Emacs tutorial notes
17 November 2003
Mike Daniels

Conventions:

C-x means hold down the control key and press x
S-x means hold down the shift key and press x
M-X means hold down the meta key and press x OR
          press Escape, and then press x

Note that C-S-x and C-X are the same thing.

Files:

C-x C-f opens files
C-x i inserts a file
C-x C-s saves a file
C-x C-w saves a file with a different name

Cursor navigation:

C-a - beginning of line
C-e - end of line
C-f - forward character
C-b - backward character
M-f - forward word
M-b - backward word
C-n - next line
C-p - previous line
M-< - top of buffer
M-> - end of buffer
C-v - page down
M-v - page up

To bring emacs' cursor movement in line with windows conventions:

  M-x pc-selection-mode

Undo:

C-x u OR
C-_

Cancel:

C-g

The basic help system: C-h i
What does this key do? C-h k
What command is appropriate for doing X? C-h a

Selection:

Use mouse to highlight, OR
Type C-{SPACE} at the beginning of the region and move the cursor to
the end OR

M-h - select current paragraph
C-x h - select entire buffer
C-x C-p - select entire page

Things to do with selected text:

C-k - cut
M-w - copy
M-x print-region - print

Use any command with "region" in its name.

Paste: C-y

Search and replace:

C-s - incremental search
C-M-s - incremental regexp-based search
M-% - interactive search and replace
C-M-% - interactive regexp-based search and replace

Interactive search-and-replace:

{SPACE} replace and continue OR y
{DELETE} skip and continue OR n
{RETURN} skip and stop OR q
. replace and stop
! replace all
^ back up

Typing a character literally:
C-q [character]

Window management:

C-x b [buffername] - create a buffer, or switch to an existing one
C-x 4 b [buffername] - do the above in another window
C-x 5 b [buffername] - do the above in another frame
C-x k [buffername] - get rid of buffer

C-x 2 - split vertically
C-x 3 - split horizontally
C-x o - move to other window
C-M-v - scroll other window (without moving to it)

C-x {zero} - delete current window
C-x {one} - delete other windows

Frame management:

C-x 5 2 - make new frame
C-x 5 b [buffername] - put or create buffername in a new frame
C-x 5 0 - get rid of frame
C-x 5 o - move to other frame
C-x 5 1 - delete other frames

Customization:

M-x customize

Modes:

C-h m - describe current modes

Emacs at home:

Emacs for windows can be obtained here:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/windows/emacs/latest/

See http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ for installation
instructions.

Emacs for mac can be obtained here:

http://mac-emacs.sourceforge.net/

Remote editing:

C-x C-f /user@host:path/file

Regular Expressions:

{character}	matches itself, unless {character} is one of the following
\$		matches '$'
\^		matches '^'
\.		matches '.'
\*		matches '*'
\+		matches '+'
\?		matches '?'
\[		matches '['
\]		matches ']'
\\		matches '\'

.		matches any single character except a newline
^		matches the beginning of a line
\`		ditto
$		matches the end of a line
\'		ditto
[{stuff}]	matches any character inside the list {stuff}
   [A-Z]	  matches any capital letter (in the unaccented Latin alphabet)
   [0-9]	  matches any digit
   [A-Za-z_]	  matches any letter-or-underscore
   [^z]		  matches any letter that isn't 'z'
		  note that tricks are involved if your character
		  class needs to include ']', '-', or '^'
\b		matches the beginning or end of a word
		  \bking\b will actually find the word "king" while
		  ignoring "picnicking"
\B		matches that which is not the beginning or end of a
		word
		  \Bking will only find the "king" in "picnicking"
\<		matches the beginning of a word
\>		matches the end of a word
\w		matches any word-constituent character
\W		matches any non-word-constituent character
\cC		matches any character belonging to category C
                  (use M-x describe-categories to get possible values
		  for C)
\CC		matches any character not belonging to category C
            
modifiers:

*		matches zero-or-more of the previous expression
+		matches one-or-more of the previous expression
?		matches zero-or-one of the previous expression
  [A-Z]*	matches zero-or-more uppercase letters
  [0-9]?	matches an optional digit
  [a-z][0-9A-Za-z_]	prolog identifiers
\{{num}\}	matches num quantities of the previous expression
  i.\{18\}n     matches "internationalization"

(note that these are "greedy" operators -- they'll match as much as
possible. Non-greedy versions are available in *?, +?, and ??)

\|		disjunction
   [a-z]*\|[A-Z]*	matches a block of same-case letters
\( and \)	grouping
		- limits the scope of \|
		- allows *, +, ?, etc. to apply to a complex
                  expression (e.g. ba\(na\)* matches bana, banana,
		  bananana, etc. [insert obligatory joke here])

Exercise:

This is the definition of "sentence end", a regexp used by emacs to
match the end of a sentence along with any whitespace that follows.

"[.?!][]\"')]*\\($\\| $\\|\t\\|  \\)[ \t\n]*"

This is in the syntax of a string literal, so all quotes and
backslashes have been escaped. The actual characters in the string are
therefore:

[.?!][]"')]*\($\| $\|{tab}\|  \)[ {tab}{newline}]*

(where {tab} represents what you get when you hit the Tab key, ditto
{newline})

So how does this work? Does it match your expectation of the end of a
sentence? If not, how would you revise it so that it does?