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17.4 Basic -Editing

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When you have opened a file, you can of course move around in it with the cursor. The -cursor keys and PgUp, PgDn do what you'd expect. Home and End jump to the beginning and end of the line. (In older versions, -they would actually jump to the beginning and end of the buffer.) However, there are also -Control and Meta (Alt) -key combos that move the cursor around. Because you do not need to move your hands to -another part of the keyboard for these, they are much quicker once you get used to them. -The most important such commands are listed in Table 17-1.

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Table 17-1. Basic Emacs Editing Commands

- - --- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Command	Result
C-b	go one character back
C-f	go one character forward
C-n	go one line down
C-p	go one line up
C-a	go to the beginning of the line
C-e	go to the end of the line
M-b	go one word back
M-f	go one word forward
M-}	go one paragraph forward
M-{	go one paragraph backward
M-a	go one sentence backward
M-e	go one sentence forward
C-d	delete the character under the cursor
M-d	delete until the end of the current word
C-v	go down one screen (i.e., PgDn)
M-v	go up one screen (i.e., PgUp)
M-<	go to the beginning of the buffer
M->	go to the end of the buffer
C-_	undo the last change (can be repeated); note that you actually have to type Shift+Control+hyphen for -this.
C-k	delete to end of line
C-s	forward search
C-r	backward search

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Note that many Meta commands are parallel to the Control commands except that they operate on larger units: while C-f goes forward one character, M-f goes forward an entire word, etc.

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Also note that M-< and M-> require you to type Shift+Alt+comma and Shift+Alt+dot -respectively, since < and > are on Shift+comma and Shift+dot. (Unless of course you have a different keyboard layout from the -standard US layout.)

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Note that C-k deletes (kills, as it is -commonly called) all the text after the cursor to the end of the line, but doesn't delete -the line itself (i.e., it doesn't delete the final newline). It only deletes the line if -there was no text after the cursor. In other words, in order to delete a complete line, -you have to put the cursor at the beginning of the line, and then hit C-k twice: once to delete the text on the line, -once to delete the line itself.

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