1 Deletion and Killing

Most commands which erase text from the buffer save it in the kill ring so that you can move or copy it to other parts of the buffer. These commands are known as kill commands. The rest of the commands that erase text do not save it in the kill ring; they are known as delete commands. (This distinction is made only for erasure of text in the buffer.) If you do a kill or delete command by mistake, you can use the C-x u (undo) command to undo it (@pxref{Undo}).

The delete commands 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 destroy significant amounts of nontrivial data generally kill. The commands’ names and individual descriptions use the words ‘kill’ and ‘delete’ to say which they do.

You can use kill commands in read-only buffers. They don’t actually change the buffer, and they beep to warn you of that, but they do copy the text you tried to kill into the kill ring, so you can yank it into other buffers.

1.1 Deletion

C-d

Delete next character (delete-char).

<DEL>

Delete previous character (delete-backward-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).

M-^

Join two lines by deleting the intervening newline, along with any indentation following it (delete-indentation).

The most basic delete commands are C-d (delete-char) and <DEL> (delete-backward-char). C-d deletes the character after point, the one the cursor is “on top of”. This doesn’t move point. <DEL> deletes the character before the cursor, and moves point back. You can delete newlines like any other characters in the buffer; deleting a newline joins two lines. Actually, C-d and <DEL> aren’t always delete commands; when given arguments, they kill instead, since they can erase more than one character this way.

The other delete commands are those which delete only whitespace characters: spaces, tabs and newlines. M-\ (delete-horizontal-space) deletes all the spaces and tab characters before and after point. M-<SPC> (just-one-space) does likewise but leaves a single space after point, regardless of the number of spaces that existed previously (even zero).

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).

M-^ (delete-indentation) joins the current line and the previous line, by deleting a newline and all surrounding spaces, usually leaving a single space. @xref{Indentation,M-^}.

1.2 Killing by Lines

C-k

Kill rest of line or one or more lines (kill-line).

The simplest kill command is C-k. If given at the beginning of a line, it kills all the text on the line, leaving it blank. When used on a blank line, it kills the whole line including its newline. To kill an entire non-blank line, go to the beginning and type C-k twice.

More generally, C-k kills from point up to the end of the line, unless it is at the end of a line. In that case it kills the newline following point, thus merging the next line into the current one. Spaces and tabs that you can’t see at the end of the line are ignored when deciding which case applies, so if point appears to be at the end of the line, you can be sure C-k will kill the newline.

When C-k is given a positive argument, it kills that many lines and the newlines that follow them (however, text on the current line before point is spared). With a negative argument -n, it kills n lines preceding the current line (together with the text on the current line before point). Thus, C-u - 2 C-k at the front of a line kills the two previous lines.

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.

1.3 Other Kill Commands

C-w

Kill region (from point to the mark) (kill-region).

M-d

Kill word (kill-word). @xref{Words}.

M-<DEL>

Kill word backwards (backward-kill-word).

C-x <DEL>

Kill back to beginning of sentence (backward-kill-sentence). @xref{Sentences}.

M-k

Kill to end of sentence (kill-sentence).

C-M-k

Kill sexp (kill-sexp). @xref{Lists}.

M-z char

Kill through the next occurrence of char (zap-to-char).

A kill command which is very general is C-w (kill-region), which kills everything between point and the mark. With this command, you can kill any contiguous sequence of characters, if you first set the region around them.

A convenient way of killing is combined with searching: M-z (zap-to-char) 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.

Other syntactic units can be killed: words, with M-<DEL> and M-d (@pxref{Words}); sexps, with C-M-k (@pxref{Lists}); and sentences, with C-x <DEL> and M-k (@pxref{Sentences}).

2 Yanking

Yanking means reinserting text previously killed. This is what some systems call “pasting”. The usual way to move or copy text is to kill it and then yank it elsewhere one or more times.

C-y

Yank last killed text (yank).

M-y

Replace text just yanked with an earlier batch of killed text (yank-pop).

M-w

Save region as last killed text without actually killing it (kill-ring-save).

C-M-w

Append next kill to last batch of killed text (append-next-kill).

2.1 The Kill Ring

All killed text is recorded in the kill ring, a list of blocks of text that have been killed. There is only one kill ring, used in 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 file to another. (See section Accumulating Text, for some other ways.)

The command C-y (yank) reinserts the text of the most recent kill. It leaves the cursor at the end of the text. It sets the mark at the beginning of the text. @xref{Mark}.

C-u C-y leaves the cursor in front of the text, and sets the mark after it. This is only if the argument is specified with just a C-u, precisely. Any other sort of argument, including C-u and digits, specifies an earlier kill to yank (see section Yanking Earlier Kills).

If you wish to copy a block of text, you might want to use M-w (kill-ring-save), which copies the region into the kill ring without removing it from the buffer. This is approximately equivalent to C-w followed by C-x u, except that M-w does not alter the undo history and does not temporarily change the screen.

2.2 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 gets it all back 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 is a line ∗of sample text.

with point as shown. 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, 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 append by first typing the command C-M-w (append-next-kill) right before it. The C-M-w tells the following command, if it is a kill command, to append the text it kills to the last killed text, instead of starting a new entry. With C-M-w, you can kill several separated pieces of text and accumulate them to be yanked back in one place.

