Emacs


Convention


The following Iccy bindings should work for many terminals, workstations and PCs undcr most UNIX-derived systems. Problems may be encountred with the special keys <Home, End, PgDn, PgUp, Del,-,-,|,|>, which may work differently or not at all.
C-stands for the Control key <Ctrl>; C-p stands for holding down the Control key and then pressing p.
M- stands for the Meta or Alt key; M-p stands for holding down the Meta Icey and then pressing p. An alternative for this is ESC p, which means pressing ESC, releasing it and then pressing p.
Many of the commands bound to keys can also be executed using the pull-down menus.

Starting and Quitting


emacs file Enter emacs and read file file; sometimes also gmacs, em, ....
Emacs dir td> Enter dired and read directory dir
C-x C-c Exit emacs

Iterating and stopping, Undoing


M-n cmd Iterate cmd n-times, for some commands also with negative n
C-u cmd Iterate cmd 4-times
C-g Abort current command
C-x u or F9 Undo last edit

Working with Files and Buffers


C-x C-f Visit a file
C-x C-v Visit another file
C-x 4 C-f Visit a file in another window
C-x 5 C-f Visit a file in a new frame
C-x i Insert file at cursor position
C-x C-s or F2 Save file with old name
C-x C-w Save file with new name
C-x b Move to the buffer specified
C-x k or F3 Kill current buffer
C-x C-b Display the buffer list

Moving the Cursor


Left mouse Move cursor to mouse pointer
C-f or Move forward character
C-b or Move backward character
C-p or Move to previous line
C-n or Move to next line
M-f Move forward word
M-b Move backward word
C-a or Home Home Move to beginning of line
C-e Move to end of line
C-Y or PgDn Move forward one screen
M-v or PgUp Move backward one screen
M-> or End Move to end of file
M-< Move to beginning of file
C-l Put current line in the center

Input and Spelling


Insert Toggle between insert and overwrite mode
C-x = Show character, code, position
C-o or Enter Add new line, split line
M-^ Join line with the previous one
C-q xxx Insert octal xxx
Tab or Spc Expand word <in command>
M-/ Expand word <in buffer>
M-$ Spell check word under cursor

Regions Deleting, Cut and Paste


C-@ or C-SpcMark beginning or end of region
C-x C-x change point <cursor> and mark
C-d Delete character under cursor, join lines
Del or Bkspc Delete character before cursor
M-d Delete from cursor to end of word
M-\ Delete all tabs and blanks
C-k Delete from cursor to end of line
C-x C-o Delete all blank lines but one
C-w Delete region <Cut and delete>
M-w Copy region into kill ring <Cut>
C-y Insert deleted region <Paste>
M-y Insert previous deletion <Paste re cursively>
C-x Tab Move region one character right

Transposing and Capitalizing Text


C-t Transpose two characters
M-t Transpose two words
C-x C-t Transpose two lines
M-c Capitalize character
M-u Uppercase word from cursor
M-l Lowercase word from cursor