Emacs Quick Reference Guide

DEL is the DELETE key and ESC is the escape key (key F11 in G17)

C - <chr>     means hold the CONTROL key while typing the character <chr>

M - <chr>     means hold the ESC key down and type <chr>

Manipulating Files

Exit an emacs window permanently	C - x  C - c
Read (an existing) file into emacs	C - x  C - f
Save a file back to disc	C - x  C - s
Insert contents of another file into this buffer	C - x  i
write a buffer to a specified file	C - x  C - w

Note that for the write command, the file is inserted at the cursor position.

Working within a File

Moving around: one character at a time, use arrow keys.

Scrolling to next screen	C - v
Scrolling to previous screen	M - v
Go to buffer beginning or end	M - <   M - >

Killing and deleting

Entity to kill	backward	forward
Character	DEL	C - d
word	M - DEL	M - d
to end of line	M - 0 C - k	C - k
sentence	C - x DEL	M - k
Kill to next occurence of char	M - z	char

Error recovery

Abort partially typed or executing command	C - g
Undo an unwanted change	C - x u or C - _
Restore a buffer to its original contents	M - x revert  - buffer
Redraw garbaged screen	C - l

The latter command is not only useful to redraw the screen, it also centers the screen so that the cursor is placed in the midddle of the window.

Searching:

search forward	C - s
search backward	C - r
regular expression search	C - M - s
exit incremental search	ESC
undo effect of last character	DEL
abort current search	C - g

Starting EMACS

First, make sure you are in the right sub-directory by issuing the command

> cd directory

where directory is the sub-directory you will be working on (e.g. project 1 or project 2). Once in the appropriate directory, it is a matter of creating or updating a file by the command:

> emacs answer &

This creates a window and reads the file answer if it exists; otherwise it will create the file when you save the contents of the emacs window. The & tells the system to run emacs in the background so it doesn't lock up the xterm window.