buffers to show the search field, change the variable
custom-search-field to nil.
The command M-x customize-apropos is similar to using the search field, except that
it reads the search term(s) using the minibuffer. See Section 33.1.6 [Specific Customization],
page 499.
M-x customize-browse is another way to browse the available settings. This command
creates a special customization buffer, which shows only the names of groups and settings, in
a structured layout. You can show the contents of a group, in the same buffer, by invoking
the ‘[+]’ button next to the group name. When the group contents are shown, the button
changes to ‘[-]’; invoking that hides the group contents again. Each group or setting in this
buffer has a link which says ‘[Group]’, ‘[Option]’ or ‘[Face]’. Invoking this link creates
an ordinary customization buffer showing just that group, option, or face; this is the way to
change settings that you find with M-x customize-browse.

33.1.3 Changing a Variable

Here is an example of what a variable, or user option, looks like in the customization buffer:
[Hide] Kill Ring Max: 60
[State]: STANDARD.
Maximum length of kill ring before oldest elements are thrown away.
The first line shows that the variable is named kill-ring-max, formatted as ‘Kill Ring
Max’ for easier viewing. Its value is ‘120’. The button labeled ‘[Hide]’, if activated, hides the
496 GNU Emacs Manual

variable’s value and state; this is useful to avoid cluttering up the customization buffer with
very long values (for this reason, variables that have very long values may start out hidden).
If you use the ‘[Hide]’ button, it changes to ‘[Show Value]’, which you can activate to
reveal the value and state. On a graphical display, the ‘[Hide]’ and ‘[Show Value]’ buttons
are replaced with graphical triangles pointing downwards and rightwards respectively.
The line after the variable name indicates the customization state of the variable: in this
example, ‘STANDARD’ means you have not changed the variable, so its value is the default
one. The ‘[State]’ button gives a menu of operations for customizing the variable.
Below the customization state is the documentation for the variable. This is the same
documentation that would be shown by the C-h v command (see Section 33.2.1 [Examining],
page 503). If the documentation is more than one line long, only one line may be shown. If
so, that line ends with a ‘[More]’ button; activate this to see the full documentation.
To enter a new value for ‘Kill Ring Max’, just move point to the value and edit it. For
example, type M-d to delete the ‘60’ and type in another number. As you begin to alter the
text, the ‘[State]’ line will change:
[State]: EDITED, shown value does not take effect until you
set or save it.
Editing the value does not make it take effect right away. To do that, you must set the
variable by activating the ‘[State]’ button and choosing ‘Set for Current Session’. Then
the variable’s state becomes:
[State]: SET for current session only.
You don’t have to worry about specifying a value that is not valid; the ‘Set for Current
Session’ operation checks for validity and will not install an unacceptable value.
While editing certain kinds of values, such as file names, directory names, and Emacs
command names, you can perform completion with C-M-i (widget-complete), or the
equivalent keys M-TAB or ESC TAB. This behaves much like minibuffer completion (see
Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30).
Typing RET on an editable value field moves point forward to the next field or button,
like TAB. You can thus type RET when you are finished editing a field, to move on to the
next button or field. To insert a newline within an editable field, use C-o or C-q C-j.
For some variables, there is only a fixed set of legitimate values, and you are not allowed to
edit the value directly. Instead, a ‘[Value Menu]’ button appears before the value; activating
this button presents a choice of values. For a boolean “on or off” value, the button says
‘[Toggle]’, and flips the value. After using the ‘[Value Menu]’ or ‘[Toggle]’ button, you
must again set the variable to make the chosen value take effect.
Some variables have values with complex structure. For example, the value of
minibuffer-frame-alist is an association list. Here is how it appears in the customization
buffer:
[Hide] Minibuffer Frame Alist:
[INS] [DEL] Parameter: width
Value: 80
[INS] [DEL] Parameter: height
Value: 2
[INS]
[ State ]: STANDARD.
Alist of parameters for the initial minibuffer frame. [Hide]
Chapter 33: Customization 497

[. . . more lines of documentation. . . ]

In this case, each association in the list consists of two items, one labeled ‘Parameter’ and
one labeled ‘Value’; both are editable fields. You can delete an association from the list with
the ‘[DEL]’ button next to it. To add an association, use the ‘[INS]’ button at the position
where you want to insert it; the very last ‘[INS]’ button inserts at the end of the list.
When you set a variable, the new value takes effect only in the current Emacs session.
To save the value for future sessions, use the ‘[State]’ button and select the ‘Save for
Future Sessions’ operation. See Section 33.1.4 [Saving Customizations], page 497.
You can also restore the variable to its standard value by using the ‘[State]’ button and
selecting the ‘Erase Customization’ operation. There are actually four reset operations:
‘Undo Edits’
If you have modified but not yet set the variable, this restores the text in the
customization buffer to match the actual value.
‘Revert This Session's Customizations’
This restores the value of the variable to the last saved value, if there was one.
Otherwise it restores the standard value. It updates the text accordingly.
‘Erase Customization’
This sets the variable to its standard value. Any saved value that you have is
also eliminated.
‘Set to Backup Value’
This sets the variable to a previous value that was set in the customization buffer
in this session. If you customize a variable and then reset it, which discards
the customized value, you can get the discarded value back again with this
operation.
Sometimes it is useful to record a comment about a specific customization. Use the ‘Add
Comment’ item from the ‘[State]’ menu to create a field for entering the comment.
Near the top of the customization buffer are two lines of buttons:
Operate on all settings in this buffer:
[Revert...] [Apply] [Apply and Save]
The ‘[Revert...]’ button drops a menu with the first 3 reset operations described above.
The ‘[Apply]’ button applies the settings for the current session. The ‘[Apply and Save]’
button applies the settings and saves them for future sessions; this button does not appear
if Emacs was started with the -q or -Q option (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570).
The command C-c C-c (Custom-set) is equivalent to using the ‘[Set for Current
Session]’ button. The command C-x C-s (Custom-save) is like using the ‘[Save for
Future Sessions]’ button.
The ‘[Exit]’ button switches out of the customization buffer, and buries the buffer at
the bottom of the buffer list. To make it kill the customization buffer instead, change the
variable custom-buffer-done-kill to t.

33.1.4 Saving Customizations

In the customization buffer, you can save a customization setting by choosing the ‘Save for
Future Sessions’ choice from its ‘[State]’ button. The C-x C-s (Custom-save) command,
498 GNU Emacs Manual

or the ‘[Apply and Save]’ button at the top of the customization buffer, saves all applicable
settings in the buffer.
Saving works by writing code to a file, usually your initialization file (see Section 33.4
[Init File], page 522). Future Emacs sessions automatically read this file at startup, which
sets up the customizations again.
You can choose to save customizations somewhere other than your initialization file. To
make this work, you must add a couple of lines of code to your initialization file, to set the
variable custom-file to the name of the desired file, and to load that file. For example:
(setq custom-file "~/.config/emacs-custom.el")
(load custom-file)
You can even specify different customization files for different Emacs versions, like this:
(cond ((< emacs-major-version 28)
;; Emacs 27 customization.
(setq custom-file "~/.config/custom-27.el"))
((and (= emacs-major-version 26)
(< emacs-minor-version 3))
;; Emacs 26 customization, before version 26.3.
(setq custom-file "~/.config/custom-26.el"))
(t
;; Emacs version 28.1 or later.
(setq custom-file "~/.config/emacs-custom.el")))

(load custom-file)
If Emacs was invoked with the -q or --no-init-file options (see Section C.2 [Initial
Options], page 570), it will not let you save your customizations in your initialization file.
This is because saving customizations from such a session would wipe out all the other
customizations you might have on your initialization file.
Please note that any customizations you have not chosen to save for future sessions will be
lost when you terminate Emacs. If you’d like to be prompted about unsaved customizations
at termination time, add the following to your initialization file:
(add-hook 'kill-emacs-query-functions
'custom-prompt-customize-unsaved-options)

33.1.5 Customizing Faces

You can customize faces (see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82), which determine how Emacs
displays different types of text. Customization groups can contain both variables and faces.
For example, in programming language modes, source code comments are shown with
font-lock-comment-face (see Section 11.13 [Font Lock], page 88). In a customization
buffer, that face appears like this, after you click on the ‘[Show All Attributes]’ link:
[Hide] Font Lock Comment Face:[sample]
[State] : STANDARD.
Font Lock mode face used to highlight comments.
[ ] Font Family: --
[ ] Font Foundry: --
[ ] Width: --
[ ] Height: --
Chapter 33: Customization 499

[ ] Weight: --
[ ] Slant: --
[ ] Underline: --
[ ] Overline: --
[ ] Strike-through: --
[ ] Box around text: --
[ ] Inverse-video: --
[X] Foreground: Firebrick [Choose] (sample)
[ ] Background: --
[ ] Stipple: --
[ ] Inherit: --
[Hide Unused Attributes]
The first three lines show the name, ‘[State]’ button, and documentation for the face.
Below that is a list of face attributes. In front of each attribute is a checkbox. A filled
checkbox, ‘[X]’, means that the face specifies a value for this attribute; an empty checkbox,
‘[ ]’, means that the face does not specify any special value for the attribute. You can
activate a checkbox to specify or unspecify its attribute.
A face does not have to specify every single attribute; in fact, most faces only specify a few
attributes. In the above example, font-lock-comment-face only specifies the foreground
color. Any unspecified attribute is taken from the special face named default, whose
attributes are all specified. The default face is the face used to display any text that does
not have an explicitly-assigned face; furthermore, its background color attribute serves as
the background color of the frame.
The ‘[Hide Unused Attributes]’ button, at the end of the attribute list, hides the
unspecified attributes of the face. When attributes are being hidden, the button changes to
‘[Show All Attributes]’, which reveals the entire attribute list. The customization buffer
may start out with unspecified attributes hidden, to avoid cluttering the interface.
When an attribute is specified, you can change its value in the usual ways.
Foreground and background colors can be specified using either color names or RGB
triplets (see Section 11.9 [Colors], page 82). You can also use the ‘[Choose]’ button to
switch to a list of color names; select a color with RET in that buffer to put the color name
in the value field.
Setting, saving and resetting a face work like the same operations for variables (see
Section 33.1.3 [Changing a Variable], page 495).
A face can specify different appearances for different types of displays. For example, a
face can make text red on a color display, but use a bold font on a monochrome display. To
specify multiple appearances for a face, select ‘For All Kinds of Displays’ in the menu
you get from invoking ‘[State]’.

33.1.6 Customizing Specific Items

M-x customize-option RET option RET
M-x customize-variable RET option RET
Set up a customization buffer for just one user option, option.
M-x customize-face RET face RET
Set up a customization buffer for just one face, face.
M-x customize-icon RET face RET
Set up a customization buffer for just one icon, icon.
500 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x customize-group RET group RET

Set up a customization buffer for just one group, group.
M-x customize-apropos RET regexp RET
Set up a customization buffer for all the settings and groups that match regexp.
M-x customize-changed RET version RET
Set up a customization buffer with all the user options, faces and groups whose
meaning has changed since (or been added after) Emacs version version.
M-x customize-saved
Set up a customization buffer containing all settings that you have saved with
customization buffers.
M-x customize-unsaved
Set up a customization buffer containing all settings that you have set but not
saved.
If you want to customize a particular user option, type M-x customize-option. This
reads the variable name, and sets up the customization buffer with just that one user option.
When entering the variable name into the minibuffer, completion is available, but only for
the names of variables that have been loaded into Emacs.
Likewise, you can customize a specific face using M-x customize-face. You can set up a
customization buffer for a specific customization group using M-x customize-group.
M-x customize-apropos prompts for a search term—either one or more words separated
by spaces, or a regular expression—and sets up a customization buffer for all loaded settings
and groups with matching names. This is like using the search field at the top of the
customization buffer (see Section 33.1.1 [Customization Groups], page 494).
When you upgrade to a new Emacs version, you might want to consider customizing new
settings, and settings whose meanings or default values have changed. To do this, use M-x
customize-changed and specify a previous Emacs version number using the minibuffer. It
creates a customization buffer which shows all the settings and groups whose definitions
have been changed since the specified version, loading them if necessary.
If you change settings and then decide the change was a mistake, you can use two
commands to revisit your changes. Use M-x customize-saved to customize settings that
you have saved. Use M-x customize-unsaved to customize settings that you have set but
not saved.

33.1.7 Custom Themes

Custom themes are collections of settings that can be enabled or disabled as a unit. You can
use Custom themes to switch easily between various collections of settings, and to transfer
such collections from one computer to another.
A Custom theme is stored as an Emacs Lisp source file. If the name of the Custom theme
is name, the theme file is named name-theme.el. See Section 33.1.8 [Creating Custom
Themes], page 502, for the format of a theme file and how to make one.
Type M-x customize-themes to switch to a buffer named *Custom Themes*, which lists
the Custom themes that Emacs knows about. By default, Emacs looks for theme files
in two locations: the directory specified by the variable custom-theme-directory (which
Chapter 33: Customization 501

defaults to ~/.emacs.d/), and a directory named etc/themes in your Emacs installation

(see the variable data-directory). The latter contains several Custom themes distributed
with Emacs that customize Emacs’s faces to fit various color schemes. (Note, however,
that Custom themes need not be restricted to this purpose; they can be used to customize
variables too.)
If you want Emacs to look for Custom themes in some other directory, add the directory to
the list variable custom-theme-load-path. Its default value is (custom-theme-directory
t); here, the symbol custom-theme-directory has the special meaning of the value of
the variable custom-theme-directory, while t stands for the built-in theme directory
etc/themes. The themes listed in the *Custom Themes* buffer are those found in the
directories specified by custom-theme-load-path.
In the *Custom Themes* buffer, you can activate the checkbox next to a Custom theme
to enable or disable the theme for the current Emacs session. When a Custom theme is
enabled, all of its settings (variables and faces) take effect in the Emacs session. To apply
the choice of theme(s) to future Emacs sessions, type C-x C-s (custom-theme-save) or use
the ‘[Save Theme Settings]’ button.
When you first enable a Custom theme, Emacs displays the contents of the theme file and
asks if you really want to load it. Because loading a Custom theme can execute arbitrary
Lisp code, you should only say yes if you know that the theme is safe; in that case, Emacs
offers to remember in the future that the theme is safe(this is done by saving the theme
file’s SHA-256 hash to the variable custom-safe-themes; if you want to treat all themes as
safe, change its value to t). Themes that come with Emacs (in the etc/themes directory)
are exempt from this check, and are always considered safe.
Setting or saving Custom themes actually works by customizing the variable
custom-enabled-themes. The value of this variable is a list of Custom theme names
(as Lisp symbols, e.g., tango). Instead of using the *Custom Themes* buffer to set
custom-enabled-themes, you can customize the variable using the usual customization
interface, e.g., with M-x customize-option. Note that Custom themes are not allowed to
set custom-enabled-themes themselves.
Any customizations that you make through the customization buffer take precedence
over theme settings. This lets you easily override individual theme settings that you
disagree with. If settings from two different themes overlap, the theme occurring earlier
in custom-enabled-themes takes precedence. In the customization buffer, if a setting has
been changed from its default by a Custom theme, its ‘State’ display shows ‘THEMED’ instead
of ‘STANDARD’.
You can enable a specific Custom theme in the current Emacs session by typing M-x
load-theme. This prompts for a theme name, loads the theme from the theme file, and
enables it. If a theme file has been loaded before, you can enable the theme without loading
its file by typing M-x enable-theme. To disable a Custom theme, type M-x disable-theme.
To see a description of a Custom theme, type ? on its line in the *Custom Themes* buffer;
or type M-x describe-theme anywhere in Emacs and enter the theme name.
Some themes have variants (most often just two: light and dark). You can switch to
another variant using M-x theme-choose-variant. If the currently active theme has only
one other variant, it will be selected; if there are more variants, the command will prompt
you which one to switch to.
502 GNU Emacs Manual

Note that theme-choose-variant only works if a single theme is active.

33.1.8 Creating Custom Themes

You can define a Custom theme using an interface similar to the customization buffer, by
typing M-x customize-create-theme. This switches to a buffer named *Custom Theme*. It
also offers to insert some common Emacs faces into the theme (a convenience, since Custom
themes are often used to customize faces). If you answer no, the theme will initially contain
no settings.
Near the top of the *Custom Theme* buffer, there are editable fields where you can enter
the theme’s name and description. The name can be anything except ‘user’. The description
is the one that will be shown when you invoke M-x describe-theme for the theme. Its first
line should be a brief one-sentence summary; in the buffer made by M-x customize-themes,
this sentence is displayed next to the theme name.
To add a new setting to the theme, use the ‘[Insert Additional Face]’ or ‘[Insert
Additional Variable]’ buttons. Each button reads a face or variable name using the
minibuffer, with completion, and inserts a customization entry for the face or variable. You
can edit the variable values or face attributes in the same way as in a normal customization
buffer. To remove a face or variable from the theme, uncheck the checkbox next to its name.
After specifying the Custom theme’s faces and variables, type C-x C-s (custom-theme-
write) or use the buffer’s ‘[Save Theme]’ button. This saves the theme file, named
name-theme.el where name is the theme name, in the directory named by custom-theme-
directory.
From the *Custom Theme* buffer, you can view and edit an existing Custom theme by
activating the ‘[Visit Theme]’ button and specifying the theme name. You can also add
the settings of another theme into the buffer, using the ‘[Merge Theme]’ button. You can
import your non-theme settings into a Custom theme by using the ‘[Merge Theme]’ button
and specifying the special theme named ‘user’.
A theme file is simply an Emacs Lisp source file, and loading the Custom theme works
by loading the Lisp file. Therefore, you can edit a theme file directly instead of using
the *Custom Theme* buffer. See Section “Custom Themes” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual, for details.

33.2 Variables
A variable is a Lisp symbol which has a value. The symbol’s name is also called the variable
name. A variable name can contain any characters that can appear in a file, but most
variable names consist of ordinary words separated by hyphens.
The name of the variable serves as a compact description of its role. Most variables also
have a documentation string, which describes what the variable’s purpose is, what kind of
value it should have, and how the value will be used. You can view this documentation using
the help command C-h v (describe-variable). See Section 33.2.1 [Examining], page 503.
Emacs uses many Lisp variables for internal record keeping, but the most interesting
variables for a non-programmer user are those meant for users to change—these are called
customizable variables or user options (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494). In
the following sections, we will describe other aspects of Emacs variables, such as how to set
them outside Customize.
Chapter 33: Customization 503

Emacs Lisp allows any variable (with a few exceptions) to have any kind of value. However,
many variables are meaningful only if assigned values of a certain type. For example, only
numbers are meaningful values for kill-ring-max, which specifies the maximum length of
the kill ring (see Section 9.2.2 [Earlier Kills], page 62); if you give kill-ring-max a string
value, commands such as C-y (yank) will signal an error. On the other hand, some variables
don’t care about type; for instance, if a variable has one effect for nil values and another
effect for non-nil values, then any value that is not the symbol nil induces the second effect,
regardless of its type (by convention, we usually use the value t—a symbol which stands for
“true”—to specify a non-nil value). If you set a variable using the customization buffer, you
need not worry about giving it an invalid type: the customization buffer usually only allows
you to enter meaningful values. When in doubt, use C-h v (describe-variable) to check
the variable’s documentation string to see what kind of value it expects (see Section 33.2.1
[Examining], page 503).

33.2.1 Examining and Setting Variables

C-h v var RET
Display the value and documentation of variable var (describe-variable).
M-x set-variable RET var RET value RET
Change the value of variable var to value.
To examine the value of a variable, use C-h v (describe-variable). This reads a
variable name using the minibuffer, with completion, and displays both the value and the
documentation of the variable. For example,
C-h v fill-column RET
displays something like this:
fill-column is a variable defined in ‘C source code’.
Its value is 70

Automatically becomes buffer-local when set.

This variable is safe as a file local variable if its value
satisfies the predicate ‘integerp’.
Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 18.

Documentation:
Column beyond which automatic line-wrapping should happen.
Interactively, you can set the buffer local value using C-x f.

You can customize this variable.

The line that says ‘You can customize the variable’ indicates that this variable is a user
option. C-h v is not restricted to user options; it allows non-customizable variables too.
The most convenient way to set a specific customizable variable is with M-x set-variable.
This reads the variable name with the minibuffer (with completion), and then reads a Lisp
expression for the new value using the minibuffer a second time (you can insert the old value
into the minibuffer for editing via M-n). For example,
M-x set-variable RET fill-column RET 75 RET
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sets fill-column to 75.

M-x set-variable is limited to customizable variables, but you can set any variable with
a Lisp expression like this:
(setq fill-column 75)
To execute such an expression, type M-: (eval-expression) and enter the expression in the
minibuffer (see Section 24.9 [Lisp Eval], page 328). Alternatively, go to the *scratch* buffer,
type in the expression, and then type C-j (see Section 24.10 [Lisp Interaction], page 330).
Setting variables, like all means of customizing Emacs except where otherwise stated,
affects only the current Emacs session. The only way to alter the variable in future sessions
is to put something in your initialization file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522).
If you’re setting a customizable variable in your initialization file, and you don’t want to
use the Customize interface, you can use the setopt macro. For instance:
(setopt fill-column 75)
This works the same as setq, but if the variable has any special setter functions, they
will be run automatically when using setopt. You can also use setopt on other, non-
customizable variables, but this is less efficient than using setq.

33.2.2 Hooks
Hooks are an important mechanism for customizing Emacs. A hook is a Lisp variable which
holds a list of functions, to be called on some well-defined occasion. (This is called running
the hook.) The individual functions in the list are called the hook functions of the hook.
For example, the hook kill-emacs-hook runs just before exiting Emacs (see Section 3.2
[Exiting], page 15).
Most hooks are normal hooks. This means that when Emacs runs the hook, it calls each
hook function in turn, with no arguments. We have made an effort to keep most hooks
normal, so that you can use them in a uniform way. Every variable whose name ends in
‘-hook’ is a normal hook.
A few hooks are abnormal hooks. Their names end in ‘-functions’, instead of ‘-hook’
(some old code may also use the deprecated suffix ‘-hooks’). What makes these hooks ab-
normal is the way its functions are called—perhaps they are given arguments, or perhaps the
values they return are used in some way. For example, find-file-not-found-functions
is abnormal because as soon as one hook function returns a non-nil value, the rest are not
called at all (see Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146). The documentation of each abnormal
hook variable explains how its functions are used.
You can set a hook variable with setq like any other Lisp variable, but the recommended
way to add a function to a hook (either normal or abnormal) is to use add-hook, as shown
by the following examples. See Section “Hooks” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for
details.
Most major modes run one or more mode hooks as the last step of initialization. Mode
hooks are a convenient way to customize the behavior of individual modes; they are always
normal. For example, here’s how to set up a hook to turn on Auto Fill mode in Text mode
and other modes based on Text mode:
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'auto-fill-mode)
Chapter 33: Customization 505

This works by calling auto-fill-mode, which enables the minor mode when no argument
is supplied (see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242). Next, suppose you don’t want Auto
Fill mode turned on in LATEX mode, which is one of the modes based on Text mode. You
can do this with the following additional line:
(add-hook 'latex-mode-hook (lambda () (auto-fill-mode -1)))
Here we have used the special macro lambda to construct an anonymous function (see Section
“Lambda Expressions” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual), which calls auto-fill-mode
with an argument of -1 to disable the minor mode. Because LATEX mode runs latex-mode-
hook after running text-mode-hook, the result leaves Auto Fill mode disabled.
Here is a more complex example, showing how to use a hook to customize the indentation
of C code:
(setq my-c-style
'((c-comment-only-line-offset . 4)
(c-cleanup-list . (scope-operator
empty-defun-braces
defun-close-semi))))

(add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook
(lambda () (c-add-style "my-style" my-c-style t)))
Major mode hooks also apply to other major modes derived from the original mode
(see Section “Derived Modes” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). For instance, HTML
mode is derived from Text mode (see Section 22.12 [HTML Mode], page 273); when HTML
mode is enabled, it runs text-mode-hook before running html-mode-hook. This provides a
convenient way to use a single hook to affect several related modes. In particular, if you want
to apply a hook function to any programming language mode, add it to prog-mode-hook;
Prog mode is a major mode that does little else than to let other major modes inherit from
it, exactly for this purpose.
It is best to design your hook functions so that the order in which they are executed
does not matter. Any dependence on the order is asking for trouble. However, the order is
predictable: the hook functions are executed in the order they appear in the hook.
If you play with adding various different versions of a hook function by calling add-hook
over and over, remember that all the versions you added will remain in the hook variable
together. You can clear out individual functions by calling remove-hook, or do (setq
hook-variable nil) to remove everything.
If the hook variable is buffer-local, the buffer-local variable will be used instead of the
global variable. However, if the buffer-local variable contains the element t, the global hook
variable will be run as well.

33.2.3 Local Variables

M-x make-local-variable RET var RET
Make variable var have a local value in the current buffer.
M-x kill-local-variable RET var RET
Make variable var use its global value in the current buffer.
506 GNU Emacs Manual

M-x make-variable-buffer-local RET var RET

Mark variable var so that setting it will make it local to the buffer that is current
at that time.
Almost any variable can be made local to a specific Emacs buffer. This means that its
value in that buffer is independent of its value in other buffers. A few variables are always
local in every buffer. Every other Emacs variable has a global value which is in effect in all
buffers that have not made the variable local.
M-x make-local-variable reads the name of a variable and makes it local to the current
buffer. Changing its value subsequently in this buffer will not affect others, and changes in
its global value will not affect this buffer.
M-x make-variable-buffer-local marks a variable so it will become local automatically
whenever it is set. More precisely, once a variable has been marked in this way, the usual
ways of setting the variable automatically do make-local-variable first. We call such
variables per-buffer variables. Many variables in Emacs are normally per-buffer; the variable’s
document string tells you when this is so. A per-buffer variable’s global value is normally
never effective in any buffer, but it still has a meaning: it is the initial value of the variable
for each new buffer.
Major modes (see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241) always make variables local
to the buffer before setting the variables. This is why changing major modes in one buffer
has no effect on other buffers. Minor modes also work by setting variables—normally, each
minor mode has one controlling variable which is non-nil when the mode is enabled (see
Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242). For many minor modes, the controlling variable is
per buffer, and thus always buffer-local. Otherwise, you can make it local in a specific buffer
like any other variable.
A few variables cannot be local to a buffer because they are always local to each display
instead (see Section 18.10 [Multiple Displays], page 205). If you try to make one of these
variables buffer-local, you’ll get an error message.
M-x kill-local-variable makes a specified variable cease to be local to the current
buffer. The global value of the variable henceforth is in effect in this buffer. Setting the
major mode kills all the local variables of the buffer except for a few variables specially
marked as permanent locals.
To set the global value of a variable, regardless of whether the variable has a local value
in the current buffer, you can use the Lisp construct setq-default. This construct is used
just like setq, but it sets variables’ global values instead of their local values (if any). When
the current buffer does have a local value, the new global value may not be visible until you
switch to another buffer. Here is an example:
(setq-default fill-column 75)
setq-default is the only way to set the global value of a variable that has been marked
with make-variable-buffer-local.
Lisp programs can use default-value to look at a variable’s default value. This function
takes a symbol as argument and returns its default value. The argument is evaluated;
usually you must quote it explicitly. For example, here’s how to obtain the default value of
fill-column:
(default-value 'fill-column)
Chapter 33: Customization 507

33.2.4 Local Variables in Files

A file can specify local variable values to use when editing the file with Emacs. Visiting the
file or setting a major mode checks for local variable specifications; it automatically makes
these variables local to the buffer, and sets them to the values specified in the file.
File local variables override directory local variables (see Section 33.2.5 [Directory Vari-
ables], page 510), if any are specified for a file’s directory.

33.2.4.1 Specifying File Variables

There are two ways to specify file local variable values: in the first line, or with a local
variables list. Here’s how to specify them in the first line:
-*- mode: modename; var: value; ... -*-
You can specify any number of variable/value pairs in this way, each pair with a colon and
semicolon. The special variable/value pair mode: modename;, if present, specifies a major
mode (without the “-mode” suffix). The values are used literally, and not evaluated.
You can use M-x add-file-local-variable-prop-line instead of adding entries
by hand. This command prompts for a variable and value, and adds them to the
first line in the appropriate way. M-x delete-file-local-variable-prop-line
prompts for a variable, and deletes its entry from the line. The command M-x
copy-dir-locals-to-file-locals-prop-line copies the current directory-local variables
to the first line (see Section 33.2.5 [Directory Variables], page 510).
Here is an example first line that specifies Lisp mode and sets two variables with numeric
values:
;; -*- mode: Lisp; fill-column: 75; comment-column: 50; -*-
Aside from mode, other keywords that have special meanings as file variables are coding,
unibyte, and eval. These are described below.
In shell scripts, the first line is used to identify the script interpreter, so you cannot put
any local variables there. To accommodate this, Emacs looks for local variable specifications
in the second line if the first line specifies an interpreter. The same is true for man pages
which start with the magic string ‘'\"’ to specify a list of troff preprocessors (not all do,
however).
Apart from using a ‘-*-’ line, you can define file local variables using a local variables
list near the end of the file. The start of the local variables list should be no more than 3000
characters from the end of the file, and must be on the last page if the file is divided into
pages.
If a file has both a local variables list and a ‘-*-’ line, Emacs processes everything in the
‘-*-’ line first, and everything in the local variables list afterward. The exception to this is
a major mode specification. Emacs applies this first, wherever it appears, since most major
modes kill all local variables as part of their initialization.
A local variables list starts with a line containing the string ‘Local Variables:’, and
ends with a line containing the string ‘End:’. In between come the variable names and
values, one set per line, like this:
/* Local Variables: */
/* mode: c */
/* comment-column: 0 */
508 GNU Emacs Manual

/* End: */
In this example, each line starts with the prefix ‘/*’ and ends with the suffix ‘*/’. Emacs
recognizes the prefix and suffix by finding them surrounding the magic string ‘Local
Variables:’, on the first line of the list; it then automatically discards them from the other
lines of the list. The usual reason for using a prefix and/or suffix is to embed the local
variables list in a comment, so it won’t confuse other programs that the file is intended for.
The example above is for the C programming language, where comments start with ‘/*’ and
end with ‘*/’.
If some unrelated text might look to Emacs as a local variables list, you can countermand
that by inserting a form-feed character (a page delimiter, see Section 22.4 [Pages], page 254)
after that text. Emacs only looks for file-local variables in the last page of a file, after the
last page delimiter.
Instead of typing in the local variables list directly, you can use the command M-x
add-file-local-variable. This prompts for a variable and value, and adds them to
the list, adding the ‘Local Variables:’ string and start and end markers as necessary.
The command M-x delete-file-local-variable deletes a variable from the list. M-x
copy-dir-locals-to-file-locals copies directory-local variables to the list (see
Section 33.2.5 [Directory Variables], page 510).
As with the ‘-*-’ line, the variables in a local variables list are used literally, and are
not evaluated first. If you want to split a long string value across multiple lines of the file,
you can use backslash-newline, which is ignored in Lisp string constants; you should put the
prefix and suffix on each line, even lines that start or end within the string, as they will be
stripped off when processing the list. Here is an example:
# Local Variables:
# compile-command: "cc foo.c -Dfoo=bar -Dhack=whatever \
# -Dmumble=blaah"
# End:
Some names have special meanings in a local variables list:
• mode enables the specified major mode.
• eval evaluates the specified Lisp expression (the value returned by that expression is
ignored).
• coding specifies the coding system for character code conversion of this file. See
Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223.
• unibyte says to load or compile a file of Emacs Lisp in unibyte mode, if the value is t.
See Section “Disabling Multibyte Characters” in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

These four keywords are not really variables; setting them in any other context has no special
meaning.
If you’re editing a file across Emacs versions, and a new mode has been introduced to
handle a file in a newer Emacs version, you can use several mode entries to use the new mode
(called my-new-mode) in the new Emacs, and fall back to the old mode (called my-old-mode)
in older Emacs versions. If you’re enabling the modes in the first line of the file, can say:
-*- mode: my-old; mode: my-new -*-
Chapter 33: Customization 509

Emacs will use the final defined mode it finds, so in older Emacs versions it will ignore
my-new-mode, while in Emacs versions where my-new-mode is defined, it’ll ignore my-old-
mode. Similarly, in a local variable block at the end of the file:
Local variables:
mode: my-old
mode: my-new
Do not use the mode keyword for minor modes. To enable or disable a minor mode in a
local variables list, use the eval keyword with a Lisp expression that runs the mode command
(see Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242). For example, the following local variables list
enables ElDoc mode (see Section 23.6.3 [Programming Language Doc], page 299) by calling
eldoc-mode with no argument (calling it with an argument of 1 would do the same), and
disables Font Lock mode (see Section 11.13 [Font Lock], page 88) by calling font-lock-mode
with an argument of −1.
;; Local Variables:
;; eval: (eldoc-mode)
;; eval: (font-lock-mode -1)
;; End:
Note, however, that it is often a mistake to specify minor modes this way. Minor modes
represent individual user preferences, and it may be inappropriate to impose your preferences
on another user who might edit the file. If you wish to automatically enable or disable a
minor mode in a situation-dependent way, it is often better to do it in a major mode hook
(see Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504).
Use the command M-x normal-mode to reset the local variables and major mode of a
buffer according to the file name and contents, including the local variables list if any. See
Section 20.3 [Choosing Modes], page 244.

33.2.4.2 Safety of File Variables

File-local variables can be dangerous; when you visit someone else’s file, there’s no telling
what its local variables list could do to your Emacs. Improper values of the eval “variable”,
and other variables such as load-path, could execute Lisp code you didn’t intend to run.
Therefore, whenever Emacs encounters file local variable values that are not known to
be safe, it displays the file’s entire local variables list, and asks you for confirmation before
setting them. You can type y or SPC to put the local variables list into effect, or n to ignore
it. When Emacs is run in batch mode (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570), it can’t
really ask you, so it assumes the answer n.
Emacs normally recognizes certain variable/value pairs as safe. For instance, it is safe to
give comment-column or fill-column any integer value. If a file specifies only known-safe
variable/value pairs, Emacs does not ask for confirmation before setting them. Otherwise,
you can tell Emacs to record all the variable/value pairs in this file as safe, by typing ! at
the confirmation prompt. When Emacs encounters these variable/value pairs subsequently,
in the same file or others, it will assume they are safe.
You can also tell Emacs to permanently ignore all the variable/value pairs in the file, by
typing i at the confirmation prompt – these pairs will thereafter be ignored in this file and
in all other files.
510 GNU Emacs Manual

Some variables, such as load-path, are considered particularly risky: there is seldom
any reason to specify them as local variables, and changing them can be dangerous. If a
file contains only risky local variables, Emacs neither offers nor accepts ! as input at the
confirmation prompt. If some of the local variables in a file are risky, and some are only
potentially unsafe, you can enter ! at the prompt. It applies all the variables, but only marks
the non-risky ones as safe for the future. If you really want to record safe values for risky
variables, do it directly by customizing ‘safe-local-variable-values’ (see Section 33.1
[Easy Customization], page 494). Similarly, if you want to record values of risky variables
that should be permanently ignored, customize ignored-local-variable-values.
The variable enable-local-variables allows you to change the way Emacs processes
local variables. Its default value is t, which specifies the behavior described above. If it is
nil, Emacs simply ignores all file local variables. :safe means use only the safe values and
ignore the rest. :all instructs Emacs to set all file local variables regardless of whether
their value is safe or not (we advise not to use this permanently). Any other value says to
query you about each file that has local variables, without trying to determine whether the
values are known to be safe.
The variable enable-local-eval controls whether Emacs processes eval variables.
The three possibilities for the variable’s value are t, nil, and anything else, just as for
enable-local-variables. The default is maybe, which is neither t nor nil, so normally
Emacs does ask for confirmation about processing eval variables.
As an exception, Emacs never asks for confirmation to evaluate any eval form if that
form occurs within the variable safe-local-eval-forms.

33.2.5 Per-Directory Local Variables

Sometimes, you may wish to define the same set of local variables to all the files in a certain
directory and its subdirectories, such as the directory tree of a large software project. This
can be accomplished with directory-local variables. File local variables override directory
local variables, so if some of the files in a directory need specialized settings, you can specify
the settings for the majority of the directory’s files in directory variables, and then define
file local variables in a few files which need the general settings overridden.
The usual way to define directory-local variables is to put a file named .dir-locals.el1
in a directory. Whenever Emacs visits any file in that directory or any of its subdirectories,
it will apply the directory-local variables specified in .dir-locals.el, as though they had
been defined as file-local variables for that file (see Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507).
Emacs searches for .dir-locals.el starting in the directory of the visited file, and moving
up the directory tree. To avoid slowdown, this search is skipped for remote files. If needed, the
search can be extended for remote files by setting the variable enable-remote-dir-locals
to t.
You can also use .dir-locals-2.el; if found, Emacs loads it in addition to
.dir-locals.el. This is useful when .dir-locals.el is under version control in a shared
repository and can’t be used for personal customizations.

1
On MS-DOS, the name of this file should be _dir-locals.el, due to limitations of the DOS filesystems.
If the filesystem is limited to 8+3 file names, the name of the file will be truncated by the OS to
_dir-loc.el.
Chapter 33: Customization 511

The .dir-locals.el file should hold a specially-constructed list, which maps major
mode names (symbols) to alists (see Section “Association Lists” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual). Each alist entry consists of a variable name and the directory-local value to assign
to that variable, when the specified major mode is enabled. Instead of a mode name, you
can specify ‘nil’, which means that the alist applies to any mode; or you can specify a
subdirectory (a string), in which case the alist applies to all files in that subdirectory.
Here’s an example of a .dir-locals.el file:
((nil . ((indent-tabs-mode . t)
(fill-column . 80)
(mode . auto-fill)))
(c-mode . ((c-file-style . "BSD")
(subdirs . nil)))
("src/imported"
. ((nil . ((change-log-default-name
. "ChangeLog.local"))))))
This sets the variables ‘indent-tabs-mode’ and fill-column for any file in the directory
tree, and the indentation style for any C source file. The special mode element specifies
the minor mode to be enabled. So (mode . auto-fill) specifies that the minor mode
auto-fill-mode needs to be enabled. The special subdirs element is not a variable, but
a special keyword which indicates that the C mode settings are only to be applied in the
current directory, not in any subdirectories. Finally, it specifies a different ChangeLog file
name for any file in the src/imported subdirectory.
If the .dir-locals.el file contains multiple different values for a variable using different
mode names or directories, the values will be applied in an order such that the values
for more specific modes take priority over more generic modes. Values specified under a
directory have even more priority. For example:
((nil . ((fill-column . 40)))
(c-mode . ((fill-column . 50)))
(prog-mode . ((fill-column . 60)))
("narrow-files" . ((nil . ((fill-column . 20))))))
Files that use c-mode also match prog-mode because the former inherits from the latter.
The value used for fill-column in C files will however be 50 because the mode name is
more specific than prog-mode. Files using other modes inheriting from prog-mode will use
60. Any file under the directory narrow-files will use the value 20 even if they use c-mode
because directory entries have priority over mode entries.
You can specify the variables mode, eval, and unibyte in your .dir-locals.el, and
they have the same meanings as they would have in file local variables. coding cannot be
specified as a directory local variable. See Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507.
The special key auto-mode-alist in a .dir-locals.el lets you set a file’s major mode.
It works much like the variable auto-mode-alist (see Section 20.3 [Choosing Modes],
page 244). For example, here is how you can tell Emacs that .def source files in this
directory should be in C mode:
((auto-mode-alist . (("\\.def\\'" . c-mode))))
Instead of editing the .dir-locals.el file by hand, you can use the command
M-x add-dir-local-variable. This prompts for a mode or subdirectory, and for
512 GNU Emacs Manual

variable and value, and adds the entry defining the directory-local variable. M-x
delete-dir-local-variable deletes an entry. M-x copy-file-locals-to-dir-locals
copies the file-local variables in the current file into .dir-locals.el.
Another method of specifying directory-local variables is to define a group of vari-
ables/value pairs in a directory class, using the dir-locals-set-class-variables function;
then, tell Emacs which directories correspond to the class by using the dir-locals-set-
directory-class function. These function calls normally go in your initialization file (see
Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522). This method is useful when you can’t put .dir-locals.el
in a directory for some reason. For example, you could apply settings to an unwritable
directory this way:
(dir-locals-set-class-variables 'unwritable-directory
'((nil . ((some-useful-setting . value)))))

(dir-locals-set-directory-class
"/usr/include/" 'unwritable-directory)
If a variable has both a directory-local and file-local value specified, the file-local value
takes effect. Unsafe directory-local variables are handled in the same way as unsafe file-local
variables (see Section 33.2.4.2 [Safe File Variables], page 509).
Directory-local variables also take effect in certain buffers that do not visit a file directly
but perform work within a directory, such as Dired buffers (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378).

33.2.6 Per-Connection Local Variables

Most of the variables reflect the situation on the local machine. Often, they must use a
different value when you operate in buffers with a remote default directory. Think about
the behavior when calling shell – on your local machine, you might use /bin/bash and
rely on termcap, but on a remote machine, it may be /bin/ksh and terminfo.
This can be accomplished with connection-local variables. Directory and file local variables
override connection-local variables. Unsafe connection-local variables are handled in the
same way as unsafe file-local variables (see Section 33.2.4.2 [Safe File Variables], page 509).
Connection-local variables are declared as a group of variables/value pairs in a
profile, using the connection-local-set-profile-variables function. The function
connection-local-set-profiles activates profiles for a given criteria, identifying a
remote machine:
(connection-local-set-profile-variables 'remote-terminfo
'((system-uses-terminfo . t)
(comint-terminfo-terminal . "dumb-emacs-ansi")))

(connection-local-set-profile-variables 'remote-ksh
'((shell-file-name . "/bin/ksh")
(shell-command-switch . "-c")))

(connection-local-set-profile-variables 'remote-bash
'((shell-file-name . "/bin/bash")
(shell-command-switch . "-c")))
Chapter 33: Customization 513

(connection-local-set-profiles
'(:application tramp :machine "remotemachine")
'remote-terminfo 'remote-ksh)
This code declares three different profiles, remote-terminfo, remote-ksh, and
remote-bash. The profiles remote-terminfo and remote-ksh are applied to all buffers
which have a remote default directory matching the regexp "remotemachine" as host name.
Such a criteria can also discriminate for the properties :protocol (this is the Tramp
method) or :user (a remote user name). The nil criteria matches all buffers with a remote
default directory.

33.3 Customizing Key Bindings

This section describes key bindings, which map keys to commands, and keymaps, which
record key bindings. It also explains how to customize key bindings, which is done by editing
your init file (see Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 516).
Since most modes define their own key bindings, activating a mode might override your
custom key bindings. A small number of keys are reserved for user-defined bindings, and
should not be used by modes, so key bindings using those keys are safer in this regard. The
reserved key sequences are those consisting of C-c followed by a letter (either upper or lower
case), and function keys F5 through F9 without modifiers (see Section 33.3.7 [Modifier Keys],
page 517).

33.3.1 Keymaps
As described in Section 2.4 [Commands], page 13, each Emacs command is a Lisp function
whose definition provides for interactive use. Like every Lisp function, a command has a
function name, which usually consists of lower-case letters and hyphens.
A key sequence (key, for short) is a sequence of input events that have a meaning as a
unit. Input events include characters, function keys, and mouse buttons—all the inputs that
you can send to the computer. A key sequence gets its meaning from its binding, which says
what command it runs.
The bindings between key sequences and command functions are recorded in data
structures called keymaps. Emacs has many of these, each used on particular occasions.
The global keymap is the most important keymap because it is always in effect. The
global keymap defines keys for Fundamental mode (see Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241);
most of these definitions are common to most or all major modes. Each major or minor
mode can have its own keymap which overrides the global definitions of some keys.
For example, a self-inserting character such as g is self-inserting because the global
keymap binds it to the command self-insert-command. The standard Emacs editing
characters such as C-a also get their standard meanings from the global keymap. Commands
to rebind keys, such as M-x keymap-global-set, work by storing the new binding in the
proper place in the global map (see Section 33.3.5 [Rebinding], page 515). To view the
current key bindings, use the C-h b command.
Most modern keyboards have function keys as well as character keys. Function keys
send input events just as character keys do, and keymaps can have bindings for them. Key
sequences can mix function keys and characters. For example, if your keyboard has a Home
514 GNU Emacs Manual

function key, Emacs can recognize key sequences like C-x Home. You can even mix mouse
events with keyboard events, such as S-down-mouse-1.
On text terminals, typing a function key actually sends the computer a sequence of
characters; the precise details of the sequence depend on the function key and on the terminal
type. (Often the sequence starts with ESC [.) If Emacs understands your terminal type
properly, it automatically handles such sequences as single input events.
Key sequences that consist of C-c followed by a letter (upper or lower case; ASCII or
non-ASCII) are reserved for users. Emacs itself will never bind those key sequences, and
Emacs extensions should avoid binding them. In other words, users can bind key sequences
like C-c a or C-c ç and rely on these never being shadowed by other Emacs bindings.

33.3.2 Prefix Keymaps

Internally, Emacs records only single events in each keymap. Interpreting a key sequence of
multiple events involves a chain of keymaps: the first keymap gives a definition for the first
event, which is another keymap, which is used to look up the second event in the sequence,
and so on. Thus, a prefix key such as C-x or ESC has its own keymap, which holds the
definition for the event that immediately follows that prefix.
The definition of a prefix key is usually the keymap to use for looking up the following
event. The definition can also be a Lisp symbol whose function definition is the following
keymap; the effect is the same, but it provides a command name for the prefix key that
can be used as a description of what the prefix key is for. Thus, the binding of C-x is the
symbol Control-X-prefix, whose function definition is the keymap for C-x commands.
The definitions of C-c, C-x, C-h, and ESC as prefix keys appear in the global map, so these
prefix keys are always available.
Aside from ordinary prefix keys, there is a fictitious “prefix key” which represents the
menu bar; see Section “Menu Bar” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for special
information about menu bar key bindings. Mouse button events that invoke pop-up menus
are also prefix keys; see Section “Menu Keymaps” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, for
more details.
Some prefix keymaps are stored in variables with names:
• ctl-x-map is the variable name for the map used for characters that follow C-x.
• help-map is for characters that follow C-h.
• esc-map is for characters that follow ESC. Thus, all Meta characters are actually defined
by this map.
• ctl-x-4-map is for characters that follow C-x 4.
• mode-specific-map is for characters that follow C-c.
• project-prefix-map is for characters that follow C-x p, used for project-related com-
mands (see Section 25.2 [Projects], page 351).

33.3.3 Local Keymaps

So far, we have explained the ins and outs of the global map. Major modes customize Emacs
by providing their own key bindings in local keymaps. For example, C mode overrides TAB
to make it indent the current line for C code. Minor modes can also have local keymaps;
whenever a minor mode is in effect, the definitions in its keymap override both the major
Chapter 33: Customization 515

mode’s local keymap and the global keymap. In addition, portions of text in the buffer can
specify their own keymaps, which override all other keymaps.
A local keymap can redefine a key as a prefix key by defining it as a prefix keymap. If
the key is also defined globally as a prefix, its local and global definitions (both keymaps)
effectively combine: both definitions are used to look up the event that follows the prefix key.
For example, if a local keymap defines C-c as a prefix keymap, and that keymap defines
C-z as a command, this provides a local meaning for C-c C-z. This does not affect other
sequences that start with C-c; if those sequences don’t have their own local bindings, their
global bindings remain in effect.
Another way to think of this is that Emacs handles a multi-event key sequence by looking
in several keymaps, one by one, for a binding of the whole key sequence. First it checks the
minor mode keymaps for minor modes that are enabled, then it checks the major mode’s
keymap, and then it checks the global keymap. This is not precisely how key lookup works,
but it’s good enough for understanding the results in ordinary circumstances.

33.3.4 Minibuffer Keymaps

The minibuffer has its own set of local keymaps; they contain various completion and exit
commands.
• minibuffer-local-map is used for ordinary input (no completion).
• minibuffer-local-ns-map is similar, except that SPC exits just like RET.
• minibuffer-local-completion-map is for permissive completion.
• minibuffer-local-must-match-map is for strict completion and for cautious comple-
tion.
• minibuffer-local-filename-completion-map is like the two previous ones, but specif-
ically for file name completion. It does not bind SPC.
By default, TAB, SPC and ? do completion in minibuffer-local-completion-map. If
you commonly complete over collections that have elements with space or question mark
characters in them, it may be convenient to disable completion on those keys by putting
this in your init file:
(keymap-set minibuffer-local-completion-map "SPC" 'self-insert-command)
(keymap-set minibuffer-local-completion-map "?" 'self-insert-command)

33.3.5 Changing Key Bindings Interactively

The way to redefine an Emacs key is to change its entry in a keymap. You can change
the global keymap, in which case the change is effective in all major modes (except those
that have their own overriding local bindings for the same key). Or you can change a local
keymap, which affects all buffers using the same major mode.
In this section, we describe how to rebind keys for the present Emacs session. See
Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 516, for a description of how to make key rebindings
affect future Emacs sessions.
M-x keymap-global-set RET key cmd RET
Define key globally to run cmd.
M-x keymap-local-set RET key cmd RET
Define key locally (in the major mode now in effect) to run cmd.
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M-x keymap-global-unset RET key

Make key undefined in the global map.
M-x keymap-local-unset RET key
Make key undefined locally (in the major mode now in effect).
For example, the following binds C-z to the shell command (see Section 31.5.2 [Interac-
tive Shell], page 455), replacing the normal global definition of C-z:
M-x keymap-global-set RET C-z shell RET
The keymap-global-set command reads the command name after the key. After you press
the key, a message like this appears so that you can confirm that you are binding the key
you want:
Set key C-z to command:
You can redefine function keys and mouse events in the same way; just type the function
key or click the mouse when it’s time to specify the key to rebind.
You can rebind a key that contains more than one event in the same way. Emacs keeps
reading the key to rebind until it is a complete key (that is, not a prefix key). Thus, if you
type C-f for key, that’s the end; it enters the minibuffer immediately to read cmd. But if
you type C-x, since that’s a prefix, it reads another character; if that is 4, another prefix
character, it reads one more character, and so on. For example,
M-x keymap-global-set RET C-x 4 $ spell-other-window RET
redefines C-x 4 $ to run the (fictitious) command spell-other-window.
You can remove the global definition of a key with keymap-global-unset. This makes
the key undefined; if you type it, Emacs will just beep. Similarly, keymap-local-unset
makes a key undefined in the current major mode keymap, which makes the global definition
(or lack of one) come back into effect in that major mode.
If you have redefined (or undefined) a key and you subsequently wish to retract the
change, undefining the key will not do the job—you need to redefine the key with its standard
definition. To find the name of the standard definition of a key, go to a Fundamental mode
buffer in a fresh Emacs and use C-h c. The documentation of keys in this manual also lists
their command names.
If you want to prevent yourself from invoking a command by mistake, it is better to
disable the command than to undefine the key. A disabled command is less work to invoke
when you really want to. See Section 33.3.11 [Disabling], page 521.

33.3.6 Rebinding Keys in Your Init File

If you have a set of key bindings that you like to use all the time, you can specify them
in your initialization file by writing Lisp code. See Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522, for a
description of the initialization file.
The recommended way to write a key binding using Lisp is to use either the
keymap-global-set or the keymap-set functions. For example, here’s how to bind C-z to
the shell command in the global keymap (see Section 31.5.2 [Interactive Shell], page 455):
(keymap-global-set "C-z" 'shell)
The first argument to keymap-global-set describes the key sequence. It is a string made
of a series of characters separated by spaces, with each character corresponding to a key.
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Keys with modifiers can be specified by prepending the modifier, such as ‘C-’ for Control, or
‘M-’ for Meta. Special keys, such as TAB and RET, can be specified within angle brackets as
in TAB and RET.
The single-quote before the command name that is being bound to the key sequence,
shell in the above example, marks it as a constant symbol rather than a variable. If you
omit the quote, Emacs would try to evaluate shell as a variable. This will probably cause
an error; it certainly isn’t what you want.
Here are some additional examples, including binding function keys and mouse events:
(keymap-global-set "C-c y" 'clipboard-yank)
(keymap-global-set "C-M-q" 'query-replace)
(keymap-global-set "<f5>" 'flyspell-mode)
(keymap-global-set "C-<f5>" 'display-line-numbers-mode)
(keymap-global-set "C-<right>" 'forward-sentence)
(keymap-global-set "<mouse-2>" 'mouse-save-then-kill)
Language and coding systems may cause problems with key bindings for non-ASCII
characters. See Section 33.4.5 [Init Non-ASCII], page 528.
Alternatively, you can use the low level functions define-key and global-set-key. For
example, to bind C-z to the shell command, as in the above example, using these low-level
functions, use:
(global-set-key (kbd "C-z") 'shell)
There are various ways to specify the key sequence but the simplest is to use the function
kbd as shown in the example above. kbd takes a single string argument that is a textual
representation of a key sequence, and converts it into a form suitable for low-level functions
such as global-set-key. For more details about binding keys using Lisp, see Section
“Keymaps” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
As described in Section 33.3.3 [Local Keymaps], page 514, major modes and minor modes
can define local keymaps. These keymaps are constructed when the mode is loaded for the
first time in a session. The function keymap-set can be used to make changes in a specific
keymap. To remove a key binding, use keymap-unset.
Since a mode’s keymaps are not constructed until it has been loaded, you must delay
running code which modifies them, e.g., by putting it on a mode hook (see Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 504). For example, Texinfo mode runs the hook texinfo-mode-hook. Here’s
how you can use the hook to add local bindings for C-c n and C-c p, and remove the one
for C-c C-x x in Texinfo mode:
(add-hook 'texinfo-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(keymap-set texinfo-mode-map "C-c p"
'backward-paragraph)
(keymap-set texinfo-mode-map "C-c n"
'forward-paragraph)))
(keymap-set texinfo-mode-map "C-c C-x x" nil)

33.3.7 Modifier Keys

The default key bindings in Emacs are set up so that modified alphabetical characters are
case-insensitive. In other words, C-A does the same thing as C-a, and M-A does the same
518 GNU Emacs Manual

thing as M-a. This concerns only alphabetical characters, and does not apply to shifted
versions of other keys; for instance, C-@ is not the same as C-2.
A Control-modified alphabetical character is generally considered case-insensitive: Emacs
always treats C-A as C-a, C-B as C-b, and so forth. The reason for this is historical: In
non-graphical environments there is no distinction between those keystrokes. However, you
can bind shifted Control alphabetical keystrokes in GUI frames:
(keymap-global-set "C-S-n" #'previous-line)
For all other modifiers, you can make the modified alphabetical characters case-sensitive
(even on non-graphical frames) when you customize Emacs. For instance, you could make
M-a and M-A run different commands.
Although only the Control and Meta modifier keys are commonly used, Emacs supports
three other modifier keys. These are called Super, Hyper, and Alt. Few terminals provide
ways to use these modifiers; the key labeled Alt on most keyboards usually issues the Meta
modifier, not Alt. The standard key bindings in Emacs do not include any characters with
the Super and Hyper modifiers, and only a small number of standard key bindings use
Alt. However, you can customize Emacs to assign meanings to key bindings that use these
modifiers. The modifier bits are labeled as ‘s-’, ‘H-’ and ‘A-’ respectively.
Even if your keyboard lacks these additional modifier keys, you can enter them using
C-x @: C-x @ h adds the Hyper flag to the next character, C-x @ s adds the Super flag, and
C-x @ a adds the Alt flag. For instance, C-x @ h C-a is a way to enter Hyper-Control-a.
(Unfortunately, there is no way to add two modifiers by using C-x @ twice for the same
character, because the first one goes to work on the C-x.) You can similarly enter the Shift,
Control, and Meta modifiers by using C-x S, C-x c, and C-x m, respectively, although
this is rarely needed.

