(Stupid) Useful Emacs Tricks?

Count Fenring writes "Since the Vi version of this question was both interesting and popular, let's hear from the other end of the spectrum. What are your favorite tricks, macros, extensions, and techniques for any of the various Emacs? Myself, I like 'M-x dunnet' ;-)"

Comments

Emacs...

[Anonymous Coward]

...thats 3 letters too many in common with Steve Job's littlest pet shop of horrors play mates.

Thanks, but I'll stick to vi(m)...

Young people being led astray?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that this recent wave of vi and emacs posts is due to old guys, not young guys.

It would be tragic to think that bad habits from 20 years ago would be inflicted on a new generation.

We interviewed a candidate for a sysadmin position. He saw nano on a screen and made a comment: "who's the newbie?"

So I asked him to compile and install mysql from source on a test box. He flailed.

Re:Please Don't Stop

[DiegoBravo]

From the resume:

>> Since the Vi version of this question was both interesting and popular, let's hear from the other end of the spectrum

A bit suspicious, but is there any reason the VIM story ran first than the Emacs one? (and the Emacs' smells like a sort of concession) ... Taco's preferences lurking? It would be interesting to see if the ./ crowd has a marked statistical preference for one of the editors independently of the (religious) reasons; I'd speculate that Vim is a lot more used because its ubiquity in almost every Linux fresh installation.

Re:I replaced it

[ColonelPanic]

You equate popularity with quality.

I do not care how many people use aoeui/asdfg. I do care that I have a portable, intuitive editor that interfaces transparently with other tools. This makes me more productive.

So damn right it's better. If that makes me arrogant, then fuck you *and* your favorite bloated text editor, whose built-in artificial intelligence psychologist is doubtlessly precious to you.