Unix and Linux Stack Exchange
Unix and Linux Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [emacs]

A text editor, usually characterized by its extensibility. Often described as "the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor." There is an Emacs-specific SE site for specialized questions.

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor. A large part of the Emacs code base is written in a dialect of Lisp called Emacs Lisp, and the editor can be customized and extended in this language.

Emacs provides context-sensitive editing modes with syntax coloring, is self documenting, has full Unicode support and extensions to do most anything. Die-hard Emacs users do most everything from within Emacs: write code, compile, run, debug, read/compose email, browse the web, do project planning, etc.

Useful Links

Wisdom from the stack

588 questions
412
votes
15 answers

What are the pros and cons of Vim and Emacs?

How would you compare these editors? What are the pros and cons of each? [note] This is not meant to be answered by those who "hate one and love another" or those who haven't used both.
John Berryman
  • 735
  • 5
  • 9
  • 17
376
votes
2 answers

Ctrl-s hangs the terminal emulator?

I came across a sentence in vimdoc: Note: CTRL-S does not work on all terminals and might block further input, use CTRL-Q to get going again. and using CTRL-S indeed hangs my vim. I was thinking that it was vims fault, since there…
Hongxu Chen
  • 5,828
  • 8
  • 27
  • 32
78
votes
2 answers

What is the difference between shell, eshell, and term in Emacs?

In Emacs I can run a shell using following commands - M-x term M-x shell M-x eshell What is the difference between these three?
Kshitiz Sharma
  • 8,585
  • 21
  • 59
  • 75
29
votes
5 answers

How do I configure Emacs to use 'ispell' on Mac OS X?

I'm using brew as my package manager for both Emacs and ispell. I have both installed. Doing a quick google, I was unable to figure out how to tell Emacs where ispell is and to load the appropriate dictionaries. Right now when I do a M-x…
Son of the Wai-Pan
  • 689
  • 2
  • 8
  • 13
29
votes
2 answers

How can mouse support be enabled in terminal Emacs?

How can mouse support be enabled in an Emacs terminal session started with emacs -nw? Is there a keyboard shortcut or a flag to do this? If not how can it be done in terminal emulators? I use Guake.
user
  • 2,227
  • 6
  • 20
  • 25
28
votes
3 answers

How to modify write permission on current buffer in emacs?

Is it possible to change the write permissions on a file from inside emacs, without killing/re-opening the buffer? Sometimes I forget to modify the permissions on a file before opening it. I can modify the permissions from inside emacs (M-! chmod…
rahmu
  • 19,673
  • 28
  • 87
  • 128
27
votes
10 answers

How to replace current word under cursor in Emacs

How do I replace current word under cursor in Emacs? I know that I can use query-replace or replace-string but every time I do so I have to type entire string to be replaced, this is just annoying. Vi has equivalent command cword and I can use a…
Think Pl
  • 473
  • 1
  • 5
  • 7
26
votes
4 answers

Shift-arrow not working in emacs within tmux

I recently started using tmux (was a screen user before) and I'm loving it, except for one small problem. I use emacs within my tmux session and I am used to using Shift-arrow keys to move between emacs windows (not tmux windows). When running…
triangle_man
  • 361
  • 1
  • 3
  • 3
25
votes
2 answers

GNU Emacs; Does the GUI version offer anything more than the ability to have a GUI menu?

I've been looking at GNU Emacs for a few months now, on and off (mainly off), and I've really only gone as far as testing a few basic things which I especially want in an editor... I'm slowly getting to realize its topography, and it is starting to…
Peter.O
  • 32,426
  • 28
  • 115
  • 163
24
votes
3 answers

How to get current buffer's filename in emacs?

One of the main features I miss about Vim, is that it always saves the filename of the current file in the % buffer (more info). That allows launching commands easily like: ;; compile current file :! gcc % ;; source current file (useful when I'm…
rahmu
  • 19,673
  • 28
  • 87
  • 128
24
votes
2 answers

GNU emacs vs. XEmacs

After using Vim for the past couple of years, I'm switching to emacs as part of my "get out og your comfort zone" 2012 resolution. Although I have been using GNU Emacs for the past 10 days, I am curious about XEmacs and I wonder if it differs…
rahmu
  • 19,673
  • 28
  • 87
  • 128
23
votes
3 answers

My `which` command may be wrong (sometimes)?

I've compiled the last emacs version from the source code (v24.2) because the version installed on my machine is (quite) old for me (v21.3). I've done the usual: $configure --prefix=$HOME make make install Now I am testing emacs and realized that…
yves Baumes
  • 569
  • 1
  • 4
  • 11
23
votes
1 answer

How do I stop emacs from asking me if I want to load a large file?

When I open a large file in emacs, I get a message saying 'foo.bar file is large; really open?' How do I stop emacs from asking me this question all the time? In other words, if I open the file, I want to open the file, no matter how big it is.
Tola Odejayi
  • 515
  • 5
  • 10
21
votes
2 answers

How to open a file in an existing emacs process from command line?

I have several script that will launch all the apps and files related to a specific project. But, it will launch multiple emacs instances, rather than simply cause the current emacs to open the requested files. I'd rather the current emacs simply…
bev
  • 623
  • 4
  • 8
  • 17
21
votes
3 answers

Prevent unwanted buffers from opening

I'm using emacs for my daily javascript editing, to switch between buffers I use C-x LEFT and C-x RIGHT and I'm fine with this (even if I find it difficult to know the path of the file I'm modifying). My problems: at the startup I always have…
Alberto Zaccagni
  • 385
  • 2
  • 9
1
2 3
…
39 40