Chapter 8. The Emacs Editor
The Emacs editor is found on many Unix systems, including Linux, because it is a popular alternative to vi. Many versions are available, but this book documents the most popular one, GNU Emacs (version 22.3), which is available from the Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs).
Emacs is much more than “just an editor” — in fact, it provides a fully integrated user environment. From within Emacs, you can issue individual shell commands or open a window where you can work in the shell, read and send mail, read news, access the Internet, write and test programs, and maintain a calendar. To fully describe Emacs would require more space than we have available. In this chapter, therefore, we focus on the editing capabilities of Emacs.
This chapter presents the following topics:
Conceptual overview
Command-line syntax
Summary of emacs commands by group
Summary of emacs commands by key
Summary of emacs commands by name
For more information about Emacs, see Learning GNU Emacs, by Debra Cameron et al. (O’Reilly).
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