Practical UNIX

Getting Help

Emacs offers a lot of help available online, ranging from descriptions of key bindings to a general introduction to Emacs. Common to it all is that this is available with the key prefix Ctrl+h. In the following list, you can get an overview of the available information:

• Ctrl+h, Ctrl+h (describe help)— This is the most important key binding for you to remember. This is the entrance to an index of all the key bindings.

• Ctrl+h, f (describe function)— Given a function name, this gives you documentation about that function. (You have already seen numerous examples of this.)

• Ctrl+h, v (describe variable)— Given a variable name, this function describes the variable. Variables are used to configure how Emacs works in different situations. ...