33.3.8 Rebinding Function Keys

Key sequences can contain function keys as well as ordinary characters. Just as Lisp
characters (actually integers) represent keyboard characters, Lisp symbols represent function
keys. If the function key has a word as its label, then that word is also the name of the
corresponding Lisp symbol. Here are the conventional Lisp names for common function keys:

left, up, right, down

Cursor arrow keys.

begin, end, home, next, prior

Other cursor repositioning keys.

select, print, execute, backtab

insert, undo, redo, clearline
insertline, deleteline, insertchar, deletechar
Miscellaneous function keys.

f1, f2, . . . f35

Numbered function keys (across the top of the keyboard).
Chapter 33: Customization 519

kp-add, kp-subtract, kp-multiply, kp-divide

kp-backtab, kp-space, kp-tab, kp-enter
kp-separator, kp-decimal, kp-equal
kp-prior, kp-next, kp-end, kp-home
kp-left, kp-up, kp-right, kp-down
kp-insert , kp-delete
Keypad keys (to the right of the regular keyboard), with names or punctuation.
kp-0, kp-1, . . . kp-9
Keypad keys with digits.
kp-f1, kp-f2, kp-f3, kp-f4
Keypad PF keys.
These names are conventional, but some systems (especially when using X) may use
different names. To make certain what symbol is used for a given function key on your
terminal, type C-h c followed by that key.
See Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding], page 516, for examples of binding function keys.
Many keyboards have a numeric keypad on the right-hand side. The numeric keys in the
keypad double up as cursor motion keys, toggled by a key labeled ‘Num Lock’. By default,
Emacs translates these keys to the corresponding keys on the main keyboard. For example,
when ‘Num Lock’ is on, the key labeled ‘8’ on the numeric keypad produces kp-8, which is
translated to 8; when ‘Num Lock’ is off, the same key produces kp-up, which is translated to
UP. If you rebind a key such as 8 or UP, it affects the equivalent keypad key too. However, if
you rebind a ‘kp-’ key directly, that won’t affect its non-keypad equivalent. Note that the
modified keys are not translated: for instance, if you hold down the Meta key while pressing
the ‘8’ key on the numeric keypad, that generates M-kp-8.
Emacs provides a convenient method for binding the numeric keypad keys, using
the variables keypad-setup, keypad-numlock-setup, keypad-shifted-setup, and
keypad-numlock-shifted-setup. These can be found in the ‘keyboard’ customization
group (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494). You can rebind the keys to
perform other tasks, such as issuing numeric prefix arguments.

33.3.9 Named ASCII Control Characters

TAB, RET, BS, LFD, ESC, and DEL started out as names for certain ASCII control characters,
used so often that they have special keys of their own. For instance, TAB was another name
for C-i. Later, users found it convenient to distinguish in Emacs between these keys and
the corresponding control characters typed with the Ctrl key. Therefore, on most modern
terminals, they are no longer the same: TAB is different from C-i.
Emacs can distinguish these two kinds of input if the keyboard does. It treats the special
keys as function keys named tab, return, backspace, linefeed, escape, and delete.
These function keys translate automatically into the corresponding ASCII characters if they
have no bindings of their own. As a result, neither users nor Lisp programs need to pay
attention to the distinction unless they care to.
If you do not want to distinguish between (for example) TAB and C-i, make just one
binding, for the ASCII character TAB (octal code 011). If you do want to distinguish, make
one binding for this ASCII character, and another for the function key tab.
520 GNU Emacs Manual

With an ordinary ASCII terminal, there is no way to distinguish between TAB and C-i
(and likewise for other such pairs), because the terminal sends the same character in both
cases.

33.3.10 Rebinding Mouse Buttons

Emacs uses Lisp symbols to designate mouse buttons, too. The ordinary mouse events in
Emacs are click events; these happen when you press a button and release it without moving
the mouse. You can also get drag events, when you move the mouse while holding the
button down. Drag events happen when you finally let go of the button.
The symbols for basic click events are mouse-1 for the leftmost button, mouse-2 for the
next, and so on. Here is how you can redefine the second mouse button to split the current
window:
(keymap-global-set "<mouse-2>" 'split-window-below)
The symbols for drag events are similar, but have the prefix ‘drag-’ before the word
‘mouse’. For example, dragging the first button generates a drag-mouse-1 event.
You can also define bindings for events that occur when a mouse button is pressed down.
These events start with ‘down-’ instead of ‘drag-’. Such events are generated only if they
have key bindings. When you get a button-down event, a corresponding click or drag event
will always follow.
If you wish, you can distinguish single, double, and triple clicks. A double click means
clicking a mouse button twice in approximately the same place. The first click generates
an ordinary click event. The second click, if it comes soon enough, generates a double-click
event instead. The event type for a double-click event starts with ‘double-’: for example,
double-mouse-3.
This means that you can give a special meaning to the second click at the same place,
but it must act on the assumption that the ordinary single click definition has run when the
first click was received.
This constrains what you can do with double clicks, but user interface designers say that
this constraint ought to be followed in any case. A double click should do something similar
to the single click, only more so. The command for the double-click event should perform
the extra work for the double click.
If a double-click event has no binding, it changes to the corresponding single-click event.
Thus, if you don’t define a particular double click specially, it executes the single-click
command twice.
Emacs also supports triple-click events whose names start with ‘triple-’. Emacs does
not distinguish quadruple clicks as event types; clicks beyond the third generate additional
triple-click events. However, the full number of clicks is recorded in the event list, so if you
know Emacs Lisp you can distinguish if you really want to (see Section “Click Events” in
The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). We don’t recommend distinct meanings for more than
three clicks, but sometimes it is useful for subsequent clicks to cycle through the same set of
three meanings, so that four clicks are equivalent to one click, five are equivalent to two,
and six are equivalent to three.
Emacs also records multiple presses in drag and button-down events. For example, when
you press a button twice, then move the mouse while holding the button, Emacs gets a
Chapter 33: Customization 521

‘double-drag-’ event. And at the moment when you press it down for the second time,
Emacs gets a ‘double-down-’ event (which is ignored, like all button-down events, if it has
no binding).
The variable double-click-time specifies how much time can elapse between clicks and
still allow them to be grouped as a multiple click. Its value is in units of milliseconds. If the
value is nil, double clicks are not detected at all. If the value is t, then there is no time
limit. The default is 500.
The variable double-click-fuzz specifies how much the mouse can move between clicks
and still allow them to be grouped as a multiple click. Its value is in units of pixels on
windowed displays and in units of 1/8 of a character cell on text-mode terminals; the default
is 3.
The symbols for mouse events also indicate the status of the modifier keys, with the usual
prefixes ‘C-’, ‘M-’, ‘H-’, ‘s-’, ‘A-’, and ‘S-’. These always precede ‘double-’ or ‘triple-’,
which always precede ‘drag-’ or ‘down-’.
A frame includes areas that don’t show text from the buffer, such as the mode line and
the scroll bar. You can tell whether a mouse button comes from a special area of the screen
by means of dummy prefix keys. For example, if you click the mouse in the mode line, you
get the prefix key mode-line before the ordinary mouse-button symbol. Thus, here is how to
define the command for clicking the first button in a mode line to run scroll-up-command:
(keymap-global-set "<mode-line> <mouse-1>" 'scroll-up-command)
Here is the complete list of these dummy prefix keys and their meanings:
mode-line
The mouse was in the mode line of a window.
vertical-line
The mouse was in the vertical line separating side-by-side windows. (If you use
scroll bars, they appear in place of these vertical lines.)
vertical-scroll-bar
The mouse was in a vertical scroll bar. (This is the only kind of scroll bar Emacs
currently supports.)
menu-bar The mouse was in the menu bar.
tab-bar The mouse was in a tab bar.
tab-line The mouse was in a tab line.
header-line
The mouse was in a header line.
You can put more than one mouse button in a key sequence, but it isn’t usual to do so.

33.3.11 Disabling Commands

Disabling a command means that invoking it interactively asks for confirmation from the
user. The purpose of disabling a command is to prevent users from executing it by accident;
we do this for commands that might be confusing to the uninitiated.
Attempting to invoke a disabled command interactively in Emacs displays a window
containing the command’s name, its documentation, and some instructions on what to
522 GNU Emacs Manual

do immediately; then Emacs asks for input saying whether to execute the command as
requested, enable it and execute it, or cancel. If you decide to enable the command, you
must then answer another question—whether to do this permanently, or just for the current
session. (Enabling permanently works by automatically editing your initialization file.) You
can also type ! to enable all commands, for the current session only.
The direct mechanism for disabling a command is to put a non-nil disabled property
on the Lisp symbol for the command. Here is the Lisp program to do this:
(put 'delete-region 'disabled t)
If the value of the disabled property is a string, that string is included in the message
displayed when the command is used:
(put 'delete-region 'disabled
"It's better to use `kill-region' instead.\n")
As a less heavy-handed alternative to disabling commands, you may want to be queried
before executing a command. For instance, to be queried before executing the M-> (end-of-
buffer) command, you could put something like the following in your init file:
(command-query
'end-of-buffer
"Do you really want to go to the end of the buffer?")
By default, you’ll be queried with a y/n question, but if you give a non-nil value to the
third, optional argument, you’ll be queried with yes/no instead.
You can make a command disabled either by editing the initialization file directly, or with
the command M-x disable-command, which edits the initialization file for you. Likewise,
M-x enable-command edits the initialization file to enable a command permanently. See
Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522.
If Emacs was invoked with the -q or --no-init-file options (see Section C.2 [Initial
Options], page 570), it will not edit your initialization file. Doing so could lose information
because Emacs has not read your initialization file.
Whether a command is disabled is independent of what key is used to invoke it; disabling
also applies if the command is invoked using M-x. However, disabling a command has no
effect on calling it as a function from Lisp programs.

33.4 The Emacs Initialization File

When Emacs is started, it normally tries to load a Lisp program from an initialization
file, or init file for short. This file, if it exists, specifies how to initialize Emacs for you.
Traditionally, file ~/.emacs is used as the init file, although Emacs also looks at ~/.emacs.el,
~/.emacs.d/init.el, ~/.config/emacs/init.el, or other locations. See Section 33.4.4
[Find Init], page 527.
You may find it convenient to have all your Emacs configuration in one direc-
tory, in which case you should use ~/.emacs.d/init.el or the XDG-compatible
~/.config/emacs/init.el.
You can use the command line switch ‘-q’ to prevent loading your init file, and ‘-u’ (or
‘--user’) to specify a different user’s init file (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570).
There can also be a default init file, which is the library named default.el, found via
the standard search path for libraries. The Emacs distribution contains no such library;
Chapter 33: Customization 523

your site may create one for local customizations. If this library exists, it is loaded whenever
you start Emacs (except when you specify ‘-q’). But your init file, if any, is loaded first; if
it sets inhibit-default-init non-nil, then default is not loaded.
Your site may also have a site startup file; this is named site-start.el, if it exists. Like
default.el, Emacs finds this file via the standard search path for Lisp libraries. Emacs
loads this library before it loads your init file. To inhibit loading of this library, use the
option ‘--no-site-file’. See Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570. We recommend
against using site-start.el for changes that some users may not like. It is better to put
them in default.el, so that users can more easily override them.
You can place default.el and site-start.el in any of the directories which
Emacs searches for Lisp libraries. The variable load-path (see Section 24.8
[Lisp Libraries], page 326) specifies these directories. Many sites put these files
in a subdirectory named site-lisp in the Emacs installation directory, such as
/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp.
Byte-compiling your init file is not recommended (see Section “Byte Compilation” in
the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). It generally does not speed up startup very much, and
often leads to problems when you forget to recompile the file. A better solution is to use
the Emacs server to reduce the number of times you have to start Emacs (see Section 31.6
[Emacs Server], page 464). If your init file defines many functions, consider moving them to
a separate (byte-compiled) file that you load in your init file.
If you are going to write actual Emacs Lisp programs that go beyond minor customization,
you should read the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.

33.4.1 Init File Syntax

The init file contains one or more Lisp expressions. Each of these consists of a function name
followed by arguments, all surrounded by parentheses. For example, (setq fill-column
60) calls the function setq to set the variable fill-column (see Section 22.6 [Filling],
page 256) to 60.
You can set any Lisp variable with setq, but with certain variables setq won’t do what
you probably want in the init file. Some variables automatically become buffer-local when
set with setq; what you want in the init file is to set the default value, using setq-default.
(The following section has examples of both of these methods.)
Some customizable minor mode variables do special things to enable the mode when
you set them with Customize, but ordinary setq won’t do that; to enable the mode in
your init file, call the minor mode command. Finally, a few customizable user options are
initialized in complex ways, and these have to be set either via the customize interface (see
Chapter 33 [Customization], page 494), or by using customize-set-variable/setopt (see
Section 33.2.1 [Examining], page 503).
The second argument to setq is an expression for the new value of the variable. This
can be a constant, a variable, or a function call expression. In the init file, constants are
used most of the time. They can be:
Numbers: Numbers are written in decimal, with an optional initial minus sign.
Strings: Lisp string syntax is the same as C string syntax with a few extra features. Use
a double-quote character to begin and end a string constant.
524 GNU Emacs Manual

In a string, you can include newlines and special characters literally. But often
it is cleaner to use backslash sequences for them: ‘\n’ for newline, ‘\b’ for
backspace, ‘\r’ for carriage return, ‘\t’ for tab, ‘\f’ for formfeed (control-L),
‘\e’ for escape, ‘\\’ for a backslash, ‘\"’ for a double-quote, or ‘\ooo’ for the
character whose octal code is ooo. Backslash and double-quote are the only
characters for which backslash sequences are mandatory.
‘\C-’ can be used as a prefix for a control character, as in ‘\C-s’ for ASCII
control-S, and ‘\M-’ can be used as a prefix for a Meta character, as in ‘\M-a’
for Meta-A or ‘\M-\C-a’ for Ctrl-Meta-A.
See Section 33.4.5 [Init Non-ASCII], page 528, for information about including
non-ASCII in your init file.
Characters:
Lisp character constant syntax consists of a ‘?’ followed by either a character or
an escape sequence starting with ‘\’. Examples: ?x, ?\n, ?\", ?\). Note that
strings and characters are not interchangeable in Lisp; some contexts require
one and some contexts require the other.
See Section 33.4.5 [Init Non-ASCII], page 528, for information about binding
commands to keys which send non-ASCII characters.
True: t stands for “true”.
False: nil stands for “false”.
Other Lisp objects:
Write a single-quote (') followed by the Lisp object you want.
For more information on the Emacs Lisp syntax, see Section “Introduction” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual.

33.4.2 Init File Examples

Here are some examples of doing certain commonly desired things with Lisp expressions:
• Add a directory to the variable load-path. You can then put Lisp libraries that are
not included with Emacs in this directory, and load them with M-x load-library. See
Section 24.8 [Lisp Libraries], page 326.
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/lisp/libraries")
• Make TAB in C mode just insert a tab if point is in the middle of a line.
(setq c-tab-always-indent nil)
Here we have a variable whose value is normally t for “true” and the alternative is nil
for “false”.
• Make searches case sensitive by default (in all buffers that do not override this).
(setq-default case-fold-search nil)
This sets the default value, which is effective in all buffers that do not have local values
for the variable (see Section 33.2.3 [Locals], page 505). Setting case-fold-search with
setq affects only the current buffer’s local value, which is probably not what you want
to do in an init file.
Chapter 33: Customization 525

• Specify your own email address, if Emacs can’t figure it out correctly.
(setq user-mail-address "[email protected]")
Various Emacs packages, such as Message mode, consult user-mail-address when
they need to know your email address. See Section 29.2 [Mail Headers], page 419.
• Make Text mode the default mode for new buffers.
(setq-default major-mode 'text-mode)
Note that text-mode is used because it is the command for entering Text mode. The
single-quote before it makes the symbol a constant; otherwise, text-mode would be
treated as a variable name.
• Set up defaults for the Latin-1 character set, which supports most of the languages of
Western Europe.
(set-language-environment "Latin-1")
• Turn off Line Number mode, a global minor mode.
(line-number-mode 0)
• Turn on Auto Fill mode automatically in Text mode and related modes (see Section 33.2.2
[Hooks], page 504).
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'auto-fill-mode)
• Change the coding system used when using the clipboard (see Section 19.10 [Communi-
cation Coding], page 229).
(setopt selection-coding-system 'utf-8)
• Load the installed Lisp library named foo (actually a file foo.elc or foo.el in a
standard Emacs directory).
(load "foo")
When the argument to load is a relative file name, not starting with ‘/’ or ‘~’, load
searches the directories in load-path (see Section 24.8 [Lisp Libraries], page 326).
• Load the compiled Lisp file foo.elc from your home directory.
(load "~/foo.elc")
Here a full file name is used, so no searching is done.
• Tell Emacs to find the definition for the function myfunction by loading a Lisp library
named mypackage (i.e., a file mypackage.elc or mypackage.el):
(autoload 'myfunction "mypackage" "Do what I say." t)
Here the string "Do what I say." is the function’s documentation string. You specify
it in the autoload definition so it will be available for help commands even when the
package is not loaded. The last argument, t, indicates that this function is interactive;
that is, it can be invoked interactively by typing M-x myfunction RET or by binding it
to a key. If the function is not interactive, omit the t or use nil.
• Rebind the key C-x l to run the function make-symbolic-link (see Section 33.3.6 [Init
Rebinding], page 516).
(keymap-global-set "C-x l" 'make-symbolic-link)
or
(keymap-set global-map "C-x l" 'make-symbolic-link)
526 GNU Emacs Manual

Note once again the single-quote used to refer to the symbol make-symbolic-link
instead of its value as a variable.
• Do the same thing for Lisp mode only.
(keymap-set lisp-mode-map "C-x l" 'make-symbolic-link)
• Redefine all keys which now run next-line in Fundamental mode so that they run
forward-line instead.
(keymap-substitute global-map 'next-line 'forward-line)
• Make C-x C-v undefined.
(keymap-global-unset "C-x C-v")
One reason to undefine a key is so that you can make it a prefix. Simply defining C-x
C-v anything will make C-x C-v a prefix, but C-x C-v must first be freed of its usual
non-prefix definition.
• Make ‘$’ have the syntax of punctuation in Text mode. Note the use of a character
constant for ‘$’.
(modify-syntax-entry ?\$ "." text-mode-syntax-table)
• Enable the use of the command narrow-to-region without confirmation.
(put 'narrow-to-region 'disabled nil)
• Adjusting the configuration to various platforms and Emacs versions.
Users typically want Emacs to behave the same on all systems, so the same init file
is right for all platforms. However, sometimes it happens that a function you use for
customizing Emacs is not available on some platforms or in older Emacs versions. To
deal with that situation, put the customization inside a conditional that tests whether
the function or facility is available, like this:
(if (fboundp 'blink-cursor-mode)
(blink-cursor-mode 0))

(if (boundp 'coding-category-utf-8)

(set-coding-priority '(coding-category-utf-8)))
You can also simply disregard the errors that occur if the function is not defined.
(ignore-errors (set-face-background 'region "grey75"))
A setq on a variable which does not exist is generally harmless, so those do not need a
conditional.
• Using use-package to automatically load and configure a package.
(use-package hi-lock
:defer t
:init (add-hook 'some-hook 'hi-lock-mode)
:config (use-package my-hi-lock)
:bind (("M-o l" . highlight-lines-matching-regexp)
("M-o r" . highlight-regexp)
("M-o w" . highlight-phrase)))
This will load hi-lock when some of its commands or variables are first used, bind
3 keys to its commands, and additionally load the my-hi-lock package (presumably
Chapter 33: Customization 527

further customizing hi-lock) after loading hi-lock. The use-package facility is fully
documented in its own manual, see use-package User manual.

33.4.3 Terminal-specific Initialization

Each terminal type can have a Lisp library to be loaded into Emacs when it is run on that
type of terminal. For a terminal type named termtype, the library is called term/termtype.
(If there is an entry of the form (termtype . alias) in the term-file-aliases association
list, Emacs uses alias in place of termtype.) The library is found by searching the directories
load-path as usual and trying the suffixes ‘.elc’ and ‘.el’. Normally it appears in the
subdirectory term of the directory where most Emacs libraries are kept.
The usual purpose of the terminal-specific library is to map the escape sequences used
by the terminal’s function keys onto more meaningful names, using input-decode-map. See
the file term/lk201.el for an example of how this is done. Many function keys are mapped
automatically according to the information in the Termcap data base; the terminal-specific
library needs to map only the function keys that Termcap does not specify.
When the terminal type contains a hyphen, only the part of the name before the first
hyphen is significant in choosing the library name. Thus, terminal types ‘aaa-48’ and
‘aaa-30-rv’ both use the library term/aaa. The code in the library can use (getenv
"TERM") to find the full terminal type name.
The library’s name is constructed by concatenating the value of the variable term-file-
prefix and the terminal type. Your .emacs file can prevent the loading of the terminal-
specific library by setting term-file-prefix to nil.
Emacs runs the hook tty-setup-hook at the end of initialization, after both your .emacs
file and any terminal-specific library have been read in. Add hook functions to this hook if
you wish to override part of any of the terminal-specific libraries and to define initializations
for terminals that do not have a library. See Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.

33.4.4 How Emacs Finds Your Init File

Emacs normally finds your init file in a location under your home directory. See Section 33.4
[Init File], page 522.
Emacs looks for your init file using the filenames ~/.emacs.el, ~/.emacs, or
~/.emacs.d/init.el in that order; you can choose to use any one of these names. (Note
that only the locations directly in your home directory have a leading dot in the location’s
basename.)
Emacs can also look in an XDG-compatible location for init.el, the default is the
directory ~/.config/emacs. This can be overridden by setting XDG_CONFIG_HOME in your
environment, its value replaces ~/.config in the name of the default XDG init file. However
~/.emacs.d, ~/.emacs, and ~/.emacs.el are always preferred if they exist, which means
that you must delete or rename them in order to use the XDG location.
Note also that if neither the XDG location nor ~/.emacs.d exist, then Emacs will create
~/.emacs.d (and therefore use it during subsequent invocations).
Emacs will set user-emacs-directory to the directory it decides to use.
Although this is backward-compatible with older Emacs versions, modern POSIX plat-
forms prefer putting your initialization files under ~/.config so that troubleshooting a
problem that might be due to a bad init file, or archiving a collection of init files, can be
528 GNU Emacs Manual

done by renaming that directory. To help older Emacs versions find configuration files in
their current default locations, you can execute the following Emacs Lisp code:
(make-symbolic-link ".config/emacs" "~/.emacs.d")
However, if you run Emacs from a shell started by su and XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not
set in your environment, Emacs tries to find your own initialization files, not that of the
user you are currently pretending to be. The idea is that you should get your own editor
customizations even if you are running as the super user.
More precisely, Emacs first determines which user’s init file to use. It gets your user
name from the environment variables LOGNAME and USER; if neither of those exists, it uses
the effective user-ID. If that user name matches the real user-ID, then Emacs uses HOME;
otherwise, it looks up the home directory corresponding to that user name in the system’s
data base of users.
For brevity the rest of the Emacs documentation generally uses just the current default
location ~/.emacs.d/init.el for the init file.

33.4.5 Non-ASCII Characters in Init Files

Language and coding systems may cause problems if your init file contains non-ASCII
characters, such as accented letters, in strings or key bindings.
If you want to use non-ASCII characters in your init file, you should put a
‘-*-coding: coding-system-*-’ tag on the first line of the init file, and specify a coding
system that supports the character(s) in question. See Section 19.6 [Recognize Coding],
page 225. This is because the defaults for decoding non-ASCII text might not yet be set up
by the time Emacs reads those parts of your init file which use such strings, possibly leading
Emacs to decode those strings incorrectly. You should then avoid adding Emacs Lisp code
that modifies the coding system in other ways, such as calls to set-language-environment.
An alternative to using non-ASCII characters directly is to use one of the character escape
syntaxes described in see Section “General Escape Syntax” in The Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual, as they allow all Unicode codepoints to be specified using only ASCII characters.
To bind non-ASCII keys, you must use a vector (see Section 33.3.6 [Init Rebinding],
page 516). The string syntax cannot be used, since the non-ASCII characters will be
interpreted as meta keys. For instance:
(global-set-key [?char] 'some-function)
Type C-q, followed by the key you want to bind, to insert char.

33.4.6 The Early Init File

Most customizations for Emacs should be put in the normal init file. See Section 33.4 [Init
File], page 522. However, it is sometimes necessary to have customizations take effect during
Emacs startup earlier than the normal init file is processed. Such customizations can be
put in the early init file, ~/.config/emacs/early-init.el or ~/.emacs.d/early-init.el.
This file is loaded before the package system and GUI is initialized, so in it you can customize
variables that affect the package initialization process, such as package-enable-at-startup,
package-load-list, and package-user-dir. Note that variables like package-archives
which only affect the installation of new packages, and not the process of making already-
installed packages available, may be customized in the regular init file. See Section 32.3
[Package Installation], page 488.
Chapter 33: Customization 529

We do not recommend that you move into early-init.el customizations that can be
left in the normal init files. That is because the early init file is read before the GUI is
initialized, so customizations related to GUI features will not work reliably in early-init.el.
By contrast, the normal init files are read after the GUI is initialized. If you must have
customizations in the early init file that rely on GUI features, make them run off hooks
provided by the Emacs startup, such as window-setup-hook or tty-setup-hook. See
Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.
For more information on the early init file, see Section “Init File” in The Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual.

33.5 Keeping Persistent Authentication Information

Some Emacs packages, which connect to other services, require authentication (see Section 5.7
[Passwords], page 38), e.g., see The Gnus Manual, or The Tramp Manual. Because it might
be annoying to provide the same user name and password again and again, Emacs offers to
keep this information persistent via the auth-source library.
By default, the authentication information is taken from the file ~/.authinfo or
~/.authinfo.gpg or ~/.netrc. These files have a syntax similar to netrc files as known
from the ftp program, like this:
machine mymachine login myloginname password mypassword port myport
Similarly, the auth-source library supports multiple storage backend, currently either
the classic netrc backend, JSON files, the Secret Service API, and pass, the standard unix
password manager.
All these alternatives can be customized via the user option auth-sources, see Section
“Help for users” in Emacs auth-source.
When a password is entered interactively, which is not found via the configured backend,
some of the backends offer to save it persistently. This can be changed by customizing the
user option auth-source-save-behavior.
530 GNU Emacs Manual

34 Dealing with Common Problems

If you type an Emacs command you did not intend, the results are often mysterious. This
chapter tells what you can do to cancel your mistake or recover from a mysterious situation.
Emacs bugs and system crashes are also considered.

34.1 Quitting and Aborting

C-g
C-Break (MS-DOS only)
Quit: cancel running or partially typed command.
C-] Abort innermost recursive editing level and cancel the command which invoked
it (abort-recursive-edit).
ESC ESC ESC
Either quit or abort, whichever makes sense (keyboard-escape-quit).
M-x top-level
Abort all recursive editing levels that are currently executing.
C-/
C-x u
C-_ Cancel a previously made change in the buffer contents (undo).
There are two ways of canceling a command before it has finished: quitting with C-g,
and aborting with C-] or M-x top-level. Quitting cancels a partially typed command, or
one which is still running. Aborting exits a recursive editing level and cancels the command
that invoked the recursive edit (see Section 31.11 [Recursive Edit], page 479).
Quitting with C-g is the way to get rid of a partially typed command, or a numeric
argument that you don’t want. Furthermore, if you are in the middle of a command that
is running, C-g stops the command in a relatively safe way. For example, if you quit out
of a kill command that is taking a long time, either your text will all still be in the buffer,
or it will all be in the kill ring, or maybe both. If the region is active, C-g deactivates
the mark, unless Transient Mark mode is off (see Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient Mark],
page 56). If you are in the middle of an incremental search, C-g behaves specially; it may
take two successive C-g characters to get out of a search. See Section 12.1 [Incremental
Search], page 104, for details.
If you type C-g in a minibuffer, this quits the command that opened that minibuffer,
closing it. If that minibuffer is not the most recently opened one (which can happen when
minibuffer-follows-selected-frame is nil (see Section 5.1 [Basic Minibuffer], page 27)),
C-g also closes the more recently opened ones, quitting their associated commands, after
asking you for confirmation.
On MS-DOS, the character C-Break serves as a quit character like C-g. The reason is
that it is not feasible, on MS-DOS, to recognize C-g while a command is running, between
interactions with the user. By contrast, it is feasible to recognize C-Break at all times. See
Section “MS-DOS Keyboard” in Specialized Emacs Features.
C-g works by setting the variable quit-flag to t the instant C-g is typed; Emacs Lisp
checks this variable frequently, and quits if it is non-nil. C-g is only actually executed as a
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 531

command if you type it while Emacs is waiting for input. In that case, the command it runs
is keyboard-quit.
On a text terminal, if you quit with C-g a second time before the first C-g is recognized,
you activate the emergency-escape feature and return to the shell. See Section 34.2.7
[Emergency Escape], page 535.
There are some situations where you cannot quit. When Emacs is waiting for the
operating system to do something, quitting is impossible unless special pains are taken
for the particular system call within Emacs where the waiting occurs. We have done this
for the system calls that users are likely to want to quit from, but it’s possible you will
encounter a case not handled. In one very common case—waiting for file input or output
using NFS—Emacs itself knows how to quit, but many NFS implementations simply do not
allow user programs to stop waiting for NFS when the NFS server is hung.
Aborting with C-] (abort-recursive-edit) is used to get out of a recursive editing
level and cancel the command which invoked it. Quitting with C-g does not do this, and
could not do this, because it is used to cancel a partially typed command within the recursive
editing level. Both operations are useful. For example, if you are in a recursive edit and
type C-u 8 to enter a numeric argument, you can cancel that argument with C-g and remain
in the recursive edit.
The sequence ESC ESC ESC (keyboard-escape-quit) can either quit or abort. (We
defined it this way because ESC means “get out” in many PC programs.) It can cancel a
prefix argument, clear a selected region, or get out of a Query Replace, like C-g. It can get
out of the minibuffer or a recursive edit, like C-]. It can also get out of splitting the frame
into multiple windows, as with C-x 1. One thing it cannot do, however, is stop a command
that is running. That’s because it executes as an ordinary command, and Emacs doesn’t
notice it until it is ready for the next command.
The command M-x top-level is equivalent to enough C-] commands to get you out of
all the levels of recursive edits that you are in; it also exits the minibuffer if it is active. C-]
gets you out one level at a time, but M-x top-level goes out all levels at once. Both C-]
and M-x top-level are like all other commands, and unlike C-g, in that they take effect
only when Emacs is ready for a command. C-] is an ordinary key and has its meaning only
because of its binding in the keymap. See Section 31.11 [Recursive Edit], page 479.
C-/ (undo) is not strictly speaking a way of canceling a command, but you can think of it
as canceling a command that already finished executing. See Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131,
for more information about the undo facility.

34.2 Dealing with Emacs Trouble

This section describes how to recognize and deal with situations in which Emacs does not
work as you expect, such as keyboard code mixups, garbled displays, running out of memory,
and crashes and hangs.
See Section 34.3 [Bugs], page 536, for what to do when you think you have found a bug
in Emacs.

34.2.1 Recursive Editing Levels

Recursive editing levels are important and useful features of Emacs, but they can seem like
malfunctions if you do not understand them.
532 GNU Emacs Manual

If the mode line has square brackets ‘[...]’ around the parentheses that contain the
names of the major and minor modes, you have entered a recursive editing level. If you did
not do this on purpose, or if you don’t understand what that means, you should just get out
of the recursive editing level. To do so, type M-x top-level. See Section 31.11 [Recursive
Edit], page 479.

34.2.2 Garbage on the Screen

If the text on a text terminal looks wrong, the first thing to do is see whether it is wrong
in the buffer. Type C-l (recenter-top-bottom) to redisplay the entire screen. If the
screen appears correct after this, the problem was entirely in the previous screen update.
(Otherwise, see the following section.)
Display updating problems often result from an incorrect terminfo entry for the terminal
you are using. The file etc/TERMS in the Emacs distribution gives the fixes for known
problems of this sort. INSTALL contains general advice for these problems in one of its
sections. If you seem to be using the right terminfo entry, it is possible that there is a bug
in the terminfo entry, or a bug in Emacs that appears for certain terminal types.

34.2.3 Garbage in the Text

If C-l shows that the text is wrong, first type C-h l (view-lossage) to see what commands
you typed to produce the observed results. Then try undoing the changes step by step using
C-x u (undo), until it gets back to a state you consider correct.
If a large portion of text appears to be missing at the beginning or end of the buffer,
check for the word ‘Narrow’ in the mode line. If it appears, the text you don’t see is probably
still present, but temporarily off-limits. To make it accessible again, type C-x n w (widen).
See Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80.

34.2.4 Running out of Memory

If you get the error message ‘Virtual memory exceeded’, save your modified buffers with C-x
s (save-some-buffers). This method of saving them has the smallest need for additional
memory. Emacs keeps a reserve of memory which it makes available when this error happens;
that should be enough to enable C-x s to complete its work. When the reserve has been
used, ‘!MEM FULL!’ appears at the beginning of the mode line, indicating there is no more
reserve.
Once you have saved your modified buffers, you can exit this Emacs session and start
another, or you can use M-x kill-some-buffers to free space in the current Emacs job. If
this frees up sufficient space, Emacs will refill its memory reserve, and ‘!MEM FULL!’ will
disappear from the mode line. That means you can safely go on editing in the same Emacs
session.
Do not use M-x buffer-menu to save or kill buffers when you run out of memory, because
the Buffer Menu needs a fair amount of memory itself, and the reserve supply may not be
enough.
On GNU/Linux systems, Emacs does not normally get notified about out-of-memory
situations; instead, the OS can kill the Emacs process when it runs out of memory. This
feature is known as the out-of-memory killer, or OOM killer. When this behavior is in
effect, Emacs is unable to detect the out-of-memory situation in time, and won’t be able
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 533

to let you save your buffer as described above. However, it is possible to turn off this
behavior of the OS, and thus allow Emacs a chance to handle the out-of-memory situation
in a more useful manner, before it is killed. To do that, become the super user, edit the
file /etc/sysctl.conf to contain the lines shown below, and then invoke the command
sysctl -p from the shell prompt:
vm.overcommit_memory=2
vm.overcommit_ratio=0
Please note that the above setting affects all the processes on the system, and in general the
behavior of the system under memory pressure, not just the Emacs process alone.

34.2.5 When Emacs Crashes

Emacs is not supposed to crash, but if it does, it produces a crash report prior to exiting. The
crash report is printed to the standard error stream. If Emacs was started from a graphical
desktop on a GNU or Unix system, the standard error stream is commonly redirected to a file
such as ~/.xsession-errors, so you can look for the crash report there. On MS-Windows,
the crash report is written to a file named emacs_backtrace.txt in the current directory
of the Emacs process, in addition to the standard error stream.
The format of the crash report depends on the platform. On some platforms, such
as those using the GNU C Library, the crash report includes a backtrace describing the
execution state prior to crashing, which can be used to help debug the crash. Here is an
example for a GNU system:
Fatal error 11: Segmentation fault
Backtrace:
emacs[0x5094e4]
emacs[0x4ed3e6]
emacs[0x4ed504]
/lib64/libpthread.so.0[0x375220efe0]
/lib64/libpthread.so.0(read+0xe)[0x375220e08e]
emacs[0x509af6]
emacs[0x5acc26]
...
The number ‘11’ is the system signal number corresponding to the crash—in this case
a segmentation fault. The hexadecimal numbers are program addresses, which can be
associated with source code lines using a debugging tool. For example, the GDB command
‘list *0x509af6’ prints the source-code lines corresponding to the ‘emacs[0x509af6]’ entry.
If your system has the addr2line utility, the following shell command outputs a backtrace
with source-code line numbers:
sed -n 's/.*\[\(.*\)]$/\1/p' backtrace |
addr2line -C -f -i -p -e bindir/emacs-binary
On MS-Windows, the backtrace looks somewhat differently, for example:
Backtrace:
00007ff61166a12e
00007ff611538be1
00007ff611559601
00007ff6116ce84a
534 GNU Emacs Manual

00007ff9b7977ff0
...
Therefore, the filtering via sed is not required, and the command to show the source-code
line number is
addr2line -C -f -i -p -e bindir/emacs-binary < backtrace
Here, backtrace is the name of a text file containing a copy of the backtrace (on MS-Windows,
emacs_backtrace.txt in the directory where Emacs was started), bindir is the name of the
directory that contains the Emacs executable, and emacs-binary is the name of the Emacs
executable file, normally emacs on GNU and Unix systems and emacs.exe on MS-Windows
and MS-DOS. Omit the -p option if your version of addr2line is too old to have it.
Optionally, Emacs can generate a core dump when it crashes, on systems that support
core files. A core dump is a file containing voluminous data about the state of the program
prior to the crash, usually examined by loading it into a debugger such as GDB. On many
platforms, core dumps are disabled by default, and you must explicitly enable them by
running the shell command ‘ulimit -c unlimited’ (e.g., in your shell startup script).

34.2.6 Recovery After a Crash

If Emacs or the computer crashes, you can recover the files you were editing at the time of
the crash from their auto-save files. To do this, start Emacs again and type the command
M-x recover-session.
This command initially displays a buffer which lists interrupted session files, each with
its date. You must choose which session to recover from. Typically the one you want is the
most recent one. Move point to the one you choose, and type C-c C-c.
Then recover-session considers each of the files that you were editing during that
session; for each such file, it asks whether to recover that file. If you answer y for a file, it
shows the dates of that file and its auto-save file, then asks once again whether to recover
that file. For the second question, you must confirm with yes. If you do, Emacs visits the
file but gets the text from the auto-save file.
When recover-session is done, the files you’ve chosen to recover are present in Emacs
buffers. You should then save them. Only this—saving them—updates the files themselves.
As a last resort, if you had buffers with content which were not associated with any files,
or if the autosave was not recent enough to have recorded important changes, you can use
the etc/emacs-buffer.gdb script with GDB (the GNU Debugger) to retrieve them from a
core dump—provided that a core dump was saved, and that the Emacs executable was not
stripped of its debugging symbols.
As soon as you get the core dump, rename it to another name such as core.emacs, so
that another crash won’t overwrite it.
To use this script, run gdb with the file name of your Emacs executable and the file
name of the core dump, e.g., ‘gdb /usr/bin/emacs core.emacs’. At the (gdb) prompt,
load the recovery script: ‘source /usr/src/emacs/etc/emacs-buffer.gdb’. Then type
the command ybuffer-list to see which buffers are available. For each buffer, it lists a
buffer number. To save a buffer, use ysave-buffer; you specify the buffer number, and the
file name to write that buffer into. You should use a file name which does not already exist;
if the file does exist, the script does not make a backup of its old contents.
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 535

34.2.7 Emergency Escape

On text terminals, the emergency escape feature suspends Emacs immediately if you type
C-g a second time before Emacs can actually respond to the first one by quitting. This is so
you can always get out of GNU Emacs no matter how badly it might be hung. When things
are working properly, Emacs recognizes and handles the first C-g so fast that the second one
won’t trigger emergency escape. However, if some problem prevents Emacs from handling
the first C-g properly, then the second one will get you back to the shell.
When you resume Emacs after a suspension caused by emergency escape, it reports the
resumption and asks a question or two before going back to what it had been doing:
Emacs is resuming after an emergency escape.
Auto-save? (y or n)
Abort (and dump core)? (y or n)
Answer each question with y or n followed by RET.
Saying y to ‘Auto-save?’ causes immediate auto-saving of all modified buffers in which
auto-saving is enabled. Saying n skips this. This question is omitted if Emacs is in a state
where auto-saving cannot be done safely.
Saying y to ‘Abort (and dump core)?’ causes Emacs to crash, dumping core. This is to
enable a wizard to figure out why Emacs was failing to quit in the first place. Execution
does not continue after a core dump.
If you answer this question n, Emacs execution resumes. With luck, Emacs will ultimately
do the requested quit. If not, each subsequent C-g invokes emergency escape again.
If Emacs is not really hung, just slow, you may invoke the double C-g feature without
really meaning to. Then just resume and answer n to both questions, and you will get back
to the former state. The quit you requested will happen by and by.
Emergency escape is active only for text terminals. On graphical displays, you can use
the mouse to kill Emacs or switch to another program.
On MS-DOS, you must type C-Break (twice) to cause emergency escape—but there are
cases where it won’t work, when a system call hangs or when Emacs is stuck in a tight loop
in C code.

34.2.8 If DEL Fails to Delete

Every keyboard has a large key, usually labeled BACKSPACE, which is ordinarily used to erase
the last character that you typed. In Emacs, this key is supposed to be equivalent to DEL.
When Emacs starts up on a graphical display, it determines automatically which key
should be DEL. In some unusual cases, Emacs gets the wrong information from the system,
and BACKSPACE ends up deleting forwards instead of backwards.
Some keyboards also have a Delete key, which is ordinarily used to delete forwards. If
this key deletes backward in Emacs, that too suggests Emacs got the wrong information—but
in the opposite sense.
On a text terminal, if you find that BACKSPACE prompts for a Help command, like
Control-h, instead of deleting a character, it means that key is actually sending the ‘BS’
character. Emacs ought to be treating BS as DEL, but it isn’t.
In all of those cases, the immediate remedy is the same: use the command M-x
normal-erase-is-backspace-mode. This toggles between the two modes that Emacs
536 GNU Emacs Manual

supports for handling DEL, so if Emacs starts in the wrong mode, this should switch to the
right mode. On a text terminal, if you want to ask for help when BS is treated as DEL, use
F1 instead of C-h; C-? may also work, if it sends character code 127.
To fix the problem in every Emacs session, put one of the following lines into your
initialization file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522). For the first case above, where
BACKSPACE deletes forwards instead of backwards, use this line to make BACKSPACE act as
DEL:
(normal-erase-is-backspace-mode 0)
For the other two cases, use this line:
(normal-erase-is-backspace-mode 1)
Another way to fix the problem for every Emacs session is to customize the variable
normal-erase-is-backspace: the value t specifies the mode where BS or BACKSPACE is
DEL, and nil specifies the other mode. See Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494.

34.3 Reporting Bugs

If you think you have found a bug in Emacs, please report it. We cannot promise to fix
it, or always to agree that it is a bug, but we certainly want to hear about it. The same
applies for new features you would like to see added. This section will help you to determine
whether you found a bug, and if so, construct an effective bug report.
The general procedure when you find something that could be a bug is as follows:
• See if what you found is a known problem or a bug that was already reported and/or
fixed. See Section 34.3.1 [Known Problems], page 536, where you will find how to look
for known problems and bugs.
• If you are unsure whether the behavior you see is a bug, see Section 34.3.2 [Bug Criteria],
page 537, which tells what we consider as clear bugs in Emacs.
• Once you decide you found a bug, see Section 34.3.3 [Understanding Bug Reporting],
page 538, which helps you in describing what you see in the most efficient manner,
making our job of reproducing the issue and investigating it easier.
• Next, see Section 34.3.4 [Checklist], page 539, where we describe in detail how to submit
a bug report and what information to include in it. In a nutshell, you submit a bug
report via electronic mail using the Emacs command report-emacs-bug, which assists
you in doing so. Submitting a bug report starts the process of investigating and fixing
the bug, where you will receive copies of email messages discussing the bug, in which
we might ask you to provide more information, test possible fixes, etc.
• Finally, if you want to propose specific changes to Emacs, whether to fix a bug, add a
new feature, or improve our documentation, please see Section 34.3.5 [Sending Patches],
page 544, for details about submitting such changes.

34.3.1 Reading Existing Bug Reports and Known Problems

Before reporting a bug, if at all possible, please check to see if we already know about it.
Indeed, it may already have been fixed in a later release of Emacs, or in the development
version. Here is a list of the main places you can read about known issues:
• The etc/PROBLEMS file; type C-h C-p to read it. This file contains a list of particularly
well-known issues that have been encountered in compiling, installing and running
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 537

Emacs, with special emphasis on issues caused by other software that cannot be easily
solved in Emacs. Often, you will find there suggestions for workarounds and solutions.
• The GNU Bug Tracker at https://debbugs.gnu.org. Emacs bugs and issues are filed
in the tracker under the ‘emacs’ package. The tracker records information about the
status of each bug, the initial bug report, and the follow-up messages by the bug reporter
and Emacs developers who participate in discussing and fixing the bug. You can search
for bugs by subject, severity, and other criteria. For more complex search criteria, use
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/search.cgi.
Instead of browsing the bug tracker as a web page, you can browse it from Emacs using
the debbugs package, which can be downloaded via the Package Menu (see Chapter 32
[Packages], page 485). This package provides the command M-x debbugs-gnu to list
bugs, and M-x debbugs-gnu-search to search for a specific bug. User tags, applied by
the Emacs maintainers, are shown by M-x debbugs-gnu-usertags.
• The ‘bug-gnu-emacs’ mailing list (also available as the newsgroup ‘gnu.emacs.bug’).
You can read the list archives at https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/
bug-gnu-emacs. This list works as a mirror of the Emacs bug reports and follow-up
messages which are sent to the bug tracker. It also contains old bug reports from before
the bug tracker was introduced (in early 2008).
If you like, you can subscribe to the list. Be aware that its purpose is to provide the
Emacs maintainers with information about bugs and feature requests, so reports may
contain fairly large amounts of data; spectators should not complain about this.
• The ‘emacs-pretest-bug’ mailing list. This list is no longer used, and is mainly of
historical interest. At one time, it was used for bug reports in development (i.e., not
yet released) versions of Emacs. You can read the archives for 2003 to mid 2007 at
https://lists.gnu.org/r/emacs-pretest-bug/. Nowadays, email messages sent to
this list are redirected to ‘bug-gnu-emacs’.
• The ‘emacs-devel’ mailing list. Sometimes people report bugs to this mailing list. This
is not the main purpose of the list, however, and it is much better to send bug reports
to the bug list. You should not feel obliged to read this list before reporting a bug.

34.3.2 When Is There a Bug

If Emacs accesses an invalid memory location (a.k.a. “segmentation fault”) or exits with
an operating system error message that indicates a problem in the program (as opposed to
something like “disk full”), then it is certainly a bug.
If the Emacs display does not correspond properly to the contents of the buffer, then
it is a bug. But you should check that features like buffer narrowing (see Section 11.5
[Narrowing], page 80), which can hide parts of the buffer or change how it is displayed, are
not responsible.
Taking forever to complete a command can be a bug, but you must make sure that it
is really Emacs’s fault. Some commands simply take a long time. Type C-g (C-Break on
MS-DOS) and then C-h l to see whether the input Emacs received was what you intended
to type; if the input was such that you know it should have been processed quickly, report a
bug. If you don’t know whether the command should take a long time, find out by looking
in the manual or by asking for assistance.
538 GNU Emacs Manual

If a command you are familiar with causes an Emacs error message in a case where its
usual definition ought to be reasonable, it is probably a bug.
If a command does the wrong thing, that is a bug. But be sure you know for certain
what it ought to have done. If you aren’t familiar with the command, it might actually be
working right. If in doubt, read the command’s documentation (see Section 7.2 [Name Help],
page 44).
A command’s intended definition may not be the best possible definition for editing with.
This is a very important sort of problem, but it is also a matter of judgment. Also, it is easy
to come to such a conclusion out of ignorance of some of the existing features. It is probably
best not to complain about such a problem until you have checked the documentation in
the usual ways, feel confident that you understand it, and know for certain that what you
want is not available. Ask other Emacs users, too. If you are not sure what the command is
supposed to do after a careful reading of the manual, check the index and glossary for any
terms that may be unclear.
If after careful rereading of the manual you still do not understand what the command
should do, that indicates a bug in the manual, which you should report. The manual’s job
is to make everything clear to people who are not Emacs experts—including you. It is just
as important to report documentation bugs as program bugs.
If the built-in documentation for a function or variable disagrees with the manual, one of
them must be wrong; that is a bug.
For problems with packages that are not part of Emacs, it is better to begin by reporting
them to the package developers.

34.3.3 Understanding Bug Reporting

When you decide that there is a bug, it is important to report it, and to report it in a way
which is useful. What is most useful is an exact description of what commands you type,
starting with the shell command to run Emacs, until the problem happens, and the effects
produced by typing those commands.
The most important principle in reporting a bug is to report facts. Hypotheses and
verbal descriptions are no substitute for the detailed raw data. Reporting the facts is
straightforward, but many people strain to posit explanations and report them instead of
the facts. If the explanations are based on guesses about how Emacs is implemented, they
night not be useful; meanwhile, lacking the facts, we will have no real information about
the bug. If you want to actually debug the problem, and report explanations that are more
than guesses, that is useful—but please include the raw facts as well.
For example, suppose that you type C-x C-f /glorp/baz.ugh RET, visiting a file which
(you know) happens to be rather large, and Emacs displays ‘I feel pretty today’. The
bug report would need to provide all that information. You should not assume that the
problem is due to the size of the file and say, “I visited a large file, and Emacs displayed
‘I feel pretty today’.” This is what we mean by “guessing explanations”. The problem
might be due to the fact that there is a ‘z’ in the file name. If this is so, then when we got
your report, we would try out the problem with some large file, probably with no ‘z’ in its
name, and not see any problem. There is no way we could guess that we should try visiting
a file with a ‘z’ in its name.
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 539

You should not even say “visit a file” instead of C-x C-f. That’s because a file can
be visited in more than one way, and there’s no certainty that all of them reproduce the
problem. Similarly, rather than saying “if I have three characters on the line”, say “after I
type RET A B C RET C-p”, if that is the way you entered the text—that is, tell us about the
text which in your case produced the problem.
If possible, try quickly to reproduce the bug by invoking Emacs with emacs -Q (so that
Emacs starts with no initial customizations; see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570),
and repeating the steps that you took to trigger the bug. If you can reproduce the bug
this way, that rules out bugs in your personal customizations and makes the bug much
easier to reproduce. Then your bug report should begin by stating that you started Emacs
with emacs -Q, followed by the exact sequence of steps for reproducing the bug. If possible,
inform us of the exact contents of any file that is needed to reproduce the bug.
Some bugs are not reproducible from emacs -Q; some are not easily reproducible at all.
In that case, you should report what you have—but, as before, please stick to the raw facts
about what you did to trigger the bug the first time.
If you have multiple issues that you want to report, please make a separate bug report
for each.