2.3 Yanking Earlier Kills

To recover killed text that is no longer the most recent kill, use the M-y command (yank-pop). It takes the text previously 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. M-y is allowed only after a C-y or another M-y.

You can understand 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 moves the “last yank” pointer to a different entry, and the text in the buffer changes to match. Enough M-y commands 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 moves it 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.

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 it 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.

If you know how many M-y commands it would take to find the text you want, you can yank that text in one step using C-y with a numeric argument. C-y with an argument restores the text the specified number of entries back in the kill ring. Thus, C-u 2 C-y gets the next to the last block of killed text. It is equivalent to C-y M-y. C-y with a numeric argument starts counting from the “last yank” pointer, and sets the “last yank” pointer to the entry that it yanks.

The length of the kill ring is controlled by the variable kill-ring-max; no more than that many blocks of killed text are saved.

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 the command C-h v kill-ring.

3 Accumulating Text

Usually we copy or move text by killing it and yanking it, but there are other methods convenient for copying one block of text in many places, or for copying many scattered blocks of text into one place. To copy one block to many places, store it in a register (@pxref{Registers}). 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 contents of specified buffer.

M-x prepend-to-buffer

Prepend region to contents of specified buffer.

M-x copy-to-buffer

Copy region into specified buffer, deleting that buffer’s old contents.

M-x insert-buffer

Insert contents of specified buffer into current buffer at point.

M-x append-to-file

Append region to contents of specified file, at the end.

To accumulate text into a buffer, use M-x append-to-buffer. This reads a buffer name, them 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, wherever point happens to be in it.

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—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 prependings 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.

To retrieve the accumulated text from another buffer, use M-x insert-buffer; this too takes buffername as an argument. It inserts a copy of the text in buffer buffername into the selected buffer. You can alternatively select the other buffer for editing, then optionally move text from it by killing. @xref{Buffers}, for background information on buffers.

Instead of accumulating text within Emacs, in a buffer, you can append text directly into a file with M-x append-to-file, which takes filename as an argument. It 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.

4 Rectangles

The rectangle commands operate on rectangular areas of the text: all the characters between a certain pair of columns, in a certain range of lines. Commands are provided 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.

When you must specify a rectangle for a command to work on, you do it by putting the mark at one corner and point at the opposite corner. The rectangle thus specified is called the region-rectangle because you control it in about the same way 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.

If point and the mark are in the same column, the rectangle they delimit is empty. If they are in the same line, the rectangle is one line high. This asymmetry between lines and columns comes about because point (and likewise the mark) is between two columns, but within a line.

C-x r k

Kill the text of the region-rectangle, saving its contents as the “last killed rectangle” (kill-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 rightward.

M-x delete-rectangle

Delete the text of the region-rectangle without saving it in any special way.

M-x clear-rectangle

Clear the region-rectangle by replacing its contents with spaces.

M-x string-rectangle <RET> string <RET>

Insert string on each line of the region-rectangle.

The rectangle operations fall into two classes: commands deleting and inserting rectangles, and commands for blank rectangles.

There are two ways to get rid of the text in a rectangle: you can discard the text (delete it) or save it as the “last killed” rectangle. The commands for these two ways are M-x delete-rectangle and C-x r k (kill-rectangle). In either case, the portion of each line that falls inside the rectangle’s boundaries is deleted, causing following text (if any) on the line to move left into the gap.

Note that “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 can only record 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 and yank-popping is hard to make sense of.

Yanking a rectangle is the opposite of killing one. Point specifies where to put the rectangle’s upper left corner. The rectangle’s first line is inserted there, the rectangle’s second line is inserted at a point one line vertically down, and so on. The number of lines affected is determined by the height of the saved rectangle.

To yank the last killed rectangle, type C-x r y (yank-rectangle). This can be used to convert single-column lists into double-column lists; kill the second half of the list as a rectangle and then yank it beside the first line of the list.

You can also copy rectangles into and out of registers with C-x r r r and C-x r i r. @xref{RegRect,,Rectangle Registers}.

The command M-x string-rectangle is similar to C-x r o, but it inserts a specified string instead of blanks. You specify the string with the minibuffer. Since the length of the string specifies how many columns to insert, the width of the region-rectangle does not matter for this command. What does matter is the position of the left edge (which specifies the column position for the insertion in each line) and the range of lines that the rectangle occupies. The previous contents of the text after the insertion column are pushed rightward.

There are two commands for making with blank rectangles: M-x clear-rectangle to blank out existing text, and C-x r o (open-rectangle) to insert a blank rectangle. Clearing a rectangle is equivalent to deleting it and then inserting a blank rectangle of the same size.

About This Document

This document was generated on March 29, 2022 using texi2html 5.0.

The buttons in the navigation panels have the following meaning:

where the Example assumes that the current position is at Subsubsection One-Two-Three of a document of the following structure:

• 1. Section One
  • 1.1 Subsection One-One
    • ...
  • 1.2 Subsection One-Two
    • 1.2.1 Subsubsection One-Two-One
    • 1.2.2 Subsubsection One-Two-Two
    • 1.2.3 Subsubsection One-Two-Three     <== Current Position
    • 1.2.4 Subsubsection One-Two-Four
  • 1.3 Subsection One-Three
    • ...
  • 1.4 Subsection One-Four

This document was generated on March 29, 2022 using texi2html 5.0.