My emacs cheat sheet

emacs-cheat-sheet.md

In penance for cracking stupid jokes on Twitter, here's my Emacs cheat sheet. Emacs has a steep learning curve, so I've tried to order them by importance so you could learn them in stages.

One overall rule of thumb: pay attention to the minibuffer (the line at the bottom of the editor). It will often guide you through a process, and also gives you hints about what state you're in, such as the middle of a multi-chord sequence.

The other rule of thumb: when in doubt, C-g it out.

Basics (mandatory)

You simply can't get by without having these at your fingertips.

• C-x C-c - quit
• C-x C-s - save buffer
• C-x C-f - open file
• C-x b buffer name - switch to open buffer
• C-g - cancel
• C-x k - close current buffer
• C-h a command name - look up docs for command
• M-x command name - execute command
• C-x u - undo
• C-/ - undo

Getting around (really useful, worth learning)

Navigation

• C-a - beginning of line

• C-e - end of line

• C-f - forward character

• C-b - backward character

• C-p - down a line

• C-n - up a line

• M-f - forward word

• M-b - backward word

• S-any of the above - navigate and select

• C-space - start selection

Cutting and pasting

• C-w - cut
• C-y - paste

Search and replace

• C-s - search
• M-% - search and replace

More advanced editing

Deletion and cutting

• C-d - delete character ahead
• M-d - delete word ahead
• backspace - delete character behind
• M-backspace - delete word behind
• C-k - cut from cursor to end of line

Insertion

• C-o - insert newline after cursor

Frames

• C-x 2 - split window horizontally
• C-x 3 - split window vertically
• C-x 1 - unsplit window
• C-x o - switch to other pane in split window

Tricks

• M-q - auto-hard-wrap current paragraph
• C-t - swap the two characters at the cursor
• M-u - uppercase the word at the cursor
• M-l - lowercase the word at the cursor
• C-u n char - insert n copies of char

Power tools

• M-x replace-regexp - search and replace by regexp (the quoting/escaping is so weird that this always takes me several tries)
• C-r t - "string-rectangle" (this one's really weird but super useful sometimes; look up the docs)

the joke is funny because its true, but also because its totally mystifying to anyone new to emacs :)

That should be C-x r t not C-r t which will perform a reverse search.

For those of us new to emacs, which keys do the 'C' and 'M' represent?

@BrainStormCenter

For those of us new to emacs, which keys do the 'C' and 'M' represent?

C=Control and M=Alt on my keyboard. But see here for more details:

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>.

I'm not that new to emacs, but I still don't get the joke from Twitter. Can you explain? Also, nice cheat sheet!

I don't get the joke

@blessing4538 I think it’s because Emacs Lisp (the language in which you configure Emacs) is a language that, just like other Lisp-based languages, necessarily uses open and closing parentheses in it’s syntax. Hence, getting started is as simple as (.