34.3.4 Checklist for Bug Reports

Before reporting a bug, first try to see if the problem has already been reported (see
Section 34.3.1 [Known Problems], page 536).
If you are able to, try the latest release of Emacs to see if the problem has already been
fixed. Even better is to try the latest development version. We recognize that this is not
easy for some people, so do not feel that you absolutely must do this before making a report.
The best way to write a bug report for Emacs is to use the command M-x
report-emacs-bug. This sets up a mail buffer (see Chapter 29 [Sending Mail], page 418)
and automatically inserts some of the essential information. However, it cannot supply all
the necessary information; you should still read and follow the guidelines below, so you can
enter the other crucial information by hand before you send the message. You may feel that
some of the information inserted by M-x report-emacs-bug is not relevant, but unless you
are absolutely sure, it is best to leave it, so that the developers can decide for themselves.
When you have finished writing your report, type C-c C-c and it will be sent to the
Emacs maintainers at [email protected]. If you cannot send mail from inside Emacs,
you can copy the text of your report to your normal mail client (if your system supports it,
you can type C-c M-i to have Emacs do this for you) and send it to that address. Or you
can simply send an email to that address describing the problem, including the necessary
information mentioned below.
If you want to submit code to Emacs (to fix a problem or implement a new feature),
the easiest way to do this is to send a patch to the Emacs issue tracker. Use the M-x
submit-emacs-patch command for that, which works much the same as when reporting
bugs; see Section 34.3.5 [Sending Patches], page 544.
In any case, your report will be sent to the ‘bug-gnu-emacs’ mailing list, and stored in
the GNU Bug Tracker at https://debbugs.gnu.org. Please include a valid reply email
address, in case we need to ask you for more information about your report. Submissions
are moderated, so there may be a delay before your report actually appears on the tracker.
540 GNU Emacs Manual

You do not need to know how the GNU Bug Tracker works in order to report a bug, but
if you want to, you can read the tracker’s online documentation (https://debbugs.gnu.
org/Advanced.html) to see the various features you can use.
All mail sent to the ‘bug-gnu-emacs’ mailing list is also gatewayed to the ‘gnu.emacs.bug’
newsgroup. The reverse is also true, but we ask you not to post bug reports (or replies)
via the newsgroup. It can make it much harder to contact you if we need to ask for more
information, and it does not integrate well with the bug tracker.
If your data is more than 500,000 bytes, please don’t include it directly in the bug
report; instead, offer to send it on request, or make it available online and say where. Large
attachments are best sent compressed.
The GNU Bug Tracker will assign a bug number to your report; please use it in the
following discussions, keeping the bug address in the list of recipients, so that the bug discus-
sion is recorded by the tracker. The bug address will look like ‘[email protected]’,
where nnnnn is the bug number.
To enable maintainers to investigate a bug, your report should include all these things:
• A description of what behavior you observe that you believe is incorrect. For example,
“The Emacs process gets a fatal signal”, or, “The resulting text is as follows, which I
think is wrong.”
Of course, if the bug is that Emacs gets a fatal signal, then one can’t miss it. But if the
bug is incorrect text, the maintainer might fail to notice what is wrong. Why leave it
to chance?
Even if the problem you experience is a fatal signal, you should still say so explicitly.
Suppose something strange is going on, such as, your copy of the source is out of sync, or
you have encountered a bug in the C library on your system. (This has happened!) Your
copy might crash and the copy here might not. If you said to expect a crash, then when
Emacs here fails to crash, we would know that the bug was not happening. If you don’t
say to expect a crash, then we would not know whether the bug was happening—we
would not be able to draw any conclusion from our observations.
Usually, description of the behavior and of the way to reproduce the problem needs to
specify one or more of the following aspects:
− The complete text of any files needed to reproduce the bug.
If you can tell us a way to cause the problem without visiting any files, please do
so. This makes it much easier to debug. If you do need files, make sure you arrange
for us to see their exact contents. For example, it can matter whether there are
spaces at the ends of lines, or a newline after the last line in the buffer (nothing
ought to care whether the last line is terminated, but try telling the bugs that).
− The precise commands we need to type to reproduce the bug. If at all possible,
give a full recipe for an Emacs started with the ‘-Q’ option (see Section C.2 [Initial
Options], page 570). This bypasses your personal customizations.
One way to record the input to Emacs precisely is to write a dribble file. To start
the file, use the command M-x open-dribble-file. From then on, Emacs copies
all your input to the specified dribble file until the Emacs process is killed. Be
aware that sensitive information (such as passwords) may end up recorded in the
dribble file.
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 541

− If the bug is that the Emacs Manual or the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual fails to
describe the actual behavior of Emacs, or that the text is confusing, copy in the
text from the manual which you think is at fault. If the section is small, just the
section name is enough.
− If the manifestation of the bug is an Emacs error message, it is important to
report the precise text of the error message, and a backtrace showing how the Lisp
program in Emacs arrived at the error.
To get the error message text accurately, copy it from the *Messages* buffer into
the bug report. Copy all of it, not just part.
− Check whether any programs you have loaded into the Lisp world, including your
initialization file, set any variables that may affect the functioning of Emacs. Also,
see whether the problem happens in a freshly started Emacs without loading your
initialization file (start Emacs with the -Q switch to prevent loading the init files).
If the problem does not occur then, you must report the precise contents of any
programs that you must load into the Lisp world in order to cause the problem to
occur.
− If the problem does depend on an init file or other Lisp programs that are not part
of the standard Emacs system, then you should make sure it is not a bug in those
programs by complaining to their maintainers first. After they verify that they are
using Emacs in a way that is supposed to work, they should report the bug.
− If you wish to mention something in the GNU Emacs source, show the line of code
with a few lines of context. Don’t just give a line number.
The line numbers in the development sources don’t match those in your sources.
It would take extra work for the maintainers to determine what code is in your
version at a given line number, and we could not be certain.
− For possible display bugs on text-mode terminals, the terminal type (the value
of environment variable TERM), the complete termcap entry for the terminal from
/etc/termcap (since that file is not identical on all machines), and the output that
Emacs actually sent to the terminal.
The way to collect the terminal output is to invoke the command M-x
open-termscript just after starting Emacs; it will prompt you for the name of
the file where to record all terminal output until the Emacs process is killed. If the
problem happens when Emacs starts up, put the Lisp expression
(open-termscript "~/termscript")
into your Emacs initialization file so that the termscript file will be open when
Emacs displays the screen for the first time.
Be warned: it is often difficult, and sometimes impossible, to fix a terminal-
dependent bug without access to a terminal of the type that stimulates the bug.
• The version number of Emacs. Without this, we won’t know whether there is any point
in looking for the bug in the current version of GNU Emacs.
M-x report-emacs-bug includes this information automatically, but if you are not
using that command for your report you can get the version number by typing M-x
emacs-version RET. If that command does not work, you probably have something
other than GNU Emacs, so you will have to report the bug somewhere else.
542 GNU Emacs Manual

• The type of machine you are using, and the operating system name and version number
(again, automatically included by M-x report-emacs-bug). M-x emacs-version RET
provides this information too. Copy its output from the *Messages* buffer, so that you
get it all and get it accurately, or use C-u M-x emacs-version RET to insert the version
information into the current buffer.
• The command-line arguments given to the configure command when Emacs was built
(automatically included by M-x report-emacs-bug).
• A complete list of any modifications you have made to the Emacs source. (We may
not have time to investigate the bug unless it happens in an unmodified Emacs. But if
you’ve made modifications and you don’t tell us, you are sending us on a wild goose
chase.)
Be precise about these changes. A description in English is not enough—send a unified
context diff for them.
Adding files of your own, or porting to another machine, is a modification of the source.
• Details of any other deviations from the standard procedure for installing GNU Emacs.
• If non-ASCII text or internationalization is relevant, the locale that was current when you
started Emacs. This is automatically included by M-x report-emacs-bug; alternatively,
on GNU/Linux and Unix systems, or if you use a POSIX-style shell such as Bash, you
can use this shell command to view the relevant values:
echo LC_ALL=$LC_ALL LC_COLLATE=$LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE=$LC_CTYPE \
LC_MESSAGES=$LC_MESSAGES LC_TIME=$LC_TIME LANG=$LANG
You can also use the locale command, if your system has it, to display your locale
settings.

Here are some things that are not necessary in a bug report:
• A description of the envelope of the bug—this is not necessary for a reproducible bug.
Often people who encounter a bug spend a lot of time investigating which changes to
the input file will make the bug go away and which changes will not affect it.
This is often time-consuming and not very useful, because the way we will find the
bug is by running a single example under the debugger with breakpoints, not by pure
deduction from a series of examples. You might as well save time by not searching for
additional examples. It is better to send the bug report right away, go back to editing,
and find another bug to report.
Of course, if you can find a simpler example to report instead of the original one, that is
a convenience. Errors in the output will be easier to spot, running under the debugger
will take less time, etc.
However, simplification is not vital; if you can’t do this or don’t have time to try, please
report the bug with your original test case.
• A core dump file.
Debugging the core dump might be useful, but it can only be done on your machine,
with your Emacs executable. Therefore, sending the core dump file to the Emacs
maintainers won’t be useful. Above all, don’t include the core file in an email bug
report! Such a large message can be extremely inconvenient.
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 543

• A system-call trace of Emacs execution.

System-call traces are very useful for certain special kinds of debugging, but in most
cases they give little useful information. It is therefore strange that many people seem
to think that the way to report information about a crash is to send a system-call trace.
Perhaps this is a habit formed from experience debugging programs that don’t have
source code or debugging symbols.
In most programs, a backtrace is normally far, far more informative than a system-call
trace. Even in Emacs, a simple backtrace is generally more informative, though to give
full information you should supplement the backtrace by displaying variable values and
printing them as Lisp objects with pr (see above).
• A patch for the bug.
A patch for the bug is useful if it is a good one. But don’t omit the other information
that a bug report needs, such as the test case, on the assumption that a patch is
sufficient. We might see problems with your patch and decide to fix the problem another
way, or we might not understand it at all. And if we can’t understand what bug you
are trying to fix, or why your patch should be an improvement, we mustn’t install it.
See Section 34.3.5 [Sending Patches], page 544, for guidelines on how to make it easy
for us to understand and install your patches.
• A guess about what the bug is or what it depends on.
Such guesses are usually wrong. Even experts can’t guess right about such things
without first using the debugger to find the facts.
If you are willing to debug Emacs and provide additional information about the bug,
here is some useful advice:
• If the bug manifests itself as an error message, try providing a Lisp backtrace for the
error. To make a backtrace for the error, use M-x toggle-debug-on-error before the
error happens (that is to say, you must give that command and then make the bug
happen). This causes the error to start the Lisp debugger, which shows you a backtrace.
Copy the text of the debugger’s backtrace into the bug report. (The backtrace is more
detailed if you load the relevant Lisp *.el source files before triggering the error, so do
that if you know how to find and load those files.)
To debug the error, we suggest using Edebug. See Section “Edebug” in the Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual, for information on debugging Emacs Lisp programs with the Edebug
package.
This use of the debugger is possible only if you know how to make the bug happen
again. If you can’t make it happen again, at least copy the whole error message.
• If Emacs appears to be stuck in an infinite loop or in a very long operation, typing
C-g with the variable debug-on-quit non-nil will start the Lisp debugger and show a
backtrace. This backtrace is useful for debugging such long loops, so if you can produce
it, copy it into the bug report.
If you cannot get Emacs to respond to C-g (e.g., because inhibit-quit is set), then
you can try sending the signal specified by debug-on-event (default SIGUSR2) from
outside Emacs to cause it to enter the debugger.
• Additional information from a C debugger such as GDB might enable someone to find
a problem on a machine which he does not have available. If you don’t know how to
544 GNU Emacs Manual

use GDB, please read the GDB manual—it is not very long, and using GDB is easy.
You can find the GDB distribution, including the GDB manual in online form, in most
of the same places you can find the Emacs distribution. To run Emacs under GDB, you
should switch to the src subdirectory in which Emacs was compiled, then type gdb
./emacs. It is important for the directory src to be current so that GDB will read the
.gdbinit file in this directory. (You can also tell GDB to read that file from inside
GDB, by typing source ./.gdbinit.)
However, you need to think when you collect the additional information if you want it
to show what causes the bug.
For example, many people send just a C-level backtrace, but that is not very useful by
itself. A simple backtrace with arguments often conveys little about what is happening
inside GNU Emacs, because most of the arguments listed in the backtrace are pointers
to Lisp objects. The numeric values of these pointers have no significance whatever; all
that matters is the contents of the objects they point to (and most of the contents are
themselves pointers).
To provide useful information, you need to show the values of Lisp objects in Lisp
notation. Do this for each variable which is a Lisp object, in several stack frames near
the bottom of the stack. Look at the source to see which variables are Lisp objects,
because the debugger thinks of them as integers.
To show a variable’s value in Lisp syntax, first print its value, then use the user-defined
GDB command pr to print the Lisp object in Lisp syntax. (If you must use another
debugger, call the function debug_print with the object as an argument.) The pr
command is defined by the file .gdbinit, and it works only if you are debugging a
running process (not with a core dump).
To make Lisp errors stop Emacs and return to GDB, put a breakpoint at Fsignal.
For a backtrace of Lisp functions running, type the GDB command xbacktrace.
The file .gdbinit defines several other commands that are useful for examining the
data types and contents of Lisp objects. Their names begin with ‘x’. These commands
work at a lower level than pr, and are less convenient, but they may work even when pr
does not, such as when debugging a core dump or when Emacs has had a fatal signal.
More detailed advice and other useful techniques for debugging Emacs are available
in the file etc/DEBUG in the Emacs distribution. That file also includes instructions
for investigating problems whereby Emacs stops responding (many people assume that
Emacs is “hung”, whereas in fact it might be in an infinite loop).
To find the file etc/DEBUG in your Emacs installation, use the directory name stored in
the variable data-directory.

34.3.5 Sending Patches for GNU Emacs

If you would like to write bug fixes or improvements for GNU Emacs, that is very helpful.
When you send your changes, please follow these guidelines to make it easy for the maintainers
to use them. If you don’t follow these guidelines, your information might still be useful,
but using it will take extra work. Maintaining GNU Emacs is a lot of work in the best of
circumstances, and we can’t keep up unless you do your best to help.
Every patch must have several pieces of information before we can properly evaluate it.
They are described below.
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 545

When you have all these pieces, use the M-x submit-emacs-patch command to send the
patch. The command will prompt you for the Subject of the patch and a patch file. It
will then create and display a Message mode buffer with the patch file as an attachment,
display the buffer, and let you explain more about the patch and add any other information
as requested below. When you are done, type C-c C-c to send the patch via email to the
developers. It will be sent to the GNU Bug Tracker at https://debbugs.gnu.org. The
tracker will assign a number to your submission, just like it does with bug reports. The
developers will usually respond, perhaps asking you for more details or any additional
information, so be sure to include a valid reply email address.
Here’s what we ask you to provide as part of your patch submissions:
• An explanation of what problem you are fixing or what improvement will the patches
bring about:
− For a fix for an existing bug, it is best to reply to the relevant discussion on
the ‘bug-gnu-emacs’ list, or the bug entry in the GNU Bug Tracker at https://
debbugs.gnu.org. Explain why your change fixes the bug.
− For a new feature, include a description of the feature and your implementation.
− For a new bug, include a proper bug report for the problem you think you have
fixed; see Section 34.3.4 [Checklist], page 539. We need to convince ourselves that
the change is right before installing it. Even if it is correct, we might have trouble
understanding it if we don’t have a way to reproduce the problem it tries to fix.
• Include in your code changes all the comments that are appropriate to help people
reading the source in the future understand why this change was needed.
• Don’t mix together changes made for different reasons. Send them individually.
If you make two changes for separate reasons, then we might not want to install them
both. We might want to install just one, or install each one in a different versions of
Emacs. If you send them all jumbled together in a single set of diffs, we have to do
extra work to disentangle them—to figure out which parts of the change serve which
purpose. If we don’t have time for this, we might have to postpone inclusion of your
patches for a long time.
If you send each change as soon as you have written it, with its own explanation, then
two changes never get tangled up, and we can consider each one properly without any
extra work to disentangle them.
• Send each change as soon as that change is finished. Sometimes people think they are
helping us by accumulating many changes to send them all together. As explained
above, this is absolutely the worst thing you could do.
Since you should send each change separately, you might as well send it right away.
That gives us the option of installing it immediately if it is important.
• The patch itself. This can be produced in one of the following ways:
− If you are using the Emacs repository, make sure your copy is up-to-date (e.g.,
with git pull). You can commit your changes to a private branch and generate a
patch from the master version by using git format-patch master. (This is the
preferred method, as it makes our job of applying the patch easier.) Or you can
leave your changes uncommitted and use git diff, as described below.
546 GNU Emacs Manual

− Use diff -u to make your diffs. If you have GNU diff, use
diff -u -F'^[_a-zA-Z0-9$]\+ *(' when making diffs of C code. This
shows the name of the function that each change occurs in.
When producing the diffs, avoid any ambiguity as to which is the old version and
which is the new. Please make the old version the first argument to diff, and the
new version the second argument. And please give one version or the other a name
that indicates whether it is the old version or your new changed one.
• Write the commit log entries for your changes. This is both to save us the extra work
of writing them, and to help explain your changes so we can understand them.
The purpose of the commit log is to explain the rationale of the changes, the way the
modified code solves whatever problems your patch is trying to fix, and also show people
where to find what was changed. So you need to be specific about what functions you
changed and why. For the details about our style and requirements for good commit
log messages, please see the “Commit messages” section of the file CONTRIBUTE in the
Emacs source tree.
Please also look at the commit log entries of recent commits to see what sorts of
information to put in, and to learn the style that we use. Note that, unlike some
other projects, we do require commit logs for documentation, i.e., Texinfo files. See
Section 25.3 [Change Log], page 354, See Section “Change Log Concepts” in GNU
Coding Standards.
• When you write the fix, keep in mind that we can’t install a change that would break
other systems. Please think about what effect your change will have if compiled and/or
used on another type of system.
Sometimes people send fixes that might be an improvement in general—but it is hard
to be sure of this. It’s hard to install such changes because we have to study them very
carefully. Of course, a good explanation of the reasoning by which you concluded the
change was correct can help convince us.
The safest changes are changes to the files or portions of files that are only used for
a particular machine or a particular system. These are safe because they can’t create
new bugs on other machines or systems.
Please help us keep up with the workload by designing the patch in a form that is
clearly safe to install.

34.4 Contributing to Emacs Development

Emacs is a collaborative project and we encourage contributions from anyone and everyone.
There are many ways to contribute to Emacs:
• find and report bugs; see Section 34.3 [Bugs], page 536.
• answer questions on the Emacs user mailing list https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/
listinfo/help-gnu-emacs.
• write documentation, either on the wiki (https://www.emacswiki.org/), or in the
Emacs source repository (see Section 34.3.5 [Sending Patches], page 544).
• check if existing bug reports are fixed in newer versions of Emacs https://debbugs.
gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=emacs.
Chapter 34: Dealing with Common Problems 547

• fix existing bug reports.

• implement a feature listed in the etc/TODO file in the Emacs distribution, and submit a
patch.
• implement a new feature, and submit a patch.
• develop a package that works with Emacs, and publish it on your own or in GNU ELPA
(https://elpa.gnu.org/).
• port Emacs to a new platform, but that is not common nowadays.
If you would like to work on improving Emacs, please contact the maintainers at
[email protected]. You can ask for suggested projects or suggest your own ideas.
If you have a feature request or a suggestion for how to improve Emacs, the best place to
send it is to [email protected] . Please explain as clearly as possible what change
you would like to see, and why and how you think it would improve Emacs.
If you have already written an improvement, please tell us about it. If you have not yet
started work, it is useful to contact [email protected] before you start; it might be
possible to suggest ways to make your extension fit in better with the rest of Emacs.
When implementing a feature, please follow the Emacs coding standards; see Section 34.4.1
[Coding Standards], page 547. In addition, substantial contributions require a copyright
assignment to the FSF; see Section 34.4.2 [Copyright Assignment], page 548.
The development version of Emacs can be downloaded from the repository where it
is actively maintained by a group of developers. See the Emacs project page https://
savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs/ for access details.
It is important to write your patches based on the current working version. If you start
from an older version, your patch may be outdated (so that maintainers will have a hard
time applying it), or changes in Emacs may have made your patch unnecessary. After you
have downloaded the repository source, you should read the file INSTALL.REPO for build
instructions (they differ to some extent from a normal build).
If you would like to make more extensive contributions, see the CONTRIBUTE file in the
Emacs source tree for information on how to be an Emacs developer. That file is distributed
as part of the source tarball of every released Emacs version, and can also be found on-line in
the Emacs on-line source repository (https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/
tree/CONTRIBUTE). If you cloned the Emacs repository, per the instructions in https://
savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs/, you will find this file in the top directory of the
source Emacs tree.
For documentation on Emacs (to understand how to implement your desired change),
refer to:
• See emacs.
• See elisp.
• https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs
• https://www.emacswiki.org/

34.4.1 Coding Standards

Contributed code should follow the GNU Coding Standards https://www.gnu.org/prep/
standards/. This may also be available in info on your system.
548 GNU Emacs Manual

If it doesn’t, we’ll need to find someone to fix the code before we can use it.
Emacs has additional style and coding conventions:
• See Section “Tips Appendix” in Emacs Lisp Reference.
• Avoid using defadvice or with-eval-after-load for Lisp code to be included in
Emacs.
• Remove all trailing whitespace in all source and text files.
• Use ?\s instead of ? in Lisp code for a space character.

34.4.2 Copyright Assignment

The FSF (Free Software Foundation) is the copyright holder for GNU Emacs. The FSF is a
nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the
rights of all free software users. For general information, see the website https://www.fsf.
org/.
Generally speaking, for non-trivial contributions to GNU Emacs and packages stored in
GNU ELPA, we require that the copyright be assigned to the FSF. For the reasons behind
this, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html.
Copyright assignment is a simple process. Residents of many countries can do it entirely
electronically. We can help you get started, including sending you the forms you should fill,
and answer any questions you may have (or point you to the people with the answers), at
the [email protected] mailing list.
(Please note: general discussion about why some GNU projects ask for a copyright
assignment is off-topic for emacs-devel. See gnu-misc-discuss instead.)
A copyright disclaimer is also a possibility, but we prefer an assignment. Note that the
disclaimer, like an assignment, involves you sending signed paperwork to the FSF (simply
saying “this is in the public domain” is not enough). Also, a disclaimer cannot be applied
to future work, it has to be repeated each time you want to send something new.
We can accept small changes (roughly, fewer than 15 lines) without an assignment. This
is a cumulative limit (e.g., three separate 5 line patches) over all your contributions.

34.5 How To Get Help with GNU Emacs

If you need help installing, using or changing GNU Emacs, there are two ways to find it:
• Send a message to the mailing list [email protected], or post your request on
newsgroup gnu.emacs.help. (This mailing list and newsgroup interconnect, so it does
not matter which one you use.)
• Look in the service directory (https://www.fsf.org/resources/service/) for some-
one who might help you for a fee.
 549

Appendix A GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 3, 29 June 2007
Copyright c 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. https://fsf.org/

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this

license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble
The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of
works.
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is
intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program—to make
sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the
GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work
released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General
Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of
free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if
you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and
that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these rights or asking
you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute
copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you
must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. You must make sure
that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so
they know their rights.
Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright
on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute
and/or modify it.
For the developers’ and authors’ protection, the GPL clearly explains that there is no
warranty for this free software. For both users’ and authors’ sake, the GPL requires that
modified versions be marked as changed, so that their problems will not be attributed
erroneously to authors of previous versions.
Some devices are designed to deny users access to install or run modified versions of
the software inside them, although the manufacturer can do so. This is fundamentally
incompatible with the aim of protecting users’ freedom to change the software. The
systematic pattern of such abuse occurs in the area of products for individuals to use, which
is precisely where it is most unacceptable. Therefore, we have designed this version of the
GPL to prohibit the practice for those products. If such problems arise substantially in
other domains, we stand ready to extend this provision to those domains in future versions
of the GPL, as needed to protect the freedom of users.
550 GNU Emacs Manual

Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents. States should not
allow patents to restrict development and use of software on general-purpose computers, but
in those that do, we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free program
could make it effectively proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that patents cannot
be used to render the program non-free.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

0. Definitions.
“This License” refers to version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
“Copyright” also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of works, such as
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organizations.
To “modify” a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion
requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting
work is called a “modified version” of the earlier work or a work “based on” the earlier
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A “covered work” means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.
To “propagate” a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would
make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law,
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To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make
or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no
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An interactive user interface displays “Appropriate Legal Notices” to the extent that it
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1. Source Code.
The “source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifi-
cations to it. “Object code” means any non-source form of a work.
A “Standard Interface” means an interface that either is an official standard defined
by a recognized standards body, or, in the case of interfaces specified for a particular
programming language, one that is widely used among developers working in that
language.
The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other than the work as
a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a Major Component, but
Appendix A: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 551

which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the
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You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without
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Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under the conditions
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No covered work shall be deemed part of an effective technological measure under
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When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of
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552 GNU Emacs Manual

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4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program’s source code as you receive it, in any
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You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from
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c. You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who
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d. If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal
Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display
Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so.
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are
not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it
such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium,
is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to
limit the access or legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual
works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License
to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and
5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the
terms of this License, in one of these ways:
a. Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical
distribution medium), accompanied by the Corresponding Source fixed on a durable
physical medium customarily used for software interchange.
Appendix A: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 553

b. Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical
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years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that
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554 GNU Emacs Manual

If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use
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key for unpacking, reading or copying.
7. Additional Terms.
“Additional permissions” are terms that supplement the terms of this License by making
exceptions from one or more of its conditions. Additional permissions that are applicable
to the entire Program shall be treated as though they were included in this License, to
the extent that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions apply only
to part of the Program, that part may be used separately under those permissions, but
the entire Program remains governed by this License without regard to the additional
permissions.
When you convey a copy of a covered work, you may at your option remove any
additional permissions from that copy, or from any part of it. (Additional permissions
may be written to require their own removal in certain cases when you modify the
work.) You may place additional permissions on material, added by you to a covered
work, for which you have or can give appropriate copyright permission.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for material you add to a covered
work, you may (if authorized by the copyright holders of that material) supplement the
terms of this License with terms:
a. Disclaiming warranty or limiting liability differently from the terms of sections 15
and 16 of this License; or
b. Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions
in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing
it; or
c. Prohibiting misrepresentation of the origin of that material, or requiring that
modified versions of such material be marked in reasonable ways as different from
the original version; or
d. Limiting the use for publicity purposes of names of licensors or authors of the
material; or
Appendix A: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 555

e. Declining to grant rights under trademark law for use of some trade names, trade-
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Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if
the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the
first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that
copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the
notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties
who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been
terminated and not permanently reinstated, you do not qualify to receive new licenses
for the same material under section 10.
9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the
Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of
using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance.
However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify
any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License.
Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance
of this License to do so.
556 GNU Emacs Manual

10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients.

Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically receives a license
from the original licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this
License. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties with this
License.
An “entity transaction” is a transaction transferring control of an organization, or
substantially all assets of one, or subdividing an organization, or merging organizations.
If propagation of a covered work results from an entity transaction, each party to that
transaction who receives a copy of the work also receives whatever licenses to the work
the party’s predecessor in interest had or could give under the previous paragraph, plus
a right to possession of the Corresponding Source of the work from the predecessor in
interest, if the predecessor has it or can get it with reasonable efforts.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights granted or
affirmed under this License. For example, you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or
other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate
litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent
claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program
or any portion of it.
11. Patents.
A “contributor” is a copyright holder who authorizes use under this License of the
Program or a work on which the Program is based. The work thus licensed is called the
contributor’s “contributor version”.
A contributor’s “essential patent claims” are all patent claims owned or controlled
by the contributor, whether already acquired or hereafter acquired, that would be
infringed by some manner, permitted by this License, of making, using, or selling
its contributor version, but do not include claims that would be infringed only as a
consequence of further modification of the contributor version. For purposes of this
definition, “control” includes the right to grant patent sublicenses in a manner consistent
with the requirements of this License.
Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent license
under the contributor’s essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import
and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its contributor version.
In the following three paragraphs, a “patent license” is any express agreement or com-
mitment, however denominated, not to enforce a patent (such as an express permission
to practice a patent or covenant not to sue for patent infringement). To “grant” such
a patent license to a party means to make such an agreement or commitment not to
enforce a patent against the party.
If you convey a covered work, knowingly relying on a patent license, and the Corre-
sponding Source of the work is not available for anyone to copy, free of charge and under
the terms of this License, through a publicly available network server or other readily
accessible means, then you must either (1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so
available, or (2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the patent license for this
particular work, or (3) arrange, in a manner consistent with the requirements of this
License, to extend the patent license to downstream recipients. “Knowingly relying”
means you have actual knowledge that, but for the patent license, your conveying the
Appendix A: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 557

covered work in a country, or your recipient’s use of the covered work in a country,
would infringe one or more identifiable patents in that country that you have reason to
believe are valid.
If, pursuant to or in connection with a single transaction or arrangement, you convey,
or propagate by procuring conveyance of, a covered work, and grant a patent license
to some of the parties receiving the covered work authorizing them to use, propagate,
modify or convey a specific copy of the covered work, then the patent license you grant
is automatically extended to all recipients of the covered work and works based on it.
A patent license is “discriminatory” if it does not include within the scope of its coverage,
prohibits the exercise of, or is conditioned on the non-exercise of one or more of the
rights that are specifically granted under this License. You may not convey a covered
work if you are a party to an arrangement with a third party that is in the business of
distributing software, under which you make payment to the third party based on the
extent of your activity of conveying the work, and under which the third party grants,
to any of the parties who would receive the covered work from you, a discriminatory
patent license (a) in connection with copies of the covered work conveyed by you (or
copies made from those copies), or (b) primarily for and in connection with specific
products or compilations that contain the covered work, unless you entered into that
arrangement, or that patent license was granted, prior to 28 March 2007.
Nothing in this License shall be construed as excluding or limiting any implied license or
other defenses to infringement that may otherwise be available to you under applicable
patent law.
12. No Surrender of Others’ Freedom.
If conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that
contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions
of this License. If you cannot convey a covered work so as to satisfy simultaneously
your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a
consequence you may not convey it at all. For example, if you agree to terms that
obligate you to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey
the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this License would
be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
13. Use with the GNU Affero General Public License.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or
combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU Affero
General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work.
The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work,
but the special requirements of the GNU Affero General Public License, section 13,
concerning interaction through a network will apply to the combination as such.
14. Revised Versions of this License.
The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU
General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to
the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies that
a certain numbered version of the GNU General Public License “or any later version”
applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that
558 GNU Emacs Manual

numbered version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If
the Program does not specify a version number of the GNU General Public License,
you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
If the Program specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of the GNU
General Public License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a
version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Program.
Later license versions may give you additional or different permissions. However, no
additional obligations are imposed on any author or copyright holder as a result of your
choosing to follow a later version.
15. Disclaimer of Warranty.
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PER-
MITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN
WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE
THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EX-
PRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE
OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFEC-
TIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR
CORRECTION.
16. Limitation of Liability.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO
IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY
WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE,
BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL,
INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS
OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED
BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE
WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY
HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
17. Interpretation of Sections 15 and 16.
If the disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability provided above cannot be given
local legal effect according to their terms, reviewing courts shall apply local law that
most closely approximates an absolute waiver of all civil liability in connection with
the Program, unless a warranty or assumption of liability accompanies a copy of the
Program in return for a fee.

END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public,
the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and
change under these terms.
Appendix A: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 559

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the
start of each source file to most effectively state the exclusion of warranty; and each file
should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) year name of author

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify

it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at
your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short notice like this when it
starts in an interactive mode:
program Copyright (C) year name of author
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type ‘show w’.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type ‘show c’ for details.
The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the appropriate parts of
the General Public License. Of course, your program’s commands might be different; for a
GUI interface, you would use an “about box”.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or school, if any, to
sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. For more information on this,
and how to apply and follow the GNU GPL, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
The GNU General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more
useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want
to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License. But first, please
read https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html.
560 GNU Emacs Manual

Appendix B GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
Copyright c 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
https://fsf.org/

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies

of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and
useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom
to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or
noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way
to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications
made by others.
This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the document
must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public
License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because
free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals
providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to
software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or
whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for
works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this
License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration,
to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The “Document”, below, refers
to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed
as “you”. You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way
requiring permission under copyright law.
A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the Document or
a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into
another language.
A “Secondary Section” is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document
that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document
to the Document’s overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that
could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a
textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The
relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related
matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding
them.
The “Invariant Sections” are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as
being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released
Appendix B: GNU Free Documentation License 561

under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is
not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant
Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.
The “Cover Texts” are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover
Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under
this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may
be at most 25 words.
A “Transparent” copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a
format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for revising
the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of
pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor,
and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a
variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise
Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to
thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image
format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is
not “Transparent” is called “Opaque”.
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without
markup, Texinfo input format, LaTEX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly
available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed
for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF
and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only
by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing
tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF
produced by some word processors for output purposes only.
The “Title Page” means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following
pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the
title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, “Title Page”
means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work’s title, preceding the
beginning of the body of the text.
The “publisher” means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document to
the public.
A section “Entitled XYZ” means a named subunit of the Document whose title either
is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in
another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such
as “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, “Endorsements”, or “History”.) To “Preserve
the Title” of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a
section “Entitled XYZ” according to this definition.
The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that
this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be
included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties: any
other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect
on the meaning of this License.
2. VERBATIM COPYING
562 GNU Emacs Manual

You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or
noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license
notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and
that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use
technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies
you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies.
If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in
section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly
display copies.
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of
the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document’s license notice requires
Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all
these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on
the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher
of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title
equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition.
Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the
Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other
respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put
the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the
rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100,
you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque
copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which
the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network
protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If
you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin
distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will
remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time
you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that
edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well
before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you
with an updated version of the Document.
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions
of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely
this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing
distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it.
In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the
Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any,
Appendix B: GNU Free Documentation License 563

be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a
previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for
authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five
of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer
than five), unless they release you from this requirement.
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the
publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other
copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public
permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form
shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover
Texts given in the Document’s license notice.
H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section Entitled “History”, Preserve its Title, and add to it an item
stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as
given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled “History” in the Document,
create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given
on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in
the previous sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to
a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in
the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the
“History” section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published
at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the
version it refers to gives permission.
K. For any section Entitled “Acknowledgements” or “Dedications”, Preserve the Title
of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the
contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and
in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the
section titles.
M. Delete any section Entitled “Endorsements”. Such a section may not be included
in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled “Endorsements” or to conflict in
title with any Invariant Section.
O. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as
Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at
your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their
564 GNU Emacs Manual

titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These
titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing but
endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example, statements of
peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative
definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up
to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified
Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be
added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already
includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement
made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but
you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that
added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission
to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified
Version.
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License,
under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you
include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents,
unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license
notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical
Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant
Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section
unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or
publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment
to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined
work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the various
original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any
sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You
must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released
under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various
documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow
the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other
respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually
under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted
document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of
that document.
Appendix B: GNU Free Documentation License 565

7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent
documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an
“aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal
rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. When the
Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works
in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document,
then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document’s Cover
Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the
electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they
must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations
of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with
translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may
include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions
of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the
license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also
include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those
notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the
original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “His-
tory”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require
changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly
provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or
distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular
copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder
explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright
holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days
after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if
the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the
first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that
copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the
notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties
who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been
terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the same
material does not give you any rights to use it.
566 GNU Emacs Manual

10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free
Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit
to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.
See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document
specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any later version” applies
to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified
version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License,
you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software
Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions
of this License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version
permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.
11. RELICENSING
“Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site” (or “MMC Site”) means any World Wide
Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities for
anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of
such a server. A “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration” (or “MMC”) contained in the
site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.
“CC-BY-SA” means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published
by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal place
of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that license
published by that same organization.
“Incorporate” means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part of
another Document.
An MMC is “eligible for relicensing” if it is licensed under this License, and if all works
that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and
subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or
invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under
CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is
eligible for relicensing.
Appendix B: GNU Free Documentation License 567

ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the
document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (C) year your name.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU
Free Documentation License''.
If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the
“with. . . Texts.” line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with
the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts
being list.
If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the
three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing
these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU
General Public License, to permit their use in free software.
568 GNU Emacs Manual

Appendix C Command Line Arguments for Emacs

Invocation
Emacs supports command line arguments to request various actions when invoking Emacs.
These are for compatibility with other editors and for sophisticated activities. We don’t
recommend using them for ordinary editing (See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 464, for
a way to access an existing Emacs job from the command line).
Arguments starting with ‘-’ are options, and so is ‘+linenum’. All other arguments specify
files to visit. Emacs visits the specified files while it starts up. The last file specified on the
command line becomes the current buffer; the other files are also visited in other buffers. As
with most programs, the special argument ‘--’ says that all subsequent arguments are file
names, not options, even if they start with ‘-’.
Emacs command options can specify many things, such as the size and position of the
X window Emacs uses, its colors, and so on. A few options support advanced usage, such
as running Lisp functions on files in batch mode. The sections of this chapter describe the
available options, arranged according to their purpose.
There are two ways of writing options: the short forms that start with a single ‘-’, and
the long forms that start with ‘--’. For example, ‘-d’ is a short form and ‘--display’ is the
corresponding long form.
The long forms with ‘--’ are easier to remember, but longer to type. However, you don’t
have to spell out the whole option name; any unambiguous abbreviation is enough. When a
long option requires an argument, you can use either a space or an equal sign to separate
the option name and the argument. Thus, for the option ‘--display’, you can write either
‘--display sugar-bombs:0.0’ or ‘--display=sugar-bombs:0.0’. We recommend an equal
sign because it makes the relationship clearer, and the tables below always show an equal
sign.
Most options specify how to initialize Emacs, or set parameters for the Emacs session.
We call them initial options. A few options specify things to do, such as loading libraries or
calling Lisp functions. These are called action options. These and file names together are
called action arguments. The action arguments are stored as a list of strings in the variable
command-line-args. (Actually, when Emacs starts up, command-line-args contains all
the arguments passed from the command line; during initialization, the initial arguments
are removed from this list when they are processed, leaving only the action arguments.)

C.1 Action Arguments

Here is a table of action arguments:
‘file’
‘--file=file’
‘--find-file=file’
‘--visit=file’
Visit the specified file. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
When Emacs starts up, it displays the startup buffer in one window, and the
buffer visiting file in another window (see Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185).
If you supply more than one file argument, the displayed file is the last one
specified on the command line; the other files are visited but their buffers are
not shown.
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 569

If the startup buffer is disabled (see Section 3.1 [Entering Emacs], page 14),
then starting Emacs with one file argument displays the buffer visiting file
in a single window. With two file arguments, Emacs displays the files in two
different windows. With more than two file arguments, Emacs displays the last
file specified in one window, plus another window with a Buffer Menu showing
all the other files (see Section 16.5 [Several Buffers], page 179). To inhibit using
the Buffer Menu for this, change the variable inhibit-startup-buffer-menu
to t.
‘+linenum file’
Visit the specified file, then go to line number linenum in it.
‘+linenum:columnnum file’
Visit the specified file, then go to line number linenum and put point at column
number columnnum.
‘-l file’
‘--load=file’
Load a Lisp library named file with the function load. If file is not an absolute
file name, Emacs first looks for it in the current directory, then in the directories
listed in load-path (see Section 24.8 [Lisp Libraries], page 326).
Warning: If previous command-line arguments have visited files, the current
directory is the directory of the last file visited.
‘-L dir’
‘--directory=dir’
Prepend directory dir to the variable load-path. If you specify multiple ‘-L’
options, Emacs preserves the relative order; i.e., using ‘-L /foo -L /bar’ results
in a load-path of the form ("/foo" "/bar" ...). If dir begins with ‘:’, Emacs
removes the ‘:’ and appends (rather than prepends) the remainder to load-path.
(On MS Windows, use ‘;’ instead of ‘:’; i.e., use the value of path-separator.)
‘-f function’
‘--funcall=function’
Call Lisp function function. If it is an interactive function (a command), it
reads the arguments interactively just as if you had called the same function
with a key sequence. Otherwise, it calls the function with no arguments.
‘--eval=expression’
‘--execute=expression’
Evaluate Lisp expression expression.
‘--insert=file’
Insert the contents of file into the buffer that is current when this command-line
argument is processed. Usually, this is the *scratch* buffer (see Section 24.10
[Lisp Interaction], page 330), but if arguments earlier on the command line
visit files or switch buffers, that might be a different buffer. The effect of this
command-line argument is like what M-x insert-file does (see Section 15.12
[Misc File Ops], page 167).
‘--kill’ Exit from Emacs without asking for confirmation.
570 GNU Emacs Manual

‘--help’ Print a usage message listing all available options, then exit successfully.
‘--version’
Print Emacs version, then exit successfully.
‘--fingerprint’
Print the Emacs “fingerprint”, which is used to uniquely identify the compiled
version of Emacs.

C.2 Initial Options

The initial options specify parameters for the Emacs session. This section describes the
more general initial options; some other options specifically related to the X Window System
appear in the following sections.
Some initial options affect the loading of the initialization file. Normally, Emacs first
loads site-start.el if it exists, then your own initialization file if it exists, and finally
the default initialization file default.el if it exists (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522).
Certain options prevent loading of some of these files or substitute other files for them.
‘-chdir directory’
‘--chdir=directory’
Change to directory before doing anything else. This is mainly used by session
management in X so that Emacs starts in the same directory as it stopped. This
makes desktop saving and restoring easier.
‘-t device’
‘--terminal=device’
Use device as the device for terminal input and output. This option implies
‘--no-window-system’.
‘-d display’
‘--display=display’
Use the X Window System and use the display named display to open the initial
Emacs frame. See Section C.5 [Display X], page 578, for more details.
‘-nw’
‘--no-window-system’
Don’t communicate directly with the window system, disregarding the DISPLAY
environment variable even if it is set. This means that Emacs uses the terminal
from which it was launched for all its display and input.
‘-batch’
‘--batch’ Run Emacs in batch mode. Batch mode is used for running programs written in
Emacs Lisp from shell scripts, makefiles, and so on. To invoke a Lisp program,
use the ‘-batch’ option in conjunction with one or more of ‘-l’, ‘-f’ or ‘--eval’
(see Section C.1 [Action Arguments], page 568). See Section C.3 [Command
Example], page 573, for an example.
In batch mode, Emacs does not display the text being edited, and the standard
terminal interrupt characters such as C-z and C-c have their usual effect. Emacs
functions that normally print a message in the echo area will print to either the
standard output stream (stdout) or the standard error stream (stderr) instead.
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 571

(To be precise, functions like prin1, princ and print print to stdout, while
message and error print to stderr.) Functions that normally read keyboard
input from the minibuffer take their input from the terminal’s standard input
stream (stdin) instead.
‘--batch’ implies ‘-q’ (do not load an initialization file), but site-start.el
is loaded nonetheless. It also causes Emacs to exit after processing all the
command options. In addition, it disables auto-saving except in buffers for
which auto-saving is explicitly requested, and when saving files it omits the
fsync system call unless otherwise requested.
Errors that occur when running a ‘--batch’ Emacs will result in an Emacs Lisp
backtrace being printed. To disable this behavior, set backtrace-on-error-
noninteractive to nil.
‘--script file’
Run Emacs in batch mode, like ‘--batch’, and then read and execute the Lisp
code in file.
The normal use of this option is in executable script files that run Emacs. They
can start with this text on the first line
#!/usr/bin/emacs --script
which will invoke Emacs with ‘--script’ and supply the name of the script file
as file. Emacs Lisp then treats the ‘#!’ on this first line as a comment delimiter.
‘-x’ This option can only be used in executable script files, and should be invoked
like this:
#!/usr/bin/emacs -x
This is like ‘--script’, but suppresses loading the init files (like --quick), and
can’t be used on a normal command line (since it doesn’t specify the script to
load). In addition, when it reaches the end of the script, it exits Emacs and
uses the value of the final form as the exit value from the script (if the final
value is numerical). Otherwise, it will always exit with a zero value.
‘--no-build-details’
Omit details like system name and build time from the Emacs executable, so
that builds are more deterministic. This switch is not meant for regular (or
interactive) use, since it makes commands like system-name return nil.
‘-q’
‘--no-init-file’
Do not load any initialization file (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522). When
Emacs is invoked with this option, the Customize facility does not allow options
to be saved (see Section 33.1 [Easy Customization], page 494). This option does
not disable loading site-start.el.
‘--no-site-file’
‘-nsl’ Do not load site-start.el (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522). The ‘-Q’
option does this too, but other options like ‘-q’ do not.
‘--no-site-lisp’
Do not include the site-lisp directories in load-path (see Section 33.4 [Init
File], page 522). The ‘-Q’ option does this too.
572 GNU Emacs Manual

‘--init-directory’
Specify the directory to use when looking for the Emacs init files.
‘--no-splash’
Do not display a startup screen. You can also achieve this effect by setting
the variable inhibit-startup-screen to non-nil in your initialization file (see
Section 3.1 [Entering Emacs], page 14).
‘--no-x-resources’
Do not load X resources. You can also achieve this effect by setting the variable
inhibit-x-resources to t in your initialization file (see Section D.1 [Resources],
page 584).
‘-Q’
‘--quick’ Start Emacs with minimum customizations. This is similar to using ‘-q’,
‘--no-site-file’, ‘--no-site-lisp’, ‘--no-x-resources’, and ‘--no-splash’
together.
‘-daemon’
‘--daemon[=name]’
‘--bg-daemon[=name]’
‘--fg-daemon[=name]’
Start Emacs as a daemon: after Emacs starts up, it starts the Emacs server
without opening any frames. You can then use the emacsclient command to
connect to Emacs for editing. (Optionally, you can specify an explicit name for
the server; if you do, you will need to specify the same name when you invoke
emacsclient, via its --socket-name option, see Section 31.6.3 [emacsclient
Options], page 468.) See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 464, for information
about using Emacs as a daemon. A “background” daemon disconnects from the
terminal and runs in the background (‘--daemon’ is an alias for ‘--bg-daemon’).
‘--no-desktop’
Do not reload any saved desktop. See Section 31.10 [Saving Emacs Sessions],
page 478.
‘-u user’
‘--user=user’
Load user’s initialization file instead of your own1 .
‘--debug-init’
Enable the Emacs Lisp debugger for errors in the init file. See Section “Entering
the Debugger on an Error” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
‘--module-assertions’
Enable expensive correctness checks when dealing with dynamically loadable
modules. This is intended for module authors that wish to verify that their
module conforms to the module API requirements. The option makes Emacs
abort if a module-related assertion triggers. See Section “Writing Dynamically-
Loaded Modules” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
1
This option has no effect on MS-Windows.
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 573

‘--dump-file=file’
Load the dumped Emacs state from the named file. By default, an installed
Emacs will look for its dump state in a file named emacs.pdmp in the directory
where the Emacs installation puts the architecture-dependent files; the variable
exec-directory holds the name of that directory. emacs is the name of the
Emacs executable file, normally just emacs. (When you invoke Emacs from the
src directory where it was built without installing it, it will look for the dump
file in the directory of the executable.) If you rename or move the dump file to
a different place, you can use this option to tell Emacs where to find that file.

C.3 Command Argument Example

Here is an example of using Emacs with arguments and options. It assumes you have a Lisp
program file called hack-c.el which, when loaded, performs some useful operation on the
current buffer, expected to be a C program.
emacs --batch foo.c -l hack-c -f save-buffer >& log
This says to visit foo.c, load hack-c.el (which makes changes in the visited file), save
foo.c (note that save-buffer is the function that C-x C-s is bound to), and then exit
back to the shell (because of ‘--batch’). ‘--batch’ also guarantees there will be no problem
redirecting output to log, because Emacs will not assume that it has a display terminal to
work with.

C.4 Environment Variables

The environment is a feature of the operating system; it consists of a collection of variables
with names and values. Each variable is called an environment variable; environment variable
names are case-sensitive, and it is conventional to use upper case letters only. The values
are all text strings.
What makes the environment useful is that subprocesses inherit the environment auto-
matically from their parent process. This means you can set up an environment variable in
your login shell, and all the programs you run (including Emacs) will automatically see it.
Subprocesses of Emacs (such as shells, compilers, and version control programs) inherit the
environment from Emacs, too.
Inside Emacs, the command M-x getenv reads the name of an environment variable, and
prints its value in the echo area. M-x setenv sets a variable in the Emacs environment,
and C-u M-x setenv removes a variable. (Environment variable substitutions with ‘$’ work
in the value just as in file names; see [File Names with $], page 145.) The variable
initial-environment stores the initial environment inherited by Emacs.
The way to set environment variables outside of Emacs depends on the operating system,
and especially the shell that you are using. For example, here’s how to set the environment
variable ORGANIZATION to ‘not very much’ using Bash:
export ORGANIZATION="not very much"
and here’s how to do it in csh or tcsh:
setenv ORGANIZATION "not very much"
When Emacs is using the X Window System, various environment variables that control
X work for Emacs as well. See the X documentation for more information.
574 GNU Emacs Manual

C.4.1 General Variables

Here is an alphabetical list of environment variables that have special meanings in Emacs.
Most of these variables are also used by some other programs. Emacs does not require any
of these environment variables to be set, but it uses their values if they are set.
CDPATH Used by the cd command to search for the directory you specify, when you
specify a relative directory.
COLORTERM
If this variable is set to the value ‘truecolor’, it tells Emacs to use 24-bit true
color on text-mode displays even if the terminfo database is not installed. Emacs
will use built-in commands to request true color by RGB values instead of the
missing terminfo information.
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
Used by D-Bus when Emacs is compiled with it. Usually, there is no need
to change it. Setting it to a dummy address, like ‘unix:path=/dev/null’,
suppresses connections to the D-Bus session bus as well as autolaunching the
D-Bus session bus if not running yet.
EMACSDATA
Directory for the architecture-independent files that come with Emacs. This is
used to initialize the variable data-directory.
EMACSDOC Directory for the documentation string file, which is used to initialize the Lisp
variable doc-directory.
EMACSLOADPATH
A colon-separated list of directories2 to search for Emacs Lisp files. If set, it
modifies the usual initial value of the load-path variable (see Section 24.8
[Lisp Libraries], page 326). An empty element stands for the default value of
load-path; e.g., using ‘EMACSLOADPATH="/tmp:"’ adds /tmp to the front of the
default load-path. To specify an empty element in the middle of the list, use 2
colons in a row, as in ‘EMACSLOADPATH="/tmp::/foo"’.
EMACSPATH
A colon-separated list of directories to search for executable files. If set, Emacs
uses this in addition to PATH (see below) when initializing the variable exec-path
(see Section 31.5 [Shell], page 453).
EMAIL Your email address; used to initialize the Lisp variable user-mail-address,
which the Emacs mail interface puts into the ‘From’ header of outgoing messages
(see Section 29.2 [Mail Headers], page 419).
ESHELL Used for shell-mode to override the SHELL environment variable (see
Section 31.5.2 [Interactive Shell], page 455).
HISTFILE The name of the file that shell commands are saved in between logins. This
variable defaults to ~/.bash_history if you use Bash, to ~/.sh_history if you
use ksh, and to ~/.history otherwise.
2
Here and below, whenever we say “colon-separated list of directories”, it pertains to Unix and GNU/Linux
systems. On MS-DOS and MS-Windows, the directories are separated by semi-colons instead, since
DOS/Windows file names might include a colon after a drive letter.
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 575

HOME The location of your files in the directory tree; used for expansion of file names
starting with a tilde (~). If set, it should be set to an absolute file name. (If
set to a relative file name, Emacs interprets it relative to the directory where
Emacs was started, but we don’t recommend to use this feature.) If unset,
HOME normally defaults to the home directory of the user given by LOGNAME,
USER or your user ID, or to / if all else fails. On MS-DOS, it defaults to the
directory from which Emacs was started, with ‘/bin’ removed from the end if it
was present. On Windows, the default value of HOME is the Application Data
subdirectory of the user profile directory (normally, this is C:/Documents and
Settings/username/Application Data, where username is your user name),
though for backwards compatibility C:/ will be used instead if a .emacs file is
found there.
HOSTNAME The name of the machine that Emacs is running on.
INFOPATH A colon-separated list of directories in which to search for Info files.
LC_ALL
LC_COLLATE
LC_CTYPE
LC_MESSAGES
LC_MONETARY
LC_NUMERIC
LC_TIME
LANG The user’s preferred locale. The locale has six categories, specified by the
environment variables LC_COLLATE for sorting, LC_CTYPE for character encoding,
LC_MESSAGES for system messages, LC_MONETARY for monetary formats, LC_
NUMERIC for numbers, and LC_TIME for dates and times. If one of these variables
is not set, the category defaults to the value of the LANG environment variable, or
to the default ‘C’ locale if LANG is not set. But if LC_ALL is specified, it overrides
the settings of all the other locale environment variables.
On MS-Windows and macOS, if LANG is not already set in the environment,
Emacs sets it based on the system-wide default. You can set this in the “Regional
Settings” Control Panel on some versions of MS-Windows, and in the “Language
and Region” System Preference on macOS.
The value of the LC_CTYPE category is matched against entries in
locale-language-names, locale-charset-language-names, and
locale-preferred-coding-systems, to select a default language environment
and coding system. See Section 19.2 [Language Environments], page 218.
LOGNAME The user’s login name. See also USER.
MAIL The name of your system mail inbox.
NAME Your real-world name. This is used to initialize the variable user-full-name
(see Section 29.2 [Mail Headers], page 419).
NNTPSERVER
The name of the news server. Used by the mh and Gnus packages.
576 GNU Emacs Manual

ORGANIZATION
The name of the organization to which you belong. Used for setting the
‘Organization:’ header in your posts from the Gnus package.
PATH A colon-separated list of directories containing executable files. This is used to
initialize the variable exec-path (see Section 31.5 [Shell], page 453).
PWD If set, this should be the default directory when Emacs was started.
REPLYTO If set, this specifies an initial value for the variable mail-default-reply-to
(see Section 29.2 [Mail Headers], page 419).
SAVEDIR The name of a directory in which news articles are saved by default. Used by
the Gnus package.
SHELL The name of an interpreter used to parse and execute programs run from
inside Emacs. This is used to initialize the variable shell-file-name (see
Section 31.5.1 [Single Shell], page 453).
SMTPSERVER
The name of the outgoing mail server. This is used to initialize the variable
smtpmail-smtp-server (see Section 29.4.1 [Mail Sending], page 421).
TERM The type of the terminal that Emacs is using. This variable must be set unless
Emacs is run in batch mode. On MS-DOS, it defaults to ‘internal’, which
specifies a built-in terminal emulation that handles the machine’s own display.
TERMCAP The name of the termcap library file describing how to program the terminal
specified by TERM. This defaults to /etc/termcap.
TMPDIR
TMP
TEMP These environment variables are used to initialize the variable temporary-file-
directory, which specifies a directory in which to put temporary files (see
Section 15.3.2 [Backup], page 151). Emacs tries to use TMPDIR first. If that is
unset, Emacs normally falls back on /tmp, but on MS-Windows and MS-DOS it
instead falls back on TMP, then TEMP, and finally c:/temp.
TZ This specifies the default time zone and possibly also daylight saving time
information. See Section “Time Zone Rules” in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference
Manual. On MS-DOS, if TZ is not set in the environment when Emacs starts,
Emacs defines a default value as appropriate for the country code returned by
DOS. On MS-Windows, Emacs does not use TZ at all.
USER The user’s login name. See also LOGNAME. On MS-DOS, this defaults to ‘root’.
VERSION_CONTROL
Used to initialize the version-control variable (see Section 15.3.2.1 [Backup
Names], page 152).

