Emacs editing environment, Part 2: Learn the essential modes and editing features of Emacs

Level: Introductory

Michael Stutz (stutz@dsl.org), Author, Consultant

10 Apr 2007

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One of the powerhouses of UNIX computing, the open source Emacs editor is a large, complex application that does everything from edit text to function as a complete development environment. This tutorial, the second in a series, introduces you to some of the essential concept of modes, shows you some of the powerful text manipulation functions available, and teaches you how to use the built-in search, replace, and spell check facilities of Emacs.

In this tutorial

• Editing modes
  • See which modes are active
  • Get a description of the current mode
  • The default mode
  • Set the mode
  • Type in Text mode
  
  
• Abbrev mode
  • Define an abbrev
  • Use a word as an abbrev definition
  • Erase an abbrev
  
  
• Text manipulation
  • Indent and fill text
  • Transpose text
  • Convert case
  • Summary of text manipulation commands
  
  
• Search and replace text
  • Incremental search
  • Backward incremental search
  • Non-incremental search
  • Word search
  • Regexp search
  • Replace text
  • Summary of search and replace commands
  
  
• Use the spelling checker
  • Spell check a word
  • Spell check a region
  • Spell check a buffer
  • Catch misspellings as they happen
  • Summary of Emacs spelling commands
  
  

Objectives

The primary objective of this tutorial is to take users who are already familiar with the basics of the Emacs editor, such as its manner of keyboard input and the paradigm of buffers, and illustrate some of its essential but more intermediate features, including editing modes, incremental search, and other important Emacs text manipulation commands and facilities.

Prerequisites

The only prerequisite for this tutorial is that you already have a basic understanding of Emacs, which you can gain by taking the first tutorial in this series.

System requirements

This tutorial requires a user account on any UNIX-based system that has a recent copy of Emacs installed.

There are several varieties of Emacs; the original and most popular is GNU Emacs, which is published online by the GNU Project.

You should have a recent copy of GNU Emacs -- one that is at version 20 or greater. Versions 20 and 21 are the most commonly available, and development snapshots of version 22 are also available. This tutorial works with any of these versions for Emacs. If your system is running something older, it's time to upgrade.

Duration

2 hours

Formats

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