Practical UNIX

Chapter 23. Introducing the Emacs Editor

Jesper Pedersen and Steve “Mor” Moritsugu

Starting Emacs Binding keys Defining macros Searching and replacing text Spell-checking documents Major and minor modes Getting help about Emacs

Tip for Beginners This chapter describes a text editor called Emacs. It is usually not provided on most commercial versions of UNIX, but it often can be downloaded via the Internet. Learn the basics of vi first in Chapter 20 because vi is the one editor available on all flavors of UNIX. While not as wide spread as vi, Emacs offers many powerful features and is the editor of choice for many UNIX experts.

A text editor enables you to create and modify text documents that contain the letters and characters that you can ...