C.4.2 Miscellaneous Variables

These variables are used only on particular configurations:
COMSPEC On MS-DOS and MS-Windows, the name of the command interpreter to use
when invoking batch files and commands internal to the shell. On MS-DOS this
is also used to make a default value for the SHELL environment variable.
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 577

NAME On MS-DOS, this variable defaults to the value of the USER variable.
EMACSTEST
On MS-DOS, this specifies a file to use to log the operation of the internal
terminal emulator. This feature is useful for submitting bug reports.
EMACSCOLORS
On MS-DOS, this specifies the screen colors. It is useful to set them this way,
since otherwise Emacs would display the default colors momentarily when it
starts up.
The value of this variable should be the two-character encoding of the foreground
(the first character) and the background (the second character) colors of the
default face. Each character should be the hexadecimal code for the desired
color on a standard PC text-mode display. For example, to get blue text on a
light gray background, specify ‘EMACSCOLORS=17’, since 1 is the code of the blue
color and 7 is the code of the light gray color.
The PC display usually supports only eight background colors. However, Emacs
switches the DOS display to a mode where all 16 colors can be used for the
background, so all four bits of the background color are actually used.
PRELOAD_WINSOCK
On MS-Windows, if you set this variable, Emacs will load and initialize the
network library at startup, instead of waiting until the first time it is required.
WAYLAND_DISPLAY
Pgtk Emacs (built with --with-pgtk) can run on Wayland natively. WAYLAND_
DISPLAY specifies the connection to the compositor.
emacs_dir
On MS-Windows, emacs_dir is a special environment variable, which indicates
the full path of the directory in which Emacs is installed. If Emacs is installed in
the standard directory structure, it calculates this value automatically. It is not
much use setting this variable yourself unless your installation is non-standard,
since unlike other environment variables, it will be overridden by Emacs at
startup. When setting other environment variables, such as EMACSLOADPATH,
you may find it useful to use emacs_dir rather than hard-coding an absolute
path. This allows multiple versions of Emacs to share the same environment
variable settings, and it allows you to move the Emacs installation directory,
without changing any environment or registry settings.

C.4.3 The MS-Windows System Registry

On MS-Windows, the environment variables emacs_dir, EMACSLOADPATH, EMACSDATA,
EMACSPATH, EMACSDOC, SHELL, TERM, HOME, LANG, and PRELOAD_WINSOCK can also be set in
the HKEY_CURRENT_USER or the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE section of the system registry, under
the /Software/GNU/Emacs key. When Emacs starts, as well as checking the environment, it
also checks the system registry for those variables.
To determine the value of those variables, Emacs goes through the following procedure.
First, it checks the environment. If the variable is not found there, Emacs looks for a registry
578 GNU Emacs Manual

key by the name of the variable under /Software/GNU/Emacs; first in the HKEY_CURRENT_
USER section of the registry, and if not found there, in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE section.
Finally, if Emacs still cannot determine the values, it uses the compiled-in defaults.
Note that the registry settings have global system-wide effect: they will affect all Emacs
sessions run on the system. Thus, if you run different Emacs versions, or use both installed
and un-installed Emacs executables, or build newer versions of Emacs, the settings in the
registry will cause all of them to use the same directories, which is probably not what you
want. For this reason, we recommend against setting these variables in the registry. If you
have such settings in the registry, we recommend that you remove them.
If you run the Emacs MS-Windows installation program addpm.exe, it will update
any existing registry settings of the emacs_dir, EMACSLOADPATH, EMACSDATA, EMACSPATH,
EMACSDOC, SHELL, and TERM variables to have the values suitable for the installed Emacs
version with which addpm.exe came. Note that addpm.exe will not create any registry
setting that didn’t exist, it will only update existing settings, which are most probably
inherited from an old Emacs installation, so that they are compatible with the newly installed
Emacs version. Running addpm.exe is no longer necessary when installing recent versions
of Emacs, so we only recommend doing that if you are upgrading from an older version, and
cannot remove these settings from the registry for some reason.
In addition to the environment variables above, you can also add settings to the
/Software/GNU/Emacs registry key to specify X resources (see Appendix D [X Resources],
page 584). Most of the settings you can specify in your .Xdefaults file can be set from that
registry key.

C.5 Specifying the Display Name

The environment variable DISPLAY tells all X clients, including Emacs, where to display
their windows. Its value is set by default in ordinary circumstances, when you start an X
server and run jobs locally. You can specify the display yourself; one reason to do this is if
you want to log into another system and run Emacs there, and have the window displayed
at your local terminal.
DISPLAY has the syntax ‘host:display.screen’, where host is the host name of the X
Window System server machine, display is an arbitrarily-assigned number that distinguishes
your server (X terminal) from other servers on the same machine, and screen is a field that
allows an X server to control multiple terminal screens. The period and the screen field are
optional. If included, screen is usually zero.
For example, if your host is named ‘glasperle’ and your server is the first (or perhaps
the only) server listed in the configuration, your DISPLAY is ‘glasperle:0.0’.
You can specify the display name explicitly when you run Emacs, either by changing
the DISPLAY variable, or with the option ‘-d display’ or ‘--display=display’. Here is an
example:
emacs --display=glasperle:0 &
You can inhibit the use of the X window system with the ‘-nw’ option. Then Emacs uses
its controlling text terminal for display. See Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570.
Sometimes, security arrangements prevent a program on a remote system from displaying
on your local system. In this case, trying to run Emacs produces messages like this:
Xlib: connection to "glasperle:0.0" refused by server
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 579

You might be able to overcome this problem by using the xhost command on the local
system to give permission for access from your remote machine.

C.6 Font Specification Options

You can use the command line option ‘-fn font’ (or ‘--font’, which is an alias for ‘-fn’)
to specify a default font:
‘-fn font’
‘--font=font’
Use font as the default font.
When passing a font name to Emacs on the command line, you may need to quote it, by
enclosing it in quotation marks, if it contains characters that the shell treats specially (e.g.,
spaces). For example:
emacs -fn "DejaVu Sans Mono-12"
See Section 18.8 [Fonts], page 201, for details about font names and other ways to specify
the default font.

C.7 Window Color Options

You can use the following command-line options to specify the colors to use for various parts
of the Emacs display. Colors may be specified using either color names or RGB triplets (see
Section 11.9 [Colors], page 82).
‘-fg color’
‘--foreground-color=color’
Specify the foreground color, overriding the color specified by the default face
(see Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82).
‘-bg color’
‘--background-color=color’
Specify the background color, overriding the color specified by the default face.
‘-bd color’
‘--border-color=color’
Specify the color of the border of the X window. This has no effect if Emacs is
compiled with GTK+ support.
‘-cr color’
‘--cursor-color=color’
Specify the color of the Emacs cursor which indicates where point is.
‘-ms color’
‘--mouse-color=color’
Specify the color for the mouse cursor when the mouse is in the Emacs window.
‘-r’
‘-rv’
‘--reverse-video’
Reverse video: swap the foreground and background colors.
580 GNU Emacs Manual

‘--color=mode’
Set the color support mode when Emacs is run on a text terminal. This option
overrides the number of supported colors that the character terminal advertises
in its termcap or terminfo database. The parameter mode can be one of the
following:
‘never’
‘no’ Don’t use colors even if the terminal’s capabilities specify color
support.
‘default’
‘auto’ Same as when --color is not used at all: Emacs detects at startup
whether the terminal supports colors, and if it does, turns on colored
display.
‘always’
‘yes’
‘ansi8’ Turn on the color support unconditionally, and use color commands
specified by the ANSI escape sequences for the 8 standard colors.
‘num’ Use color mode for num colors. If num is −1, turn off color support
(equivalent to ‘never’); if it is 0, use the default color support for
this terminal (equivalent to ‘auto’); otherwise use an appropriate
standard mode for num colors. Depending on your terminal’s
capabilities, Emacs might be able to turn on a color mode for 8, 16,
88, or 256 as the value of num. If there is no mode that supports
num colors, Emacs acts as if num were 0, i.e., it uses the terminal’s
default color support mode.
If mode is omitted, it defaults to ansi8.
For example, to use a coral mouse cursor and a slate blue text cursor, enter:
emacs -ms coral -cr 'slate blue' &
You can reverse the foreground and background colors through the ‘-rv’ option or with
the X resource ‘reverseVideo’.
The ‘-fg’, ‘-bg’, and ‘-rv’ options function on text terminals as well as on graphical
displays.

C.8 Options for Window Size and Position

Here is a list of the command-line options for specifying size and position of the initial
Emacs frame:
‘-g widthxheight[{+-}xoffset{+-}yoffset]]’
‘--geometry=widthxheight[{+-}xoffset{+-}yoffset]]’
Specify the size width and height (measured in character columns and lines),
and positions xoffset and yoffset (measured in pixels). The width and height
parameters apply to all frames, whereas xoffset and yoffset only to the initial
frame.
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 581

‘-fs’
‘--fullscreen’
Specify that width and height should be that of the screen. Normally no window
manager decorations are shown. (After starting Emacs, you can toggle this state
using F11, toggle-frame-fullscreen.)
‘-mm’
‘--maximized’
Specify that the Emacs frame should be maximized. This normally means that
the frame has window manager decorations. (After starting Emacs, you can
toggle this state using M-F10, toggle-frame-maximized.)
‘-fh’
‘--fullheight’
Specify that the height should be the height of the screen.
‘-fw’
‘--fullwidth’
Specify that the width should be the width of the screen.
In the ‘--geometry’ option, {+-} means either a plus sign or a minus sign. A plus sign
before xoffset means it is the distance from the left side of the screen; a minus sign means it
counts from the right side. A plus sign before yoffset means it is the distance from the top
of the screen, and a minus sign there indicates the distance from the bottom. The values
xoffset and yoffset may themselves be positive or negative, but that doesn’t change their
meaning, only their direction.
Emacs uses the same units as xterm does to interpret the geometry. The width and
height are measured in characters, so a large font creates a larger frame than a small font.
(If you specify a proportional font, Emacs uses its maximum bounds width as the width
unit.) The xoffset and yoffset are measured in pixels.
You do not have to specify all of the fields in the geometry specification. If you omit both
xoffset and yoffset, the window manager decides where to put the Emacs frame, possibly by
letting you place it with the mouse. For example, ‘164x55’ specifies a window 164 columns
wide, enough for two ordinary width windows side by side, and 55 lines tall.
The default frame width is 80 characters and the default height is between 35 and 40
lines, depending on the OS and the window manager. You can omit either the width or the
height or both. If you start the geometry with an integer, Emacs interprets it as the width.
If you start with an ‘x’ followed by an integer, Emacs interprets it as the height. Thus, ‘81’
specifies just the width; ‘x45’ specifies just the height.
If you start the geometry with ‘+’ or ‘-’, that introduces an offset, which means both
sizes are omitted. Thus, ‘-3’ specifies the xoffset only. (If you give just one offset, it is
always xoffset.) ‘+3-3’ specifies both the xoffset and the yoffset, placing the frame near the
bottom left of the screen.
You can specify a default for any or all of the fields in your X resource file (see Section D.1
[Resources], page 584), and then override selected fields with a ‘--geometry’ option.
Since the mode line and the echo area occupy the last 2 lines of the frame, the height of
the initial text window is 2 less than the height specified in your geometry. In non-X-toolkit
versions of Emacs, the menu bar also takes one line of the specified number. But in the X
582 GNU Emacs Manual

toolkit version, the menu bar is additional and does not count against the specified height.
The tool bar, if present, is also additional.
Enabling or disabling the menu bar or tool bar alters the amount of space available for
ordinary text. Therefore, if Emacs starts up with a tool bar (which is the default), and
handles the geometry specification assuming there is a tool bar, and then your initialization
file disables the tool bar, you will end up with a frame geometry different from what you
asked for. To get the intended size with no tool bar, use an X resource to specify “no tool
bar” (see Section D.2 [Table of Resources], page 585); then Emacs will already know there’s
no tool bar when it processes the specified geometry.
When using one of ‘--fullscreen’, ‘--maximized’, ‘--fullwidth’ or ‘--fullheight’,
some window managers require you to set the variable frame-resize-pixelwise to a
non-nil value to make a frame appear truly maximized or full-screen.
Some window managers have options that can make them ignore both program-specified
and user-specified positions. If these are set, Emacs fails to position the window correctly.

C.9 Internal and Outer Borders

An Emacs frame has an internal border and an outer border. The internal border is an
extra strip of the background color around the text portion of the frame. Emacs itself draws
the internal border. The outer border is drawn by X outside the tool and menu bars of the
frame. There is also an external border which is drawn by the window manager. The size of
the external border cannot be set from within Emacs.
‘-ib width’
‘--internal-border=width’
Specify width as the width of the internal border (around the frame’s text area),
in pixels.
‘-bw width’
‘--border-width=width’
Specify width as the width of the outer border, in pixels.
When you specify the size of the frame, that does not count the borders. The frame’s
position is measured from the outside edge of the external border.
Use the ‘-ib n’ option to specify an internal border n pixels wide. The default is 1. Use
‘-bw n’ to specify the width of the outer border (though the window manager may not pay
attention to what you specify). The default width of the outer border is 2.

C.10 Frame Titles

Each Emacs frame always has a title, which appears in window decorations and icons as the
name of the frame. The default title is of the form ‘invocation-name@machine’ (if there
is only one frame) or shows the selected window’s buffer name (if there is more than one
frame).
You can specify a non-default title for the initial Emacs frame with a command line
option:
‘-T title’
‘--title=title’
Specify title as the title for the initial Emacs frame.
Appendix C: Command Line Arguments for Emacs Invocation 583

The ‘--name’ option (see Section D.1 [Resources], page 584) also specifies the title for
the initial Emacs frame.

C.11 Icons
‘-iconic’
‘--iconic’
Start Emacs in an iconified state.
‘-nbi’
‘--no-bitmap-icon’
Disable the use of the Emacs icon.
Most window managers allow you to iconify (or “minimize”) an Emacs frame, hiding it
from sight. Some window managers replace iconified windows with tiny icons, while others
remove them entirely from sight. The ‘-iconic’ option tells Emacs to begin running in an
iconified state, rather than showing a frame right away. The text frame doesn’t appear until
you deiconify (or “un-minimize”) it.
By default, Emacs uses an icon containing the Emacs logo. On desktop environments
such as Gnome, this icon is also displayed in other contexts, e.g., when switching into an
Emacs frame. The ‘-nbi’ or ‘--no-bitmap-icon’ option tells Emacs to let the window
manager choose what sort of icon to use—usually just a small rectangle containing the
frame’s title.

C.12 Other Display Options

‘--parent-id id’
Open Emacs as a client X window via the XEmbed protocol, with id as the
parent X window id. Currently, this option is mainly useful for developers.
‘-vb’
‘--vertical-scroll-bars’
Enable vertical scroll bars.
‘-lsp pixels’
‘--line-spacing=pixels’
Specify pixels as additional space to put between lines, in pixels.
‘-nbc’
‘--no-blinking-cursor’
Disable the blinking cursor on graphical displays.
‘-D’
‘--basic-display’
Disable the menu-bar, the tool-bar, the scroll-bars, tool tips, and turn off font-
lock-mode and the blinking cursor. This can be useful for making a test case
that simplifies debugging of display problems.
The ‘--xrm’ option (see Section D.1 [Resources], page 584) specifies additional X resource
values.
584 GNU Emacs Manual

Appendix D X Options and Resources

You can customize some X-related aspects of Emacs behavior using X resources, as is usual
for programs that use X.
When Emacs is compiled with GTK+ support, the appearance of various graphical widgets,
such as the menu-bar, scroll-bar, and dialog boxes, is determined by GTK+ resources. When
Emacs is built without GTK+ support, the appearance of these widgets is determined by
additional X resources.
On MS-Windows, you can customize some of the same aspects using the system registry
(see Section C.4.3 [MS-Windows Registry], page 577).

D.1 X Resources
Programs running under the X Window System organize their user options under a hierarchy
of classes and resources. You can specify default values for these options in your X resource
file, usually named ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources. Changes in this file do not take effect
immediately, because the X server stores its own list of resources; to update it, use the
command xrdb—for instance, ‘xrdb ~/.Xdefaults’.
Settings specified via X resources in general override the equivalent settings in Emacs
init files (see Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522), in particular for parameters of the initial
frame (see Section 18.11 [Frame Parameters], page 205).
(MS-Windows systems do not support X resource files; on such systems,
Emacs looks for X resources in the Windows Registry, first under the
key ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs’, which affects only the cur-
rent user and override the system-wide settings, and then under the key
‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs’, which affects all users of the system. The
menu and scroll bars are native widgets on MS-Windows, so they are only customizable via
the system-wide settings in the Display Control Panel. You can also set resources using the
‘-xrm’ command line option, as explained below.)
Each line in the X resource file specifies a value for one option or for a collection of
related options. The order in which the lines appear in the file does not matter. Each
resource specification consists of a program name and a resource name. Case distinctions
are significant in each of these names. Here is an example:
emacs.cursorColor: dark green
The program name is the name of the executable file to which the resource applies. For
Emacs, this is normally ‘emacs’. To specify a definition that applies to all instances of
Emacs, regardless of the name of the Emacs executable, use ‘Emacs’.
The resource name is the name of a program setting. For instance, Emacs recognizes a
‘cursorColor’ resource that controls the color of the text cursor.
Resources are grouped into named classes. For instance, the ‘Foreground’ class contains
the ‘cursorColor’, ‘foreground’ and ‘pointerColor’ resources (see Section D.2 [Table of
Resources], page 585). Instead of using a resource name, you can use a class name to specify
the default value for all resources in that class, like this:
emacs.Foreground: dark green
Appendix D: X Options and Resources 585

Emacs does not process X resources at all if you set the variable inhibit-x-resources
to a non-nil value. If you invoke Emacs with the ‘-Q’ (or ‘--quick’) command-line option,
inhibit-x-resources is automatically set to t (see Section C.2 [Initial Options], page 570).

D.2 Table of X Resources for Emacs

The table below lists the X resource names that Emacs recognizes. Note that some of the
resources have no effect in Emacs compiled with various X toolkits (GTK+, Lucid, etc.)—we
indicate below when this is the case.
alpha (class Alpha)
Sets the ‘alpha’ frame parameter, determining frame transparency (see Section
“Frame Parameters” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
alphaBackground (class AlphaBackground)
Sets the ‘alpha-background’ frame parameter, determining background trans-
parency (see Section “Frame Parameters” in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
background (class Background)
Background color (see Section 11.9 [Colors], page 82).
bitmapIcon (class BitmapIcon)
Tell the window manager to display the Emacs icon if ‘on’; don’t do so if ‘off’.
See Section C.11 [Icons X], page 583, for a description of the icon.
cursorBlink (class CursorBlink)
If the value of this resource is ‘off’ or ‘false’ or ‘0’ at startup, Emacs disables
Blink Cursor mode (see Section 11.21 [Cursor Display], page 98).
cursorColor (class Foreground)
Text cursor color. If this resource is specified when Emacs starts up, Emacs sets
its value as the background color of the cursor face (see Section 11.8 [Faces],
page 82).
font (class Font)
Font name for the default face (see Section 18.8 [Fonts], page 201). You can
also specify a fontset name (see Section 19.14 [Fontsets], page 232).
fontBackend (class FontBackend)
Comma-delimited list of backend(s) to use for drawing fonts, in order of prece-
dence. For instance, the value ‘x,xft’ tells Emacs to draw fonts using the X
core font driver, falling back on the Xft font driver if that fails. Normally, you
should leave this resource unset, in which case Emacs tries using all available
font backends.
foreground (class Foreground)
Default foreground color for text.
fullscreen (class Fullscreen)
The desired fullscreen size. The value can be one of fullboth, maximized,
fullwidth or fullheight, which correspond to the command-line options ‘-fs’,
‘-mm’, ‘-fw’, and ‘-fh’ (see Section C.8 [Window Size X], page 580). Note that
this applies to the initial frame only.
586 GNU Emacs Manual

geometry (class Geometry)

Window size and position. The value should be a size and position specification,
of the same form as in the ‘-g’ or ‘--geometry’ command-line option (see
Section C.8 [Window Size X], page 580).
The size applies to all frames in the Emacs session, but the position applies
only to the initial Emacs frame (or, in the case of a resource for a specific frame
name, only that frame).
Be careful not to specify this resource as ‘emacs*geometry’, as that may affect
individual menus as well as the main Emacs frame.
lineSpacing (class LineSpacing)
Additional space between lines, in pixels.
menuBar (class MenuBar)
If the value of this resource is ‘off’ or ‘false’ or ‘0’, Emacs disables Menu Bar
mode at startup (see Section 18.15 [Menu Bars], page 209).
pointerColor (class Foreground)
Color of the mouse cursor. This has no effect in many graphical desktop
environments, as they do not let Emacs change the mouse cursor this way.
title (class Title)
Name to display in the title bar of the initial Emacs frame.
toolBar (class ToolBar)
If the value of this resource is ‘off’ or ‘false’ or ‘0’, Emacs disables Tool Bar
mode at startup (see Section 18.16 [Tool Bars], page 209).
tabBar (class TabBar)
If the value of this resource is ‘on’ or ‘yes’ or ‘1’, Emacs enables Tab Bar mode
at startup (see Section 18.17 [Tab Bars], page 209).
useXIM (class UseXIM)
Disable use of X input methods (XIM) if ‘false’ or ‘off’. This is only relevant
if your Emacs is built with XIM support. It might be useful to turn off XIM on
slow X client/server links.
inputStyle (class InputStyle)
This resource controls how preview text generated by X input methods is
displayed. Its value can be on of the following:
‘callback’
Display the contents of the preview text in the current buffer.
‘offthespot’
Display the preview text inside a separate area of the display pro-
vided by Emacs.
‘overthespot’
Display the preview text inside a popup window at the location of
point in the current window.
Appendix D: X Options and Resources 587

‘none’ Let the input method decide how to display itself. This is usually
equivalent to ‘overthespot’, but it might work with more input
methods.
‘native’ Use the toolkit for handling input methods. This is currently imple-
mented only on GTK.
‘root’ Use some location on display specific to the input method for dis-
playing the preview text.
synchronizeResize (class SynchronizeResize)
If ‘off’ or ‘false’, Emacs will not try to tell the window manager when it has
finished redrawing the display in response to a frame being resized. Otherwise,
the window manager will postpone drawing a frame that was just resized until
its contents are updated, which prevents blank areas of a frame that have not
yet been painted from being displayed. If set to ‘extended’, it will enable use
of an alternative frame synchronization protocol, which might be supported by
some compositing window managers that don’t support the protocol Emacs uses
by default, and causes Emacs to synchronize display with the monitor refresh
rate when a compatible compositing window manager is in use.
verticalScrollBars (class ScrollBars)
Give frames scroll bars on the left if ‘left’, on the right if ‘right’; don’t have
scroll bars if ‘off’ (see Section 18.12 [Scroll Bars], page 206).
You can also use X resources to customize individual Emacs faces (see Section 11.8 [Faces],
page 82). For example, setting the resource ‘face.attributeForeground’ is equivalent
to customizing the ‘foreground’ attribute of the face face. However, we recommend
customizing faces from within Emacs, instead of using X resources. See Section 33.1.5 [Face
Customization], page 498.

D.3 GTK+ resources

If Emacs is compiled with GTK+ toolkit support, the simplest way to customize its GTK+
widgets (e.g., menus, dialogs, tool bars and scroll bars) is to choose an appropriate GTK+
theme, for example with the GNOME theme selector.
In GTK+ version 2, you can also use GTK+ resources to customize the appearance
of GTK+ widgets used by Emacs. These resources are specified in either the file
~/.emacs.d/gtkrc (for Emacs-specific GTK+ resources), or ~/.gtkrc-2.0 (for general
GTK+ resources). We recommend using ~/.emacs.d/gtkrc, since GTK+ seems to ignore
~/.gtkrc-2.0 when running GConf with GNOME. Note, however, that some GTK+
themes may override customizations in ~/.emacs.d/gtkrc; there is nothing we can do
about this. GTK+ resources do not affect aspects of Emacs unrelated to GTK+ widgets,
such as fonts and colors in the main Emacs window; those are governed by normal X
resources (see Section D.1 [Resources], page 584).
The following sections describe how to customize GTK+ resources for Emacs. For details
about GTK+ resources, see the GTK+ API document at https://developer-old.gnome.
org/gtk2/stable/gtk2-Resource-Files.html.
In GTK+ version 3, GTK+ resources have been replaced by a completely
different system. The appearance of GTK+ widgets is now determined by
588 GNU Emacs Manual

CSS-like style files: gtk-3.0/gtk.css in the GTK+ installation directory, and

~/.themes/theme/gtk-3.0/gtk.css for local style settings (where theme is the name of
the current GTK+ theme). Therefore, the description of GTK+ resources in this section
does not apply to GTK+ 3. For details about the GTK+ 3 styling system, see https://
developer-old.gnome.org/gtk3/3.0/GtkCssProvider.html.

D.3.1 GTK+ Resource Basics

In a GTK+ 2 resource file (usually ~/.emacs.d/gtkrc), the simplest kind of a resource
setting simply assigns a value to a variable. For example, putting the following line in the
resource file changes the font on all GTK+ widgets to ‘courier-12’:
gtk-font-name = "courier 12"
Note that in this case the font name must be supplied as a GTK font pattern (also called a
Pango font name), not as a Fontconfig-style font name or XLFD. See Section 18.8 [Fonts],
page 201.
To customize widgets you first define a style, and then apply the style to the widgets.
Here is an example that sets the font for menus (‘#’ characters indicate comments):
# Define the style ‘my_style’.
style "my_style"
{
font_name = "helvetica bold 14"
}

# Specify that widget type ‘*emacs-menuitem*’ uses ‘my_style’.

widget "*emacs-menuitem*" style "my_style"
The widget name in this example contains wildcards, so the style is applied to all widgets
matching ‘*emacs-menuitem*’. The widgets are named by the way they are contained,
from the outer widget to the inner widget. Here is another example that applies ‘my_style’
specifically to the Emacs menu bar:
widget "Emacs.pane.menubar.*" style "my_style"
Here is a more elaborate example, showing how to change the parts of the scroll bar:
style "scroll"
{
fg[NORMAL] = "red" # Arrow color.
bg[NORMAL] = "yellow" # Thumb and background around arrow.
bg[ACTIVE] = "blue" # Trough color.
bg[PRELIGHT] = "white" # Thumb color when the mouse is over it.
}

widget "*verticalScrollBar*" style "scroll"

D.3.2 GTK+ widget names

A GTK+ widget is specified by a widget name and a widget class. The widget name refers
to a specific widget (e.g., ‘emacs-menuitem’), while the widget class refers to a collection
of similar widgets (e.g., ‘GtkMenuItem’). A widget always has a class, but need not have a
name.
Absolute names are sequences of widget names or widget classes, corresponding to
hierarchies of widgets embedded within other widgets. For example, if a GtkWindow named
top contains a GtkVBox named box, which in turn contains a GtkMenuBar called menubar,
Appendix D: X Options and Resources 589

the absolute class name of the menu-bar widget is GtkWindow.GtkVBox.GtkMenuBar, and

its absolute widget name is top.box.menubar.
GTK+ resource files can contain two types of commands for specifying widget appearances:
widget specifies a style for widgets based on the class name, or just the class.
widget_class
specifies a style for widgets based on the class name.
See the previous subsection for examples of using the widget command; the widget_class
command is used similarly. Note that the widget name/class and the style must be enclosed
in double-quotes, and these commands must be at the top level in the GTK+ resource file.
As previously noted, you may specify a widget name or class with shell wildcard syntax:
‘*’ matches zero or more characters and ‘?’ matches one character. This example assigns a
style to all widgets:
widget "*" style "my_style"

D.3.3 GTK+ Widget Names in Emacs

The GTK+ widgets used by an Emacs frame are listed below:
Emacs (class GtkWindow)
pane (class GtkVBox)
menubar (class GtkMenuBar)
[menu item widgets]
[unnamed widget] (class GtkHandleBox)
emacs-toolbar (class GtkToolbar)
[tool bar item widgets]
emacs (class GtkFixed)
verticalScrollBar (class GtkVScrollbar)
The contents of Emacs windows are drawn in the emacs widget. Note that even if there are
multiple Emacs windows, each scroll bar widget is named verticalScrollBar.
For example, here are two different ways to set the menu bar style:
widget "Emacs.pane.menubar.*" style "my_style"
widget_class "GtkWindow.GtkVBox.GtkMenuBar.*" style "my_style"
For GTK+ dialogs, Emacs uses a widget named emacs-dialog, of class GtkDialog. For
file selection, Emacs uses a widget named emacs-filedialog, of class GtkFileSelection.
Because the widgets for pop-up menus and dialogs are free-standing windows and not
contained in the Emacs widget, their GTK+ absolute names do not start with ‘Emacs’. To
customize these widgets, use wildcards like this:
widget "*emacs-dialog*" style "my_dialog_style"
widget "*emacs-filedialog* style "my_file_style"
widget "*emacs-menuitem* style "my_menu_style"
If you want to apply a style to all menus in Emacs, use this:
widget_class "*Menu*" style "my_menu_style"
590 GNU Emacs Manual

D.3.4 GTK+ styles

Here is an example of two GTK+ style declarations:
pixmap_path "/usr/share/pixmaps:/usr/include/X11/pixmaps"

style "default"
{
font_name = "helvetica 12"

bg[NORMAL] = { 0.83, 0.80, 0.73 }

bg[SELECTED] = { 0.0, 0.55, 0.55 }
bg[INSENSITIVE] = { 0.77, 0.77, 0.66 }
bg[ACTIVE] = { 0.0, 0.55, 0.55 }
bg[PRELIGHT] = { 0.0, 0.55, 0.55 }

fg[NORMAL] = "black"
fg[SELECTED] = { 0.9, 0.9, 0.9 }
fg[ACTIVE] = "black"
fg[PRELIGHT] = { 0.9, 0.9, 0.9 }

base[INSENSITIVE] = "#777766"
text[INSENSITIVE] = { 0.60, 0.65, 0.57 }

bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "background.xpm"
bg_pixmap[INSENSITIVE] = "background.xpm"
bg_pixmap[ACTIVE] = "background.xpm"
bg_pixmap[PRELIGHT] = "<none>"

style "ruler" = "default"

{
font_name = "helvetica 8"
}

The style ‘ruler’ inherits from ‘default’. This way you can build on existing styles.
The syntax for fonts and colors is described below.
As this example shows, it is possible to specify several values for foreground and back-
ground depending on the widget’s state. The possible states are:
NORMAL This is the default state for widgets.
ACTIVE This is the state for a widget that is ready to do something. It is also for the
trough of a scroll bar, i.e., bg[ACTIVE] = "red" sets the scroll bar trough to red.
Buttons that have been armed (pressed but not released yet) are in this state.
PRELIGHT This is the state for a widget that can be manipulated, when the mouse pointer
is over it—for example when the mouse is over the thumb in the scroll bar or
over a menu item. When the mouse is over a button that is not pressed, the
button is in this state.
SELECTED This is the state for data that has been selected by the user. It can be selected
text or items selected in a list. This state is not used in Emacs.
INSENSITIVE
This is the state for widgets that are visible, but they cannot be manipulated
in the usual way—for example, buttons that can’t be pressed, and disabled
Appendix D: X Options and Resources 591

menu items. To display disabled menu items in yellow, use fg[INSENSITIVE] =

"yellow".
Here are the things that can go in a style declaration:
bg[state] = color
This specifies the background color for the widget. Note that editable text
doesn’t use bg; it uses base instead.
base[state] = color
This specifies the background color for editable text. In Emacs, this color is
used for the background of the text fields in the file dialog.
bg_pixmap[state] = "pixmap"
This specifies an image background (instead of a background color). pixmap
should be the image file name. GTK+ can use a number of image file formats,
including XPM, XBM, GIF, JPEG and PNG. If you want a widget to use the
same image as its parent, use ‘<parent>’. If you don’t want any image, use
‘<none>’. ‘<none>’ is the way to cancel a background image inherited from a
parent style.
You can’t specify the file by its absolute file name. GTK+ looks for the pixmap
file in directories specified in pixmap_path. pixmap_path is a colon-separated
list of directories within double quotes, specified at the top level in a gtkrc file
(i.e., not inside a style definition; see example above):
pixmap_path "/usr/share/pixmaps:/usr/include/X11/pixmaps"

fg[state] = color
This specifies the foreground color for widgets to use. It is the color of text in
menus and buttons, and the color for the arrows in the scroll bar. For editable
text, use text.
text[state] = color
This is the color for editable text. In Emacs, this color is used for the text fields
in the file dialog.
font_name = "font"
This specifies the font for text in the widget. font is a GTK-style (or Pango) font
name, like ‘Sans Italic 10’. See Section 18.8 [Fonts], page 201. The names are
case insensitive.
There are three ways to specify a color: a color name, an RGB triplet, or a GTK-style
RGB triplet. See Section 11.9 [Colors], page 82, for a description of color names and RGB
triplets. Color names should be enclosed with double quotes, e.g., ‘"red"’. RGB triplets
should be written without double quotes, e.g., ‘#ff0000’. GTK-style RGB triplets have the
form { r, g, b }, where r, g and b are either integers in the range 0–65535 or floats in the
range 0.0–1.0.
592 GNU Emacs Manual

Appendix E Emacs 28 Antinews

For those users who live backwards in time, here is information about downgrading to Emacs
version 28.2. We hope you will enjoy the greater simplicity that results from the absence of
many Emacs 29.1 features.
• Like its newer releases, Emacs 28 can still be built with support of native compilation
of Lisp programs. However, in preparation for removal of this feature in some previous
version, we’ve deleted the capability of ahead-of-time native compilation of all the Lisp
files that come with Emacs. This makes the Emacs build process much faster.
• Emacs can no longer be built with the tree-sitter library, so you no longer will need
to look for and install the grammar libraries for the languages in which you want to
program. Similarly, all the modes that are based on the tree-sitter library were deleted,
leaving you with just one major mode for every supported programming language: no
more need to decide whether to turn the tree-sitter supported modes on and try using
their parser-based fontification, indentation, and other features. For some languages and
file types, this means no major mode at all, leaving you with the venerable Fundamental
mode as the natural, high-performance choice. For example, Go, Rust, and CMake files
no longer have any major modes for editing their files — another milestone towards a
simpler, leaner Emacs.
• Built-in support for accessing SQLite databases was removed. You can now again edit
SQLite files as simple binary files, which Emacs is quite capable to support, as it always
did.
• As a gesture to users of the Haiku operating system, we’ve dropped the code which
allowed Emacs to be built on that OS. We expect Haiku users to enjoy the much simpler
editors they have for editing their files.
• Support for XInput2 input events on X is gone. We think the traditional X input
events are more than enough, certainly so as you move back in time, where XInput2
will eventually be removed from X as well, once the maintainers of the X Windows
system realize the utter futility of supporting fancy input mechanisms.
• The “pure GTK” (a.k.a. PGTK) configuration of Emacs is no longer supported. This is
in anticipation of the complete removal of the GTK toolkit support from Emacs, and
in accordance with our expectation that GTK will cease to exist as you move back in
time. We plan on removing support for all the other toolkits as well, leaving only the
pure X build with our own widgets as the single supported GUI configuration on X.
• The --init-directory command-line option was removed, as initializing Emacs with
init files of another user is a preposterous idea anyway.
• In line with simplifying and eventually removing the native-compilation option, we’ve
deleted the --with-native-compilation=aot configure-time option. This greatly
simplifies how native compilation works and makes your configure-time decision regarding
native compilation in Emacs clear-cut: either Emacs compiles non-preloaded Lisp
packages to native code only before using it, or it never uses native compilation at all;
no more half measures and special exceptions. For similar reasons, native-compile-
prune-cache and startup-redirect-eln-cache features are no longer part of Emacs.
• We’ve deleted the special code and features which allowed Emacs to present decent
performance and responsiveness when editing files with very long lines. Such files
Appendix E: Emacs 28 Antinews 593

become more and more rare as time goes back, and so having all this tricky code in
Emacs for their benefit was deemed an unnecessary complication.
• Emacs dropped support for Eglot and the LSP servers. We decided that the built-in
ways of analyzing source code are more than enough as you move back in time.
• Commands to scale and rotate images are once again bound to single keys like +, -, and
r, which makes them much easier to type. As for the risk of typing these by mistake,
we don’t believe Emacs users make typing mistakes, especially as they move back in
time and become younger and younger.
• To simplify typing popular commands, we’ve rebound the C-x 8 . . back to C-x 8 .
and C-x 8 = = back to C-x 8 =. There’s no need for fancier, longer key sequences, as
moving back in time means we will have fewer and fewer commands to bind to them in
the first place.
• If you inadvertently kill the *scratch* buffer, Emacs will recreate it in Fundamental
mode, not in Lisp Interaction mode. You get to turn on the mode you like yourself.
Our long-term plans for past Emacs releases is to remove the recreation of *scratch*
altogether, and this is the first step in that direction.
• Support for rlogin and rsh protocols are back, since we expect them to become more
and more important and popular as you move back in time.
• In preparation for eventual removal of Unicode support from Emacs, we’ve downgraded
our Unicode support to version 14.0.
• You can no longer change the size of the font globally. Since Emacs will at some past
date remove all support for variable-size fonts, having such commands is a luxury we
are better without.
• On our permanent quest for simplifying Emacs, we’ve removed the commands
duplicate-line and duplicate-dwim; the old-time friends M-w and C-y (typed one
or more times) should suffice. The command rename-visited-file is gone for the
same reason.
• We’ve deleted many commands related to Emoji, which were bound in the C-x 8 e
prefix keymap. We decided that the ability to type Emoji sequences using C-x 8 RET is
enough, and actually serves our users better by requiring them to know the codepoints
of the sequences they want to type.
• We dropped support for many scripts and input methods, especially old scripts that no
one uses anyway. For similar reasons, Greek and Ukrainian translations of the Emacs
tutorial are not available anymore.
• package.el can no longer fetch source code of packages from their VCS repositories.
We think command-line tools like Git should be enough to allow you to clone their
repositories. So we deleted the package-vc-install command and other similar
commands.
• To keep up with decreasing computer memory capacity and disk space, many other
functions and files have been eliminated in Emacs 28.2.
594 GNU Emacs Manual

Appendix F Emacs and macOS / GNUstep

This section describes the peculiarities of using Emacs built with the GNUstep libraries on
GNU/Linux or other operating systems, or on macOS with native window system support.
On macOS, Emacs can be built either without window system support, with X11, or with
the Cocoa interface; this section only applies to the Cocoa build. This does not support
versions before macOS 10.6.
GNUstep is free software; macOS is not. Because it is a non-free operating system,
macOS denies its users the freedom that every computer user deserves. That is an injustice.
For your freedom’s sake, we urge you to switch to a free operating system.
We support GNU Emacs on proprietary operating systems because we hope this taste of
freedom will inspire users to escape from them.
For various historical and technical reasons, Emacs uses the term ‘Nextstep’ internally,
instead of “Cocoa” or “macOS”; for instance, most of the commands and variables described
in this section begin with ‘ns-’, which is short for ‘Nextstep’. NeXTstep was an application
interface released by NeXT Inc. during the 1980s, of which Cocoa is a direct descendant.
Apart from Cocoa, there is another NeXTstep-style system: GNUstep, which is free software.
As of this writing, Emacs GNUstep support is in alpha status (see Section F.4 [GNUstep
Support], page 597), but we hope to improve it in the future.

F.1 Basic Emacs usage under macOS and GNUstep

By default, the Alt and Option keys are the same as Meta. The Mac Cmd key is the same as
Super, and Emacs provides a set of key bindings using this modifier key that mimic other
Mac / GNUstep applications (see Section F.3 [Mac / GNUstep Events], page 596). You can
change these bindings in the usual way (see Section 33.3 [Key Bindings], page 513). The
modifiers themselves can be customized; see Section F.2 [Mac / GNUstep Customization],
page 595.
S-mouse-1 adjusts the region to the click position, just like mouse-3 (mouse-save-then-
kill); it does not pop up a menu for changing the default face, as S-mouse-1 normally does
(see Section 11.12 [Text Scale], page 87). This change makes Emacs behave more like other
Mac / GNUstep applications.
When you open or save files using the menus, or using the Cmd-o and Cmd-S bindings,
Emacs uses graphical file dialogs to read file names. However, if you use the regular Emacs
key sequences, such as C-x C-f, Emacs uses the minibuffer to read file names.
On GNUstep, in an X-windows environment you need to use Cmd-c instead of one of
the C-w or M-w commands to transfer text to the X primary selection; otherwise, Emacs
will use the clipboard selection. Likewise, Cmd-y (instead of C-y) yanks from the X primary
selection instead of the kill-ring or clipboard.

F.1.1 Grabbing environment variables

Many programs which may run under Emacs, like latex or man, depend on the settings of
environment variables. If Emacs is launched from the shell, it will automatically inherit
these environment variables and its subprocesses will inherit them from it. But if Emacs is
launched from the Finder it is not a descendant of any shell, so its environment variables
Appendix F: Emacs and macOS / GNUstep 595

haven’t been set, which often causes the subprocesses it launches to behave differently than
they would when launched from the shell.
For the PATH and MANPATH variables, a system-wide method of setting PATH is
recommended on macOS, using the /etc/paths files and the /etc/paths.d directory.

F.2 Mac / GNUstep Customization

There are a few customization options that are specific to the Nextstep port. For example,
they affect things such as the modifier keys and the fullscreen behavior. To see all such
options, use M-x customize-group RET ns RET.

F.2.1 Modifier keys

The following variables control the behavior of the actual modifier keys:

ns-alternate-modifier
ns-right-alternate-modifier
The left and right Option or Alt keys.
ns-command-modifier
ns-right-command-modifier
The left and right Command keys.
ns-control-modifier
ns-right-control-modifier
The left and right Control keys.
ns-function-modifier
The Function (fn) key.

The value of each variable is either a symbol, describing the key for any purpose, or a
list of the form (:ordinary symbol :function symbol :mouse symbol), which describes
the modifier when used with ordinary keys, function keys (that do not produce a character,
such as arrow keys), and mouse clicks.
If the symbol is one of control, meta, alt, super or hyper, this describes the Emacs
modifier it represents. If symbol is none, Emacs does not use the key, which retains its
standard behavior. For instance, the Option key in macOS is then used for composing
additional characters.
The variables for right-hand keys, like ns-right-alternate-modifier, may also be set
to left, which means to use the same behavior as the corresponding left-hand key.

F.2.2 Frame Variables

ns-use-proxy-icon
This variable specifies whether to display the proxy icon in the titlebar.
ns-confirm-quit
This variable specifies whether to display a graphical confirmation dialog on
quitting.
596 GNU Emacs Manual

ns-auto-hide-menu-bar
This variable specifies whether the macOS menu bar is hidden when an Emacs
frame is selected. If non-nil the menu bar is not shown unless the mouse pointer
is moved near to the top of the screen.
ns-use-native-fullscreen
This variable controls whether to use native, or non-native fullscreen. Native
fullscreen is only available on macOS 10.7 and above.

F.2.3 macOS Trackpad/Mousewheel Variables

These variables only apply to macOS 10.7 (Lion) and above.
ns-use-mwheel-acceleration
This variable controls whether Emacs ignores the system mousewheel acceleration.
When nil each ‘click’ of the mousewheel will correspond exactly with one
mousewheel event. When non-nil, the default, each ‘click’ may correspond with
more than one mousewheel event, depending on the user’s input.
ns-use-mwheel-momentum
This variable controls whether Emacs ignores the system ‘momentum’ when
scrolling using a trackpad. When non-nil, the default, scrolling rapidly may
result in the buffer continuing to scroll for a short while after the user has lifted
their fingers off the trackpad.
ns-mwheel-line-height
This variable controls the sensitivity of scrolling with the trackpad. Apple
trackpads scroll by pixels, not lines, so Emacs converts the system’s pixel values
into lines. When set to a number, this variable sets the number of pixels Emacs
will consider as one line. When nil or a non-number the default line height is
used.
Setting a lower number makes the trackpad more sensitive, and a higher number
makes the trackpad less sensitive.

F.3 Windowing System Events under macOS / GNUstep

Nextstep applications receive a number of special events which have no X equivalent. These
are sent as specially defined key events, which do not correspond to any sequence of keystrokes.
Under Emacs, these key events can be bound to functions just like ordinary keystrokes. Here
is a list of these events.
ns-open-file
This event occurs when another Nextstep application requests that Emacs open
a file. A typical reason for this would be a user double-clicking a file in the
Finder application. By default, Emacs responds to this event by opening a new
frame and visiting the file in that frame (ns-find-file). As an exception, if
the selected buffer is the *scratch* buffer, Emacs visits the file in the selected
frame.
You can change how Emacs responds to a ns-open-file event by changing the
variable ns-pop-up-frames. Its default value, ‘fresh’, is what we have just
Appendix F: Emacs and macOS / GNUstep 597

described. A value of t means to always visit the file in a new frame. A value
of nil means to always visit the file in the selected frame.
ns-open-temp-file
This event occurs when another application requests that Emacs open a tempo-
rary file. By default, this is handled by just generating a ns-open-file event,
the results of which are described above.
ns-open-file-line
Some applications, such as ProjectBuilder and gdb, request not only a particular
file, but also a particular line or sequence of lines in the file. Emacs handles
this by visiting that file and highlighting the requested line (ns-open-file-
select-line).
ns-power-off
This event occurs when the user logs out and Emacs is still running, or when
“Quit Emacs” is chosen from the application menu. The default behavior is to
save all file-visiting buffers.
ns-show-prefs
This event occurs when the user selects “Preferences” from the application menu.
By default, it is bound to the command customize.
Emacs also allows users to make use of Nextstep services, via a set of commands
whose names begin with ‘ns-service-’ and end with the name of the service. Type M-x
ns-service- TAB to see a list of these commands. These functions either operate on marked
text (replacing it with the result) or take a string argument and return the result as a
string. You can also use the Lisp function ns-perform-service to pass arbitrary strings to
arbitrary services and receive the results back. Note that you may need to restart Emacs to
access newly-available services.

F.4 GNUstep Support

Emacs can be built and run under GNUstep, but there are still issues to be addressed.
Interested developers should contact [email protected].
598 GNU Emacs Manual

Appendix G Emacs and Haiku

Haiku is a Unix-like operating system that originated as a re-implementation of the operating
system BeOS.
This section describes the peculiarities of using Emacs built with the Application Kit,
the windowing system native to Haiku. The oddities described here do not apply to using
Emacs on Haiku built without windowing support, or built with X11.

G.1 Installation and usage peculiarities under Haiku

Emacs installs two separate executables under Haiku; it is up to the user to decide which
one suits him best: A regular executable, with the lowercase name emacs, and a binary
containing Haiku-specific application metadata, with the name Emacs.
If you are launching Emacs from the Tracker, or want to make the Tracker open files using
Emacs, you should use the binary named Emacs; if you are going to use Emacs in the terminal,
or wish to launch separate instances of Emacs, or do not care for the aforementioned system
integration features, use the binary named emacs instead.
On Haiku, unusual modifier keys such as the Hyper key are unsupported. By default,
the super key corresponds with the option key defined by the operating system, the meta
key with the command key, the control key with the system control key, and the shift key
with the system shift key. On a standard PC keyboard, Haiku should map these keys to
positions familiar to those using a GNU system, but this may require some adjustment to
your system’s configuration to work.
It is impossible to type accented characters using the system super key map.
You can customize the correspondence between modifier keys known to the system, and
those known to Emacs. The variables that allow for that are described below.
haiku-meta-keysym
The system modifier key that will be treated as the Meta key by Emacs. It
defaults to command.
haiku-control-keysym
The system modifier key that will be treated as the Control key by Emacs. It
defaults to control.
haiku-super-keysym
The system modifier key that will be treated as the Super key by Emacs. It
defaults to option.
haiku-shift-keysym
The system modifier key that will be treated as the Shift key by Emacs. It
defaults to shift.
The value of each variable can be one of the symbols command, control, option, shift,
or nil. nil or any other value will cause the default value to be used instead.
On Haiku, Emacs defaults to using the system tooltip mechanism. This usually leads to
more responsive tooltips, but the tooltips will not be able to display text properties or faces.
If you need those features, customize the variable use-system-tooltips to the nil value,
and Emacs will use its own implementation of tooltips.
Appendix G: Emacs and Haiku 599

Unlike the X window system, Haiku does not have a system-wide resource database.
Since many important options are specified via X resources (see Appendix D [X Resources],
page 584), an emulation is provided: upon startup, Emacs will load a file named GNU Emacs
inside the user configuration directory (normally /boot/home/config/settings), which
should be a flattened system message where keys and values are both strings, and correspond
to attributes and their values respectively.
You can create such a file with the xmlbmessage tool.

G.1.1 What to do when Emacs crashes

If the variable haiku-debug-on-fatal-error is non-nil, Emacs will launch the system
debugger when a fatal signal is received. It defaults to t. If GDB cannot be used on your
system, please attach the report generated by the system debugger when reporting a bug.

G.2 Font and font backend selection on Haiku

Emacs, when built with Haiku windowing support, can be built with several different font
backends. You can specify font backends by specifying -xrm Emacs.fontBackend:BACKEND
on the command line used to invoke Emacs, where BACKEND is one of the backends specified
below, or on a per-frame basis by changing the font-backend frame parameter.
Two of these backends, ftcr and ftcrhb are identical to their counterparts on the X
Window System. There is also a Haiku-specific backend named haiku, that uses the App
Server to draw fonts, but does not at present support display of color font and emoji.
600 GNU Emacs Manual

Appendix H Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-

DOS
This section describes peculiarities of using Emacs on Microsoft Windows. Some of these
peculiarities are also relevant to Microsoft’s older MS-DOS operating system. However,
Emacs features that are relevant only to MS-DOS are described in a separate manual (see
Section “MS-DOS” in Specialized Emacs Features).
MS-Windows is a non-free operating system; that means it denies its users the freedom
that every computer user deserves. That is an injustice. For your freedom’s sake, we urge
you to switch to a free operating system.
We support GNU Emacs on proprietary operating systems because we hope this taste of
freedom will inspire users to escape from them.
The behavior of Emacs on MS-Windows is reasonably similar to what is documented in
the rest of the manual, including support for long file names, multiple frames, scroll bars,
mouse menus, and subprocesses. However, a few special considerations apply, and they are
described here.

H.1 How to Start Emacs on MS-Windows

There are several ways of starting Emacs on MS-Windows:
1. From the desktop shortcut icon: either double-click the left mouse button on the icon,
or click once, then press RET. The desktop shortcut should specify as its “Target” (in
the “Properties” of the shortcut) the full absolute file name of runemacs.exe, not of
emacs.exe. This is because runemacs.exe hides the console window that would have
been created if the target of the shortcut were emacs.exe (which is a console program,
as far as Windows is concerned). If you use this method, Emacs starts in the directory
specified by the shortcut. To control where that is, right-click on the shortcut, select
“Properties”, and in the “Shortcut” tab modify the “Start in” field to your liking.
2. From a task-bar shortcut icon, by clicking once the left mouse button. Windows versions
since Vista allow you to create such shortcuts by pinning the icon of a running program
that appears in the task bar. You can do that with Emacs, but afterwards you will
have to change the properties of the pinned shortcut to run runemacs.exe, not of
emacs.exe. You can also pin Emacs to the task bar by clicking the right mouse button
on its icon in the Start menu, then selecting ‘Pin to taskbar’. Once again, be sure to
specify runemacs.exe as the program to run. You can control where Emacs starts by
setting the “Start in” field of the shortcut’s Properties.
3. From the Command Prompt window, by typing emacs RET at the prompt. The Com-
mand Prompt window where you did that will not be available for invoking other
commands until Emacs exits. In this case, Emacs will start in the current directory of
the Windows shell.
4. From the Command Prompt window, by typing runemacs RET at the prompt. The
Command Prompt window where you did that will be immediately available for invoking
other commands. In this case, Emacs will start in the current directory of the Windows
shell.
5. From the Windows Run dialog (normally reached by clicking the Start button). Typing
runemacs RET into the dialog will start Emacs in the parent directory of the Windows
equivalent of your user’s HOME directory, see Section H.5 [Windows HOME], page 603.
Appendix H: Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS 601

6. Via emacsclient.exe or emacsclientw.exe, which allow you to invoke Emacs from

other programs, and to reuse a running Emacs process for serving editing jobs required
by other programs. See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 464. The difference between
emacsclient.exe and emacsclientw.exe is that the former is a console program, while
the latter is a Windows GUI program. Both programs wait for Emacs to signal that
the editing job is finished, before they exit and return control to the program that
invoked them. Which one of them to use in each case depends on the expectations of
the program that needs editing services. If that program is itself a console (text-mode)
program, you should use emacsclient.exe, so that any of its messages and prompts
appear in the same command window as those of the invoking program. By contrast, if
the invoking program is a GUI program, you will be better off using emacsclientw.exe,
because emacsclient.exe will pop up a command window if it is invoked from a GUI
program. A notable situation where you would want emacsclientw.exe is when you
right-click on a file in the Windows Explorer and select “Open With” from the pop-up
menu. Use the ‘--alternate-editor=’ or ‘-a’ options if Emacs might not be running
(or not running as a server) when emacsclient is invoked—that will always give you
an editor. When invoked via emacsclient, Emacs will start in the current directory of
the program that invoked emacsclient.
Note that, due to limitations of MS-Windows, Emacs cannot have both GUI and text-
mode frames in the same session. It also cannot open text-mode frames on more than a
single Command Prompt window, because each Windows program can have only one console
at any given time. For these reasons, if you invoke emacsclient with the -c option, and
the Emacs server runs in a text-mode session, Emacs will always create a new text-mode
frame in the same Command Prompt window where it was started; a GUI frame will be
created only if the server runs in a GUI session. Similarly, if you invoke emacsclient with
the -t option, Emacs will create a GUI frame if the server runs in a GUI session, or a
text-mode frame when the session runs in text mode in a Command Prompt window. See
Section 31.6.3 [emacsclient Options], page 468.

