Emacs Cheatsheet

DOCUMENT KEY
C
The control key.
M
The "meta" key. This key does not exist on most modern keyboards. To simulate, this is usually mapped
to pressing (and releasing) the Esc key once. It is sometimes also mapped to the Alt key.

C-<key>
Hold the control key, and press <key>.

M-<key>
Press the Esc key once, and press <key>.

BUFFER LAYOUT AND NAVIGATION

C-x b
select another buffer
C-x C-b
list all buffers
C-x k
close buffer
C-x 0
close this window (when split)
C-x 1
go back to one buffer on screen
C-x 2
split screen horizantally (two windows)
C-x 3
split screen vertically (two windows)
C-x o
switch cursor to other buffer
C-M-v
scroll other window
C-l
Clear screen and redisplay, scrolling the selected window to center point vertically within it (recenter).
C-x ^
grow buffer taller
M-x shrink-window
shrink window shorter
C-x {
shrink window narrower
C-x }
grow window wider
C-l
redraw screen

FILES AND BUFFERS

C-x C-f
read a file into a buffer
C-x C-s
save current buffer back to file
C-x i
insert contents of file into current buffer
C-x C-w
write buffer to specified file
C-x C-c
exit emacs

TEXT EDITING
C-k
erases to end of line. If line is blank, the line itself is erased.
C-g
aborts a partially typed command.
C-x u
undo last change to buffer.
C-w
cut marked region
M-w
copy marked region
C-y
paste region
M-x indent-region
indents selected region
M-| wc -w
Word count region

EDITOR APPEARANCE
C-x C-+
Increase font size in buffer.

C-x C--
Decrease font size in buffer.

EDITOR BEHAVIOR
M-x set-variable RET c-basic-offset RET x RET
adjust tab width to x (c-basic-offset for c mode)
CASE CHANGE
M-u
uppercase word from cursor
M-l
lowercase word from cursor
M-c
capitalize word
C-x C-u
uppercase region
C-x C-l
lowercase region

MARKING
C-@ or C-SPACE
set mark
M-@
set mark ARG words away
M-h
mark paragraph
C-x C-p
mark page
C-M-h
mark function
C-x h
mark buffer

SPELLING
M-$
check spelling of word, offers suggestions
M-x flyspell-mode
enable/disable Flyspell mode (highlights misspelled words)
M-x flyspell-prog-mode
enable/disable Flyspell mode for comments and strings
M-/
completes partial word from cursor position
M-
corrects misspelled word under cursor (in Flyspell mode)
M-x ispell
spellcheck the active region or the current buffer
M-x ispell-buffer
M-x ispell-region
M-x ispell-string
M-x ispell-word
starts ispell for the specified region

check and correct spelling of each word in the region

M-x ispell-kill-ispell
kill aspell or ispell
M-x spell-buffer
M-x spell-region
M-x spell-string
M-x spell-word
simplified spellchecks, no suggestions, corrections by hand only

ISPELL
x
quit spellchecking in ispell, moves cursor back to starting position

skips current word while spellchecking

r word
replaces current word while spellchecking
?
display other options
a
accept spelling for all buffers for this session
i
accept spelling and add to dictionary
q
quit
X
halt at current location (will restart from there later)

SEARCHING AND REPLACING

C-s
search forward
C-r
search backward
M-x count-matches
Prints the number of occurrences of a regular expression.
M-x replace-string
will prompt for string to search and replace, unconditionally replaces all occurances

DELETING
C-d
delete the character at the point
<DEL>
delete the character before the point (i.e., backspace)
M-x kill-sentence
Kills the sentence from the point of the cursor
M-d
Delete word from cursor
C-k
Deletes previous sentence

NAVIGATION
C-a
move to beginning of line
C-e
move to end of line
M-a
backward a sentence
M-e
forward a sentence
M-}
forward a paragraph
M-{
backward a paragraph
C-v
move down a screen
M-v
move up a screen
M-<
move to beginning of the buffer
M->
move to end of buffer
C-p
move up one line (useful if cursor keys do not work) (p for previous)
C-n
move down one line (n for next)
C-f
move right one character (f for forward)
C-b
move back one character (b for back)
M-b
left one word
M-F
right one word
C-l
cursor in the middle of the screen
C-U x C-N
advance x lines
C-x w
display the line number where the cursor is located
M-d goto-line x
goto line number x

PROGRAMMING
make -k
compile using makefile
M-x comment-region
comments region of code
M-;
comment current line

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
M-x prolog-mode
Switch to Prolog language mode (default for ".pl" is Perl mode).

SHELLS
M-x shell
opens shell buffer within emacs
M-!
execute shell command
M-|
run shell command on region
C-u M-|
filter region through shell command

HTML
C-c C-t
interactively specify html tag and attributes
C-c C-f
skip across balanced tag group

LaTeX
C-c C-c
Compile using LaTeX. Note: Add the following hook
(setq latex-run-command "pdflatex")
to your .emacs file to default to pdflatex.

Version Control (VC)

Note
At the time of writing VC works with Arch, Bazaar, CVS, Git
Mercurial, Monotone, RCS, SCCS/CSSC, and Subversion.

M-x vc-register
Commits (with message) current file.
M-x vc-diff
diff with previous commit.

RECOVERY
M-x recover-session
recover session from backup in the event of crash

MISCELLANEOUS (I.E., BEING COUNTERPRODUCTIVE WITH YOUR TEXT EDITOR)

M-x tetris
Does exactly what the name implies. You can also play pong, snake, and solitaire.

M-x doctor
Starts Eliza, the built-in psychotherapist.

M-x hanoi
Allows you to watch the problem of the "Towers of Hanoi" solved recursively in the browser. Allows for a numerical argument that specifies the puzz

M-x animate
Should only be ran on your birthday.

M-x blackbox
A 5x5 puzzle.

M-x decipher
Cryptanalysis

M-x dunnet
An adventure game.

M-x life
Conway's "Game of Life" life simulation.

M-x zone
Scrambles your editor when it goes idle.

Joshua T. Guerin