H.2 Text Files and Binary Files

GNU Emacs uses newline characters to separate text lines. This is the convention used on
GNU, Unix, and other POSIX-compliant systems.
By contrast, MS-DOS and MS-Windows normally use carriage return followed by linefeed,
a two-character sequence, to separate text lines. (Linefeed is the same character as newline.)
Therefore, convenient editing of typical files with Emacs requires conversion of these end-of-
line (EOL) sequences. And that is what Emacs normally does: it converts carriage return
followed by linefeed into newline when reading files, and converts newline into carriage return
followed by linefeed when writing files. The same mechanism that handles conversion of
international character codes does this conversion also (see Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 223).
One consequence of this special format-conversion of most files is that character positions
as reported by Emacs (see Section 4.9 [Position Info], page 23) do not agree with the file
size information known to the operating system.
In addition, if Emacs recognizes from a file’s contents that it uses newline rather than
carriage return followed by linefeed as its line separator, it does not perform EOL conversion
602 GNU Emacs Manual

when reading or writing that file. Thus, you can read and edit files from GNU and Unix
systems on MS-DOS with no special effort, and they will retain their Unix-style end-of-line
convention after you edit them.
The mode line indicates whether end-of-line translation was used for the current buffer.
If MS-DOS end-of-line translation is in use for the buffer, the MS-Windows build of Emacs
displays a backslash ‘\’ after the coding system mnemonic near the beginning of the mode
line (see Section 1.3 [Mode Line], page 8). If no EOL translation was performed, the string
‘(Unix)’ is displayed instead of the backslash, to alert you that the file’s EOL format is not
the usual carriage return followed by linefeed.
To visit a file and specify whether it uses DOS-style or Unix-style end-of-line, specify
a coding system (see Section 19.9 [Text Coding], page 228). For example, C-x RET c unix
RET C-x C-f foobar.txt visits the file foobar.txt without converting the EOLs; if some
line ends with a carriage return followed by linefeed pair, Emacs will display ‘^M’ at the end
of that line. Similarly, you can direct Emacs to save a buffer in a specified EOL format
with the C-x RET f command. For example, to save a buffer with Unix EOL format, type
C-x RET f unix RET C-x C-s. If you visit a file with DOS EOL conversion, then save it with
Unix EOL format, that effectively converts the file to Unix EOL style, like the dos2unix
program.
When you use NFS, Samba, or some other similar method to access file systems that reside
on computers using GNU or Unix systems, Emacs should not perform end-of-line translation
on any files in these file systems—not even when you create a new file. To request this,
designate these file systems as untranslated file systems by calling the function w32-add-
untranslated-filesystem. It takes one argument: the file system name, including a drive
letter and optionally a directory. For example,
(w32-add-untranslated-filesystem "Z:")
designates drive Z as an untranslated file system, and
(w32-add-untranslated-filesystem "Z:\\foo")
designates directory \foo on drive Z as an untranslated file system.
Most often you would use w32-add-untranslated-filesystem in your .emacs or
init.el init file, or in site-start.el so that all the users at your site get the benefit of it.
To countermand the effect of w32-add-untranslated-filesystem, use the function
w32-remove-untranslated-filesystem. This function takes one argument, which should
be a string just like the one that was used previously with w32-add-untranslated-
filesystem.
Designating a file system as untranslated does not affect character set conversion, only
end-of-line conversion. Essentially, it directs Emacs to default to creating new files with
the Unix-style convention of using newline at the end of a line. See Section 19.5 [Coding
Systems], page 223.

H.3 File Names on MS-Windows

MS-Windows and MS-DOS normally use a backslash, ‘\’, to separate name units within
a file name, instead of the slash used on other systems. Emacs on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
permits use of either slash or backslash, and also knows about drive letters in file names.
Appendix H: Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS 603

On MS-DOS/MS-Windows, file names are case-insensitive, so Emacs by default ignores

letter-case in file names during completion. To this end, the default value of read-file-
name-completion-ignore-case is non-nil on MS-DOS/MS-Windows. See Section 5.4.5
[Completion Options], page 34.
The variable w32-get-true-file-attributes controls whether Emacs should issue
additional system calls to determine more accurately file attributes in primitives like
file-attributes and directory-files-and-attributes. These additional calls are
needed to report correct file ownership, link counts and file types for special files such
as pipes. Without these system calls, file ownership will be attributed to the current user,
link counts will be always reported as 1, and special files will be reported as regular files.
If the value of this variable is local (the default), Emacs will issue these additional
system calls only for files on local fixed drives. Any other non-nil value means do this even
for removable and remote volumes, where this could potentially slow down Dired and other
related features. The value of nil means never issue those system calls. Non-nil values
are more useful on NTFS volumes, which support hard links and file security, than on FAT,
FAT32, and exFAT volumes.
Unlike Unix, MS-Windows file systems restrict the set of characters that can be used in
a file name. The following characters are not allowed:
• Shell redirection symbols ‘<’, ‘>’, and ‘|’.
• Colon ‘:’ (except after the drive letter).
• Forward slash ‘/’ and backslash ‘\’ (except as directory separators).
• Wildcard characters ‘*’ and ‘?’.
• Control characters whose codepoints are 1 through 31 decimal. In particular, newlines
in file names are not allowed.
• The null character, whose codepoint is zero (this limitation exists on Unix filesystems
as well).
In addition, referencing any file whose name matches a DOS character device, such as NUL
or LPT1 or PRN or CON, with or without any file-name extension, will always resolve to those
character devices, in any directory. Therefore, only use such file names when you want to
use the corresponding character device.

H.4 Emulation of ls on MS-Windows

Dired normally uses the external program ls to produce the directory listing displayed in
Dired buffers (see Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378). However, MS-Windows and MS-DOS
systems don’t come with such a program, although several ports of gnu ls are available.
Therefore, Emacs on those systems emulates ls in Lisp, by using the ls-lisp.el package.
While ls-lisp.el provides a reasonably full emulation of ls, there are some options and
features peculiar to that emulation; for more details, see the documentation of the variables
whose names begin with ls-lisp.

H.5 HOME and Startup Directories on MS-Windows

The Windows equivalent of HOME is the user-specific application data direc-
tory. The actual location depends on the Windows version; typical values are
604 GNU Emacs Manual

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data on Windows 2000 up to

XP, C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming on Windows Vista and later, and either
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data or C:\WINDOWS\Profiles\username\Application Data
on Windows 9X/ME. If this directory does not exist or cannot be accessed, Emacs falls
back to C:\ as the default value of HOME.
You can override this default value of HOME by explicitly setting the environment variable
HOME to point to any directory on your system. HOME can be set either from the command
shell prompt or from ‘Properties’ dialog of ‘My Computer’. HOME can also be set in the
system registry, see Section C.4.3 [MS-Windows Registry], page 577.
For compatibility with older versions of Emacs1 , if there is a file named .emacs in C:\,
the root directory of drive C:, and HOME is set neither in the environment nor in the Registry,
Emacs will treat C:\ as the default HOME location, and will not look in the application data
directory, even if it exists. Note that only .emacs is looked for in C:\; the older name
_emacs (see below) is not. This use of C:\.emacs to define HOME is deprecated; Emacs will
display a warning about its use during startup.
Whatever the final place is, Emacs sets the internal value of the HOME environment
variable to point to it, and it will use that location for other files and directories it normally
looks for or creates in your home directory.
You can always find out what Emacs thinks is your home directory’s location by typing
C-x d ~/ RET. This should present the list of files in the home directory, and show its full
name on the first line. Likewise, to visit your init file, type C-x C-f ~/.emacs RET (assuming
the file’s name is .emacs).
Your init file can have any name mentioned in Section 33.4 [Init File], page 522.
Because MS-DOS does not allow file names with leading dots, and older Windows systems
made it hard to create files with such names, the Windows port of Emacs supports an init
file name _emacs, if such a file exists in the home directory and .emacs does not. This name
is considered obsolete, so Emacs will display a warning if it is used.

H.6 Keyboard Usage on MS-Windows

This section describes the Windows-specific features related to keyboard input in Emacs.
Many key combinations (known as “keyboard shortcuts”) that have conventional uses
in MS-Windows programs conflict with traditional Emacs key bindings. (These Emacs
key bindings were established years before Microsoft was founded.) Examples of conflicts
include C-c, C-x, C-z, and C-a. You can redefine some of them with meanings more like the
MS-Windows meanings by enabling CUA Mode (see Section 9.6 [CUA Bindings], page 70).
Another optional feature which will make Emacs behave like other Windows applications is
Delete Selection mode (see Section 8.3 [Using Region], page 54).
The variable w32-apps-modifier controls the effect of the Apps key (usually located
between the right Alt and the right Ctrl keys). Its value can be one of the symbols hyper,
super, meta, alt, control, or shift for the respective modifier, or nil to appear as the
key apps. The default is nil.
The variable w32-lwindow-modifier determines the effect of the left Windows key
(usually labeled with start and the Windows logo). If its value is nil (the default), the key
1
Older versions of Emacs didn’t check the application data directory.
Appendix H: Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS 605

will produce the symbol lwindow. Setting it to one of the symbols hyper, super, meta, alt,
control, or shift will produce the respective modifier. A similar variable w32-rwindow-
modifier controls the effect of the right Windows key, and w32-scroll-lock-modifier
does the same for the ScrLock key. If these variables are set to nil, the right Windows
key produces the symbol rwindow and ScrLock produces the symbol scroll. If you want
ScrLock to produce the same effect as in other applications, i.e. toggle the Scroll Lock
LED indication on the keyboard, set w32-scroll-lock-modifier to t or any non-nil value
other than the above modifier symbols.
Emacs compiled as a native Windows application normally turns off the Windows feature
that tapping the Alt key invokes the Windows menu. The reason is that the Alt serves as
Meta in Emacs. When using Emacs, users often press the Meta key temporarily and then
change their minds; if this has the effect of bringing up the Windows menu, it alters the
meaning of subsequent commands. Many users find this frustrating.
You can re-enable Windows’s default handling of tapping the Alt key by setting
w32-pass-alt-to-system to a non-nil value.

H.7 Mouse Usage on MS-Windows

This section describes the Windows-specific variables related to the mouse.
The variable w32-mouse-button-tolerance specifies the time interval, in milliseconds,
for faking middle mouse button press on 2-button mice. If both mouse buttons are depressed
within this time interval, Emacs generates a middle mouse button click event instead of a
double click on one of the buttons.
If the variable w32-pass-extra-mouse-buttons-to-system is non-nil, Emacs passes
the fourth and fifth mouse buttons to Windows.
The variable w32-swap-mouse-buttons controls which of the 3 mouse buttons generates
the mouse-2 events. When it is nil (the default), the middle button generates mouse-2 and
the right button generates mouse-3 events. If this variable is non-nil, the roles of these two
buttons are reversed.

H.8 Subprocesses on Windows 9X/ME and Windows

NT/2K/XP/Vista/7/8/10
Emacs compiled as a native Windows application (as opposed to the DOS version) includes
full support for asynchronous subprocesses. In the Windows version, synchronous and
asynchronous subprocesses work fine on all versions of MS-Windows, as long as you run
only 32-bit or 64-bit Windows applications. However, when you run a DOS application in
a subprocess, you may encounter problems or be unable to run the application at all; and
if you run two DOS applications at the same time in two subprocesses, you may have to
reboot your system.
Since the standard command interpreter (and most command line utilities) on Windows
9X are DOS applications, these problems are significant when using that system. But there’s
nothing we can do about them; only Microsoft can fix them.
If you run just one DOS application subprocess, the subprocess should work as expected
as long as it is “well-behaved” and does not perform direct screen access or other unusual
actions. If you have a CPU monitor application, your machine will appear to be 100% busy
606 GNU Emacs Manual

even when the DOS application is idle, but this is only an artifact of the way CPU monitors
measure processor load.
You must terminate the DOS application before you start any other DOS application in a
different subprocess. Emacs is unable to interrupt or terminate a DOS subprocess. The only
way you can terminate such a subprocess is by giving it a command that tells its program
to exit.
If you attempt to run two DOS applications at the same time in separate subprocesses,
the second one that is started will be suspended until the first one finishes, even if either or
both of them are asynchronous.
If you can go to the first subprocess, and tell it to exit, the second subprocess should
continue normally. However, if the second subprocess is synchronous, Emacs itself will be
hung until the first subprocess finishes. If it will not finish without user input, then you have
no choice but to reboot if you are running on Windows 9X. If you are running on Windows
NT and later, you can use a process viewer application to kill the appropriate instance of
NTVDM instead (this will terminate both DOS subprocesses).
If you have to reboot Windows 9X in this situation, do not use the Shutdown command
on the Start menu; that usually hangs the system. Instead, type Ctrl-Alt-DEL and then
choose Shutdown. That usually works, although it may take a few minutes to do its job.
The variable w32-quote-process-args controls how Emacs quotes the process arguments.
Non-nil means quote with the " character. If the value is a character, Emacs uses that
character to escape any quote characters that appear; otherwise it chooses a suitable escape
character based on the type of the program.
The variable w32-pipe-buffer-size controls the size of the buffer Emacs requests from
the system when it creates pipes for communications with subprocesses. The default value
is zero, which lets the OS choose the size. Any valid positive value will request a buffer of
that size in bytes. This can be used to tailor communications with subprocesses to programs
that exhibit unusual behavior with respect to buffering pipe I/O.

H.9 Printing and MS-Windows

Printing commands, such as lpr-buffer (see Section 31.7 [Printing], page 471) and
ps-print-buffer (see Section 31.7.1 [PostScript], page 472) work in MS-DOS and MS-
Windows by sending the output to one of the printer ports, if a POSIX-style lpr program is
unavailable. The same Emacs variables control printing on all systems, but in some cases
they have different default values on MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
Emacs on MS Windows attempts to determine your default printer automatically (using
the function default-printer-name). But in some rare cases this can fail, or you may wish
to use a different printer from within Emacs. The rest of this section explains how to tell
Emacs which printer to use.
If you want to use your local printer, then set the Lisp variable lpr-command to "" (its
default value on Windows) and printer-name to the name of the printer port—for example,
"PRN", the usual local printer port, or "LPT2", or "COM1" for a serial printer. You can also
set printer-name to a file name, in which case “printed” output is actually appended to
that file. If you set printer-name to "NUL", printed output is silently discarded (sent to
the system null device).
Appendix H: Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS 607

You can also use a printer shared by another machine by setting printer-name to the
UNC share name for that printer—for example, "//joes_pc/hp4si". (It doesn’t matter
whether you use forward slashes or backslashes here.) To find out the names of shared
printers, run the command ‘net view’ from the command prompt to obtain a list of servers,
and ‘net view server-name’ to see the names of printers (and directories) shared by that
server. Alternatively, click the ‘Network Neighborhood’ icon on your desktop, and look for
machines that share their printers via the network.
If the printer doesn’t appear in the output of ‘net view’, or if setting printer-name to
the UNC share name doesn’t produce a hardcopy on that printer, you can use the ‘net
use’ command to connect a local print port such as "LPT2" to the networked printer. For
example, typing net use LPT2: \\joes_pc\hp4si2 causes Windows to capture the LPT2
port and redirect the printed material to the printer connected to the machine joes_pc.
After this command, setting printer-name to "LPT2" should produce the hardcopy on the
networked printer.
With some varieties of Windows network software, you can instruct Windows to capture
a specific printer port such as "LPT2", and redirect it to a networked printer via the
Control Panel->Printers applet instead of ‘net use’.
If you set printer-name to a file name, it’s best to use an absolute file name. Emacs
changes the working directory according to the default directory of the current buffer, so if
the file name in printer-name is relative, you will end up with several such files, each one
in the directory of the buffer from which the printing was done.
If the value of printer-name is correct, but printing does not produce the hardcopy on
your printer, it is possible that your printer does not support printing plain text (some cheap
printers omit this functionality). In that case, try the PostScript print commands, described
below.
The commands print-buffer and print-region call the pr program, or use special
switches to the lpr program, to produce headers on each printed page. MS-DOS and
MS-Windows don’t normally have these programs, so by default, the variable lpr-headers-
switches is set so that the requests to print page headers are silently ignored. Thus,
print-buffer and print-region produce the same output as lpr-buffer and lpr-region,
respectively. If you do have a suitable pr program (for example, from GNU Coreutils), set
lpr-headers-switches to nil; Emacs will then call pr to produce the page headers, and
print the resulting output as specified by printer-name.
Finally, if you do have an lpr work-alike, you can set the variable lpr-command to "lpr".
Then Emacs will use lpr for printing, as on other systems. (If the name of the program
isn’t lpr, set lpr-command to the appropriate value.) The variable lpr-switches has its
standard meaning when lpr-command is not "". If the variable printer-name has a string
value, it is used as the value for the -P option to lpr, as on Unix.
A parallel set of variables, ps-lpr-command, ps-lpr-switches, and ps-printer-name
(see Section 31.7.2 [PostScript Variables], page 473), defines how PostScript files should be
printed. These variables are used in the same way as the corresponding variables described
above for non-PostScript printing. Thus, the value of ps-printer-name is used as the name
of the device (or file) to which PostScript output is sent, just as printer-name is used
2
Note that the ‘net use’ command requires the UNC share name to be typed with the Windows-style
backslashes, while the value of printer-name can be set with either forward- or backslashes.
608 GNU Emacs Manual

for non-PostScript printing. (There are two distinct sets of variables in case you have two
printers attached to two different ports, and only one of them is a PostScript printer.)
The default value of the variable ps-lpr-command is "", which causes PostScript output
to be sent to the printer port specified by ps-printer-name; but ps-lpr-command can also
be set to the name of a program which will accept PostScript files. Thus, if you have a
non-PostScript printer, you can set this variable to the name of a PostScript interpreter
program (such as Ghostscript). Any switches that need to be passed to the interpreter
program are specified using ps-lpr-switches. (If the value of ps-printer-name is a string,
it will be added to the list of switches as the value for the -P option. This is probably
only useful if you are using lpr, so when using an interpreter typically you would set
ps-printer-name to something other than a string so it is ignored.)
For example, to use Ghostscript for printing on the system’s default printer, put this in
your .emacs file:
(setq ps-printer-name t)
(setq ps-lpr-command "D:/gs6.01/bin/gswin32c.exe")
(setq ps-lpr-switches '("-q" "-dNOPAUSE" "-dBATCH"
"-sDEVICE=mswinpr2"
"-sPAPERSIZE=a4"))
(This assumes that Ghostscript is installed in the D:/gs6.01 directory.)

H.10 Specifying Fonts on MS-Windows

Fonts are specified by their name, size and optional properties. The format for specifying
fonts comes from the fontconfig library used in modern Free desktops:
[Family[-PointSize]][:Option1=Value1[:Option2=Value2[...]]]
The old XLFD based format is also supported for backwards compatibility.
Emacs on MS-Windows supports a number of font backends. Currently, the gdi,
uniscribe, and harfbuzz backends are available. The gdi font backend is available on
all versions of Windows, and supports all fonts that are natively supported by Windows.
The uniscribe font backend is available on Windows 2000 and later, and supports
TrueType and OpenType fonts. The harfbuzz font backend is available if Emacs was
built with HarfBuzz support, and if the HarfBuzz DLL is installed on your system; like
uniscribe, this backend supports only TrueType and OpenType fonts. Some languages
requiring complex layout can only be properly supported by the Uniscribe or HarfBuzz
backends. By default, two backends are enabled for each frame: gdi and either harfbuzz
or uniscribe, depending on which one is available (if both are available, only harfbuzz
is enabled by default). The harfbuzz and uniscribe backends take priority over gdi
when Emacs looks for a suitable font. To override that and use the GDI backend
even if Uniscribe is available, invoke Emacs with the -xrm Emacs.fontBackend:gdi
command-line argument, or add a Emacs.fontBackend resource with the value gdi
in the Registry under either the ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs’ or the
‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GNU\Emacs’ key (see Section D.1 [Resources], page 584).
Similarly, to use the Uniscribe backend even if HarfBuzz is available, use -xrm
Emacs.fontBackend:uniscribe on the command line that invokes Emacs. You can also
request all the 3 backends via the font-backend frame parameter, but be warned that in
Appendix H: Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS 609

that case font searches for characters for which no fonts are available on the system will
take longer.
Alternatively, you could specify a font backend for a frame via the font-backend frame
parameter, using modify-frame-parameters (see Section “Parameter Access” in The Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual). You can also request specific font backend(s) for all your frames via
default-frame-alist and initial-frame-alist (see Section 18.11 [Frame Parameters],
page 205). Note that the value of the font-backend parameter should be a list of symbols,
as in (uniscribe) or (harfbuzz uniscribe gdi).
Optional font properties supported on MS-Windows are:
weight Specifies the weight of the font. Special values light, medium, demibold,
bold, and black can be specified without weight= (e.g., Courier New-12:bold).
Otherwise, the weight should be a numeric value between 100 and 900, or one
of the named weights in font-weight-table. If unspecified, a regular font is
assumed.
slant Specifies whether the font is italic. Special values roman, italic and oblique
can be specified without slant= (e.g., Courier New-12:italic). Otherwise,
the slant should be a numeric value, or one of the named slants in font-slant-
table. On Windows, any slant above 150 is treated as italics, and anything
below as roman.
family Specifies the font family, but normally this will be specified at the start of the
font name.
pixelsize
Specifies the font size in pixels. This can be used instead of the point size
specified after the family name.
adstyle Specifies additional style information for the font. On MS-Windows, the values
mono, sans, serif, script and decorative are recognized. These are most
useful as a fallback with the font family left unspecified.
registry Specifies the character set registry that the font is expected to cover. Most
TrueType and OpenType fonts will be Unicode fonts that cover several national
character sets, but you can narrow down the selection of fonts to those that
support a particular character set by using a specific registry from w32-charset-
info-alist here.
spacing Specifies how the font is spaced. The p spacing specifies a proportional font,
and m or c specify a monospaced font.
foundry Not used on Windows, but for informational purposes and to prevent problems
with code that expects it to be set, is set internally to raster for bitmapped
fonts, outline for scalable fonts, or unknown if the type cannot be determined
as one of those.
script Specifies a Unicode subrange the font should support.
All the scripts known to Emacs (which generally means all the scripts defined
by the latest Unicode Standard) are recognized on MS-Windows. However, GDI
fonts support only a subset of the known scripts: greek, hangul, kana, kanbun,
bopomofo, tibetan, yi, mongolian, hebrew, arabic, and thai.
610 GNU Emacs Manual

antialias
Specifies the antialiasing method. The value none means no antialiasing,
standard means use standard antialiasing, subpixel means use subpixel an-
tialiasing (known as Cleartype on Windows), and natural means use subpixel
antialiasing with adjusted spacing between letters. If unspecified, the font will
use the system default antialiasing.
The method used by Emacs on MS-Windows to look for fonts suitable for displaying
a given non-ascii character might fail for some rare scripts, specifically those added by
Unicode relatively recently, even if you have fonts installed on your system that support
those scripts. That is because these scripts have no Unicode Subrange Bits (USBs) defined
for them in the information used by Emacs on MS-Windows to look for fonts. You can
use the w32-find-non-USB-fonts function to overcome these problems. It needs to be run
once at the beginning of the Emacs session, and again if you install new fonts. You can add
the following line to your init file to have this function run every time you start Emacs:
(w32-find-non-USB-fonts)
Alternatively, you can run this function manually via M-: (see Section 24.9 [Lisp Eval],
page 328) at any time. On a system that has many fonts installed, running w32-find-non-
USB-fonts might take a couple of seconds; if you consider that to be too long to be run
during startup, and if you install new fonts only rarely, run this function once via M-:, and
then assign the value it returns, if non-nil, to the variable w32-non-USB-fonts in your init
file. (If the function returns nil, you have no fonts installed that can display characters
from the scripts which need this facility.)
The variable w32-use-w32-font-dialog controls the way fonts can be selected via
S-mouse-1 (mouse-appearance-menu). If the value is t, the default, Emacs uses the
standard Windows font selection dialog. If the value is nil, Emacs instead pops a menu of
a fixed set of fonts. The fonts to appear in the menu are determined by w32-fixed-font-
alist.

H.11 Miscellaneous Windows-specific features

This section describes Windows-specific features that don’t fit anywhere else.
The variable w32-use-visible-system-caret is a flag that determines whether to make
the system caret visible. The default when no screen reader software is in use is nil, which
means Emacs draws its own cursor to indicate the position of point. A non-nil value means
Emacs will indicate point location with the system caret; this facilitates use of screen reader
software, and is the default when such software is detected when running Emacs. When this
variable is non-nil, other variables affecting the cursor display have no effect.
On Windows 10 (version 1809 and higher) and Windows 11, Emacs title bars
and scroll bars will follow the system’s Light or Dark mode, similar to other
programs such as Explorer and Command Prompt. To change the color mode, select
Personalization from Windows Settings, then Colors->Choose your color (or
Choose your default app mode); then restart Emacs.
 611

The GNU Manifesto

The GNU Manifesto which appears below was written by Richard Stallman at
the beginning of the GNU project, to ask for participation and support. For the
first few years, it was updated in minor ways to account for developments, but
now it seems best to leave it unchanged as most people have seen it.
Since that time, we have learned about certain common misunderstandings that
different wording could help avoid. Footnotes added in 1993 help clarify these
points.
For up-to-date information about available GNU software, please see our web
site, https://www.gnu.org. For software tasks and other ways to contribute,
see https://www.gnu.org/help.

What’s GNU? Gnu’s Not Unix!

GNU, which stands for Gnu’s Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible
software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use
it.1 Several other volunteers are helping me. Contributions of time, money, programs and
equipment are greatly needed.
So far we have an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands, a source
level debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator, a linker, and around 35 utilities. A
shell (command interpreter) is nearly completed. A new portable optimizing C compiler
has compiled itself and may be released this year. An initial kernel exists but many more
features are needed to emulate Unix. When the kernel and compiler are finished, it will be
possible to distribute a GNU system suitable for program development. We will use TEX
as our text formatter, but an nroff is being worked on. We will use the free, portable X
window system as well. After this we will add a portable Common Lisp, an Empire game, a
spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things, plus on-line documentation. We hope to supply,
eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and more.
GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make
all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems.
In particular, we plan to have longer file names, file version numbers, a crashproof file
system, file name completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and perhaps
eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary
Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming
languages. We will try to support UUCP, MIT Chaosnet, and Internet protocols for
communication.
1
The wording here was careless. The intention was that nobody would have to pay for permission to use
the GNU system. But the words don’t make this clear, and people often interpret them as saying that
copies of GNU should always be distributed at little or no charge. That was never the intent; later on,
the manifesto mentions the possibility of companies providing the service of distribution for a profit.
Subsequently I have learned to distinguish carefully between “free” in the sense of freedom and “free” in
the sense of price. Free software is software that users have the freedom to distribute and change. Some
users may obtain copies at no charge, while others pay to obtain copies—and if the funds help support
improving the software, so much the better. The important thing is that everyone who has a copy has
the freedom to cooperate with others in using it.
612 GNU Emacs Manual

GNU is aimed initially at machines in the 68000/16000 class with virtual memory, because
they are the easiest machines to make it run on. The extra effort to make it run on smaller
machines will be left to someone who wants to use it on them.
To avoid horrible confusion, please pronounce the “G” in the word “GNU” when it is the
name of this project.

Why I Must Write GNU

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other
people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each
user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.
I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.
For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other
inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution
where such things are done for me against my will.
So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together
a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software
that is not free. I have resigned from the AI lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent
me from giving GNU away.

Why GNU Will Be Compatible with Unix

Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The essential features of Unix seem to
be good ones, and I think I can fill in what Unix lacks without spoiling them. And a system
compatible with Unix would be convenient for many other people to adopt.

How GNU Will Be Available

GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute
GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution. That is to say,
proprietary modifications will not be allowed. I want to make sure that all versions of GNU
remain free.

Why Many Other Programmers Want to Help

I have found many other programmers who are excited about GNU and want to help.
Many programmers are unhappy about the commercialization of system software. It
may enable them to make more money, but it requires them to feel in conflict with other
programmers in general rather than feel as comrades. The fundamental act of friendship
among programmers is the sharing of programs; marketing arrangements now typically used
essentially forbid programmers to treat others as friends. The purchaser of software must
choose between friendship and obeying the law. Naturally, many decide that friendship is
more important. But those who believe in law often do not feel at ease with either choice.
They become cynical and think that programming is just a way of making money.
By working on and using GNU rather than proprietary programs, we can be hospitable
to everyone and obey the law. In addition, GNU serves as an example to inspire and a
banner to rally others to join us in sharing. This can give us a feeling of harmony which is
The GNU Manifesto 613

impossible if we use software that is not free. For about half the programmers I talk to, this
is an important happiness that money cannot replace.

How You Can Contribute

I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money. I’m asking
individuals for donations of programs and work.
One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them
at an early date. The machines should be complete, ready to use systems, approved for use
in a residential area, and not in need of sophisticated cooling or power.
I have found very many programmers eager to contribute part-time work for GNU.
For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the
independently-written parts would not work together. But for the particular task of replacing
Unix, this problem is absent. A complete Unix system contains hundreds of utility programs,
each of which is documented separately. Most interface specifications are fixed by Unix
compatibility. If each contributor can write a compatible replacement for a single Unix utility,
and make it work properly in place of the original on a Unix system, then these utilities
will work right when put together. Even allowing for Murphy to create a few unexpected
problems, assembling these components will be a feasible task. (The kernel will require
closer communication and will be worked on by a small, tight group.)
If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or part time. The
salary won’t be high by programmers’ standards, but I’m looking for people for whom
building community spirit is as important as making money. I view this as a way of enabling
dedicated people to devote their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them the need
to make a living in another way.

Why All Computer Users Will Benefit

Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like
air.2
This means much more than just saving everyone the price of a Unix license. It means
that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort
can go instead into advancing the state of the art.
Complete system sources will be available to everyone. As a result, a user who needs
changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available
programmer or company to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one
programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes.
Schools will be able to provide a much more educational environment by encouraging all
students to study and improve the system code. Harvard’s computer lab used to have the
policy that no program could be installed on the system if its sources were not on public
display, and upheld it by actually refusing to install certain programs. I was very much
inspired by this.

2
This is another place I failed to distinguish carefully between the two different meanings of “free.” The
statement as it stands is not false—you can get copies of GNU software at no charge, from your friends
or over the net. But it does suggest the wrong idea.
614 GNU Emacs Manual

Finally, the overhead of considering who owns the system software and what one is or is
not entitled to do with it will be lifted.
Arrangements to make people pay for using a program, including licensing of copies,
always incur a tremendous cost to society through the cumbersome mechanisms necessary to
figure out how much (that is, which programs) a person must pay for. And only a police state
can force everyone to obey them. Consider a space station where air must be manufactured
at great cost: charging each breather per liter of air may be fair, but wearing the metered
gas mask all day and all night is intolerable even if everyone can afford to pay the air bill.
And the TV cameras everywhere to see if you ever take the mask off are outrageous. It’s
better to support the air plant with a head tax and chuck the masks.
Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as
productive. It ought to be as free.

Some Easily Rebutted Objections to GNU’s Goals

“Nobody will use it if it is free, because that means they can’t rely on any
support.”
“You have to charge for the program to pay for providing the support.”
If people would rather pay for GNU plus service than get GNU free without service,
a company to provide just service to people who have obtained GNU free ought to be
profitable.3
We must distinguish between support in the form of real programming work and mere
handholding. The former is something one cannot rely on from a software vendor. If your
problem is not shared by enough people, the vendor will tell you to get lost.
If your business needs to be able to rely on support, the only way is to have all the
necessary sources and tools. Then you can hire any available person to fix your problem;
you are not at the mercy of any individual. With Unix, the price of sources puts this out of
consideration for most businesses. With GNU this will be easy. It is still possible for there
to be no available competent person, but this problem cannot be blamed on distribution
arrangements. GNU does not eliminate all the world’s problems, only some of them.
Meanwhile, the users who know nothing about computers need handholding: doing things
for them which they could easily do themselves but don’t know how.
Such services could be provided by companies that sell just hand-holding and repair
service. If it is true that users would rather spend money and get a product with service, they
will also be willing to buy the service having got the product free. The service companies
will compete in quality and price; users will not be tied to any particular one. Meanwhile,
those of us who don’t need the service should be able to use the program without paying for
the service.
“You cannot reach many people without advertising, and you must charge for
the program to support that.”
“It’s no use advertising a program people can get free.”
There are various forms of free or very cheap publicity that can be used to inform numbers
of computer users about something like GNU. But it may be true that one can reach more
3
Several such companies now exist.
The GNU Manifesto 615

microcomputer users with advertising. If this is really so, a business which advertises the
service of copying and mailing GNU for a fee ought to be successful enough to pay for its
advertising and more. This way, only the users who benefit from the advertising pay for it.
On the other hand, if many people get GNU from their friends, and such companies don’t
succeed, this will show that advertising was not really necessary to spread GNU. Why is it
that free market advocates don’t want to let the free market decide this?4
“My company needs a proprietary operating system to get a competitive edge.”
GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition. You will
not be able to get an edge in this area, but neither will your competitors be able to get an
edge over you. You and they will compete in other areas, while benefiting mutually in this
one. If your business is selling an operating system, you will not like GNU, but that’s tough
on you. If your business is something else, GNU can save you from being pushed into the
expensive business of selling operating systems.
I would like to see GNU development supported by gifts from many manufacturers and
users, reducing the cost to each.5
“Don’t programmers deserve a reward for their creativity?”
If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution. Creativity can be a social
contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. If programmers deserve
to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be
punished if they restrict the use of these programs.
“Shouldn’t a programmer be able to ask for a reward for his creativity?”
There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one’s income,
as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But the means customary in the
field of software today are based on destruction.
Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive
because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used.
This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is
a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is
that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This
is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if
everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically,
the desire to be rewarded for one’s creativity does not justify depriving the world in general
of all or part of that creativity.
“Won’t programmers starve?”
I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage
to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result,
condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do
something else.
4
The Free Software Foundation raises most of its funds from a distribution service, although it is a charity
rather than a company. If no one chooses to obtain copies by ordering from the FSF, it will be unable
to do its work. But this does not mean that proprietary restrictions are justified to force every user to
pay. If a small fraction of all the users order copies from the FSF, that is sufficient to keep the FSF
afloat. So we ask users to choose to support us in this way. Have you done your part?
5
A group of computer companies recently pooled funds to support maintenance of the GNU C Compiler.
616 GNU Emacs Manual

But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner’s implicit assumption:
that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly
it is all or nothing.
The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to
get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now.
Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common
basis because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer,
software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often.
There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that
is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks
make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an
injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than that.)
“Don’t people have a right to control how their creativity is used?”
“Control over the use of one’s ideas” really constitutes control over other people’s lives;
and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.
People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights6 carefully (such as
lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed
intellectual property rights that the government recognizes were created by specific acts of
legislation for specific purposes.
For example, the patent system was established to encourage inventors to disclose the
details of their inventions. Its purpose was to help society rather than to help inventors. At
the time, the life span of 17 years for a patent was short compared with the rate of advance
of the state of the art. Since patents are an issue only among manufacturers, for whom
the cost and effort of a license agreement are small compared with setting up production,
the patents often do not do much harm. They do not obstruct most individuals who use
patented products.
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other
authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many
authors’ works have survived even in part. The copyright system was created expressly for
the purpose of encouraging authorship. In the domain for which it was invented—books,
which could be copied economically only on a printing press—it did little harm, and did not
obstruct most of the individuals who read the books.
All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society because it was thought,
rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any
particular situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What
kind of act are we licensing a person to do?
The case of programs today is very different from that of books a hundred years ago.
The fact that the easiest way to copy a program is from one neighbor to another, the fact
6
In the 80s I had not yet realized how confusing it was to speak of “the issue” of “intellectual property.”
That term is obviously biased; more subtle is the fact that it lumps together various disparate laws which
raise very different issues. Nowadays I urge people to reject the term “intellectual property” entirely,
lest it lead others to suppose that those laws form one coherent issue. The way to be clear is to discuss
patents, copyrights, and trademarks separately. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml
for more explanation of how this term spreads confusion and bias.
The GNU Manifesto 617

that a program has both source code and object code which are distinct, and the fact that
a program is used rather than read and enjoyed, combine to create a situation in which a
person who enforces a copyright is harming society as a whole both materially and spiritually;
in which a person should not do so regardless of whether the law enables him to.
“Competition makes things get done better.”
The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone
to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders
are wrong in assuming it always works this way. If the runners forget why the reward is
offered and become intent on winning, no matter how, they may find other strategies—such
as, attacking other runners. If the runners get into a fist fight, they will all finish late.
Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners in a fist fight. Sad
to say, the only referee we’ve got does not seem to object to fights; he just regulates them
(“For every ten yards you run, you can fire one shot”). He really ought to break them up,
and penalize runners for even trying to fight.
“Won’t everyone stop programming without a monetary incentive?”
Actually, many people will program with absolutely no monetary incentive. Programming
has an irresistible fascination for some people, usually the people who are best at it. There
is no shortage of professional musicians who keep at it even though they have no hope of
making a living that way.
But really this question, though commonly asked, is not appropriate to the situation.
Pay for programmers will not disappear, only become less. So the right question is, will
anyone program with a reduced monetary incentive? My experience shows that they will.
For more than ten years, many of the world’s best programmers worked at the Artificial
Intelligence Lab for far less money than they could have had anywhere else. They got many
kinds of non-monetary rewards: fame and appreciation, for example. And creativity is also
fun, a reward in itself.
Then most of them left when offered a chance to do the same interesting work for a lot
of money.
What the facts show is that people will program for reasons other than riches; but if
given a chance to make a lot of money as well, they will come to expect and demand it.
Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not
have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned.
“We need the programmers desperately. If they demand that we stop helping
our neighbors, we have to obey.”
You’re never so desperate that you have to obey this sort of demand. Remember: millions
for defense, but not a cent for tribute!
“Programmers need to make a living somehow.”
In the short run, this is true. However, there are plenty of ways that programmers could
make a living without selling the right to use a program. This way is customary now because
it brings programmers and businessmen the most money, not because it is the only way to
make a living. It is easy to find other ways if you want to find them. Here are a number of
examples.
A manufacturer introducing a new computer will pay for the porting of operating systems
onto the new hardware.
618 GNU Emacs Manual

The sale of teaching, hand-holding and maintenance services could also employ program-
mers.
People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware7 , asking for donations from
satisfied users, or selling hand-holding services. I have met people who are already working
this way successfully.
Users with related needs can form users’ groups, and pay dues. A group would contract
with programming companies to write programs that the group’s members would like to use.
All sorts of development can be funded with a Software Tax:
Suppose everyone who buys a computer has to pay x percent of the price as a
software tax. The government gives this to an agency like the NSF to spend on
software development.
But if the computer buyer makes a donation to software development himself,
he can take a credit against the tax. He can donate to the project of his own
choosing—often, chosen because he hopes to use the results when it is done. He
can take a credit for any amount of donation up to the total tax he had to pay.
The total tax rate could be decided by a vote of the payers of the tax, weighted
according to the amount they will be taxed on.
The consequences:
• The computer-using community supports software development.
• This community decides what level of support is needed.
• Users who care which projects their share is spent on can choose this for
themselves.
In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where
nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote
themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary
ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and
asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming.
We have already greatly reduced the amount of work that the whole society must do
for its actual productivity, but only a little of this has translated itself into leisure for
workers because much nonproductive activity is required to accompany productive activity.
The main causes of this are bureaucracy and isometric struggles against competition. Free
software will greatly reduce these drains in the area of software production. We must do
this, in order for technical gains in productivity to translate into less work for us.

7
Subsequently we have discovered the need to distinguish between “free software” and “freeware”. The
term “freeware” means software you are free to redistribute, but usually you are not free to study and
change the source code, so most of it is not free software. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/
words-to-avoid.html for more explanation.
 619

Glossary
Abbrev An abbrev is a text string that expands into a different text string when present
in the buffer. For example, you might define a few letters as an abbrev for a long
phrase that you want to insert frequently. See Chapter 26 [Abbrevs], page 371.
Aborting Aborting means getting out of a recursive edit (q.v.). The commands C-] and
M-x top-level are used for this. See Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 530.
Active Region
Setting the mark (q.v.) at a position in the text also activates it. When the mark
is active, we call the region an active region. See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51.
Alt Alt is the name of a modifier bit that a keyboard input character may have. To
make a character Alt, type it while holding down the Alt key. Such characters
are given names that start with Alt- (usually written A- for short). (Note that
many terminals have a key labeled Alt that is really a Meta key.) See Section 2.1
[User Input], page 11.
Argument See [Glossary—Numeric Argument], page 635.
ASCII character
An ASCII character is either an ASCII control character or an ASCII printing
character. See Section 2.1 [User Input], page 11.
ASCII control character
An ASCII control character is the Control version of an upper-case letter, or the
Control version of one of the characters ‘@[\]^_?’.
ASCII printing character
ASCII letters, digits, space, and the following punctuation characters:
‘!@#$%^&*()_-+=|\~`{}[]:;"'<>,.?/’.
Auto Fill Mode
Auto Fill mode is a minor mode (q.v.) in which text that you insert is automat-
ically broken into lines of a given maximum width. See Section 22.6 [Filling],
page 256.
Auto Saving
Auto saving is the practice of periodically saving the contents of an Emacs buffer
in a specially-named file, so that the information will be preserved if the buffer is
lost due to a system error or user error. See Section 15.6 [Auto Save], page 159.
Autoloading
Emacs can automatically load Lisp libraries when a Lisp program requests a
function from those libraries. This is called “autoloading”. See Section 24.8
[Lisp Libraries], page 326.
Backtrace A backtrace is a trace of a series of function calls showing how a program arrived
at a certain point. It is used mainly for finding and correcting bugs (q.v.).
Emacs can display a backtrace when it signals an error or when you type C-g
(see [Glossary—Quitting], page 636). See Section 34.3.4 [Checklist], page 539.
620 GNU Emacs Manual

Backup File
A backup file records the contents that a file had before the current editing
session. Emacs makes backup files automatically to help you track down or
cancel changes you later regret making. See Section 15.3.2 [Backup], page 151.
Balancing Parentheses
Emacs can balance parentheses (or other matching delimiters) either manually
or automatically. You do manual balancing with the commands to move over
parenthetical groupings (see Section 23.4.2 [Moving by Parens], page 293).
Automatic balancing works by blinking or highlighting the delimiter that matches
the one you just inserted, or inserting the matching delimiter for you (see
Section 23.4.3 [Matching Parens], page 294).
Balanced Expressions
A balanced expression is a syntactically recognizable expression, such as a symbol
(q.v.), number, string constant, block, or parenthesized expression in C. See
Section 23.4.1 [Expressions], page 292.
Balloon Help
See [Glossary—Tooltips], page 640.
Base Buffer
A base buffer is a buffer whose text is shared by an indirect buffer (q.v.).
Bidirectional Text
Some human languages, such as English, are written from left to right. Others,
such as Arabic, are written from right to left. Emacs supports both of these forms,
as well as any mixture of them—this is “bidirectional text”. See Section 19.20
[Bidirectional Editing], page 238.
Bind To bind a key sequence means to give it a binding (q.v.). See Section 33.3.5
[Rebinding], page 515.
Binding A key sequence gets its meaning in Emacs by having a binding, which is a
command (q.v.)—a Lisp function that is run when you type that sequence. See
Section 2.4 [Commands], page 13. Customization often involves rebinding a
character to a different command function. The bindings of all key sequences
are recorded in the keymaps (q.v.). See Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513.
Blank Lines
Blank lines are lines that contain only whitespace. Emacs has several commands
for operating on the blank lines in the buffer. See Section 4.7 [Blank Lines],
page 22.
Bookmark Bookmarks are akin to registers (q.v.) in that they record positions in buffers to
which you can return later. Unlike registers, bookmarks persist between Emacs
sessions. See Section 10.8 [Bookmarks], page 74.
Border A border is a thin space along the edge of the frame, used just for spacing, not for
displaying anything. An Emacs frame has an ordinary external border, outside
of everything including the menu bar, plus an internal border that surrounds the
text windows, their scroll bars and fringes, and separates them from the menu
Glossary 621

bar and tool bar. You can customize both borders with options and resources
(see Section C.9 [Borders X], page 582). Borders are not the same as fringes
(q.v.).
Buffer The buffer is the basic editing unit; one buffer corresponds to one text being
edited. You normally have several buffers, but at any time you are editing
only one, the current buffer, though several can be visible when you are using
multiple windows or frames (q.v.). Most buffers are visiting (q.v.) some file. See
Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 175.
Buffer Selection History
Emacs keeps a buffer selection history that records how recently each Emacs
buffer has been selected. This is used for choosing which buffer to select. See
Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 175.
Bug A bug is an incorrect or unreasonable behavior of a program, or inaccurate or
confusing documentation. Emacs developers treat bug reports, both in Emacs
code and its documentation, very seriously and ask you to report any bugs you
find. See Section 34.3 [Bugs], page 536.
Button Down Event
A button down event is the kind of input event (q.v.) generated right away
when you press down on a mouse button. See Section 33.3.10 [Mouse Buttons],
page 520.
By Default
See [Glossary—Default], page 624.
Byte Compilation
See [Glossary—Compilation], page 622.
cf.
c.f. Short for “confer” in Latin, which means “compare with” or “compare to”. The
second variant, “c.f.”, is a widespread misspelling.
C- C- in the name of a character is an abbreviation for Control. See Section 2.1
[User Input], page 11.
C-M- C-M- in the name of a character is an abbreviation for Control-Meta. If your
terminal lacks a real Meta key, you type a Control-Meta character by typing
ESC and then typing the corresponding Control character. See Section 2.1 [User
Input], page 11.
Case Conversion
Case conversion means changing text from upper case to lower case or vice versa.
See Section 22.7 [Case], page 260.
Case Folding
Case folding means ignoring the differences between case variants of the same
letter: upper-case, lower-case, and title-case. Emacs performs case folding by
default in text search. See Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119.
Character Characters form the contents of an Emacs buffer. Also, key sequences (q.v.) are
usually made up of characters (though they may include other input events as
well). See Section 2.1 [User Input], page 11.
622 GNU Emacs Manual

Character Folding
Character folding means ignoring differences between similarly looking characters,
such as between a, and ä and á. Emacs performs character folding by default in
text search. See Section 12.9 [Lax Search], page 119.
Character Set
Emacs supports a number of character sets, each of which represents a particular
alphabet or script. See Chapter 19 [International], page 216.
Character Terminal
See [Glossary—Text Terminal], page 640.
Click Event
A click event is the kind of input event (q.v.) generated when you press a mouse
button and release it without moving the mouse. See Section 33.3.10 [Mouse
Buttons], page 520.
Client See [Glossary—Server], page 638.
Clipboard A clipboard is a buffer provided by the window system for transferring text
between applications. On the X Window System, the clipboard is provided in
addition to the primary selection (q.v.); on MS-Windows and Mac, the clipboard
is used instead of the primary selection. See Section 9.3.1 [Clipboard], page 64.
Coding System
A coding system is a way to encode text characters in a file or in a stream
of information. Emacs has the ability to convert text to or from a variety of
coding systems when reading or writing it. See Section 19.5 [Coding Systems],
page 223.
Command A command is a Lisp function specially defined to be able to serve as a key
binding in Emacs or to be invoked by its name (see [Glossary—Command Name],
page 622). (Another term for command is interactive function—they are used
interchangeably.) When you type a key sequence (q.v.), its binding (q.v.) is
looked up in the relevant keymaps (q.v.) to find the command to run. See
Section 2.4 [Commands], page 13.
Command History
See [Glossary—Minibuffer History], page 634.
Command Name
A command name is the name of a Lisp symbol (q.v.) that is a command (see
Section 2.4 [Commands], page 13). You can invoke any command by its name
using M-x (see Chapter 6 [Running Commands by Name], page 39).
Comment A comment is text in a program which is intended only for humans reading
the program, and which is specially marked so that it will be ignored when the
program is loaded or compiled. Emacs offers special commands for creating,
aligning and killing comments. See Section 23.5 [Comments], page 295.
Common Lisp
Common Lisp is a dialect of Lisp (q.v.) much larger and more powerful than
Emacs Lisp. Emacs provides a subset of Common Lisp in the CL package. See
Section “Overview” in Common Lisp Extensions.
Glossary 623

Compilation
Compilation is the process of creating an executable program from source code.
Emacs has commands for compiling files of Emacs Lisp code (see Section “Byte
Compilation” in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual) and programs in C and other
languages (see Section 24.1 [Compilation], page 309). Byte-compiled Emacs
Lisp code loads and executes faster.
Complete Key
A complete key is a key sequence that fully specifies one action to be performed
by Emacs. For example, X and C-f and C-x m are complete keys. Complete
keys derive their meanings from being bound (see [Glossary—Bind], page 620)
to commands (q.v.). Thus, X is conventionally bound to a command to insert ‘X’
in the buffer; C-x m is conventionally bound to a command to begin composing
a mail message. See Section 2.2 [Keys], page 11.
Completion
Completion is what Emacs does when it automatically expands an abbreviation
for a name into the entire name. Completion is done for minibuffer (q.v.)
arguments when the set of possible valid inputs is known; for example, on
command names, buffer names, and file names. Completion usually occurs when
TAB, SPC or RET is typed. See Section 5.4 [Completion], page 30.
Continuation Line
When a line of text is longer than the width of the window, it normally takes
up more than one screen line when displayed (but see [Glossary—Truncation],
page 641). We say that the text line is continued, and all screen lines used for it
after the first are called continuation lines. See Section 4.8 [Continuation Lines],
page 22. A related Emacs feature is filling (q.v.).
Control Character
A control character is a character that you type by holding down the Ctrl
key. Some control characters also have their own keys, so that you can type
them without using Ctrl. For example, RET, TAB, ESC and DEL are all control
characters. See Section 2.1 [User Input], page 11.
Copyleft A copyleft is a notice giving the public legal permission to redistribute and
modify a program or other work of art, but requiring modified versions to
carry similar permission. Copyright is normally used to keep users divided and
helpless; with copyleft we turn that around to empower users and encourage
them to cooperate.
The particular form of copyleft used by the GNU project is called the GNU
General Public License. See Appendix A [Copying], page 549.
Ctrl The Ctrl or control key is what you hold down in order to enter a control
character (q.v.). See [Glossary—C-], page 621.
Current Buffer
The current buffer in Emacs is the Emacs buffer on which most editing commands
operate. You can select any Emacs buffer as the current one. See Chapter 16
[Buffers], page 175.
624 GNU Emacs Manual

Current Line
The current line is the line that point is on (see Section 1.1 [Point], page 6).
Current Paragraph
The current paragraph is the paragraph that point is in. If point is between two
paragraphs, the current paragraph is the one that follows point. See Section 22.3
[Paragraphs], page 253.
Current Defun
The current defun is the defun (q.v.) that point is in. If point is between
defuns, the current defun is the one that follows point. See Section 23.2 [Defuns],
page 286.
Cursor The cursor is the rectangle on the screen which indicates the position (called
point; q.v.) at which insertion and deletion takes place. The cursor is on or
under the character that follows point. Often people speak of “the cursor” when,
strictly speaking, they mean “point”. See Section 1.1 [Point], page 6.
Customization
Customization is making minor changes in the way Emacs works, to reflect
your preferences or needs. It is often done by setting variables (see Section 33.2
[Variables], page 502) or faces (see Section 33.1.5 [Face Customization], page 498),
or by rebinding key sequences (see Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513).
Cut and Paste
See [Glossary—Killing], page 632, and [Glossary—Yanking], page 642.
Daemon A daemon is a standard term for a system-level process that runs in the
background. Daemons are often started when the system first starts up. When
Emacs runs in daemon-mode, it does not open a display. You connect to it with
the emacsclient program. See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 464.
Default Argument
The default for an argument is the value that will be assumed if you do not
specify one. When the minibuffer is used to read an argument, the default
argument is used if you just type RET. See Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 27.
Default A default is the value that is used for a certain purpose when you do not
explicitly specify a value to use.
Default Directory
When you specify a file name that does not start with ‘/’ or ‘~’, it is interpreted
relative to the current buffer’s default directory. (On MS systems, file names
that start with a drive letter ‘x:’ are treated as absolute, not relative.) See
Section 5.2 [Minibuffer File], page 27.
Defun A defun is a major definition at the top level in a program. The name “defun”
comes from Lisp, where most such definitions use the construct defun. See
Section 23.2 [Defuns], page 286.
DEL DEL is a character that runs the command to delete one character of text before
the cursor. It is typically either the Delete key or the BACKSPACE key, whichever
one is easy to type. See Section 4.3 [Erasing], page 20.
Glossary 625

Deletion Deletion means erasing text without copying it into the kill ring (q.v.). The
alternative is killing (q.v.). See Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58.
Deletion of Files
Deleting a file means erasing it from the file system. (Note that some systems
use the concept of a trash can, or recycle bin, to allow you to undelete files.)
See Section 15.12 [Miscellaneous File Operations], page 167.
Deletion of Messages
Deleting a message (in Rmail, and other mail clients) means flagging it to be
eliminated from your mail file. Until you expunge (q.v.) the Rmail file, you can
still undelete the messages you have deleted. See Section 30.4 [Rmail Deletion],
page 428.
Deletion of Windows
Deleting a window means eliminating it from the screen. Other windows expand
to use up the space. The text that was in the window is not lost, and you can
create a new window with the same dimensions as the old if you wish. See
Chapter 17 [Windows], page 185.
Directory File directories are named collections in the file system, within which you can
place individual files or subdirectories. They are sometimes referred to as
“folders”. See Section 15.8 [Directories], page 162.
Directory Local Variable
A directory local variable is a local variable (q.v.) that applies to all the files
within a certain directory. See Section 33.2.5 [Directory Variables], page 510.
Directory Name
On GNU and other Unix-like systems, directory names are strings that end in
‘/’. For example, /no-such-dir/ is a directory name whereas /tmp is not, even
though /tmp names a file that happens to be a directory. On MS-Windows the
relationship is more complicated. See Section “Directory Names” in the Emacs
Lisp Reference Manual.
Dired Dired is the Emacs facility that displays the contents of a file directory and
allows you to “edit the directory”, performing operations on the files in the
directory. See Chapter 27 [Dired], page 378.
Disabled Command
A disabled command is one that you may not run without special confirmation.
The usual reason for disabling a command is that it is confusing for beginning
users. See Section 33.3.11 [Disabling], page 521.
Down Event
Short for “button down event” (q.v.).
Drag Event
A drag event is the kind of input event (q.v.) generated when you press a mouse
button, move the mouse, and then release the button. See Section 33.3.10
[Mouse Buttons], page 520.
626 GNU Emacs Manual

Dribble File
A dribble file is a file into which Emacs writes all the characters that you type on
the keyboard. Dribble files can be used to make a record for debugging Emacs
bugs. Emacs does not make a dribble file unless you tell it to. See Section 34.3
[Bugs], page 536.
e.g. Short for “exempli gratia” in Latin, which means “for example”.
Echo Area The echo area is the bottom line of the screen, used for echoing the arguments
to commands, for asking questions, and showing brief messages (including error
messages). The messages are stored in the buffer *Messages* so you can review
them later. See Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 7.
Echoing Echoing is acknowledging the receipt of input events by displaying them (in
the echo area). Emacs never echoes single-character key sequences; longer key
sequences echo only if you pause while typing them.
Electric We say that a character is electric if it is normally self-inserting (q.v.), but the
current major mode (q.v.) redefines it to do something else as well. For example,
some programming language major modes define particular delimiter characters
to reindent the line, or insert one or more newlines in addition to self-insertion.
End Of Line
End of line is a character or a sequence of characters that indicate the end of a
text line. On GNU and Unix systems, this is a newline (q.v.), but other systems
have other conventions. See Section 19.5 [Coding Systems], page 223. Emacs
can recognize several end-of-line conventions in files and convert between them.
Environment Variable
An environment variable is one of a collection of variables stored by the operating
system, each one having a name and a value. Emacs can access environment
variables set by its parent shell, and it can set variables in the environment it
passes to programs it invokes. See Section C.4 [Environment], page 573.
EOL See [Glossary—End Of Line], page 626.
Error An error occurs when an Emacs command cannot execute in the current cir-
cumstances. When an error occurs, execution of the command stops (unless the
command has been programmed to do otherwise) and Emacs reports the error
by displaying an error message (q.v.).
Error Message
An error message is output displayed by Emacs when you ask it to do something
impossible (such as, killing text forward when point is at the end of the buffer),
or when a command malfunctions in some way. Such messages appear in the
echo area, accompanied by a beep.
ESC ESC is a character used as a prefix for typing Meta characters on keyboards
lacking a Meta key. Unlike the Meta key (which, like the SHIFT key, is held down
while another character is typed), you press the ESC key as you would press a
letter key, and it applies to the next character you type.
etc. Short for “et cetera” in Latin, which means “and so on”.
Glossary 627

Expression
See [Glossary—Balanced Expression], page 620.
Expunging
Expunging an Rmail, Gnus newsgroup, or Dired buffer is an operation that
truly discards the messages or files you have previously flagged for deletion.
Face A face is a style of displaying characters. It specifies attributes such as font
family and size, foreground and background colors, underline and strike-through,
background stipple, etc. Emacs provides features to associate specific faces with
portions of buffer text, in order to display that text as specified by the face
attributes. See Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82.
File Local Variable
A file local variable is a local variable (q.v.) specified in a given file. See
Section 33.2.4 [File Variables], page 507, and [Glossary—Directory Local Vari-
able], page 625.
File Locking
Emacs uses file locking to notice when two different users start to edit one file
at the same time. See Section 15.3.4 [Interlocking], page 155.
File Name A file name is a name that refers to a file. File names may be relative or
absolute; the meaning of a relative file name depends on the current directory,
but an absolute file name refers to the same file regardless of which directory
is current. On GNU and Unix systems, an absolute file name starts with a
slash (the root directory) or with ‘~/’ or ‘~user/’ (a home directory). On
MS-Windows/MS-DOS, an absolute file name can also start with a drive letter
and a colon, e.g., ‘d:’.
Some people use the term “pathname” for file names, but we do not; we use the
word “path” only in the term “search path” (q.v.).
File-Name Component
A file-name component names a file directly within a particular directory. On
GNU and Unix systems, a file name is a sequence of file-name components,
separated by slashes. For example, foo/bar is a file name containing two
components, ‘foo’ and ‘bar’; it refers to the file named ‘bar’ in the directory
named ‘foo’ in the current directory. MS-DOS/MS-Windows file names can
also use backslashes to separate components, as in foo\bar.
Fill Prefix The fill prefix is a string that should be expected at the beginning of each line
when filling is done. It is not regarded as part of the text to be filled. See
Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256.
Filling Filling text means adjusting the position of line-breaks to shift text between
consecutive lines, so that all the lines are approximately the same length. See
Section 22.6 [Filling], page 256. Some other editors call this feature “line
wrapping”.
Font Lock Font Lock is a mode that highlights parts of buffer text in different faces, according
to the syntax. Some other editors refer to this as “syntax highlighting”. For
628 GNU Emacs Manual

example, all comments (q.v.) might be colored red. See Section 11.13 [Font
Lock], page 88.
Fontset A fontset is a named collection of fonts. A fontset specification lists character
sets and which font to use to display each of them. Fontsets make it easy to
change several fonts at once by specifying the name of a fontset, rather than
changing each font separately. See Section 19.14 [Fontsets], page 232.
Formfeed Character
See [Glossary—Page], page 635.
Frame A frame is a rectangular cluster of Emacs windows. Emacs starts out with one
frame, but you can create more. You can subdivide each frame into Emacs
windows (q.v.). When you are using a window system (q.v.), more than one
frame can be visible at the same time. See Chapter 18 [Frames], page 194. Some
other editors use the term “window” for this, but in Emacs a window means
something else.
Free Software
Free software is software that gives you the freedom to share, study and modify
it. Emacs is free software, part of the GNU project (q.v.), and distributed under
a copyleft (q.v.) license called the GNU General Public License. See Appendix A
[Copying], page 549.
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a charitable foundation dedicated to
promoting the development of free software (q.v.). For more information, see
the FSF website (https://fsf.org/).
Fringe On a graphical display (q.v.), there’s a narrow portion of the frame (q.v.)
between the text area and the window’s border. These “fringes” are used to
display symbols that provide information about the buffer text (see Section 11.15
[Fringes], page 92). Emacs displays the fringe using a special face (q.v.) called
fringe. See Section 11.8 [Faces], page 82.
FSF See [Glossary—Free Software Foundation], page 628.
FTP FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol. This is one standard method for
retrieving remote files (q.v.).
Function Key
A function key is a key on the keyboard that sends input but does not correspond
to any character. See Section 33.3.8 [Function Keys], page 518.
Global Global means “independent of the current environment; in effect throughout
Emacs”. It is the opposite of local (q.v.). Particular examples of the use of
“global” appear below.
Global Abbrev
A global definition of an abbrev (q.v.) is effective in all major modes that do
not have local (q.v.) definitions for the same abbrev. See Chapter 26 [Abbrevs],
page 371.
Glossary 629

Global Keymap
The global keymap (q.v.) contains key bindings that are in effect everywhere,
except when overridden by local key bindings in a major mode’s local keymap
(q.v.). See Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513.
Global Mark Ring
The global mark ring records the series of buffers you have recently set a mark
(q.v.) in. In many cases you can use this to backtrack through buffers you
have been editing, or in which you have found tags (see [Glossary—Tags Table],
page 640). See Section 8.5 [Global Mark Ring], page 55.
Global Substitution
Global substitution means replacing each occurrence of one string by another
string throughout a large amount of text. See Section 12.10 [Replace], page 121.
Global Variable
The global value of a variable (q.v.) takes effect in all buffers that do not
have their own local (q.v.) values for the variable. See Section 33.2 [Variables],
page 502.
GNU GNU is a recursive acronym for GNU’s Not Unix, and it refers to a Unix-
compatible operating system which is free software (q.v.). See [Manifesto],
page 611. GNU is normally used with Linux as the kernel since Linux works
better than the GNU kernel. For more information, see the GNU website
(https://www.gnu.org/).
Graphic Character
Graphic characters are those assigned pictorial images rather than just names.
All the non-Meta (q.v.) characters except for the Control (q.v.) characters are
graphic characters. These include letters, digits, punctuation, and spaces; they
do not include RET or ESC. In Emacs, typing a graphic character inserts that
character (in ordinary editing modes). See Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16.
Graphical Display
A graphical display is one that can display images and multiple fonts. Usually
it also has a window system (q.v.).
Highlighting
Highlighting text means displaying it with a different foreground and/or back-
ground color to make it stand out from the rest of the text in the buffer.
Emacs uses highlighting in several ways. It highlights the region whenever it
is active (see Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51). Incremental search also highlights
matches (see Section 12.1 [Incremental Search], page 104). See [Glossary—Font
Lock], page 627.
Hardcopy Hardcopy means printed output. Emacs has various commands for printing the
contents of Emacs buffers. See Section 31.7 [Printing], page 471.
HELP HELP is the Emacs name for C-h or F1. You can type HELP at any time to ask
what options you have, or to ask what a command does. See Chapter 7 [Help],
page 41.
630 GNU Emacs Manual

Help Echo Help echo is a short message displayed in the echo area (q.v.) when the mouse
pointer is located on portions of display that require some explanations. Emacs
displays help echo for menu items, parts of the mode line, tool-bar buttons, etc.
On graphical displays, the messages can be displayed as tooltips (q.v.). See
Section 18.19 [Tooltips], page 213.
Home Directory
Your home directory contains your personal files. On a multi-user GNU or Unix
system, each user has his or her own home directory. When you start a new
login session, your home directory is the default directory in which to start. A
standard shorthand for your home directory is ‘~’. Similarly, ‘~user’ represents
the home directory of some other user.
Hook A hook is a list of functions to be called on specific occasions, such as saving
a buffer in a file, major mode activation, etc. By customizing the various
hooks, you can modify Emacs’s behavior without changing any of its code. See
Section 33.2.2 [Hooks], page 504.
Hyper Hyper is the name of a modifier bit that a keyboard input character may have.
To make a character Hyper, type it while holding down the Hyper key. Such
characters are given names that start with Hyper- (usually written H- for short).
See Section 33.3.7 [Modifier Keys], page 517.
i.e. Short for “id est” in Latin, which means “that is”.
Iff “Iff” means “if and only if”. This terminology comes from mathematics. Try to
avoid using this term in documentation, since many are unfamiliar with it and
mistake it for a typo.
Inbox An inbox is a file in which mail is delivered by the operating system. Rmail
transfers mail from inboxes to Rmail files in which the mail is then stored
permanently or until explicitly deleted. See Section 30.5 [Rmail Inbox], page 429.
Incremental Search
Emacs provides an incremental search facility, whereby Emacs begins searching
for a string as soon as you type the first character. As you type more characters,
it refines the search. See Section 12.1 [Incremental Search], page 104.
Indentation
Indentation means blank space at the beginning of a line. Most programming
languages have conventions for using indentation to illuminate the structure
of the program, and Emacs has special commands to adjust indentation. See
Chapter 21 [Indentation], page 247.
Indirect Buffer
An indirect buffer is a buffer that shares the text of another buffer, called its
base buffer (q.v.). See Section 16.6 [Indirect Buffers], page 181.
Info Info is the hypertext format used by the GNU project for writing documentation.
Input Event
An input event represents, within Emacs, one action taken by the user on
the terminal. Input events include typing characters, typing function keys,
Glossary 631

pressing or releasing mouse buttons, and switching between Emacs frames. See
Section 2.1 [User Input], page 11.
Input Method
An input method is a system for entering non-ASCII text characters by typing
sequences of ASCII characters (q.v.). See Section 19.3 [Input Methods], page 220.
Insertion Insertion means adding text into the buffer, either from the keyboard or from
some other place in Emacs.
Interactive Function
A different term for command (q.v.).
Interactive Invocation
A function can be called from Lisp code, or called as a user level command (via
M-x, a key binding or a menu). In the latter case, the function is said to be
called interactively.
Interlocking
See [Glossary—File Locking], page 627.
Isearch See [Glossary—Incremental Search], page 630.
Justification
Justification means adding extra spaces within lines of text in order to adjust
the position of the text edges. See Section 22.6.2 [Fill Commands], page 257.
Key Binding
See [Glossary—Binding], page 620.
Keyboard Macro
Keyboard macros are a way of defining new Emacs commands from sequences
of existing ones, with no need to write a Lisp program. You can use a macro to
record a sequence of commands, then play them back as many times as you like.
See Chapter 14 [Keyboard Macros], page 137.
Keyboard Shortcut
A keyboard shortcut is a key sequence (q.v.) that invokes a command. What
some programs call “assigning a keyboard shortcut”, Emacs calls “binding a
key sequence”. See [Glossary—Binding], page 620.
Key Sequence
A key sequence (key, for short) is a sequence of input events (q.v.) that are
meaningful as a single unit. If the key sequence is enough to specify one action,
it is a complete key (q.v.); if it is not enough, it is a prefix key (q.v.). See
Section 2.2 [Keys], page 11.
Keymap The keymap is the data structure that records the bindings (q.v.) of key
sequences to the commands that they run. For example, the global keymap
binds the character C-n to the command function next-line. See Section 33.3.1
[Keymaps], page 513.
Keyboard Translation Table
The keyboard translation table is an array that translates the character codes
that come from the terminal into the character codes that make up key sequences.
632 GNU Emacs Manual

Kill Ring The kill ring is where all text you have killed (see [Glossary—Killing], page 632)
recently is saved. You can reinsert any of the killed text still in the ring; this is
called yanking (q.v.). See Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 61.
Killing Killing means erasing text and saving it on the kill ring so it can be yanked
(q.v.) later. Some other systems call this “cutting”. Most Emacs commands
that erase text perform killing, as opposed to deletion (q.v.). See Chapter 9
[Killing], page 58.
Killing a Job
Killing a job (such as, an invocation of Emacs) means making it cease to exist.
Any data within it, if not saved in a file, is lost. See Section 3.2 [Exiting],
page 15.
Language Environment
Your choice of language environment specifies defaults for the input method
(q.v.) and coding system (q.v.). See Section 19.2 [Language Environments],
page 218. These defaults are relevant if you edit non-ASCII text (see Chapter 19
[International], page 216).
Line Wrapping
See [Glossary—Filling], page 627.
Lisp Lisp is a programming language. Most of Emacs is written in a dialect of
Lisp, called Emacs Lisp, which is extended with special features that make it
especially suitable for text editing tasks.
List A list is, approximately, a text string beginning with an open parenthesis and
ending with the matching close parenthesis. In C mode and other non-Lisp
modes, groupings surrounded by other kinds of matched delimiters appropriate
to the language, such as braces, are also considered lists. Emacs has special
commands for many operations on lists. See Section 23.4.2 [Moving by Parens],
page 293.
Local Local means “in effect only in a particular context”; the relevant kind of context
is a particular function execution, a particular buffer, or a particular major
mode. It is the opposite of “global” (q.v.). Specific uses of “local” in Emacs
terminology appear below.
Local Abbrev
A local abbrev definition is effective only if a particular major mode is selected.
In that major mode, it overrides any global definition for the same abbrev. See
Chapter 26 [Abbrevs], page 371.
Local Keymap
A local keymap is used in a particular major mode; the key bindings (q.v.) in
the current local keymap override global bindings of the same key sequences.
See Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513.
Local Variable
A local value of a variable (q.v.) applies to only one buffer. See Section 33.2.3
[Locals], page 505.
Glossary 633

M- M- in the name of a character is an abbreviation for Meta, one of the modifier

keys that can accompany any character. See Section 2.1 [User Input], page 11.
M-C- M-C- in the name of a character is an abbreviation for Control-Meta; it means
the same thing as C-M- (q.v.).
M-x M-x is the key sequence that is used to call an Emacs command by name. This
is how you run commands that are not bound to key sequences. See Chapter 6
[Running Commands by Name], page 39.
Mail Mail means messages sent from one user to another through the computer
system, to be read at the recipient’s convenience. Emacs has commands for
composing and sending mail, and for reading and editing the mail you have
received. See Chapter 29 [Sending Mail], page 418. See Chapter 30 [Rmail],
page 426, for one way to read mail with Emacs.
Mail Composition Method
A mail composition method is a program runnable within Emacs for editing
and sending a mail message. Emacs lets you select from several alternative mail
composition methods. See Section 29.7 [Mail Methods], page 425.
Major Mode
The Emacs major modes are a mutually exclusive set of options, each of which
configures Emacs for editing a certain sort of text. Ideally, each programming
language has its own major mode. See Section 20.1 [Major Modes], page 241.
Margin The space between the usable part of a window (including the fringe) and the
window edge.
Mark The mark points to a position in the text. It specifies one end of the region (q.v.),
point being the other end. Many commands operate on all the text from point
to the mark. Each buffer has its own mark. See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51.
Mark Ring
The mark ring is used to hold several recent previous locations of the mark, in
case you want to move back to them. Each buffer has its own mark ring; in
addition, there is a single global mark ring (q.v.). See Section 8.4 [Mark Ring],
page 55.
Menu Bar The menu bar is a line at the top of an Emacs frame. It contains words you can
click on with the mouse to bring up menus, or you can use a keyboard interface
to navigate it. See Section 18.15 [Menu Bars], page 209.
Message See [Glossary—Mail], page 633.
Meta Meta is the name of a modifier bit which you can use in a command character. To
enter a meta character, you hold down the Meta key while typing the character.
We refer to such characters with names that start with Meta- (usually written
M- for short). For example, M-< is typed by holding down Meta and at the same
time typing < (which itself is done, on most terminals, by holding down SHIFT
and typing ,). See Section 2.1 [User Input], page 11.
On some terminals, the Meta key is actually labeled Alt or Edit.
634 GNU Emacs Manual

Meta Character
A Meta character is one whose character code includes the Meta bit.
Minibuffer The minibuffer is the window that appears when necessary inside the echo area
(q.v.), used for reading arguments to commands. See Chapter 5 [Minibuffer],
page 27.
Minibuffer History
The minibuffer history records the text you have specified in the past for
minibuffer arguments, so you can conveniently use the same text again. See
Section 5.5 [Minibuffer History], page 35.
Minor Mode
A minor mode is an optional feature of Emacs, which can be switched on or off
independently of all other features. Each minor mode has a command to turn it
on or off. Some minor modes are global (q.v.), and some are local (q.v.). See
Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242.
Minor Mode Keymap
A minor mode keymap is a keymap that belongs to a minor mode and is active
when that mode is enabled. Minor mode keymaps take precedence over the
buffer’s local keymap, just as the local keymap takes precedence over the global
keymap. See Section 33.3.1 [Keymaps], page 513.
Mode Line
The mode line is the line at the bottom of each window (q.v.), giving status
information on the buffer displayed in that window. See Section 1.3 [Mode Line],
page 8.
Modified Buffer
A buffer (q.v.) is modified if its text has been changed since the last time the
buffer was saved (or since it was created, if it has never been saved). See
Section 15.3 [Saving], page 149.
Moving Text
Moving text means erasing it from one place and inserting it in another. The
usual way to move text is by killing (q.v.) it and then yanking (q.v.) it. See
Chapter 9 [Killing], page 58.
MULE Prior to Emacs 23, MULE was the name of a software package which provided a
MULtilingual Enhancement to Emacs, by adding support for multiple character
sets (q.v.). MULE was later integrated into Emacs, and much of it was replaced
when Emacs gained internal Unicode support in version 23.
Some parts of Emacs that deal with character set support still use the MULE
name. See Chapter 19 [International], page 216.
Multibyte Character
A multibyte character is a character that takes up several bytes in a buffer.
Emacs uses multibyte characters to represent non-ASCII text, since the number
of non-ASCII characters is much more than 256. See Section 19.1 [International
Chars], page 216.
Glossary 635

Named Mark
A named mark is a register (q.v.), in its role of recording a location in text so
that you can move point to that location. See Chapter 10 [Registers], page 71.
Narrowing Narrowing means creating a restriction (q.v.) that limits editing in the current
buffer to only a part of the text. Text outside that part is inaccessible for editing
(or viewing) until the boundaries are widened again, but it is still there, and
saving the file saves it all. See Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80.
Newline Control-J characters in the buffer terminate lines of text and are therefore also
called newlines. See [Glossary—End Of Line], page 626.
nil nil is a value usually interpreted as a logical “false”. Its opposite is t, interpreted
as “true”.
Numeric Argument
A numeric argument is a number, specified before a command, to change the
effect of the command. Often the numeric argument serves as a repeat count.
See Section 4.10 [Arguments], page 24.
Overwrite Mode
Overwrite mode is a minor mode. When it is enabled, ordinary text characters
replace the existing text after point rather than pushing it to one side. See
Section 20.2 [Minor Modes], page 242.
Package A package is a collection of Lisp code that you download and automatically
install from within Emacs. Packages provide a convenient way to add new
features. See Chapter 32 [Packages], page 485.
Page A page is a unit of text, delimited by formfeed characters (ASCII control-L, code
014) at the beginning of a line. Some Emacs commands are provided for moving
over and operating on pages. See Section 22.4 [Pages], page 254.
Paragraph Paragraphs are the medium-size unit of human-language text. There are special
Emacs commands for moving over and operating on paragraphs. See Section 22.3
[Paragraphs], page 253.
Parsing We say that certain Emacs commands parse words or expressions in the text
being edited. Really, all they know how to do is find the other end of a word or
expression.
Point Point is the place in the buffer at which insertion and deletion occur. Point is
considered to be between two characters, not at one character. The terminal’s
cursor (q.v.) indicates the location of point. See Section 1.1 [Point], page 6.
Prefix Argument
See [Glossary—Numeric Argument], page 635.
Prefix Key
A prefix key is a key sequence (q.v.) whose sole function is to introduce a set
of longer key sequences. C-x is an example of prefix key; any two-character
sequence starting with C-x is therefore a legitimate key sequence. See Section 2.2
[Keys], page 11.
636 GNU Emacs Manual

Primary Selection
The primary selection is one particular X selection (q.v.); it is the selection that
most X applications use for transferring text to and from other applications.
The Emacs commands that mark or select text set the primary selection, and
clicking the mouse inserts text from the primary selection when appropriate.
See Section 8.6 [Shift Selection], page 56.
Prompt A prompt is text used to ask you for input. Displaying a prompt is called
prompting. Emacs prompts always appear in the echo area (q.v.). One kind
of prompting happens when the minibuffer is used to read an argument (see
Chapter 5 [Minibuffer], page 27); the echoing that happens when you pause in
the middle of typing a multi-character key sequence is also a kind of prompting
(see Section 1.2 [Echo Area], page 7).
q.v. Short for “quod vide” in Latin, which means “which see”.
Query-Replace
Query-replace is an interactive string replacement feature provided by Emacs.
See Section 12.10.4 [Query Replace], page 124.
Quitting Quitting means canceling a partially typed command or a running command,
using C-g (or C-Break on MS-DOS). See Section 34.1 [Quitting], page 530.
Quoting Quoting means depriving a character of its usual special significance. The
most common kind of quoting in Emacs is with C-q. What constitutes special
significance depends on the context and on convention. For example, an ordinary
character as an Emacs command inserts itself; so in this context, a special
character is any character that does not normally insert itself (such as DEL, for
example), and quoting it makes it insert itself as if it were not special. Not all
contexts allow quoting. See Section 4.1 [Inserting Text], page 16.
Quoting File Names
Quoting a file name turns off the special significance of constructs such as ‘$’,
‘~’ and ‘:’. See Section 15.16 [Quoted File Names], page 170.
Read-Only Buffer
A read-only buffer is one whose text you are not allowed to change. Normally
Emacs makes buffers read-only when they contain text which has a special
significance to Emacs; for example, Dired buffers. Visiting a file that is write-
protected also makes a read-only buffer. See Chapter 16 [Buffers], page 175.
Rectangle A rectangle consists of the text in a given range of columns on a given range
of lines. Normally you specify a rectangle by putting point at one corner and
putting the mark at the diagonally opposite corner. See Section 9.5 [Rectangles],
page 67.
Recursive Editing Level
A recursive editing level is a state in which part of the execution of a command
involves asking you to edit some text. This text may or may not be the same
as the text to which the command was applied. The mode line (q.v.) indicates
recursive editing levels with square brackets (‘[’ and ‘]’). See Section 31.11
[Recursive Edit], page 479.
Glossary 637

Redisplay Redisplay is the process of correcting the image on the screen to correspond to
changes that have been made in the text being edited. See Chapter 1 [Screen],
page 6.
Regexp See [Glossary—Regular Expression], page 637.
Region The region is the text between point (q.v.) and the mark (q.v.). Many commands
operate on the text of the region. See Chapter 8 [Mark], page 51.
Register Registers are named slots in which text, buffer positions, or rectangles can be
saved for later use. See Chapter 10 [Registers], page 71. A related Emacs feature
is bookmarks (q.v.).
Regular Expression
A regular expression is a pattern that can match various text strings; for example,
‘a[0-9]+’ matches ‘a’ followed by one or more digits. See Section 12.6 [Regexps],
page 114.
Remote File
A remote file is a file that is stored on a system other than your own. Emacs
can access files on other computers provided that they are reachable from your
machine over the network, and (obviously) that you have a supported method
to gain access to those files. See Section 15.15 [Remote Files], page 169.
Repeat Count
See [Glossary—Numeric Argument], page 635.
Replacement
See [Glossary—Global Substitution], page 629.
Restriction
A buffer’s restriction is the amount of text, at the beginning or the end of the
buffer, that is temporarily inaccessible. Giving a buffer a nonzero amount of
restriction is called narrowing (q.v.); removing a restriction is called widening
(q.v.). See Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80.
RET RET is a character that in Emacs runs the command to insert a newline into the
text. It is also used to terminate most arguments read in the minibuffer (q.v.).
See Section 2.1 [User Input], page 11.
Reverting Reverting means returning to the original state. For example, Emacs lets you
revert a buffer by re-reading its file from disk. See Section 15.4 [Reverting],
page 157.
Saving Saving a buffer means copying its text into the file that was visited (q.v.) in
that buffer. This is the way text in files actually gets changed by your Emacs
editing. See Section 15.3 [Saving], page 149.
Scroll Bar A scroll bar is a tall thin hollow box that appears at the side of a window. You
can use mouse commands in the scroll bar to scroll the window. The scroll bar
feature is supported only under windowing systems. See Section 18.12 [Scroll
Bars], page 206.
Scrolling Scrolling means shifting the text in the Emacs window so as to see a different
part of the buffer. See Section 11.1 [Scrolling], page 76.
638 GNU Emacs Manual

Searching Searching means moving point to the next occurrence of a specified string or the
next match for a specified regular expression. See Chapter 12 [Search], page 104.
Search Path
A search path is a list of directories, to be used for searching for files for certain
purposes. For example, the variable load-path holds a search path for finding
Lisp library files. See Section 24.8 [Lisp Libraries], page 326.
Secondary Selection
The secondary selection is one particular X selection (q.v.); some X applications
can use it for transferring text to and from other applications. Emacs has
special mouse commands for transferring text using the secondary selection. See
Section 9.3.3 [Secondary Selection], page 66.
Selected Frame
The selected frame is the one your input currently operates on. See Chapter 18
[Frames], page 194.
Selected Window
The selected window is the one your input currently operates on. See Section 17.1
[Basic Window], page 185.
Selecting a Buffer
Selecting a buffer means making it the current (q.v.) buffer. See Section 16.1
[Select Buffer], page 175.
Selection Windowing systems allow an application program to specify selections whose
values are text. A program can also read the selections that other programs
have set up. This is the principal way of transferring text between window
applications. Emacs has commands to work with the primary (q.v.) selection
and the secondary (q.v.) selection, and also with the clipboard (q.v.).
Self-Documentation
Self-documentation is the feature of Emacs that can tell you what any command
does, or give you a list of all commands related to a topic you specify. You
ask for self-documentation with the help character, C-h. See Chapter 7 [Help],
page 41.
Self-Inserting Character
A character is self-inserting if typing that character inserts that character in the
buffer. Ordinary printing and whitespace characters are self-inserting in Emacs,
except in certain special major modes.
Sentences Emacs has commands for moving by or killing by sentences. See Section 22.2
[Sentences], page 252.
Server Within Emacs, you can start a “server” process, which listens for connections
from “clients”. This offers a faster alternative to starting several Emacs instances.
See Section 31.6 [Emacs Server], page 464, and [Glossary—Daemon], page 624.
Sexp A sexp (short for “s-expression”) is the basic syntactic unit of Lisp in its textual
form: either a list, or Lisp atom. Sexps are also the balanced expressions (q.v.)
of the Lisp language; this is why the commands for editing balanced expressions
have ‘sexp’ in their name. See Section 23.4.1 [Expressions], page 292.
Glossary 639

Simultaneous Editing
Simultaneous editing means two users modifying the same file at once. Simul-
taneous editing, if not detected, can cause one user to lose his or her work.
Emacs detects all cases of simultaneous editing, and warns one of the users to
investigate. See Section 15.3.4 [Simultaneous Editing], page 155.
SPC SPC is the space character, which you enter by pressing the space bar.
Speedbar The speedbar is a special tall frame that provides fast access to Emacs buffers,
functions within those buffers, Info nodes, and other interesting parts of text
within Emacs. See Section 18.9 [Speedbar], page 204.
Spell Checking
Spell checking means checking correctness of the written form of each one of
the words in a text. Emacs can use various external spelling-checker programs
to check the spelling of parts of a buffer via a convenient user interface. See
Section 13.4 [Spelling], page 134.
String A string is a kind of Lisp data object that contains a sequence of characters.
Many Emacs variables are intended to have strings as values. The Lisp syntax for
a string consists of the characters in the string with a ‘"’ before and another ‘"’
after. A ‘"’ that is part of the string must be written as ‘\"’ and a ‘\’ that is part
of the string must be written as ‘\\’. All other characters, including newline, can
be included just by writing them inside the string; however, backslash sequences
as in C, such as ‘\n’ for newline or ‘\241’ using an octal character code, are
allowed as well.
String Substitution
See [Glossary—Global Substitution], page 629.
Symbol A symbol in Emacs Lisp is an object with a name. The object can be a variable
(q.v.), a function or command (q.v.), or a face (q.v.). The symbol’s name serves
as the printed representation of the symbol. See Section “Symbol Type” in The
Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Syntax Highlighting
See [Glossary—Font Lock], page 627.
Syntax Table
The syntax table tells Emacs which characters are part of a word, which
characters balance each other like parentheses, etc. See Section “Syntax Tables”
in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Super Super is the name of a modifier bit that a keyboard input character may have.
To make a character Super, type it while holding down the SUPER key. Such
characters are given names that start with Super- (usually written s- for short).
See Section 33.3.7 [Modifier Keys], page 517.
Suspending
Suspending Emacs means stopping it temporarily and returning control to its
parent process, which is usually a shell. Unlike killing a job (q.v.), you can later
resume the suspended Emacs job without losing your buffers, unsaved edits,
undo history, etc. See Section 3.2 [Exiting], page 15.
640 GNU Emacs Manual

TAB TAB is the tab character. In Emacs it is typically used for indentation or
completion.
Tab Bar The tab bar is a row of tabs at the top of an Emacs frame. Clicking on one of
these tabs switches named persistent window configurations. See Section 18.17
[Tab Bars], page 209.
Tab Line The tab line is a line of tabs at the top of an Emacs window. Clicking on one of
these tabs switches window buffers. See Section 17.8 [Tab Line], page 192.
Tag A tag is an identifier in a program source. See Section 25.4 [Xref], page 356.
Tags Table
A tags table is a file that serves as an index to identifiers: definitions of functions,
macros, data structures, etc., in one or more other files. See Section 25.4.2 [Tags
Tables], page 361.
Termscript File
A termscript file contains a record of all characters sent by Emacs to the terminal.
It is used for tracking down bugs in Emacs redisplay. Emacs does not make a
termscript file unless you tell it to. See Section 34.3 [Bugs], page 536.
Text
“Text” has two meanings (see Chapter 22 [Text], page 251):
• Data consisting of a sequence of characters, as opposed to binary numbers,
executable programs, and the like. The basic contents of an Emacs buffer
(aside from the text properties, q.v.) are always text in this sense.
• Data consisting of written human language (as opposed to programs), or
following the stylistic conventions of human language.
Text Terminal
A text terminal, or character terminal, is a display that is limited to displaying
text in character units. Such a terminal cannot control individual pixels it
displays. Emacs supports a subset of display features on text terminals.
Text Properties
Text properties are annotations recorded for particular characters in the buffer.
Images in the buffer are recorded as text properties; they also specify formatting
information. See Section 22.14.3 [Editing Format Info], page 276.
Theme A theme is a set of customizations (q.v.) that give Emacs a particular appearance
or behavior. For example, you might use a theme for your favorite set of faces
(q.v.).
Tool Bar The tool bar is a line (sometimes multiple lines) of icons at the top of an Emacs
frame. Clicking on one of these icons executes a command. You can think of
this as a graphical relative of the menu bar (q.v.). See Section 18.16 [Tool Bars],
page 209.
Tooltips Tooltips are small windows displaying a help echo (q.v.) text, which explains
parts of the display, lists useful options available via mouse clicks, etc. See
Section 18.19 [Tooltips], page 213.
Glossary 641

Top Level Top level is the normal state of Emacs, in which you are editing the text of the file
you have visited. You are at top level whenever you are not in a recursive editing
level (q.v.) or the minibuffer (q.v.), and not in the middle of a command. You
can get back to top level by aborting (q.v.) and quitting (q.v.). See Section 34.1
[Quitting], page 530.
Transient Mark Mode
The default behavior of the mark (q.v.) and region (q.v.), in which setting the
mark activates it and highlights the region, is called Transient Mark mode. It is
enabled by default. See Section 8.7 [Disabled Transient Mark], page 56.
Transposition
Transposing two units of text means putting each one into the place formerly
occupied by the other. There are Emacs commands to transpose two adja-
cent characters, words, balanced expressions (q.v.) or lines (see Section 13.2
[Transpose], page 132).
Trash Can See [Glossary—Deletion of Files], page 625.
Truncation
Truncating text lines in the display means leaving out any text on a line that
does not fit within the right margin of the window displaying it. See Section 4.8
[Continuation Lines], page 22, and [Glossary—Continuation Line], page 623.
TTY See [Glossary—Text Terminal], page 640.
Undoing Undoing means making your previous editing go in reverse, bringing back the
text that existed earlier in the editing session. See Section 13.1 [Undo], page 131.
Unix Unix is a class of multi-user computer operating systems with a long history.
There are several implementations today. The GNU project (q.v.) aims to
develop a complete Unix-like operating system that is free software (q.v.).
User Option
A user option is a face (q.v.) or a variable (q.v.) that exists so that you can cus-
tomize Emacs by setting it to a new value. See Section 33.1 [Easy Customization],
page 494.
Variable A variable is an object in Lisp that can store an arbitrary value. Emacs uses
some variables for internal purposes, and has others (known as “user options”;
q.v.) just so that you can set their values to control the behavior of Emacs. The
variables used in Emacs that you are likely to be interested in are listed in the
Variables Index in this manual (see [Variable Index], page 670). See Section 33.2
[Variables], page 502, for information on variables.
Version Control
Version control systems keep track of multiple versions of a source file. They pro-
vide a more powerful alternative to keeping backup files (q.v.). See Section 25.1
[Version Control], page 332.
Visiting Visiting a file means loading its contents into a buffer (q.v.) where they can be
edited. See Section 15.2 [Visiting], page 146.
642 GNU Emacs Manual

Whitespace
Whitespace is any run of consecutive formatting characters (space, tab, newline,
backspace, etc.).
Widening Widening is removing any restriction (q.v.) on the current buffer; it is the
opposite of narrowing (q.v.). See Section 11.5 [Narrowing], page 80.
Window Emacs divides a frame (q.v.) into one or more windows, each of which can
display the contents of one buffer (q.v.) at any time. See Chapter 1 [Screen],
page 6, for basic information on how Emacs uses the screen. See Chapter 17
[Windows], page 185, for commands to control the use of windows. Some other
editors use the term “window” for what we call a “frame” in Emacs.
Window System
A window system is software that operates on a graphical display (q.v.), to
subdivide the screen so that multiple applications can have their own windows
at the same time. All modern operating systems include a window system.
Word Abbrev
See [Glossary—Abbrev], page 619.
Word Search
Word search is searching for a sequence of words, considering the punctuation
between them as insignificant. See Section 12.3 [Word Search], page 112.
Yanking Yanking means reinserting text previously killed (q.v.). It can be used to undo
a mistaken kill, or for copying or moving text. Some other systems call this
“pasting”. See Section 9.2 [Yanking], page 61.
 643

Key (Character) Index

! +
! (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 + (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
+ (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

"
" (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 –
- (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

#
# (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 .
. (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
. (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
$ . (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
$ (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

/
% / (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
% & (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 / / (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 / a (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% C (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 / d (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% d (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 / k (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% g (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 / m (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% H (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 / n (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% l (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 / N (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% m (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 / s (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% R (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 / u (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% S (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 / v (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
% u (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
% Y (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
:
:d (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
( :e (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
( (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 :s (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
( (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 :v (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388

* <
* ! (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 < (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
* % (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 < (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
* * (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 < (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
* / (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
* ? (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
* @ (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 =
* c (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
= (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
* C-n (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
* C-p (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
* DEL (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
* m (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
>
* N (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 > (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
* s (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 > (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
* t (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 > (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
* u (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
644 GNU Emacs Manual

? C
? (completion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 c (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
? (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 c (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
C (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
C-/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C-] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
^ C-^ (Incremental Search). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
^ (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 C-_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C-_ (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
C-@ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
C-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
{ C-0, tab bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
{ (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 C-1, tab bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
C-9, tab bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
C-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
C-a (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
} C-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
} (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 C-b (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
C-b, when using input methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
C-c , j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
C-c , J . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
~ C-c , l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
C-c , SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
~ (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
C-c . (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
~ (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
C-c . (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
~ (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
C-c / (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
C-c < (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
C-c > (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
1 C-c ? (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
C-c [ (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
1 (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
C-c [ (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
C-c ] (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
C-c @ (Outline minor mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
2 C-c @ C-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
2 (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 C-c @ C-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
C-c @ C-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
C-c @ C-M-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
C-c @ C-M-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
A C-c @ C-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
a (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 C-c @ C-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
a (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 C-c { (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
A (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 C-c } (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
A k (Gnus Group mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 C-c 8 (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
A s (Gnus Group mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 C-c C-\ (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
C-c C-\ (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
A u (Gnus Group mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
C-c C-a (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
A z (Gnus Group mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
C-c C-a (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
C-c C-a (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
C-c C-a (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
B C-c C-a (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
b (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 C-c C-a (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
C-c C-b (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
b (Rmail summary) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
C-c C-b (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
b (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
C-c C-b (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
B (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
C-c C-b (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
C-c C-b (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
C-c C-b (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
C-c C-c (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Key (Character) Index 645

C-c C-c (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 C-c C-p (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
C-c C-c (Edit Abbrevs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374 C-c C-p (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
C-c C-c (Edit Tab Stops) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 C-c C-p (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
C-c C-c (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 C-c C-p (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
C-c C-c (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 C-c C-q (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
C-c C-c (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 C-c C-q (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
C-c C-c (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 C-c C-q (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
C-c C-c (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 C-c C-q (Term mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
C-c C-d (C Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 C-c C-r (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
C-c C-d (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 C-c C-r (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
C-c C-d (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 C-c C-r (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
C-c C-d (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 C-c C-s (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
C-c C-d (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 C-c C-s (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
C-c C-d (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 C-c C-s (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
C-c C-DEL (C Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 C-c C-s (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
C-c C-Delete (C Mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 C-c C-s (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
C-c C-e (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 C-c C-s (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
C-c C-e (LATEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 C-c C-t (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
C-c C-e (Org mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 C-c C-t (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
C-c C-e (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 C-c C-t (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
C-c C-e (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 C-c C-t (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
C-c C-f (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 C-c C-u (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
C-c C-f (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 C-c C-u (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
C-c C-f (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 C-c C-u (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
C-c C-f (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 C-c C-u (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
C-c C-f (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 C-c C-v (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
C-c C-f (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 C-c C-v (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
C-c C-f (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 C-c C-w (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
C-c C-f C-b (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 C-c C-w (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
C-c C-f C-c (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 C-c C-w (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
C-c C-f C-f (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 C-c C-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
C-c C-f C-r (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 C-c C-x (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
C-c C-f C-s (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 C-c C-y (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
C-c C-f C-t (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 C-c C-z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
C-c C-f C-w (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 C-c C-z (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
C-c C-i (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 C-c DEL (C Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
C-c C-i (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 C-c Delete (C Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
C-c C-j (Term mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 C-c RET (Goto Address mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
C-c C-k (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 C-c RET (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
C-c C-k (Term mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 C-c TAB (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
C-c C-k (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 C-c TAB (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
C-c C-l (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 C-d (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
C-c C-l (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402 C-d (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
C-c C-l (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 C-d (Shell mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
C-c C-l (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 C-Down-mouse-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
C-c C-l (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 C-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
C-c C-l (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 C-e (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
C-c C-n (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 C-END . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
C-c C-n (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 C-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
C-c C-n (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 C-f (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
C-c C-n (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 C-f, when using input methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
C-c C-n (SGML mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 C-g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
C-c C-n (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 C-g (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
C-c C-o (LATEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 C-g C-g (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
C-c C-o (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 C-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
C-c C-o (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 C-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
C-c C-p (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 C-h 4 i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
C-c C-p (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 C-h a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
646 GNU Emacs Manual

C-h b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C-M-d (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

C-h c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 C-M-e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
C-h C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 C-M-f. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
C-h C-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 C-M-f (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
C-h C-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-h. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
C-h C-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-h (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
C-h C-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-i. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
C-h C-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-i (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
C-h C-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 C-M-j. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
C-h C-h (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 C-M-k. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
C-h C-m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
C-h C-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-l (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
C-h C-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-l (Shell mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
C-h C-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
C-h C-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-n (Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
C-h C-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-n (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
C-h d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 C-M-o. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
C-h e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C-M-p. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
C-h f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 C-M-p (Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
C-h F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 C-M-p (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
C-h g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 C-M-q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
C-h h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 C-M-q (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
C-h i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C-M-r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
C-h I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 C-M-r (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
C-h k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 C-M-s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
C-h K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 C-M-s (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
C-h l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C-M-S-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
C-h L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 C-M-S-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
C-h m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C-M-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
C-h o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 C-M-t. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
C-h p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 C-M-t (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
C-h P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 C-M-u. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
C-h s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C-M-u (Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
C-h S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 C-M-v. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
C-h t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 C-M-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
C-h v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 C-M-w (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
C-h w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 C-M-wheel-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
C-h x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 C-M-wheel-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
C-j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 C-M-x (Emacs Lisp mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
C-j (and major modes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 C-M-x (Lisp mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
C-j (Lisp Interaction mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 C-M-x (Scheme mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
C-j (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 C-M-y (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
C-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 C-M-z (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
C-k (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 C-mouse-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
C-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 C-mouse-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
C-LEFT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 C-mouse-2 (mode line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
C-M-%. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 C-mouse-2 (scroll bar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
C-M-% (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 C-mouse-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
C-M-,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 C-mouse-3 (when menu bar is disabled) . . . . . . . 209
C-M-.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 C-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
C-M-/. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 C-n (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
C-M-@ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 C-n (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
C-M-\. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 C-n, when using input methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
C-M-a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 C-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
C-M-b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 C-o (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
C-M-c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 C-o (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
C-M-d. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 C-o (Occur mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
C-M-d (Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 C-o (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
Key (Character) Index 647

C-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 C-x 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

C-p (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 C-x 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
C-p (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 C-x 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
C-p, when using input methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 C-x 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
C-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 C-x 4 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
C-q (Incremental Search). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 C-x 4 a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
C-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 C-x 4 b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
C-r (Incremental Search). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 C-x 4 c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
C-RIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 C-x 4 C-j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
C-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 C-x 4 C-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
C-s (Incremental Search). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 C-x 4 d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
C-S-backspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 C-x 4 f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
C-S-mouse-3 (FFAP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 C-x 4 f (FFAP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
C-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 C-x 4 m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
C-SPC C-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 C-x 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
C-SPC C-SPC, enabling Transient Mark C-x 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
mode temporarily . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 C-x 5 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
C-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 C-x 5 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
C-t d (Image-Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 C-x 5 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
C-TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171, 211 C-x 5 b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
C-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 C-x 5 c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
C-u C-/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 C-x 5 d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
C-u C-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 C-x 5 f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
C-u C-x C-x. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 C-x 5 f (FFAP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
C-u C-x v = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 C-x 5 m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
C-u C-x v D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 C-x 5 o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
C-u M-; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 C-x 5 r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
C-u TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 C-x 5 u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
C-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 76 C-x 6 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-v (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 C-x 6 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
C-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 C-x 6 b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-w (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 C-x 6 d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-wheel-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 C-x 6 RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-wheel-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 C-x 6 s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
C-x # . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 C-x 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
C-x $ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 C-x 8 e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
C-x ( . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 C-x 8 e RET (Incremental Search). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
C-x ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 C-x 8 RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
C-x + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 C-x 8 RET (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
C-x - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 C-x a g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
C-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 C-x a i g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
C-x ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 C-x a i l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
C-x < . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 C-x a l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
C-x = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 C-x b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
C-x =, and international characters . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 C-x C-+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
C-x > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 C-x C-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
C-x [ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 C-x C-; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
C-x [ (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 C-x C-= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
C-x [ (DocView mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 C-x C-0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
C-x ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 C-x C-a (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
C-x ] (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 C-x C-a C-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
C-x ] (DocView mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 C-x C-a C-j (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
C-x ^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 C-x C-a C-w (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
C-x ` . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 C-x C-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
C-x \ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 C-x C-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
C-x } . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 C-x C-c (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
C-x 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 C-x C-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
C-x 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 C-x C-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
648 GNU Emacs Manual

C-x C-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 C-x o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

C-x C-f (FFAP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 C-x q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
C-x C-j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 C-x r + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C-x C-k b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 C-x r b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C-x C-k C-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 C-x r c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C-x C-k C-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 C-x r d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
C-x C-k C-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 C-x r f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C-x C-k C-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 C-x r i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-x C-k C-i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 C-x r j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
C-x C-k C-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 C-x r k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
C-x C-k C-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 C-x r l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C-x C-k C-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 C-x r m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C-x C-k d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 C-x r M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
C-x C-k e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 C-x r M-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
C-x C-k l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 C-x r n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C-x C-k n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 C-x r N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C-x C-k r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 C-x r o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C-x C-k RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 C-x r r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-x C-k SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 C-x r s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
C-x C-k x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 C-x r SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
C-x C-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 C-x r t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C-x C-M-+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 C-x r w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C-x C-M-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 C-x r y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
C-x C-M-= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 C-x RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
C-x C-M-0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 C-x RET c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
C-x C-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 C-x RET C-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
C-x C-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 C-x RET f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
C-x C-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 C-x RET F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
C-x C-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 C-x RET k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
C-x C-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 C-x RET p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
C-x C-r (FFAP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 C-x RET r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
C-x C-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 C-x RET t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
C-x C-s (Custom Themes buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 C-x RET x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
C-x C-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 C-x RET X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
C-x C-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 C-x RIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
C-x C-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 C-x s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
C-x C-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 C-x t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
C-x C-v (FFAP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 C-x t 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
C-x C-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 C-x t 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
C-x C-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 C-x t 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
C-x C-x, in rectangle-mark-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 C-x t b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
C-x C-z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 C-x t C-f (FFAP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
C-x d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 C-x t d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
C-x d (FFAP). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 C-x t f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
C-x DEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 C-x t m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
C-x e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 C-x t o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
C-x ESC ESC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 C-x t r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
C-x f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 C-x t RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
C-x h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 C-x t t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
C-x i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 C-x TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
C-x k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 C-x TAB (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
C-x l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 C-x u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C-x LEFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 C-x v + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
C-x m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 C-x v = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
C-x n d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 C-x v ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
C-x n n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 C-x v b c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
C-x n p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 C-x v b l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
C-x n w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 C-x v b s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Key (Character) Index 649

C-x v d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 E
C-x v D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
e (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
C-x v g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
e (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
C-x v G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
e (View mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
C-x v h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
END . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
C-x v i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
ESC ESC ESC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
C-x v I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
ESC ESC ESC (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
C-x v l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
C-x v L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
C-x v O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
C-x v P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 F
C-x v u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
C-x v v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 f (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
C-x w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 f (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
C-x w b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 f (GDB threads buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
C-x w h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 f (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
C-x w i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 F1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
C-x w l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 F10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
C-x w p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 F11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
C-x w r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 F2 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-x z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 F2 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
C-y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 F2 b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-y (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 F2 d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 F2 RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
C-z (X windows). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 F2 s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
F3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
F4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

D
d (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
d (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
G
d (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 g (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
d (GDB threads buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 g (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
d (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 g (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
d (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 g char (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
D (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 g d (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
D (GDB Breakpoints buffer). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 g D (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
D (GDB speedbar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 g w (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
DEL (and major modes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 G (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
DEL (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
DEL (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
DEL (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
DEL (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 H
DEL (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 h (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
DEL (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 h (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
DEL (programming modes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 h (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
DEL (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 H (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
DEL (View mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 H (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
Down-mouse-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 H (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
DOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 HOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
DOWN (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
650 GNU Emacs Manual

I M-& . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
i (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 M-' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
i (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 M-, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
i (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 M-- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
i + (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 M-- M-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
i - (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 M-- M-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
i a (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 M-- M-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
i b (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 M-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
i c (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 M-/ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
i c (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 M-: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
i d (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 M-; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
i h (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 M-< . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
i m (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 M-< (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
i o (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 M-< (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
i r (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 M-= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
i v (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 M-= (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
i w (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 M-> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
i x (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 M-> (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
i y (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 M-> (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
I (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 M-? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
INSERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 M-? (Nroff mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
M-? (Shell mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
M-^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
J M-` . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
j (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 M-@ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 252
j (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 M-\ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
M-{ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
M-{ (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
K M-{ (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
M-} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
k (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
M-} (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
k (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
M-} (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
M-| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
M-~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
L M-0, tab bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
l (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 M-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
l (GDB threads buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 M-1, tab bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
l (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 M-9, tab bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
l (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 M-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
l (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 M-a (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
L (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 M-a (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
L (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 M-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
LEFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 M-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
LEFT, and bidirectional text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 M-c (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
M-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
M-DEL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
M M-DEL (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
m (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 M-DEL (Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
m (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 M-DOWN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
m (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 M-DOWN (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
m (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 M-Drag-mouse-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
M (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 M-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
M (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 M-e (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
M-! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 M-e (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
M-$ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 M-e (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
M-$ (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 M-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
M-% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 M-F10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
M-% (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 M-g c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Key (Character) Index 651

M-g g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 M-s _ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

M-g M-g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 M-s a C-s (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
M-g M-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 M-s a M-C-s (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
M-g n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 M-s c (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
M-g TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 M-s C-e (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
M-G (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 M-s f C-s (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
M-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 M-s f M-C-s (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
M-i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 M-s h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
M-j . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 M-s h f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
M-j b (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 M-s h l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
M-j c (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 M-s h l (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
M-j l (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 M-s h p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
M-j r (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 M-s h r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
M-j u (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 M-s h r (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
M-k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 M-s h u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
M-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 M-s h w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
M-LEFT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 M-s i (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
M-LEFT (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 M-s M-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
M-m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 M-s M-< . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
M-m (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 M-s M-> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
M-mouse-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 M-s M-r (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
M-mouse-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 M-s M-s (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
M-mouse-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 M-s M-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
M-n (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 M-s o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
M-n (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
M-s o (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
M-n (Man mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
M-s r (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
M-n (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
M-s SPC (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
M-n (Nroff mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
M-s w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
M-n (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
M-S (Enriched mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
M-n (Shell mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
M-S-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
M-o b (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
M-SPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
M-o d (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
M-t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
M-o i (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
M-TAB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
M-o l (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
M-o o (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 M-TAB (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
M-o u (Enriched mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 M-TAB (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
M-p (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 M-TAB (Text mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
M-p (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 M-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
M-p (Man mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 M-UP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
M-p (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 M-UP (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
M-p (Nroff mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 M-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 76
M-p (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 M-v (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
M-p (Shell mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 M-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
M-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 M-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
M-q (C mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 M-X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
M-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 M-y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
M-r (Incremental Search). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 M-y (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
M-r (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 M-z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
M-r (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 mouse-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
M-r (Shell mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 mouse-1 (mode line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
M-RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 mouse-1 (on buttons) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
M-RIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 mouse-1 (scroll bar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
M-RIGHT (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 mouse-1 in the minibuffer
M-s ' (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 (Incremental Search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
M-s (Log Edit mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 mouse-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
M-s (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 mouse-2 (GDB Breakpoints buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
M-s (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 mouse-2 (mode line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
M-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 mouse-2 (on buttons) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
652 GNU Emacs Manual

mouse-2 in the minibuffer Q

(Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 q (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
mouse-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 q (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
mouse-3 (mode line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 q (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
q (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
q (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
q (Rmail summary) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
N q (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
q (View mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
n (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
Q (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
n (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 Q (Rmail summary) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
n (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
n (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
n (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 R
N (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 r (GDB threads buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 76 r (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
next (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 r (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
next (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 r (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
R (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
RET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
RET (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
O RET (completion in minibuffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
RET (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
o (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
RET (GDB Breakpoints buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
o (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 RET (GDB speedbar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
o (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 RET (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
o (Occur mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 RET (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
o (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 RET (Occur mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
O (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 RET (Package Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
RET (Shell mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
RIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
RIGHT, and bidirectional text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
P
p (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 S
p (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
s (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
p (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
s (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
p (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
s (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
p (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 s (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
p (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 s (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
p d (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402 s (View mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
P (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 s 0 (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
PageDown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 76 s o (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
PageDown (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 s p (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
PageDown (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 s s (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
PageUp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 76 s w (Image mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
PageUp (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 S (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
PageUp (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 S (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
prior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 76 S (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
prior (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 S-C-TAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
prior (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 S-F10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
S-mouse-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
S-mouse-3 (FFAP). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
S-SPC (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
S-TAB (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
S-TAB (Help mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
S-TAB (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
SPC (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Key (Character) Index 653

SPC (completion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 U (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

SPC (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 U (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
SPC (DocView mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 U (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
SPC (GDB Breakpoints buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 UP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
SPC (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 UP (minibuffer history) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
SPC (Gnus Summary mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
SPC (Incremental search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
SPC (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
SPC (View mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 V
v (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
v (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
T v (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
t (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
t (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
t (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
t (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 W
T (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 w (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
T (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 w (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
TAB (and major modes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 w (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
TAB (completion example) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 W (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
TAB (completion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
TAB (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
TAB (GUD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
TAB (Help mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 X
TAB (indentation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
TAB (Message mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 x (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
TAB (Org Mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 x (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
TAB (programming modes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 x (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
TAB (Shell mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 x (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
TAB (Text mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 x (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
TAB, when using Chinese input methods . . . . . . . 220 X (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389

U Y
u (Buffer Menu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
u (Calendar mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 Y (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
u (Dired deletion) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
u (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
u (Gnus Group mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
u (Package Menu). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
Z
u (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 Z (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
654 GNU Emacs Manual

Command and Function Index

2 B
2C-associate-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 back-to-indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
2C-dissociate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 backward-button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2C-merge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 backward-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2C-newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 backward-delete-char-untabify . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
2C-split . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 backward-kill-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
2C-two-columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 backward-kill-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
backward-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
backward-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
5 backward-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
5x5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 backward-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
backward-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
backward-up-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
A backward-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
abbrev-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 balance-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
abbrev-prefix-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 beginning-of-buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
abbrev-suggest-show-report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374 beginning-of-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
abort-recursive-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 beginning-of-visual-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
activate-transient-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . 223 bibtex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
add-change-log-entry-other-window . . . . . . . . 354 binary-overwrite-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
add-change-log-entry-other- blackbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
window, in Diff mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 blink-cursor-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
add-dir-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 bookmark-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
add-file-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 bookmark-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
add-file-local-variable-prop-line . . . . . . . . 507 bookmark-insert-location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
add-global-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 bookmark-jump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
add-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504 bookmark-load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
add-mode-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 bookmark-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
add-name-to-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 bookmark-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
animate-birthday-present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 bookmark-set-no-overwrite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
append-next-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 bookmark-write . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
append-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 browse-url . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
append-to-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 browse-url-at-mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
append-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 browse-url-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
apply-macro-to-region-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 browse-url-of-dired-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
appt-activate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 bs-customize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
appt-add . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 bs-show . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
appt-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 bubbles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 buffer-menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
apropos-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Buffer-menu-1-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
apropos-documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Buffer-menu-2-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
apropos-local-value. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Buffer-menu-backup-unmark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
apropos-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Buffer-menu-bury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
apropos-user-option. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Buffer-menu-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
apropos-value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Buffer-menu-delete-backwards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
apropos-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Buffer-menu-execute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
ask-user-about-lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Buffer-menu-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
async-shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 Buffer-menu-not-modified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
auto-compression-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Buffer-menu-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
auto-fill-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 buffer-menu-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
auto-revert-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Buffer-menu-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
auto-revert-tail-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Buffer-menu-select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
auto-save-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Buffer-menu-switch-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Buffer-menu-this-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Command and Function Index 655

Buffer-menu-toggle-files-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 calendar-end-of-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

Buffer-menu-toggle-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 calendar-end-of-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Buffer-menu-unmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 calendar-ethiopic-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Buffer-menu-unmark-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 calendar-ethiopic-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Buffer-menu-unmark-all-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 calendar-forward-day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Buffer-menu-visit-tags-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 calendar-forward-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
bug-reference-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368 calendar-forward-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
bug-reference-prog-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368 calendar-forward-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
butterfly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 calendar-french-goto-date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
button-describe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 calendar-french-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
calendar-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
calendar-goto-day-of-year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
C calendar-goto-today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
c-backslash-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 calendar-hebrew-goto-date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
c-backward-conditional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 calendar-hebrew-list-yahrzeits . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
c-beginning-of-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 calendar-hebrew-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
c-beginning-of-statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 calendar-islamic-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
c-context-line-break . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 calendar-islamic-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
c-end-of-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 calendar-iso-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
c-end-of-statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 calendar-iso-goto-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
c-fill-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 calendar-iso-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
c-forward-conditional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 calendar-julian-goto-date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
c-guess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 calendar-julian-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
c-guess-install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 calendar-list-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
c-hungry-delete-backwards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 calendar-lunar-phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
c-hungry-delete-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 calendar-mark-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
c-indent-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 calendar-mayan-print-date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
c-indent-exp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 calendar-other-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
c-indent-line-or-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 calendar-persian-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
c-macro-expand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 calendar-persian-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
c-mark-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 calendar-print-day-of-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
c-set-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 calendar-print-other-dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
c-show-syntactic-information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 calendar-redraw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
c-toggle-auto-newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 calendar-scroll-left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
c-toggle-electric-state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 calendar-scroll-left-three-months . . . . . . . . 401
c-toggle-hungry-state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 calendar-scroll-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
c-ts-mode-indent-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 calendar-scroll-right-three-months . . . . . . . 401
c-ts-mode-set-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 calendar-set-date-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
c-up-conditional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 calendar-sunrise-sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 calendar-unmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
calendar-astro-goto-day-number . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 capitalize-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
calendar-astro-print-day-number . . . . . . . . . . . 407 category-set-mnemonics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
calendar-backward-day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 cd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
calendar-backward-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 center-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
calendar-backward-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 change-log-goto-source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
calendar-backward-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 change-log-merge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
calendar-bahai-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 change-log-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
calendar-bahai-print-date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 char-category-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
calendar-beginning-of-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 check-parens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
calendar-beginning-of-week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 choose-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
calendar-beginning-of-year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 clean-buffer-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
calendar-chinese-goto-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 clear-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
calendar-chinese-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 clipboard-kill-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
calendar-coptic-goto-date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 clipboard-kill-ring-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
calendar-coptic-print-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 clipboard-yank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
calendar-count-days-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 clone-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
calendar-cursor-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 clone-indirect-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
calendar-end-of-month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 clone-indirect-buffer-other-window . . . . . . . 181
656 GNU Emacs Manual

column-number-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 copy-rectangle-to-register. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
comint-bol-or-process-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 copy-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
comint-continue-subjob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 copy-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
comint-copy-old-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 count-lines-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 count-words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
comint-delete-output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 count-words-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
comint-dynamic-list-filename... . . . . . . . . . . . 456 cpp-highlight-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
comint-dynamic-list-input-ring . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 create-fontset-from-fontset-spec . . . . . . . . . 234
comint-get-next-from-history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 cua-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
comint-history-isearch-backward-regexp . . . 459 custom-prompt-customize-
comint-insert-previous-argument . . . . . . . . . . . 459 unsaved-options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
comint-interrupt-subjob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 Custom-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
comint-kill-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 Custom-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
comint-magic-space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 customize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
comint-next-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 customize-apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-next-prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 customize-browse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
comint-previous-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 customize-changed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-previous-prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 customize-create-theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
comint-quit-subjob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 customize-face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 customize-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-send-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 customize-option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-send-invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 customize-saved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-show-maximum-output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 customize-themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-show-output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 customize-unsaved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
comint-stop-subjob . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 cwarn-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
comint-strip-ctrl-m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 cycle-spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
comint-truncate-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
comint-write-output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
command-query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 D
comment-dwim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 dabbrev-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
comment-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 dabbrev-expand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
comment-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 dbx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
comment-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 debbugs-browse-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
comment-set-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 debug_print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
compare-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 decipher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
compilation-next-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 default-indent-new-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
compilation-next-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 default-value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
compilation-previous-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 define-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
compilation-previous-file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 define-global-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
compile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 define-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
compile-goto-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 define-mail-user-agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
completion-at-point, in define-mode-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
programming language modes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 delete-backward-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
completion-at-point, in Shell Mode . . . . . . . . . 456 delete-blank-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
compose-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 delete-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
compose-mail-other-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 delete-dir-local-variable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
compose-mail-other-window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 delete-duplicate-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
connection-local-set-profile-variables . . . 512 delete-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
connection-local-set-profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 delete-file-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
context-menu-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 delete-file-local-variable-prop-line . . . . . 507
copy-dir-locals-to-file-locals . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 delete-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
copy-dir-locals-to-file- delete-horizontal-space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
locals-prop-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507 delete-indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
copy-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 delete-other-frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
copy-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 delete-other-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
copy-file-locals-to-dir-locals . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 delete-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
copy-matching-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 delete-selection-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
copy-rectangle-as-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 delete-trailing-whitespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Command and Function Index 657

delete-whitespace-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 diff-context->unified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

delete-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 diff-delete-trailing-whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . 166
describe-bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 diff-ediff-patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 diff-file-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
describe-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 diff-file-next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
describe-character-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 diff-file-prev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
describe-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 diff-goto-source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 diff-hunk-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
describe-copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 diff-hunk-next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
describe-distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 diff-hunk-prev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
describe-fontset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 diff-ignore-whitespace-hunk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 diff-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
describe-gnu-project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 diff-refine-hunk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 diff-refresh-hunk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 diff-restrict-view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-key-briefly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 diff-reverse-direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 diff-split-hunk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-language-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 diff-unified->context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
describe-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 digit-argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
describe-no-warranty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 dir-locals-set-class-variables . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
describe-package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 dir-locals-set-directory-class . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
describe-prefix-bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 dired. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
describe-repeat-maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 dired-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
describe-symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 dired-change-marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
describe-syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 dired-clean-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
describe-text-properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 dired-compare-directories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
describe-theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 dired-copy-filename-as-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
describe-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 dired-create-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
desktop-change-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 dired-create-empty-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
desktop-clear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 dired-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
desktop-read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 dired-display-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
desktop-revert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 dired-do-byte-compile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
desktop-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 dired-do-chgrp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
desktop-save-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 dired-do-chmod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
diary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 dired-do-chown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
diary-anniversary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 dired-do-compress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
diary-block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 dired-do-compress-to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
diary-cyclic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 dired-do-copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
diary-float . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 dired-do-copy-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
diary-insert-anniversary-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 dired-do-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
diary-insert-block-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 dired-do-find-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
diary-insert-cyclic-entry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace . . . . . . . . . 388
diary-insert-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 dired-do-flagged-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
diary-insert-monthly-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 dired-do-hardlink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
diary-insert-weekly-entry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 dired-do-hardlink-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
diary-insert-yearly-entry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 dired-do-info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
diary-mail-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 dired-do-isearch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
diary-mark-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 dired-do-isearch-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
diary-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 dired-do-kill-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
diary-show-all-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 dired-do-load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
diary-view-entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 dired-do-man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 dired-do-print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
diff-add-change-log- dired-do-redisplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
entries-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 dired-do-relsymlink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
diff-apply-hunk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 dired-do-relsymlink-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
diff-backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 dired-do-rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
diff-buffer-with-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 dired-do-rename-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
diff-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 dired-do-shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
658 GNU Emacs Manual

dired-do-symlink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 display-buffer (command) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

dired-do-symlink-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 display-buffer, detailed description. . . . . . . . . . 190
dired-do-touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 display-fill-column-indicator-mode . . . . . . . . 93
dired-downcase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 display-line-numbers-mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
dired-find-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 display-local-help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
dired-find-file-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 display-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
dired-flag-auto-save-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 dissociated-press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
dired-flag-backup-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 do-auto-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
dired-flag-file-deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 doc-view-clear-cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-flag-files-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 doc-view-enlarge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-flag-garbage-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 doc-view-first-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-goto-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 doc-view-goto-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-goto-subdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 doc-view-kill-proc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-hide-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 doc-view-kill-proc-and-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-hide-details-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 doc-view-last-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-hide-subdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 doc-view-minor-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
dired-isearch-filenames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 doc-view-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
dired-isearch-filenames-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 doc-view-next-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-jump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 doc-view-open-text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-jump-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 doc-view-previous-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 doc-view-reset-slice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-mark-directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 doc-view-scroll-down-or-previous-page . . . . 451
dired-mark-executables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 doc-view-scroll-up-or-next-page . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-mark-files-containing-regexp . . . . . . . 384 doc-view-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-mark-files-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 doc-view-search-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-mark-subdir-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 doc-view-set-slice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-mark-symlinks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 doc-view-set-slice-using-mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-maybe-insert-subdir. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 doc-view-show-tooltip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
dired-mouse-find-file-other-window . . . . . . . 382 doc-view-shrink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-next-dirline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 doc-view-toggle-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
dired-next-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 doctex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
dired-next-marked-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 doctor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
dired-next-subdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 down-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
dired-number-of-marked-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 downcase-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
dired-other-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 downcase-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
dired-other-tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 dunnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
dired-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
dired-prev-dirline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
dired-prev-marked-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 E
dired-prev-subdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 edit-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
dired-previous-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 edit-kbd-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
dired-sort-toggle-or-edit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 edit-tab-stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
dired-toggle-marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 eldoc-doc-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
dired-tree-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 eldoc-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
dired-tree-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 eldoc-print-current-symbol-info . . . . . . . . . . . 300
dired-undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 electric-indent-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
dired-unmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 electric-layout-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
dired-unmark-all-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 electric-pair-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
dired-unmark-all-marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 electric-quote-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
dired-unmark-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 emacs-lisp-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
dired-up-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 emacs-version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
dired-upcase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 emoji-describe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
dired-view-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 emoji-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
dirs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 emoji-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
dirtrack-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 emoji-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
disable-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 enable-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
disable-theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 enable-theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
display-battery-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 end-of-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Command and Function Index 659

end-of-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 find-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

end-of-visual-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 find-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
enlarge-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 find-file-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
enlarge-window-horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 find-file-literally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
enriched-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 find-file-other-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
epa-dired-do-decrypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 find-file-other-tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
epa-dired-do-encrypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 find-file-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
epa-dired-do-sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 find-file-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
epa-dired-do-verify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 find-file-read-only-other-frame . . . . . . . . . . . 200
eval-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 find-grep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
eval-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 find-grep-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
eval-expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 find-name-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
eval-last-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 find-sibling-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
eval-print-last-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 find-tag-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
eval-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 finder-by-keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
eww . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 flush-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
eww-open-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 flyspell-auto-correct-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
eww-search-words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 flyspell-correct-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
exchange-point-and-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 flyspell-correct-word-before-point . . . . . . . 136
exchange-point-and-mark, in flyspell-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
rectangle-mark-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 flyspell-prog-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
execute-extended-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 foldout-exit-fold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
exit-calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402 foldout-zoom-subtree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
exit-recursive-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 follow-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
expand-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 font-lock-add-keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
expand-region-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 font-lock-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
font-lock-remove-keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
format-decode-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
F fortune-to-signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
facemenu-remove-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 forward-button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
facemenu-remove-face-props . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 forward-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
facemenu-set-background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 forward-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
facemenu-set-bold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 forward-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
facemenu-set-bold-italic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 forward-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
facemenu-set-default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 forward-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
facemenu-set-face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 forward-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
facemenu-set-foreground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 forward-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
facemenu-set-italic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 frameset-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
facemenu-set-underline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 fringe-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
ff-find-related-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
ffap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
ffap-menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 G
ffap-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 gdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
ffap-next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 gdb-delete-breakpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
fido-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 gdb-display-disassembly-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
file-cache-add-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 gdb-display-disassembly-for-thread . . . . . . . 322
file-cache-minibuffer-complete . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 gdb-display-io-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
file-name-shadow-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 gdb-display-locals-buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
fileloop-continue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 gdb-display-locals-for-thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
filesets-add-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 gdb-display-memory-buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
filesets-init . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 gdb-display-registers-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
filesets-remove-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 gdb-display-registers-for-thread . . . . . . . . . 323
fill-individual-paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 gdb-display-stack-for-thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
fill-nonuniform-paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 gdb-edit-value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
fill-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 gdb-frames-select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
fill-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 gdb-goto-breakpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
fill-region-as-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 gdb-load-window-configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
find-alternate-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 gdb-many-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
660 GNU Emacs Manual

gdb-restore-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 gud-gdb-complete-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

gdb-save-window-configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 gud-jump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
gdb-select-thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 gud-next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
gdb-toggle-breakpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 gud-print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
gdb-var-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 gud-refresh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
getenv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573 gud-remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
global-auto-revert-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 gud-step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
global-cwarn-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 gud-stepi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
global-display-fill-column- gud-tbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
indicator-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 gud-tooltip-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
global-display-line-numbers-mode . . . . . . . . . 101 gud-until . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
global-eldoc-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 gud-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
global-font-lock-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 gud-watch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
global-hl-line-mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 guiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
global-set-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
global-tab-line-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
global-text-scale-adjust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
global-visual-line-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 H
global-whitespace-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 handwrite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
global-whitespace-toggle-options . . . . . . . . . . . 95 hanoi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
glyphless-display-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 help-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
gnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 help-follow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
gnus-group-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 help-for-help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
gnus-group-kill-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 help-go-back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
gnus-group-list-all-groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
help-go-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
gnus-group-list-groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
help-goto-next-page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
gnus-group-list-killed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
help-goto-previous-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
gnus-group-list-zombies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
help-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
gnus-group-next-unread-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
help-with-tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
gnus-group-prev-unread-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
hi-lock-find-patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
gnus-group-read-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
hi-lock-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
gnus-group-toggle-
subscription-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 hi-lock-write-interactive-patterns . . . . . . . . 91
gnus-summary-isearch-article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 hide-ifdef-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
gnus-summary-next-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 hide-sublevels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
gnus-summary-next-unread-article . . . . . . . . . 447 highlight-changes-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
gnus-summary-prev-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 highlight-lines-matching-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
gnus-summary-prev-unread-article . . . . . . . . . 448 highlight-phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
gnus-summary-search-article-backward . . . . . 448 highlight-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
gnus-summary-search-article-forward . . . . . . 448 highlight-symbol-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
gomoku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 hl-line-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
goto-address-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
goto-address-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 horizontal-scroll-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
goto-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 how-many . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
goto-followup-to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 hs-hide-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
goto-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 hs-hide-block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
goto-line, with an argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 hs-hide-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
goto-line-relative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 hs-minor-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
goto-reply-to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 hs-show-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
gpm-mouse-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 hs-show-block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
grep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 hs-show-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
grep-find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 hs-toggle-hiding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
grep-find-toggle-abbreviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 html-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
gud-cont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 htmlfontify-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
gud-def . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
gud-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
gud-finish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
gud-gdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Command and Function Index 661

I indent-rigidly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
ibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
icalendar-export-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Info-goto-emacs-command-node . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
icalendar-export-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Info-goto-emacs-key-command-node . . . . . . . . . . . 44
icalendar-import-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 info-lookup-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
icalendar-import-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 info-lookup-symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
icomplete-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 info-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
icomplete-vertical-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 insert-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
ielm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 insert-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
image-converter-add-handler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 insert-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
image-crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 insert-file-literally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
image-cut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 insert-kbd-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
image-decrease-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 insert-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
image-decrease-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 inverse-add-global-abbrev. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
image-dired-dired-comment-files . . . . . . . . . . . 396 inverse-add-mode-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
image-dired-dired-display-external . . . . . . . 396 isearch-abort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
image-dired-dired-display-image . . . . . . . . . . . 396 isearch-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
image-dired-dired-edit- isearch-backward-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
comment-and-tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 isearch-cancel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
image-dired-dired-toggle-marked-thumbs . . . 396 isearch-char-by-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
image-dired-display-next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 isearch-complete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
image-dired-display-previous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 isearch-del-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
image-dired-display-this . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 isearch-delete-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
image-dired-display-thumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 isearch-edit-string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
image-flip-horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 isearch-emoji-by-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
image-flip-vertically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 isearch-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
image-goto-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
image-increase-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-forward-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
image-increase-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-forward-symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
image-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 isearch-forward-symbol-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . 113
image-mode-copy-file-name-as-kill . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-forward-thing-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
image-mode-mark-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-forward-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
image-mode-unmark-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-help-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
image-next-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-highlight-lines-
image-next-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 matching-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
image-previous-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-highlight-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
image-previous-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-occur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
image-reset-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-query-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
image-reverse-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-query-replace-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
image-rotate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-quote-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
image-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 isearch-repeat-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
image-toggle-animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-repeat-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
image-toggle-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 isearch-ring-advance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
image-transform-fit-to-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-ring-retreat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
image-transform-reset-to-initial . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-toggle-case-fold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
image-transform-reset-to-original . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-toggle-char-fold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
image-transform-set-percent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-toggle-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
image-transform-set-scale. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 isearch-toggle-invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
imenu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 isearch-toggle-lax-whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
imenu-add-menubar-index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 isearch-toggle-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
increase-left-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 isearch-toggle-specified-input-method . . . . 108
increment-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 isearch-toggle-symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
indent-code-rigidly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 isearch-toggle-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
indent-for-tab-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 isearch-transient-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
indent-line-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 isearch-yank-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
indent-pp-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 isearch-yank-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
indent-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 isearch-yank-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
indent-relative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 isearch-yank-pop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
662 GNU Emacs Manual

isearch-yank-symbol-or-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 kmacro-bind-to-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

isearch-yank-until-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 kmacro-cycle-ring-next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
isearch-yank-word-or-char. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 kmacro-cycle-ring-previous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
isearch-yank-x-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 kmacro-edit-lossage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
iso-gtex2iso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 kmacro-edit-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
iso-iso2gtex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 kmacro-end-and-call-macro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
iso-iso2tex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 kmacro-end-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
iso-tex2iso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 kmacro-end-or-call-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
ispell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 kmacro-end-or-call-macro-repeat . . . . . . . . . . . 139
ispell-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 kmacro-insert-counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
ispell-change-dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 kmacro-name-last-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
ispell-comment-or-string-at-point . . . . . . . . 135 kmacro-redisplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
ispell-comments-and-strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 kmacro-set-counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
ispell-complete-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 kmacro-set-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
ispell-kill-ispell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 kmacro-start-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
ispell-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 kmacro-start-macro-or-insert-counter . . . . . 137
ispell-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 kmacro-step-edit-macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
ispell-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 kmacro-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

J L
jdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 latex-close-block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
jump-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 latex-electric-env-pair-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
just-one-space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 latex-insert-block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
latex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
left-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
K left-char, and bidirectional text . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
kbd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 left-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
kbd-macro-query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 lgrep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
keep-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
keyboard-escape-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 line-number-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
keyboard-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530 lisp-eval-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
keymap-global-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515, 516 lisp-interaction-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
keymap-global-unset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 list-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
keymap-local-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 list-bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
keymap-local-unset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 list-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
keymap-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 list-character-sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
keymap-substitute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 list-charset-chars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
keymap-unset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 list-coding-systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
kill-all-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 list-colors-display. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
kill-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 list-command-history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
kill-buffer-and-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 list-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
kill-compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 list-faces-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
kill-current-buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 list-holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
kill-emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 list-input-methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
kill-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 list-matching-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
kill-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 list-packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
kill-matching-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 list-tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
kill-matching-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
kill-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 load-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
kill-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 load-library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
kill-ring-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 load-theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
kill-sentence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 locate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
kill-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 locate-with-filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
kill-some-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 log-edit-done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
kill-whole-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 log-edit-generate-changelog-from-diff . . . . 339
kill-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 log-edit-insert-changelog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
kmacro-add-counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 log-edit-show-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Command and Function Index 663

log-edit-show-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 mouse-set-secondary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

log-view-toggle-entry-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 mouse-start-secondary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
lossage-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 mouse-wheel-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
lpr-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 mouse-wheel-text-scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
lpr-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 mouse-yank-at-click . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
lunar-phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 mouse-yank-primary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
mouse-yank-secondary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
move-beginning-of-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
M move-end-of-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
mail-abbrev-insert-alias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 move-file-to-trash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
mail-add-attachment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 move-to-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
mail-fill-yanked-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 move-to-window-line-top-bottom . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
mail-text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 mpuz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
make-frame-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 msb-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
make-frame-on-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 multi-isearch-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
make-frame-on-monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 multi-isearch-buffers-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
make-indirect-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 multi-isearch-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
make-local-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
multi-isearch-files-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
make-symbolic-link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
multi-occur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
make-variable-buffer-local . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
multi-occur-in-matching-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . 127
man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
mark-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
mark-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
mark-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
mark-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
N
mark-whole-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 narrow-to-defun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
mark-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 narrow-to-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
menu-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 narrow-to-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
menu-bar-open . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 nato-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
message-goto-bcc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 negative-argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
message-goto-cc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 next-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
message-goto-fcc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 next-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
message-goto-subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 next-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
message-goto-to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 next-error-follow-minor-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
message-insert-signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
next-error-select-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
message-send . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
next-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
message-send-and-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
next-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
message-tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
message-yank-original . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 next-line-or-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
message-yank-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 next-logical-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
minibuffer-choose-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 next-matching-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
minibuffer-complete. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 next-window-any-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
minibuffer-complete-and-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 normal-erase-is-backspace-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
minibuffer-complete-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 normal-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
minibuffer-depth-indicate-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 not-modified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
minibuffer-electric-default-mode . . . . . . . . . . . 27 nroff-backward-text-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
minibuffer-inactive-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 nroff-count-text-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
minibuffer-next-completion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 nroff-electric-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
minibuffer-previous-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 nroff-forward-text-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
mml-attach-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 nroff-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
modify-category-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 number-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
morse-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 nxml-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
mouse-avoidance-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
mouse-buffer-menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
mouse-save-then-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
mouse-secondary-save-then-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
mouse-set-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
mouse-set-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
664 GNU Emacs Manual

O package-menu-filter-by-version . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
occur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 package-menu-filter-clear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
open-dribble-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540 package-menu-filter-marked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
open-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 package-menu-filter-upgradable . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
open-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 package-menu-hide-package. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
open-termscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 package-menu-mark-delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
org-agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 package-menu-mark-install. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
org-agenda-file-to-front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 package-menu-mark-obsolete-
org-cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 for-deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
org-deadline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-menu-mark-unmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
org-export-dispatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 package-menu-mark-upgrades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
org-metadown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-menu-quick-help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
org-metaleft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-menu-toggle-hiding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
org-metaright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-quickstart-refresh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
org-metaup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-recompile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
org-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-recompile-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
org-schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-report-bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
org-shifttab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-upgrade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
org-todo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 package-upgrade-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
other-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 package-vc-checkout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
other-tab-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 package-vc-install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 package-vc-install-from-checkout . . . . . . . . . 492
outline-backward-same-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 package-vc-prepare-patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
outline-cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 package-vc-rebuild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
outline-cycle-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 paragraph-indent-minor-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
outline-forward-same-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 paragraph-indent-text-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
outline-hide-body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 pdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
outline-hide-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 perldb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
outline-hide-leaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 plain-tex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
outline-hide-other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 point-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
outline-hide-subtree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 pong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
outline-minor-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 pop-global-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
outline-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 pr-interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
outline-next-visible-heading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 prefer-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
outline-previous-visible-heading . . . . . . . . . 263 prepend-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
outline-show-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 prepend-to-register. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
outline-show-branches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 prettify-symbols-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
outline-show-children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 previous-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
outline-show-entry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 previous-completion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
outline-show-subtree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 previous-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
outline-up-heading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 previous-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
overwrite-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 previous-line-or-history-element . . . . . . . . . . . 36
previous-logical-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
previous-matching-history-element . . . . . . . . . 36
P print-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
package-activate-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 print-buffer (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
package-browse-url . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 print-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
package-install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 print-region (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
package-install-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 prog-indent-sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
package-menu-describe-package . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 project-async-shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
package-menu-execute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 project-compile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
package-menu-filter-by-archive . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 project-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
package-menu-filter-by-description . . . . . . . 487 project-eshell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
package-menu-filter-by-keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 project-find-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
package-menu-filter-by-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 project-find-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
package-menu-filter-by-name- project-find-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
or-description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 project-forget-project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
package-menu-filter-by-status . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 project-kill-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Command and Function Index 665

project-list-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 repeat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

project-query-replace-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 repeat-complex-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
project-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 repeat-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
project-shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 replace-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
project-shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 replace-string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
project-switch-project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 report-emacs-bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
project-switch-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 reposition-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
project-vc-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 reveal-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
ps-despool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 reverse-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
ps-print-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 revert-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
ps-print-buffer (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 revert-buffer (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
ps-print-buffer-with-faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 revert-buffer-quick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
ps-print-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 revert-buffer-with-coding-system . . . . . . . . . 229
ps-print-region-with-faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 revert-buffer-with-fine-grain . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
ps-spool-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 rgrep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
ps-spool-buffer (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 right-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
ps-spool-buffer-with-faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 right-char, and bidirectional text . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
ps-spool-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 right-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
ps-spool-region-with-faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 rmail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
pwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 rmail-abort-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
rmail-add-label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
rmail-beginning-of-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
Q rmail-bury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
quail-set-keyboard-layout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 rmail-cease-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
quail-show-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 rmail-continue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
quail-translation-keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 rmail-delete-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
query-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 rmail-delete-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
query-replace-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 rmail-edit-current-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
quietly-read-abbrev-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 rmail-end-of-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427
quit-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32, 180 rmail-epa-decrypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
quit-window, in Dired buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 rmail-expunge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
quoted-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 rmail-expunge-and-save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
rmail-first-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
rmail-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
R rmail-get-new-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
re-search-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 rmail-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
re-search-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 rmail-kill-label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
read-abbrev-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 rmail-last-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
read-only-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 rmail-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
recenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 rmail-mime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
recenter-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 rmail-mime-next-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
recenter-top-bottom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 rmail-mime-previous-item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
recentf-edit-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 rmail-mime-toggle-hidden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
recentf-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 rmail-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
recentf-open . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 rmail-next-labeled-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
recentf-save-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 rmail-next-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
recode-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 rmail-next-same-subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
recode-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 rmail-next-undeleted-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
recompile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 rmail-output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
recover-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 rmail-output-as-seen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
recover-session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 rmail-output-body-to-file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 rmail-previous-labeled-message . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
rectangle-exchange-point-and-mark . . . . . . . . . 69 rmail-previous-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
rectangle-mark-mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 rmail-previous-same-subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
remove-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505 rmail-previous-undeleted-message . . . . . . . . . 428
rename-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 rmail-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
rename-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 rmail-redecode-body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
rename-uniquely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 rmail-reply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
666 GNU Emacs Manual

rmail-resend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 set-face-foreground. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

rmail-retry-failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 set-file-modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
rmail-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 set-file-name-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
rmail-show-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 set-fill-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
rmail-sort-by-author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-fill-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
rmail-sort-by-correspondent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-fontset-font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
rmail-sort-by-date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-frame-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
rmail-sort-by-labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-fringe-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
rmail-sort-by-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-goal-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
rmail-sort-by-recipient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
rmail-sort-by-subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-justification-center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
rmail-summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 set-justification-full . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
rmail-summary-bury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-justification-left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
rmail-summary-by-labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 set-justification-none . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
rmail-summary-by-recipients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 set-justification-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
rmail-summary-by-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 set-keyboard-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
rmail-summary-by-senders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 set-language-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
rmail-summary-by-topic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 set-left-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
rmail-summary-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-locale-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
rmail-summary-undelete-many . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438 set-mark-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
rmail-summary-wipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 set-next-selection-coding-system . . . . . . . . . 229
rmail-toggle-header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 set-right-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
rmail-undelete-previous-message . . . . . . . . . . . 429 set-selection-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
rot13-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 set-selective-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
rot13-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 set-terminal-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
run-lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 set-variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
run-scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 set-visited-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
setenv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
setopt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
S setq-default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
save-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 sgml-attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
save-buffers-kill-terminal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 sgml-close-tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
save-some-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 sgml-delete-tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
scheme-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 sgml-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
scratch-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 sgml-name-8bit-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
scroll-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 sgml-name-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
scroll-down-command. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 sgml-skip-tag-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
scroll-down-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 sgml-skip-tag-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
scroll-left . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 sgml-tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
scroll-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 sgml-tag-help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
scroll-other-window-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 sgml-tags-invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
scroll-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 sgml-validate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
scroll-up-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 shadow-initialize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
scroll-up-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 shell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
sdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 shell-backward-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
search-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
search-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 shell-command-on-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
select-frame-by-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 shell-dynamic-complete-command . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
serial-term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 shell-forward-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
server-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 shell-pushd-dextract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
server-edit-abort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 shell-pushd-dunique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
server-eval-at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 shell-pushd-tohome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
server-generate-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 shortdoc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
server-start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 show-paren-local-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
server-stop-automatically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 show-paren-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
set-buffer-file-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 shrink-window-horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
set-buffer-process-coding-system . . . . . . . . . 229 shrink-window-if-larger-than-buffer . . . . . . 189
set-face-background. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 size-indication-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Command and Function Index 667

slitex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 table-narrow-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

smerge-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 table-query-dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
snake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 table-recognize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
solitaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 table-recognize-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
sort-columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 table-recognize-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
sort-fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 table-recognize-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
sort-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 table-release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
sort-numeric-fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 table-shorten-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
sort-pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 table-span-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
sort-paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 table-split-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
split-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 table-split-cell-horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
split-window-below . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 table-split-cell-vertically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
split-window-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 table-unrecognize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
spook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 table-unrecognize-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
standard-display-8bit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 table-unrecognize-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
string-insert-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 table-unrecognize-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
string-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 table-widen-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
subword-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 tabulated-list-narrow-current-column . . . . . 181
sunrise-sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 tabulated-list-sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
superword-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 tabulated-list-widen-current-column . . . . . . 181
suspend-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 tags-next-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
switch-to-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 tags-query-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
switch-to-buffer-other-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 tags-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
switch-to-buffer-other-tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 temp-buffer-resize-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
switch-to-buffer-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
switch-to-completions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 term-char-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
term-line-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
term-pager-toggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
T tetris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
tab-bar-history-back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 tex-bibtex-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
tab-bar-history-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 tex-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
tab-bar-history-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 tex-compile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
tab-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 tex-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
tab-close . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 tex-insert-braces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
tab-close-other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 tex-insert-quote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
tab-last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 tex-kill-job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
tab-move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 tex-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
tab-new . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 tex-print . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
tab-next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 tex-recenter-output-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
tab-previous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 tex-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
tab-recent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 tex-terminate-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
tab-rename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 tex-validate-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
tab-select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 tex-view . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
tab-switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 text-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
tab-to-tab-stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 text-scale-adjust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
tab-undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 text-scale-decrease. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
tabify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 text-scale-increase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
table-backward-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 text-scale-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
table-capture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 text-scale-pinch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
table-fixed-width-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 text-scale-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
table-forward-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 theme-choose-variant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
table-generate-source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 thumbs-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
table-heighten-cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 time-stamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
table-insert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 timeclock-change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
table-insert-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 timeclock-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
table-insert-row . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 timeclock-mode-line-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
table-insert-sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 timeclock-out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
table-justify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 timeclock-reread-log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
668 GNU Emacs Manual

timeclock-when-to-leave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 vc-log-outgoing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

timeclock-workday-remaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 vc-log-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
tmm-menubar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 vc-next-action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
toggle-debug-on-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 vc-print-branch-log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
toggle-frame-fullscreen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 vc-print-log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
toggle-frame-maximized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 vc-print-root-log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
toggle-frame-tab-bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 vc-pull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
toggle-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 vc-push . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
toggle-scroll-bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 vc-refresh-state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
toggle-truncate-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 vc-region-history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
tool-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 vc-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
tooltip-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 vc-revert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
top-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 vc-revision-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
transient-mark-mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 vc-root-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
transpose-chars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 vc-root-version-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
transpose-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 vc-state-refresh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
transpose-paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 vc-switch-branch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
transpose-regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 view-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
transpose-sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 view-echo-area-messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
transpose-sexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 view-emacs-debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
transpose-words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 view-emacs-FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
tty-suppress-bold-inverse- view-emacs-news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
default-colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 view-emacs-problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
view-emacs-todo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
View-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
U view-external-packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
uncomment-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 view-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
undelete-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 view-hello-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
undelete-frame-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 view-lossage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
undigestify-rmail-message. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 view-order-manuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 View-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
undo-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 view-register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
undo-redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 visit-tags-table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
unexpand-abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 visual-line-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
unforward-rmail-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
unhighlight-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
universal-argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 W
universal-coding-system-argument . . . . . . . . . 228 w32-add-untranslated-filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . 602
unmorse-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 w32-find-non-USB-fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
untabify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 w32-remove-untranslated-filesystem . . . . . . . 602
up-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 w32-set-console-codepage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
upcase-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 wdired-change-to-wdired-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
upcase-word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 wdired-finish-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
url-handler-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 what-cursor-position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
use-hard-newlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 what-cursor-position, and
international characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
what-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
V what-page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
vc-annotate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 where-is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
vc-create-branch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350 which-function-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
vc-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 whitespace-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
vc-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 whitespace-toggle-options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
vc-dir-mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 widen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
vc-dir-mark-all-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 widget-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
vc-dir-mark-by-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 widget-complete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
vc-dir-mark-registered-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 widget-describe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
vc-ignore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 widget-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
vc-log-incoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 windmove-default-keybindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Command and Function Index 669

windmove-delete-default-keybindings . . . . . . 192 xref-next-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358

windmove-display-default-keybindings . . . . . 192 xref-prev-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
windmove-right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 xref-prev-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
windmove-swap-states- xref-query-replace-in-results . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
default-keybindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 xref-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
window-configuration-to-register . . . . . . . . . . . 73 xref-quit-and-pop-marker-stack . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
window-divider-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 xref-revert-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
winner-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 xref-select-and-show-xref. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
woman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 xref-show-location-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
word-search-backward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 xwidget-webkit-browse-history . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
word-search-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 xwidget-webkit-browse-url. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
write-abbrev-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 xwidget-webkit-edit-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
write-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 xwidget-webkit-isearch-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
write-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 xwidget-webkit-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480

X Y
xdb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 yank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
xref-etags-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 yank-media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
xref-find-apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 yank-pop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
xref-find-definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 yank-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
xref-find-definitions-other-frame . . . . . . . . 357
xref-find-definitions-other-window . . . . . . . 357
xref-find-references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Z
xref-find-references-and-replace . . . . . . . . . 360 zap-to-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
xref-go-back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 zap-up-to-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
xref-go-forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
xref-next-group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 zrgrep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
670 GNU Emacs Manual

Variable Index

A auto-save-visited-interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
abbrev-all-caps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 auto-save-visited-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
abbrev-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
abbrev-suggest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 B
abbrev-suggest-hint-threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
backtrace-on-error-noninteractive . . . . . . . . 571
adaptive-fill-first-line-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . 260
backup-by-copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
adaptive-fill-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
backup-by-copying-when-linked . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
adaptive-fill-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
backup-by-copying-when-mismatch . . . . . . . . . . . 153
adaptive-fill-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
backup-by-copying-when-
add-log-always-start-new-record . . . . . . . . . . . 354
privileged-mismatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
add-log-dont-create-changelog-file . . . . . . . 355
backup-directory-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
add-log-keep-changes-together . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
backup-enable-predicate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
ange-ftp-default-user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
battery-mode-line-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
ange-ftp-gateway-host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
bdf-directory-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
ange-ftp-generate-anonymous-password . . . . . 170 bidi-display-reordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
ange-ftp-make-backup-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 bidi-paragraph-direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
ange-ftp-smart-gateway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 bidi-paragraph-separate-re . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
appt-audible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 bidi-paragraph-start-re . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
appt-delete-window-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 blink-cursor-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
appt-disp-window-function. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 blink-cursor-blinks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
appt-display-diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 blink-cursor-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
appt-display-duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 blink-matching-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
appt-display-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 blink-matching-paren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
appt-display-mode-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 blink-matching-paren-distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
appt-message-warning-time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 bookmark-default-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
appt-warning-time-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 bookmark-save-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
apropos-do-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 bookmark-search-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
apropos-documentation-sort-by-scores . . . . . . 46 bookmark-use-annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
apropos-sort-by-scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 browse-url-browser-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
async-shell-command-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 browse-url-handlers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
async-shell-command-display-buffer . . . . . . . 454 browse-url-mailto-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
async-shell-command-width. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 buffer-file-coding-system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
auth-source-save-behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 buffer-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
auth-sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 bug-reference-auto-setup-functions . . 369, 370
auto-coding-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 bug-reference-bug-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
auto-coding-functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 bug-reference-forge-alist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
auto-coding-regexp-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 bug-reference-setup-from-irc-alist . . . . . . . 369
auto-compression-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 bug-reference-setup-from-mail-alist . . . . . . 369
auto-hscroll-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 bug-reference-setup-from-vc-alist . . . . . . . . 369
auto-mode-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 bug-reference-url-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
auto-mode-case-fold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
auto-revert-avoid-polling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
auto-revert-check-vc-info. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 C
auto-revert-interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 c-default-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
auto-revert-notify-exclude-dir-regexp . . . . 158 c-hungry-delete-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
auto-revert-remote-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 c-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
auto-revert-use-notify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 c-tab-always-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
auto-revert-verbose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 c-ts-mode-indent-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
auto-save-default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 cal-html-css-default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
auto-save-file-name-transforms . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 calendar-date-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411
auto-save-interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 calendar-daylight-savings-ends . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
auto-save-list-file-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 calendar-daylight-savings-ends-time . . . . . . 416
auto-save-no-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 calendar-daylight-savings-starts . . . . . . . . . 415
auto-save-timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 calendar-daylight-time-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Variable Index 671

calendar-daylight-time-zone-name . . . . . . . . . 405 compilation-context-lines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312

calendar-latitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 compilation-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
calendar-location-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 compilation-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
calendar-longitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 compilation-error-regexp-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
calendar-mark-diary-entries-flag . . . . . . . . . 410 compilation-hidden-output. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
calendar-mark-holidays-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 compilation-max-output-line-length . . . . . . . 310
calendar-remove-frame-by-deleting . . . . . . . . 402 compilation-scroll-output. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
calendar-standard-time-zone-name . . . . . . . . . 405 compilation-skip-threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
calendar-time-zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 compilation-warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
calendar-time-zone-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 compile-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
calendar-view-diary-initially-flag . . . . . . . 410 completion-auto-help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
calendar-view-holidays-initially-flag . . . . 404 completion-auto-select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
calendar-week-start-day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 completion-category-overrides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
calendar-weekend-days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 completion-cycle-threshold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
case-fold-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 completion-ignored-extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
case-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 completion-styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
CDPATH, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 completions-detailed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
change-log-version-info-enabled . . . . . . . . . . . 354 completions-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
change-log-version-number-regexp-list . . . . 354 completions-header-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
change-major-mode-with-file-name . . . . . . . . . 246 completions-highlight-face. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
char-fold-exclude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 completions-max-height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
char-fold-include . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 completions-sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
char-fold-override . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 COMSPEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
char-fold-symmetric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 confirm-kill-emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
clone-indirect-buffer-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 confirm-kill-processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer . . . . . . . . 32
colon-double-space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 context-menu-functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
COLORTERM, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 copy-directory-create-symlink . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
column-number-indicator-zero-based . . . . . . . . 96 create-lockfiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
comint-completion-addsuffix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 ctl-arrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
comint-completion-autolist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 ctl-x-4-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
comint-completion-fignore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 ctl-x-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
comint-completion-recexact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 cua-enable-cua-keys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
comint-input-autoexpand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 cua-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
comint-input-ignoredups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 current-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
comint-input-ring-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 current-language-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
comint-insert-previous- cursor-in-non-selected-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
argument-from-end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 cursor-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
comint-move-point-for-output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 custom-buffer-done-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
comint-prompt-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 custom-enabled-themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
comint-scroll-show-maximum-output . . . . . . . . 462 custom-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
comint-scroll-to-bottom-on-input . . . . . . . . . 462 custom-safe-themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
comint-terminfo-terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 custom-search-field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
comint-use-prompt-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 custom-theme-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
command-history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 custom-theme-directory, saving theme files . . 502
command-line-args . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 custom-theme-load-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
comment-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 cycle-spacing-actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
comment-end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
comment-fill-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
comment-indent-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 D
comment-multi-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 dabbrev-abbrev-char-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
comment-padding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 dabbrev-abbrev-skip-leading-regexp . . . . . . . 377
comment-start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 dabbrev-case-fold-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
comment-start-skip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 dabbrev-case-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
compare-ignore-case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 dabbrev-check-all-buffers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
compare-ignore-whitespace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 dabbrev-check-other-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
compilation-always-kill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 dabbrev-ignored-buffer-modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
compilation-auto-jump-to-first-error . . . . . 310 dabbrev-ignored-buffer-names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
672 GNU Emacs Manual

dabbrev-ignored-buffer-regexps . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 dired-kept-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

dabbrev-limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 dired-kill-when-opening-
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS, new-dired-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 dired-listing-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
dbx-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 dired-maybe-use-globstar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
debug-on-event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 dired-mouse-drag-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
debug-on-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 dired-recursive-copies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
default-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 dired-recursive-deletes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
default-frame-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 dired-switches-in-mode-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
default-input-method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 dired-use-ls-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
default-justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 dired-vc-rename-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
delete-active-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 dirtrack-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
delete-auto-save-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 display-battery-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
delete-by-moving-to-trash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 display-fill-column-indicator-character . . . 93
delete-by-moving-to-trash, and Dired . . . . . . 381 display-fill-column-indicator-column . . . . . . 93
delete-old-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 display-hourglass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
delete-selection-temporary-region . . . . . . . . . 54 display-line-numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
delete-trailing-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 display-line-numbers-current-absolute . . . . 101
desktop-auto-save-timeout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 display-line-numbers-grow-only . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
desktop-clear-preserve-buffers-regexp . . . . 479 display-line-numbers-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
desktop-files-not-to-save. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 display-line-numbers-type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
desktop-globals-to-clear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 display-line-numbers-widen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
desktop-load-locked-desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 display-line-numbers-width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
desktop-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 display-line-numbers-width-start . . . . . . . . . 102
desktop-restore-eager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 display-raw-bytes-as-hex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
desktop-restore-frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 display-time-24hr-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
desktop-save-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 display-time-mail-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
diary-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409 display-time-mail-face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
diary-mail-days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 display-time-mail-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
diary-nonmarking-symbol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 display-time-use-mail-icon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
diary-outlook-formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 dnd-indicate-insertion-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
diff-add-log-use-relative-names . . . . . . . . . . . 339 dnd-open-file-other-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
diff-font-lock-syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 dnd-scroll-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
diff-jump-to-old-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 doc-view-cache-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
diff-refine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164, 165 doc-view-continuous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
diff-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 doc-view-imenu-enabled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
diff-update-on-the-fly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 doc-view-imenu-flatten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
directory-abbrev-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 doc-view-imenu-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-auto-revert-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 doc-view-resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-chown-program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 doc-view-scale-internally. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
dired-confirm-shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 doctex-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
dired-copy-dereference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 double-click-fuzz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
dired-copy-preserve-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 double-click-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
dired-create-destination-dirs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
dired-create-destination-dirs-on-
trailing-dirsep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 E
dired-dwim-target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 echo-keystrokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
dired-enable-globstar-in-shell . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 eldoc-documentation-functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
dired-free-space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 eldoc-documentation-strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
dired-garbage-files-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 eldoc-echo-area-display-
dired-guess-shell-alist-default . . . . . . . . . . . 390 truncation-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
dired-guess-shell-alist-user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 eldoc-echo-area-prefer-doc-buffer . . . . . . . . 301
dired-hide-details-hide- eldoc-echo-area-use-multiline-p . . . . . . . . . . . 300
information-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 eldoc-idle-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
dired-hide-details-hide- eldoc-print-after-edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
symlink-targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 electric-pair-delete-adjacent-pairs . . . . . . 295
dired-isearch-filenames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 electric-pair-open-newline-
dired-keep-marker-copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 between-pairs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Variable Index 673

electric-pair-preserve-balance . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 find-file-visit-truename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

electric-pair-skip-whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 find-file-wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
electric-quote-chars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 find-ls-option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
electric-quote-comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 find-sibling-rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
electric-quote-paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 focus-follows-mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
electric-quote-replace-double . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 foldout-mouse-modifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
electric-quote-string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 font-lock-ignore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
emacs-lisp-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 font-lock-maximum-decoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
emacs_dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577 font-slant-table (MS-Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
EMACS_SERVER_FILE, environment variable . . . . . 467 font-weight-table (MS-Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . 609
EMACSCLIENT_TRAMP, environment variable . . . . . 471 frame-background-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
EMACSCOLORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577 frame-resize-pixelwise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
EMACSDATA, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 frameset-filter-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
EMACSDOC, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 fringe-mode (variable). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
EMACSLOADPATH, environment variable . . . . . . . . . 574
EMACSPATH, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
EMACSTEST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577 G
EMAIL, environment variable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
enable-local-eval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 gdb-default-window-configuration-file . . . . 320
enable-local-variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 gdb-delete-out-of-scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
enable-recursive-minibuffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 gdb-display-source-buffer-action . . . . . . . . . 321
enriched-allow-eval-in-display-props . . . . . 278 gdb-gud-control-all-threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
enriched-translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 gdb-many-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
eol-mnemonic-dos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 gdb-max-source-window-count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
eol-mnemonic-mac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 gdb-mi-decode-strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
eol-mnemonic-undecided . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 gdb-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
eol-mnemonic-unix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 gdb-non-stop-setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
esc-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 gdb-restore-window-
ESHELL, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 configuration-after-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
eval-expression-debug-on-error . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 gdb-show-changed-values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
eval-expression-print-length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 gdb-show-main . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
eval-expression-print-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 gdb-show-threads-by-default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
eval-expression-print- gdb-speedbar-auto-raise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
maximum-character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 gdb-stack-buffer-addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
eww-search-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 gdb-stopped-functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
exec-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 gdb-switch-reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
exit-language-environment-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 gdb-switch-when-another-stopped . . . . . . . . . . . 325
explicit-shell-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 gdb-thread-buffer-addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
extended-command-suggest-shorter . . . . . . . . . . . 40 gdb-thread-buffer-arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
gdb-thread-buffer-locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
gdb-thread-buffer-verbose-names . . . . . . . . . . . 322
F gdb-use-colon-colon-notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
gdb-window-configuration-directory . . . . . . . 320
face-ignored-fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 global-cwarn-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
fast-but-imprecise-scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 global-font-lock-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
ff-related-file-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 global-mark-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
file-coding-system-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 global-text-scale-adjust-resizes-frames . . . 87
file-name-at-point-functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 grep-find-abbreviate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
file-name-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 grep-find-ignored-directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
file-preserve-symlinks-on-save . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 grep-find-ignored-directories (Dired) . . . . . 388
fill-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 grep-find-ignored-files (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
fill-column-indicator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 grep-match-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
fill-nobreak-predicate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 grep-regexp-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
fill-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 gud-gdb-command-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
find-file-existing-other-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 gud-tooltip-echo-area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
find-file-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 gud-xdb-directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
find-file-not-found-functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 guiler-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
find-file-run-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
find-file-suppress-same-file-warnings . . . . 161
674 GNU Emacs Manual

H inhibit-iso-escape-detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
haiku-control-keysym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598 inhibit-startup-buffer-menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
haiku-debug-on-fatal-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599 inhibit-startup-screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
haiku-meta-keysym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598 initial-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
haiku-shift-keysym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598 initial-frame-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
haiku-super-keysym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598 initial-scratch-message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
help-at-pt-display-when-idle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 input-method-highlight-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
help-clean-buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 input-method-verbose-flag. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
help-enable-autoload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 insert-default-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
help-enable-completion-autoload . . . . . . . . . . . 328 interpreter-mode-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
help-enable-symbol-autoload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 isearch-allow-motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
help-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 isearch-allow-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
help-window-keep-selected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 isearch-allow-scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
help-window-select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
isearch-hide-immediately . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
help-window-select, and apropos commands . . 46
isearch-lazy-count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
hi-lock-auto-select-face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
isearch-lazy-highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
hi-lock-exclude-modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
hi-lock-file-patterns-policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 isearch-mode-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
hide-ifdef-shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 isearch-motion-changes-direction . . . . . . . . . 110
highlight-nonselected-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 isearch-repeat-on-direction-change . . . . . . . 105
HISTFILE, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 isearch-resume-in-command-history . . . . . . . . . 37
history-delete-duplicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 isearch-wrap-pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
history-length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 ispell-complete-word-dict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
HOME, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 ispell-dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
horizontal-scroll-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 ispell-local-dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
HOSTNAME, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 ispell-personal-dictionary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
hourglass-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 ispell-program-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
hs-hide-comments-when-hiding-all . . . . . . . . . 302
hs-isearch-open . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
hs-special-modes-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
hscroll-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 J
hscroll-step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
jdb-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
jit-lock-defer-time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
I
icon-preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
ignored-local-variable-values . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
image-animate-loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 K
image-auto-resize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
kept-new-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
image-auto-resize-on-window-resize . . . . . . . 172
kept-old-versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
image-crop-crop-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
keyboard-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
image-crop-cut-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
image-cut-color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 kill-buffer-delete-auto-save-files . . . . . . . 160
image-dired-external-viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 kill-buffer-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
image-dired-thumb-visible-marks . . . . . . . . . . . 396 kill-do-not-save-duplicates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
image-use-external-converter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 kill-read-only-ok . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
imagemagick-enabled-types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 kill-ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
imagemagick-types-inhibit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 kill-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
imenu-auto-rescan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 kill-transform-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
imenu-auto-rescan-maxout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 kill-whole-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
imenu-max-index-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 kmacro-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
imenu-sort-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
indent-tabs-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
indicate-buffer-boundaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
indicate-empty-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
inferior-lisp-program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
INFOPATH, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
inhibit-eol-conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Variable Index 675

L M
LANG, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 magic-fallback-mode-alist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
large-file-warning-threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 magic-mode-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
latex-block-names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 mail-citation-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
latex-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 mail-default-headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
latex-run-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 mail-dont-reply-to-names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
latin1-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 mail-personal-alias-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420
lazy-count-prefix-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 mail-signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
mail-signature-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
lazy-count-suffix-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
mail-user-agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
lazy-highlight-initial-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
MAIL, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
lazy-highlight-interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
major-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
lazy-highlight-max-at-a-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 major-mode-remap-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
lazy-highlight-no-delay-length . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 make-backup-file-name-function . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
LC_ALL, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 make-backup-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
LC_COLLATE, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 make-pointer-invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
LC_CTYPE, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 Man-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
LC_MESSAGES, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 mark-even-if-inactive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
LC_MONETARY, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 mark-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
LC_NUMERIC, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 max-mini-window-height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
LC_TIME, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 maximum-scroll-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
line-move-visual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 menu-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
line-number-display-limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 message-kill-buffer-on-exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
line-number-display-limit-width . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 message-log-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
lisp-body-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 message-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
lisp-indent-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 message-send-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
lisp-interaction-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 message-send-mail-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
lisp-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 message-setup-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
list-colors-sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 message-signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
list-directory-brief-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 message-signature-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
list-directory-verbose-switches . . . . . . . . . . . 162 midnight-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
list-matching-lines-default- midnight-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
minibuffer-completion-auto-choose . . . . . . . . . 31
context-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
minibuffer-default-prompt-format . . . . . . . . . . . 27
list-matching-lines-jump-
minibuffer-eldef-shorten-default . . . . . . . . . . . 27
to-current-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
minibuffer-follows-selected-frame . . . . . . . . . 27
load-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 minibuffer-local-completion-map . . . . . . . . . . . 515
load-prefer-newer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 minibuffer-local-filename-
locale-charset-language-names . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 completion-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
locale-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 minibuffer-local-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
locale-language-names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 minibuffer-local-must-match-map . . . . . . . . . . . 515
locale-preferred-coding-systems . . . . . . . . . . . 219 minibuffer-local-ns-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
locate-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 minibuffer-prompt-properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
LOGNAME, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 mode-line-in-non-selected-windows . . . . . . . . . 97
lpr-add-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 mode-require-final-newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
lpr-command (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 mode-specific-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
lpr-commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 mouse-1-click-follows-link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
lpr-headers-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 mouse-1-click-in-non-selected-windows . . . . 197
lpr-headers-switches (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 mouse-autoselect-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
lpr-printer-switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 mouse-avoidance-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
lpr-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 mouse-drag-and-drop-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
lpr-switches (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 mouse-drag-and-drop-region-
cross-program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
mouse-drag-and-drop-region-cut-
when-buffers-differ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
mouse-drag-and-drop-region-show-cursor . . . 208
mouse-drag-and-drop-region-
show-tooltip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
676 GNU Emacs Manual

mouse-drag-copy-region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 O
mouse-drag-mode-line-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 open-paren-in-column-0-is-defun-start . . . . 286
mouse-highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 org-agenda-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
mouse-scroll-min-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 org-publish-project-alist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
mouse-wheel-flip-direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 org-todo-keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
mouse-wheel-follow-mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 ORGANIZATION, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . 576
mouse-wheel-progressive-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 outline-default-state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
mouse-wheel-scroll-amount. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 outline-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
mouse-wheel-scroll-amount-horizontal . . . . . 196 outline-minor-mode-cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
mouse-wheel-tilt-scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 outline-minor-mode-prefix. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
mouse-yank-at-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 outline-minor-mode-use-buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
outline-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
outline-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
overflow-newline-into-fringe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
overline-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
N
NAME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
NAME, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 P
native-comp-eln-load-path. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 package-archive-priorities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
network-security-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 package-archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
network-security-protocol-checks . . . . . . . . . 448 package-check-signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
next-error-find-buffer-function . . . . . . . . . . . 311 package-directory-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
next-error-highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 package-enable-at-startup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
next-error-highlight-no-select . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 package-install-upgrade-built-in . . . . . . . . . 488
next-error-message-highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 package-load-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
next-line-add-newlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 package-menu-async . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
package-menu-hide-low-priority . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
next-screen-context-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
package-pinned-packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
NNTPSERVER, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
package-quickstart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
nobreak-char-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
package-unsigned-archives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
normal-erase-is-backspace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536 package-user-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
nroff-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 page-delimiter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
ns-alternate-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 paragraph-separate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
ns-auto-hide-menu-bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 paragraph-start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
ns-command-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 PATH, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
ns-confirm-quit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 pdb-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
ns-control-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 perldb-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
ns-function-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 plain-tex-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
ns-mwheel-line-height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596 PRELOAD_WINSOCK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
ns-pop-up-frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596 print-region-function (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . 607
ns-right-alternate-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 printer-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
ns-right-command-modifier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 printer-name, (MS-DOS/MS-Windows) . . . . . . 606
ns-right-control-modifier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 prog-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
project-kill-buffer-conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
ns-standard-fontset-spec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
project-kill-buffers-
ns-use-mwheel-acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
display-buffer-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
ns-use-mwheel-momentum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596 project-list-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
ns-use-native-fullscreen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596 project-prefix-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
ns-use-proxy-icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595 project-switch-commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
nsm-save-host-names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 ps-black-white-faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
nsm-settings-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 ps-font-family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
ps-font-info-database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
ps-font-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
ps-landscape-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
ps-lpr-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
ps-lpr-command (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
ps-lpr-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
ps-lpr-switches (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Variable Index 677

ps-multibyte-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 rmail-ignored-headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440

ps-number-of-columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 rmail-inbox-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
ps-page-dimensions-database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 rmail-mail-new-frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
ps-paper-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 rmail-mbox-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
ps-print-color-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 rmail-mime-prefer-html . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
ps-print-header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 rmail-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
ps-printer-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 rmail-movemail-flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
ps-printer-name (MS-DOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 rmail-movemail-program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
ps-use-face-background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 rmail-movemail-search-path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
PWD, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 rmail-nonignored-headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
rmail-output-file-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
rmail-output-reset-deleted-flag . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Q rmail-preserve-inbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
quail-activate-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 rmail-primary-inbox-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
query-about-changed-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 rmail-redisplay-summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
query-replace-from-to-separator . . . . . . . . . . . 124 rmail-remote-password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
query-replace-highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 rmail-remote-password-required . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
query-replace-highlight-submatches . . . . . . . 124 rmail-retry-ignored-headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
query-replace-lazy-highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 rmail-secondary-file-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
query-replace-show-replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 rmail-secondary-file-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
query-replace-skip-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 rmail-summary-line-count-flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
rmail-summary-scroll-between-messages . . . . 437
rmail-summary-window-size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
R
read-buffer-completion-ignore-case . . . . . . . . 34
read-extended-command-predicate . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
S
read-file-name-completion-ignore-case . . . . . 34 safe-local-eval-forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510
read-mail-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 safe-local-variable-values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
read-quoted-char-radix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 save-abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
recenter-positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 save-interprogram-paste-before-kill . . . . . . . 64
recenter-redisplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 save-some-buffers-default-predicate . . . . . . 151
recentf-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 SAVEDIR, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
redisplay-skip-fontification-on-input . . . . . 77 scheme-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
regexp-search-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 script-representative-chars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
register-preview-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 scroll-all-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
register-separator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 scroll-bar-adjust-thumb-portion . . . . . . . . . . . 206
remote-file-name-inhibit-locks . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 scroll-bar-height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
repeat-exit-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 scroll-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
repeat-exit-timeout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 scroll-bar-width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
replace-lax-whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 scroll-conservatively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
replace-regexp-lax-whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 scroll-down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
REPLYTO, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 scroll-down-aggressively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
require-final-newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 scroll-error-top-bottom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
resize-mini-windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 scroll-margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
revert-buffer-quick-short-answers . . . . . . . . 157 scroll-minibuffer-conservatively . . . . . . . . . . . 78
revert-buffer-with-fine- scroll-preserve-screen-position . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
grain-max-seconds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 scroll-step . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
revert-without-query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 scroll-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
rmail-automatic-folder-directives . . . . . . . . 432 scroll-up-aggressively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
rmail-delete-after-output. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432 sdb-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
rmail-delete-message-hook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 search-exit-option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
rmail-displayed-headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 search-highlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
rmail-edit-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 search-highlight-submatches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
rmail-enable-mime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 search-invisible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
rmail-enable-mime-composing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 search-nonincremental-instead . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
rmail-file-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 search-ring-max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
rmail-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 search-slow-speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
rmail-highlighted-headers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 search-slow-window-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
678 GNU Emacs Manual

search-upper-case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 T
search-whitespace-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 tab-always-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
select-active-regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 tab-bar-close-last-tab-choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
select-enable-clipboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 tab-bar-close-tab-select . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
select-enable-primary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 tab-bar-new-tab-choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
selective-display-ellipses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 tab-bar-new-tab-to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
send-mail-function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 tab-bar-select-tab-modifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
sendmail-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 tab-bar-show . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
sentence-end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 tab-bar-tab-hints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
sentence-end-double-space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 tab-bar-tab-name-function. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
sentence-end-without-period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 tab-first-completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
server-auth-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 tab-stop-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
server-auth-key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 tab-width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
server-client-instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 table-cell-horizontal-chars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
server-host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 table-cell-intersection-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
server-kill-new-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 table-cell-vertical-char . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
server-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 table-detect-cell-alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
server-port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 tags-apropos-additional-actions . . . . . . . . . . . 357
server-temp-file-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
tags-case-fold-search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
server-use-tcp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
tags-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
server-window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
tags-table-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
set-language-environment-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
temp-buffer-max-height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
set-mark-command-repeat-pop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
temp-buffer-max-width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
sgml-xml-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
TEMP, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
shell-cd-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
temporary-file-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
shell-command-buffer-name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
term-file-aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
shell-command-buffer-name-async . . . . . . . . . . . 454
term-file-prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
shell-command-default-error-buffer . . . . . . . 454
TERM, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
shell-command-dont-erase-buffer . . . . . . . . . . . 454
TERM, environment variable, and display bugs . . 541
shell-command-prompt-show-cwd . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
TERM, environment variable, in
shell-command-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
compilation mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
shell-completion-execonly. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
TERM, environment variable, in sub-shell . . . . . . . 462
shell-completion-fignore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
TERMCAP, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
shell-file-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
tex-bibtex-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
shell-popd-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
tex-default-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
shell-prompt-pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
tex-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
shell-pushd-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
tex-dvi-print-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
SHELL, environment variable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
tex-dvi-view-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
shift-select-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
tex-main-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
show-paren-context-when-offscreen . . . . . . . . 294
tex-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
show-paren-highlight-openparen . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
tex-print-file-extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
show-paren-predicate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
tex-run-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
show-paren-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
tex-shell-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
show-paren-when-point-in-periphery . . . . . . . 294
tex-start-commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
show-paren-when-point-inside-paren . . . . . . . 294
tex-start-options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
show-trailing-whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
text-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
slitex-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
timeclock-ask-before-exiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
small-temporary-file-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
timeclock-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
SMTPSERVER, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
timeclock-mode-line-display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
sort-fold-case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
TMP, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
sort-numeric-base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
TMPDIR, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
split-height-threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
split-width-threshold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 tool-bar-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
split-window-keep-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 tool-bar-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
standard-fontset-spec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 tooltip-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
standard-indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 tooltip-frame-parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
suggest-key-bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 tooltip-hide-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
system-uses-terminfo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 tooltip-short-delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
tooltip-x-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Variable Index 679

tooltip-y-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 W
track-eol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 w32-apps-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
tramp-histfile-override . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 w32-charset-info-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
treesit-defun-tactic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 w32-fixed-font-alist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
treesit-font-lock-feature-list . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 w32-get-true-file-attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
treesit-font-lock-level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 w32-lwindow-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
treesit-max-buffer-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 w32-mouse-button-tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
truncate-lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 w32-non-USB-fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
truncate-partial-width-windows . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 w32-pass-alt-to-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
tty-menu-open-use-tmm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 w32-pass-extra-mouse-buttons-to-system . . . 605
tty-setup-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 w32-pipe-buffer-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606
TZ, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 w32-quote-process-args . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606
w32-rwindow-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
w32-scroll-lock-modifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
w32-standard-fontset-spec. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
w32-swap-mouse-buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
U w32-unicode-filenames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
underline-minimum-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 w32-use-visible-system-caret . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
undo-limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 w32-use-w32-font-dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
undo-outer-limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 WAYLAND_DISPLAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
undo-strong-limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 what-cursor-show-names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
unibyte-display-via- which-func-modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
whitespace-big-indent-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
language-environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
whitespace-line-column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
uniquify-buffer-name-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
whitespace-style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
use-dialog-box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 window-divider-default-bottom-width . . . . . . 207
use-file-dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 window-divider-default-places . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
use-system-tooltips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 window-divider-default-right-width . . . . . . . 207
user-full-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 window-min-height . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
user-mail-address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 window-min-width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
user-mail-address, in init file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 window-resize-pixelwise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
user-mail-address, initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574 winner-boring-buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
USER, environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 winner-boring-buffers-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
winner-dont-bind-my-keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
winner-ring-size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
word-wrap-by-category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
V word-wrap-whitespace-mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
write-region-inhibit-fsync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
vc-annotate-background-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
vc-annotate-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
vc-diff-switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 X
vc-directory-exclusion-list . . . . . . . . . . 346, 352 x-gtk-file-dialog-help-text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
vc-log-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 x-gtk-show-hidden-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
vc-log-show-limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 x-gtk-use-native-input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
vc-revert-show-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 x-input-coding-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
version-control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 x-mouse-click-focus-ignore-position . . . . . . 194
VERSION_CONTROL, environment variable . . . . . . . 576 x-select-enable-clipboard-manager . . . . . . . . . 64
view-read-only . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 x-select-request-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
visible-bell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 x-stretch-cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
visible-cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 x-underline-at-descent-line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
visual-order-cursor-movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 xdb-mode-hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
xref-auto-jump-to-first-definition . . . . . . . 357
xref-auto-jump-to-first-xref . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
xref-prompt-for-identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357

Y
yank-pop-change-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
680 GNU Emacs Manual

Concept Index

# 7
#, in auto-save file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 7z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

$ 8
$ in file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 8-bit display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
8-bit input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

(
( in leftmost column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
A
A- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
abbrev file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
* Abbrev mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
abbrevs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
*Messages* buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
abnormal hook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
aborting recursive edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
– accented characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
accessible portion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
–/—/.-./.../. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 accumulating scattered text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
action options (command line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
. activating the mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
active region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
.#, lock file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 active text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
.dir-locals.el file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 adaptive filling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
.emacs file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 adding to the kill ring in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
.mailrc file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 addpm, MS-Windows installation program . . . . 577
.newsrc file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 adjust buffer font size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
adjust global font size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
aggressive scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
/ alarm clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
// in file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 alignment for comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Alt key invokes menu (Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
Alt key, serving as Meta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
? Alt, modifier key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
‘?’ in display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 ALTERNATE_EDITOR environment variable . . . . . . 468
ange-ftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
animate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
animated images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
_emacs init file, MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604 anonymous FTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
appending kills in the ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
appointment notification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
~ apropos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
apropos search results, order by score . . . . . . . . . . 46
~, in names of backup files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Arabic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
~/.authinfo file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 arc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
~/.authinfo.gpg file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 Archive mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
~/.config/emacs/init.el file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 arguments (command line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
~/.emacs file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522 arguments to commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
~/.emacs.d/%backup%~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 arrow keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
~/.emacs.d/gtkrc file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 ASCII . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
~/.gtkrc-2.0 file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 ASCII (language environment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
~/.netrc file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 ASCII art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
~/.Xdefaults file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584 Asm mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
~/.Xresources file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584 assembler mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Concept Index 681

astronomical day numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 border color, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . 579

at-point documentation for program symbols . . 299 borders (X Window System) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
attached frame (of speedbar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 boredom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
attribute (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 bound branch (Bazaar VCS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
attributes of mode line, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 brace in column zero and fontification . . . . . . . . . . 89
Auto Compression mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 braces, moving across . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Auto Fill mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 branch (version control) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Auto Revert mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Brazilian Portuguese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Auto Save mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Browse-URL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
auto-save for remote files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 bubbles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
autoload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 buffer contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
autoload Lisp libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 buffer definitions index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
automatic scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 buffer list, customizable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
avoiding mouse in the way of your typing . . . . . 214 Buffer Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Awk mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 buffer size display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
AWK mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 buffer size, maximum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
buffer text garbled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
buffer-local hooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
B buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
back end (version control). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 bug criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
back reference, in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 bug reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
back reference, in regexp replacement . . . . . . . . . 122 bug reporting, checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
background color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 bug reporting, principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
background color, command-line argument . . . . 579 bug tracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
background mode, on xterm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
background syntax highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 build details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
BACKSPACE vs DEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 building programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
backtrace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 built-in package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485, 488
backtrace for bug reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544 Bulgarian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
backup file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Burmese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
backup file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 butterfly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
backup files, choosing a major mode . . . . . . . . . . 246 button-down events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
backup, and user-id . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
backups for remote files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 buttons (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
Bahá’ı́ calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 buttons at buffer position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
balanced expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 bypassing init and default.el file . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
balloon help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 byte code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
base buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 byte-compiling several files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . 388
base direction of paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 bzr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
basic, completion style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
batch mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
battery status (on mode line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 C
Bazaar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 C editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Belarusian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 C mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Bengali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 C# mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
bidi formatting control characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 C++ class browser, tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
bidirectional editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 C++ mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 C- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
binding keyboard macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 cache of file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
binding keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
blank lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 calendar and HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
blank lines in programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 calendar and LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
blinking cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 calendar, first day of week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
blinking cursor disable, call Lisp functions, command-line argument . . . 569
command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583 camel case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
body lines (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 capitalizing words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
bookmark annotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 case conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 case folding in replace commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
682 GNU Emacs Manual

case folding in search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 CMake mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

case in completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 codepoint of a character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
case-sensitivity and completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 coding standards for Emacs submissions . . . . . . . 547
case-sensitivity and search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 coding systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
case-sensitivity and tags search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 collision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
categories of characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 color emulation on black-and-white printers . . . 473
CBZ file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 color name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
cells, for text-based tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 color of window, from command line . . . . . . . . . . 579
centering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 color scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
centralized version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Column Number mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Cham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 columns (and rectangles) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
change buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 columns (indentation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
change Emacs directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570 columns, splitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
change log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 Comint mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
Change Log mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 comint-highlight-input face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
changes, undoing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 comint-highlight-prompt face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
changeset-based version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
changing file group (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 command history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
changing file owner (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 command line arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
changing file permissions (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . 387 commands in *xref* buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
changing file time (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
char mode (terminal emulator) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 comments on customized settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
character classes, in regular expressions . . . . . . . 116 Common Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
character equivalence in search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 compare files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
character folding in replace commands . . . . . . . . 123 comparing 3 files (diff3) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
character folding in search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 comparing files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
character set (keyboard) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 compilation buffer, keeping point at end . . . . . . . 309
character set of character at point . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 compilation errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
character set, in regular expressions . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Compilation mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
character syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524 compilation mode faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
characters (in text) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 complete key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
characters in a certain charset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
characters which belong to a completion (Lisp symbols) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
specific language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 completion (symbol names) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
characters with no font glyphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 completion alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
characters, inserting by name or code-point . . . . . 16 completion list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
charsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 completion style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
checking out files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 completion, walking through candidates . . . . . . . . 35
checking spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 compose character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
checking syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 compressing files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
checklist before reporting a bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Conf mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Chinese calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 confirming in the minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
choosing a major mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
choosing a minor mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 connecting to remote host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
ciphers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 connection-local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
citing mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 contents of a buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
CKJ characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 context menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
class browser, C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 continuation line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Cleartype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609 contributing to Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
click events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
client frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 control character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
client-side fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 control characters on display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
clipboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 converting text to upper or lower case . . . . . . . . . 260
clipboard manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Coptic calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
clocking time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
close buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 copy/paste to/from primary
close file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 selection (macOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
Concept Index 683

copying files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 D

copying files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 daemon, Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
copying text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 day of year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
copyright assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 daylight saving time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
CORBA IDL mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 DBX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
core dump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534 deactivating the mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
correcting spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 dead character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
CPerl mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 debbugs package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
crash report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 debuggers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
crashes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 debugging Emacs, tricks and techniques . . . . . . . 544
crashes, Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599 decentralized version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
create a text-based table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 decoding mail messages (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
creating files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 decoding non-ASCII keyboard input on X . . . . . 230
creating frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 decrease buffer font size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Croatian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 decrypting files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
cropping images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 default argument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
cryptanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 default directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
CSS mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 default directory, of a buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
CSSC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 default face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
CUA key bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 default file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
curly quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 default search mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
curly quotes, and terminal capabilities . . . . . . . . . . 98 default.el file, not loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
curly quotes, inserting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 default.el, the default init file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
current buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 defining keyboard macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
current function name in mode line . . . . . . . . . . . 288 defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
current message (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 DEL does not delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
current project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 DEL vs BACKSPACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
cursor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Delete Selection mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
cursor color, command-line argument. . . . . . . . . . 579 delete window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
cursor face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 deleting auto-save files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
cursor in non-selected windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 deleting blank lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
cursor location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 deleting characters and lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
cursor location, on MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601 deleting files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
cursor motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 deleting rows and column in
cursor, blinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 text-based tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
cursor, visual-order motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 deleting some backup files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
curved quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 deleting windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
curved quotes, and terminal capabilities . . . . . . . . 98 deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
curved quotes, inserting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 deletion (of files) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
custom themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 deletion (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
custom themes, creating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502 dereference symbolic links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
customizable variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494 desktop configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494 desktop restore in daemon mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
customization buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494 desktop shortcut, MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
customization groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494 deterministic build . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
customization of menu face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Devanagari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
customizing faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498 device for Emacs terminal I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
customizing Lisp indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 dialog boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
customizing variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
cut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 diary file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
cut and paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624 Diff mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
cutting text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 digest message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
CVS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 directional window selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
CWarn mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 directories in buffer names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
cycle visibility, in Outline mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 directory header lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Cyrillic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 directory listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Czech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 directory name abbreviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
directory tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
684 GNU Emacs Manual

directory where Emacs starts on eight-bit character set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600 ElDoc mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
directory-local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 Electric Indent mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 Electric Pair mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Dired and version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 Electric Quote mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Dired sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 Eliza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
Dired, and MS-Windows/MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . 603 Emacs as a server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Dirtrack mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 Emacs Development Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
disable restoring of desktop configuration . . . . . . 478 Emacs icon, a gnu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
disable window system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570 Emacs initialization file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
disabled command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 Emacs Lisp mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
disabling remote files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Emacs Lisp package archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
display for Emacs frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570 emacs-internal, coding system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
display line numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 emacs_backtrace.txt file, MS-Windows . . . . . . 533
display name (X Window System) . . . . . . . . . . . . 578 emacs22, completion style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
display of buffer size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 emacsclient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
display of current line number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 emacsclient invocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
display server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 emacsclient options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
display, incorrect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532 emacsclient, on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
DISPLAY environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 578 emacsclient.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
distributed version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 emacsclientw.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
DNS mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Dockerfile mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 embedded widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
DocTEX mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 emergency escape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
document viewer (DocView) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 emoji input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
documentation for program symbols . . . . . . . . . . . 299 enabling Transient Mark mode temporarily . . . . . 57
documentation string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 encoding of characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
DocView mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 encrypted files, choosing a major mode . . . . . . . . 246
DOS applications, running from Emacs. . . . . . . . 605 encrypted mails (reading in Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
DOS-style end-of-line display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 encrypting files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
DOS-to-Unix conversion of files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602 encryption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
double clicks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 end-of-line convention, mode-line indication. . . . . . 8
double slash in file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 end-of-line conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
down events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 end-of-line conversion on
downcase file names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 MS-DOS/MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
drag and drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
drag and drop, Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 Enriched mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
drag events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520 enriched text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
drastic changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 entering Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
dribble file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540 entering passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
DSSSL mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
dunnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 environment variables (macOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
Dutch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 environment variables for subshells . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
DVI file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 environment variables in file names . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
EPUB file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
equivalent character sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
E erasing characters and lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
early init file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528 error log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Ebrowse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 error message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
echo area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 errors in init file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
echo area message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 ESC replacing Meta key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
echoing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 escape sequences in files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
EDE (Emacs Development Environment) . . . . . . 368 escape-glyph face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Edebug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 ESHELL environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456
editable fields (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . 494 Esperanto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
editing binary files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 etags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
editing level, recursive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 etags program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
EDITOR environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 Ethiopic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Concept Index 685

Ethiopic calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 file-name encoding, MS-Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

European character sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
evaluate expression, command-line argument . . 569 files, visiting and saving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
evaluation, Emacs Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 filesets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
events on macOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596 filesets, VC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
exit incremental search. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 filesets, VC, in Dired buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
exiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 fill prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
exiting recursive edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 filling text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
expanding subdirectories in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 find. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
expansion (of abbrevs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 find and Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
expansion of C macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 find definition of symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
expansion of environment variables . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 find Info manual by its file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 find references to symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
expunging (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 finder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
finding file at point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
finding files containing regexp
F matches (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
face at point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 finding strings within text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
face colors, setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 firewall, and accessing remote files. . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 fixing incorrectly decoded mail messages . . . . . . 441
faces for highlighting query replace . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 flagging files (in Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
faces for highlighting search matches . . . . . . . . . . 104 flagging many files for deletion (in Dired) . . . . . 381
faces for mode lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 flex, completion style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
faces for text-mode menus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Flyspell mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
faces, customizing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498 folding editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
failed merges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Follow mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
fallback modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 follow symbolic links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
FB2 file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 font antialiasing (MS Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
Feedmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 font backend selection (Haiku) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
FFAP minor mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 font backend selection (MS-Windows) . . . . . . . . . 608
fido mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Font Lock mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
file archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 font lookup, MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
file comparison (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 font name (X Window System). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
file database (locate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 font of character at point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
file dates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 font properties (MS Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
file directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 font scripts (MS Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
file local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507 font size of default face, increase or decrease. . . 87
file locking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 font specification (MS Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
file management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 font Unicode subranges (MS Windows) . . . . . . . . 609
file modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 font-lock via tree-sitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
file name caching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 fontconfig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
file names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 fonts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
file names on MS-Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602 fonts and faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
file names with non-ASCII characters . . . . . . . . . . 230 fonts for PostScript printing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
file names, invalid characters on fonts for various scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603 fonts, how to ignore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
file names, quote special characters . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 fontsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
file notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 fontsets, modifying. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
file ownership, and backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 foreground color, command-line argument . . . . . 579
file permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 formfeed character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
file selection dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 fortune cookies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
file selection dialog, how to disable . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 forwarding a message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435
file shadows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
file truenames. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 frame size, specifying default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
file version in change log entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 frame title, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . 582
file, warning when size is large . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
file-based version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 frameset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
file-name completion, on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . 602 frameset, saving in a register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
686 GNU Emacs Manual

French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 GUD interaction buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

French Revolutionary calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 GUD library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
fringe face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 GUD Tooltip mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
fringes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 guessing shell commands for files (in Dired) . . . 390
fringes, and continuation lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 guillemets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
fringes, and unused line indication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Gujarati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
fringes, for debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 gzip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
FTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
fullheight, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . 581
fullscreen, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 H
fullwidth, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 H- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
function key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
function, move to beginning or end . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 haiku application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
future history for file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 haiku debugger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
haiku installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
haiku keymap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
G haiku tooltips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 Han . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
garbled display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532 handwriting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
garbled text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532 Hangul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
gateway, and remote file access hard links (creation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
with ange-ftp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 hard links (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
GDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 hard links (visiting) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
GDB User Interface layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 hard newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
geometry of Emacs window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580 hardcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
geometry, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . 580 header (TEX mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Georgian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 header line (Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 header-line face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
getting help with keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 header-line-highlight face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Ghostscript, use for PostScript printing . . . . . . . 608 headers (of mail message) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
git . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 heading lines (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
git source of package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Glasses mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Hebrew calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Global Auto Revert mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 height of minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
global keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 height of the horizontal scroll bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
global mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
global mark ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 help buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
global substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 help in using Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
globstar, in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 help mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619 help text, in GTK+ file chooser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
glyphless characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 help, viewing web pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
glyphless-char face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 ‘help-gnu-emacs’ mailing list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548
‘gnu.emacs.help’ newsgroup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 hex editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
Gnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 Hexl mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
GNUstep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594 hg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Go Moku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 Hi Lock mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Goto Address mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 hidden files, in GTK+ file chooser . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
graphic characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Hide-ifdef mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Hideshow mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Gregorian calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 hiding details in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
growing minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 hiding subdirectories (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
GTK font pattern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Highlight Changes mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
GTK input methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 highlight current line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
GTK+ resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 highlighting by matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
GTK+ styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590 highlighting lines of text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
GTK+ widget classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589 highlighting matching parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
GTK+ widget names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588 highlighting phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
GTK+ widget names in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589 highlighting region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Concept Index 687

highlighting symbol at point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Hindi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 indentation for comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
history of commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 indentation for programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
history of minibuffer input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 index of buffer definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
history of webkit buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 indirect buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
history reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 indirect buffers and outlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
holidays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 inferior process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
home directory shorthand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Info. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
HOME directory on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603 init file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
homoglyph face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 init file .emacs on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
hook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504 init file, not loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
Horizontal Scroll Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 initial options (command line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
Horizontal Scroll Bar mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 initials, completion style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
horizontal scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 input event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
hourglass pointer display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 input item, isearch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
HTML mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 input method style, X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
hungry deletion (C Mode). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 input methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
hunk, diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 input methods, native . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Hyper, modifier key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 input methods, X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
hyperlink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 input with the keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
hyperlinks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 inputStyle (X resource) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
insert character by name or code-point . . . . . . . . 221
insert file contents, command-line argument . . . 569
I insert Unicode character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
iCalendar support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 inserted subdirectory (Dired). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Icomplete mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 inserting blank lines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Icomplete vertical mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 inserting Emoji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Icon mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 inserting matching parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
iconifying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 inserting rows and columns in
icons (X Window System) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583 text-based tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
icons, on clickable buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 insertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
icons, toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 INSIDE_EMACS environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . 456
identifier, finding definition of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Integrated development environment . . . . . . . . . . 368
IDL mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 interactive highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
IDLWAVE mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 interactively edit search string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
ignore case. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 internal border width,
ignore font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 582
ignored file names, in completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 international characters in .emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
image animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 international files from
image resize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 DOS/Windows systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
image rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 international scripts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
image-dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 Internet search. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
image-dired mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 Intlfonts for PostScript printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
ImageMagick support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Intlfonts package, installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
images, viewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 invisible lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
IMAP mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 invisible text, and query-replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
in-situ subdirectory (Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 invisible text, searching for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
inbox file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 invocation (command line arguments) . . . . . . . . . 568
incorrect fontification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 invoking Emacs from Windows Explorer. . . . . . . 601
increase buffer font size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 IPA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 isearch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
incremental search, edit search string . . . . . . . . . . 106 isearch face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
incremental search, exiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 isearch input item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
incremental search, go to first or isearch multiple buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
last occurrence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 isearch multiple files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
incremental search, help on special keys . . . . . . . 109 isearch-fail face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
incremental search, input isearch-move property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
method interference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 isearch-scroll property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
688 GNU Emacs Manual

Islamic calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 L

iso-ascii library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 label (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
iso-transl library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 language environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
ISO commercial calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 Lao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
ISO Latin character sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 large programming projects, maintaining . . . . . . 332
ispell program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 LATEX mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
issue tracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537 Latin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Italian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Latin-1 TEX encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Latvian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
launching Emacs from the tracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
J lax search. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Japanese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 lax space matching in replace commands . . . . . . 123
jar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 lax space matching in search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Java class archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 lazy highlighting customizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Java mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 lazy search highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Javascript mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 lazy-highlight face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
JDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 lazy-highlight face, in replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
JSON mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 leaving Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Julian calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
Julian day numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
just-in-time (JIT) font-lock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 line endings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 line mode (terminal emulator). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
justification in text-based tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 line number commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
justification style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 line number display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
line spacing (X resource) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
line spacing, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . 583
K line truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Kannada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 line truncation, and fringes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Kerberos POP3 authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 line wrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 line-number face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
key bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 lines, highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
key rebinding, permanent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516 links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
key rebinding, this session. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 links (customization buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
key sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Lisp character syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
key sequence syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516 Lisp editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
keyboard input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Lisp mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
keyboard macro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Lisp object syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
keyboard macros, in registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Lisp string syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631 Lisp symbol completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
keyboard, MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604 lisp-indent-function property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 list commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
keypad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 listing current buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
keys stolen by window manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 listing system fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
keys, reserved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 Lithuanian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Khmer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 load init file of another user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
kill DOS application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606 load path for Emacs Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
kill ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 loading Lisp code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
killing buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 loading Lisp libraries automatically . . . . . . . . . . . 525
killing characters and lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 loading Lisp libraries,
killing Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
killing expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 loading several files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
killing rectangular areas of text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 local keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
killing text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
killing unsaved buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 local variables in files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
kinsoku line-breaking rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 local variables, for all files in a directory . . . . . . . 510
known bugs and problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536 local variables, for all remote connections. . . . . . 512
Korean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 locale, date format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
locales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Concept Index 689

location of point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 maximized, command-line argument. . . . . . . . . . . 581

lock-file-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 maximum buffer size exceeded,
locking files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 error message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
locking-based version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 Mayan calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
locus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 mbox files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
Log Edit mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 memory full . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
log File, types of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 menu bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
logging keystrokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540 menu bar (X resource) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
logical order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 menu bar access using keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
looking for a subject in documentation . . . . . . . . . 41 menu bar appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
lost-selection-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 menu bar mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
lpr usage under MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 menu face, no effect if customized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
LRM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Mercurial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
ls emulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603 merge mail from file (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
lzh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 merges, failed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
merging changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
merging-based version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
M message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
M- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Message mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
M4 mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Message mode for sending mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Macintosh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594 message number (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
Macintosh end-of-line conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 messages saved from echo area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
macOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594 Meta commands and words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
macro expansion in C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Metafont mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 META . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
mail (on mode line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 MH mail interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
mail aliases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 Microsoft Office file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
Mail mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Microsoft Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
mail signature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 Midnight mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
mail-composition methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 MIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
MAIL environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 MIME messages (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Mailclient. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
MAILHOST environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 minibuffer confirmation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
mailrc file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 minibuffer defaults for file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
main border width, command-line argument . . . 582 Minibuffer Electric Default mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
maintaining large programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 minibuffer history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
major modes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 minibuffer history, searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
make . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 minibuffer keymaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
Makefile mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 minibuffer-prompt face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Malayalam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 minimizing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
man page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 minimizing a frame at startup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
man pages, and local file variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507 minor mode keymap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
manipulating paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 minor modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
manipulating sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 mistakes, correcting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
manipulating text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 mode commands for minor modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
manual pages, on MS-DOS/MS-Windows . . . . . 299 mode hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
manuals, included . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 mode hook, and major modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 mode line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
mark rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 mode line, 3D appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
mark ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 mode line, mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
marking executable files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 mode, Abbrev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
marking many files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 mode, archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
marking sections of text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 mode, Auto Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
marking subdirectories (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 mode, Auto Fill. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
marking symbolic links (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 mode, Auto Revert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
match (face name) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 mode, Auto Save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
matching parentheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 mode, AWK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
matching parenthesis and braces, moving to . . . 293 mode, C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
690 GNU Emacs Manual

mode, C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 mode, Tool Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

mode, Column Number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 mode, Transient Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
mode, Comint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 mode, View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
mode, Compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 mode, Visual Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
mode, CORBA IDL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 mode, Whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
mode, Delete Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 mode, Window Divider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
mode, Dirtrack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 mode, Winner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
mode, display-fill-column-indicator . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 mode, XML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
mode, DocTEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 mode-line face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
mode, DocView . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 mode-line-buffer-id face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
mode, Electric Indent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 mode-line-highlight face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
mode, Electric Quote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 mode-line-inactive face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
mode, Emacs Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 modes for editing programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
mode, Enriched . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 modes for programming languages . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
mode, Flyspell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 modification dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
mode, Follow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 modified (buffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
mode, Font Lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 modifier key customization (Haiku) . . . . . . . . . . . 598
mode, Glasses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 modifier keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
mode, Global Auto Revert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 modifier keys (macOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
mode, Goto Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 modifier keys and system keymap (Haiku) . . . . . 598
mode, GUD Tooltip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 modifier keys unsupported by keyboard . . . . . . . 518
mode, Hexl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 modifier keys, and key rebinding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
mode, Hideshow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Modula2 mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
mode, HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 module verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
mode, Java . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 moon, phases of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
mode, LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 Morse code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
mode, Lisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 motion commands, during
mode, Log Edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
mode, Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 mouse avoidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
mode, major . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 mouse button events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
mode, Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 mouse buttons (what they do) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
mode, Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 mouse input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
mode, Minibuffer Electric Default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 mouse on mode line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
mode, minor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 mouse pointer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
mode, Mouse Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 mouse pointer color,
mode, MSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 command-line argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
mode, nXML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 mouse support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
mode, Objective C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 mouse wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
mode, Occur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Mouse Wheel minor mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
mode, Occur Edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 mouse, and MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
mode, Org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 mouse, dragging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
mode, Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 mouse, selecting text using . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
mode, Overwrite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 move to beginning or end of function . . . . . . . . . . 286
mode, Paragraph-Indent Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 movemail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
mode, Pike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 movemail program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
mode, Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
mode, Scroll Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 moving files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
mode, Scroll-all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 moving inside the calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
mode, Semantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 moving point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
mode, SGML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 moving text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
mode, Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 moving the cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
mode, SliTEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 MS-DOS end-of-line conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
mode, Tab Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 MS-Windows keyboard shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604
mode, tar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 MS-Windows, and primary selection . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
mode, Term . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 MS-Windows, Emacs peculiarities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
mode, Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 MSB mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
mode, TEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 MULE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
mode, Thumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 multibyte characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Concept Index 691

multiple displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 O

multiple source file search and replace . . . . . . . . . 359 Objective C mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
multiple views of outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 obsolete command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
multiple windows in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Occur Edit mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
multiple-buffer isearch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Occur mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
multiple-file isearch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 octal escapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions . . . . . . . . 423 Octave mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Multithreaded debugging in GDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 OOM killer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
OPascal mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
open file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
open-parenthesis in leftmost column . . . . . . . . . . . 286
N OpenDocument file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
operating on files in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
names of backup files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 operations on a marked region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
narrowing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 options (command line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
narrowing, and line number display . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Org agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
native compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Org exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
nested defuns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Org mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
‘net use’, and printing on MS-Windows . . . . . . . 607 organizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
network security manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 Oriya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
networked printers (MS-Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 out of memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 out of memory killer, GNU/Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
newlines, hard and soft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 outer border width, command-line argument . . 582
newsreader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 Outline mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Next Error Follow mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 outline with multiple views. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
NFS and quitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 overlays at character position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
nil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635 override character terminal color support . . . . . . 580
overscrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
no-conversion, coding system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
overwrapped search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
nobreak-space face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Overwrite mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
non-ASCII characters in .emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528 OXPS file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
non-ASCII keys, binding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
non-breaking hyphen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
non-breaking space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 P
non-greedy regexp matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
non-integral number of lines in a window . . . . . . . 97 Package archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
non-selected windows, mode line appearance. . . . 97 package development source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Non-stop debugging in GDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 package directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
nonincremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 package file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
normal hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504 package menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
nroff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 package requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
ns-open-file event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596 package security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
ns-open-file-line event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597 package signing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
ns-open-temp-file event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597 package specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
ns-power-off event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597 package status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
ns-show-prefs event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597 pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
NSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 paging in Term mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
NSM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 paragraph, base direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Paragraph-Indent Text mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
number lines in a buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
numeric arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
parentheses, displaying matches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
nXML mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
parentheses, moving across . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
parenthesis in column zero and fontification . . . . 89
parenthetical groupings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
parser-based font-lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
partial completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
partial-completion, completion style . . . . . . . . . 33
paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
692 GNU Emacs Manual

pasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 puzzles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

patches, applying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Python mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
patches, editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
patches, sending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
PDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Q
PDF file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 query replace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
pending, in incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 query-replace face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
per-buffer variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 quitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
per-connection local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 quitting (in search) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
per-directory local variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 quitting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Perl mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Quotation marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Perldb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 quoting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Persian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 quoting file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Persian calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
phases of the moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
phrase, highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 R
Pike mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 rar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
pinch to scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 raw bytes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
pinning Emacs to Windows task bar . . . . . . . . . . 600 raw-text, coding system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
planner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 RCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 read-only buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
point location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 read-only text, killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
point location, on MS-DOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601 reading mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
Polish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 rebinding keys, permanently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
Pong game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 rebinding keys, this session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
POP3 mailboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 rebinding major mode keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
position and size of Emacs frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580 rebinding mouse buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
PostScript file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 rebinding non-ASCII keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
PostScript mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 recovering crashed session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
prefix argument commands, during rectangle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 rectangle highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
prefix arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 rectangular region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
prefix key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 recursive copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
preprocessor highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 recursive deletion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
pretty-printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 recursive editing level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
prevent commands from exiting recursive editing, cannot exit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 recycle bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
preview of registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 redo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
primary Rmail file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 refreshing displayed files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
primary selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
primary selection, when active region changes . . 53 regexp search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
printing character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 region highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
printing files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 region-rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Printing package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 registered file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Prog mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505 registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
program building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 registry, setting environment
program editing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 variables (MS-Windows) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577
program functions and variables, registry, setting resources (MS-Windows) . . . . . . 584
documentation lookup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 regular expression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
project back-end . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 related files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
project root. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 reload files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 remember editing session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
Prolog mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 remote file access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 remote host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
prompt, shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 remote host, debugging on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
PS file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 remove indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Punjabi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 renaming files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Concept Index 693

renaming files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 SCCS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

repeating a command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Scheme mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
replacement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 screen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
reply to a message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 screen display, wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
report an Emacs bug, how to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 screen reader software, MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . 610
report bugs in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 script mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571
repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 script of a character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
reread a file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Scroll Bar mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
reserved key bindings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 Scroll-all mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
resize images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 scroll-bar face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
resize window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 scroll-command property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
resizing minibuffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 scroll-command property, and
resizing windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
resolving conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350 scrolling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
resource files for GTK+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 scrolling commands, during
resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584 incremental search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
restore session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 scrolling in the calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
restriction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 scrolling windows together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
retrying a failed message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 SDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
reverse order in POP3 inboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 search and replace in multiple
reverse video, command-line argument . . . . . . . . 579 files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
revision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 search and replace in multiple source files . . . . . 359
revision ID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334 search customizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
revision ID in version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 search display on slow terminals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
RGB triplet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 search for a regular expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
right-to-left text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 search Internet for keywords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
risky variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 search known bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
RLM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 search mode, default . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 search multiple files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Rmail file sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 search ring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Romanian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 search, changing direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
rot13 code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 search, overwrapped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
rotating images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 search, wrapping around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Ruby mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 search-and-replace commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
runemacs.exe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600 searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
running a hook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504 searching Dired buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
running info on files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 searching documentation efficiently . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
running Lisp functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 searching in Rmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
running man on files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 searching in webkit buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
Russian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 searching multiple files via Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
secondary selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
secondary-selection face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
S sections of manual pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
s- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
saved echo area messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 security, when displaying enriched text . . . . . . . . 278
saving a setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 select all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
saving buffer name in a register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 selected buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
saving file name in a register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 selected window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
saving files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 selecting buffers in other windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
saving frame configuration in a register . . . . . . . . . 73 selection, primary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
saving keyboard macro in a register . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 selective display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
saving keyboard macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 selective undo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
saving number in a register. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 self-documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
saving position in a register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Semantic mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
saving rectangle in a register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Semantic package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
saving sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 sending mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
saving text in a register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 sending patches for GNU Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
saving window configuration in a register . . . . . . . 73 Sendmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
694 GNU Emacs Manual

sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 specify default font from the command line . . . . 579
server file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 specify dump file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573
server, using Emacs as . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 specify end-of-line conversion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
server-side fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 specifying fullscreen for Emacs frame . . . . . . . . . . 580
set buffer font size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 speedbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
set of alternative characters, in spell-checking the active region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
regular expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 spelling, checking and correcting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
sets of files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 splash screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
setting a mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 splitting columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
setting variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503 splitting table cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494 SQL mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
settings, how to save . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 src. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
sexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 SRC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
SGML mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 SSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
shadow cluster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 SSL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
shadow face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 standard colors on a character terminal . . . . . . . 580
shadow files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 standard faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
shell commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 standard fontset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
shell commands, Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 start directory, MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
shell completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 start iconified, command-line argument. . . . . . . . 583
Shell mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 starting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
shell scripts, and local file variables . . . . . . . . . . . 507 starting Emacs on MS-Windows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Shell-script mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 STARTTLS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
SHELL environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 startup (command line arguments) . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
shelves in version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 startup (init file) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
shift-selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 startup fontset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Show Paren mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 startup message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
showing hidden subdirectories (Dired) . . . . . . . . . 393 startup screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
shy group, in regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 stashes in version control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
signing files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388 string substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Simula mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 string syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
simulation of middle mouse button . . . . . . . . . . . . 605 stuck in recursive editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
simultaneous editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 style (for indentation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Sinhala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 subdirectories in Dired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
site init file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 subprocesses on MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
site-lisp directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 subscribe groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
site-lisp files, not loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571 subshell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
site-start.el file, not loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571 substring, completion style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
site-start.el, the site startup file . . . . . . . . . . . 523 subtree (Outline mode) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
size of file, warning when visiting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Subversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
size of minibuffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Subword mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
slashes repeated in file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 summary (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
SliTEX mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 summing time intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Slovak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 sunrise and sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Slovenian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Super, modifier key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
Smerge mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 suspending. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
SMTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 suspicious constructions in C, C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Snake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 SVN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
socket activation, systemd, Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 Swedish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
soft hyphen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 switch buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
soft newline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 switches (command line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
solitaire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 symbol search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
sorting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 symbol, highlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
sorting Dired buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394 symbolic links (creation in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
sorting Rmail file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 symbolic links (creation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Spanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 symbolic links (visiting) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
specific version control system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 synchronizing windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
specification, for source packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492 syntax highlighting and coloring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Concept Index 695

syntax of regexps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 tilde (~) at end of backup file name . . . . . . . . . . . 152
system-wide packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 time (on mode line) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
systemd unit file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 time intervals, summing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
time stamps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
timeclock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
T timelog file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635 TLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
tab bar (X resource) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586 TLS encryption (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
tab bar mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 TODO item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
tab line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 toggling marks (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
tab stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 TOML mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
tab-line face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 tool bar (X resource) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
table creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 tool bar mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
table dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Tool Bar position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
table for HTML and LaTeX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Tool Bar style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
table mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 tooltip help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
table recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 tooltips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
table to text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 tooltips (haiku) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 top level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
tabs, on the Tab Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 touchscreen events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 tower of Hanoi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
tags and tag tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 traditional font-lock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
tags, C++ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 trailing whitespace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
tags-based completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 trailing whitespace, in patches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
TaiViet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 trailing-whitespace face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Tajik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Tramp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Tamil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Transient Mark mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Tar mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 Transport Layer Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
Tcl mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 transposition of expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
TCP Emacs server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 trash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Telnet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 tree-sitter library, supported major modes . . . . . 285
Telugu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 triple clicks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
temporary windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 troubleshooting Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
Term mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 truenames of files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
terminal emulators, mouse support . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 truncation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
terminal, serial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 tty Emacs in haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
termscript file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 TTY menu faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Tetris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484 Turkish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
TEX encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 two directories (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
TEX mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 two-column editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
TEXEDIT environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 types of log file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
TEXINPUTS environment variable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 TypeScript mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 typos, fixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
text and binary files on
MS-DOS/MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 601
text buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 U
text colors, from command line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579 Ukrainian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
text cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 unbalanced parentheses and quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Text mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 uncompression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
text properties at point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 undecided, coding system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
text properties of characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 undeletion (Rmail) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
text terminal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 undigestify. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442
text to table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 undisplayable characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
text-based tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 undo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
text-based tables, splitting cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 undo limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
text/enriched MIME format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 undoing window configuration changes . . . . . . . . 191
Thai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Unibyte operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
Tibetan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Unicode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
696 GNU Emacs Manual

Unicode characters, inserting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 W

unique buffer names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Watching expressions in GDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
unmarking files (in Dired) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 wdired mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
unsaved buffers, killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
unsaved customizations, reminder to save . . . . . 498 web pages, viewing in help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
unsubscribe groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 webkit widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
untranslated file system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602 weeks, which day they start on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
unused lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Welsh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
unzip archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 what constitutes an Emacs bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
upcase file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 wheel-down, a mouse event. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
updating Dired buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 wheel-left, a mouse event. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
upstream source, for packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 wheel-right, a mouse event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
URL, viewing in help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 wheel-up, a mouse event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 whitespace character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
URLs, activating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 Whitespace mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Usenet news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 whitespace, trailing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
user name for remote file access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 wide block cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
user option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494 widening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
user options, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 widgets at buffer position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
using Nextstep services (macOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597 width and height of Emacs frame . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
UTF-8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 width of the vertical scroll bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
wildcard characters in file names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Windmove package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
V window configuration changes, undoing . . . . . . . . 191
Window Divider mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502 window manager, keys stolen by . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
variable-pitch face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 windows in Emacs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
variables, changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 Windows system menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
vc-log buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 windows, synchronizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
VC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 Windows-1255 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
VC change log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Winner mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
VC commands, in Dired buffers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 word processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
VC Directory buffer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345 word search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
VC filesets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 word wrap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
VC log buffer, commands in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
VC mode line indicator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 words, case conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
verifying digital signatures on files (in Dired) . . 388 work file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Verilog mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 working tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
version control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 World Wide Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
version control log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 wrapped search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
version control status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 wrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
VERSION_CONTROL environment variable . . . . . . . . 152 WYSIWYG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
vertical border . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Vertical Scroll Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
vertical scroll bars, command-line argument . . . 583 X
vertical-border face . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 X cutting and pasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
VHDL mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 X defaults file. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 X input method coding systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
View mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 X input method coding systems, overriding . . . . 231
viewing web pages in help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 X input methods (X resource). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
views of an outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 X Logical Font Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
visiting files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 X resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 584
visiting files, command-line argument . . . . . . . . . 568 X resources file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Visual Line mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 X resources on Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598
visual order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 X resources, not loading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 572
X selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
XDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
XDG CONFIG HOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
Concept Index 697

XIM (X resource) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586 Y

XIM, X Input Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 y or n prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
XLFD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 yahrzeits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
XML schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 yanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
XPS file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 yanking previous kills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
xref. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 yes or no prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
xref backend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
XREF mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Z
xterm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
zip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
xwidget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 Zmacs mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Xwidget-WebKit mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
xwidget-webkit-edit-mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 zoo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169