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(Stupid) Useful Emacs Tricks?

Posted by timothy on from the bonus-if-it-uses-10-fingers-at-once dept.

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' ;-)"

4 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. grep and emacs integration by meta+slash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Of all the Elisp I've written this grep is what I most miss when I use a coworker's environment.

    (defun my-grep ()
      "grep the whole directory for something defaults to term at cursor position"
      (interactive)
      (setq default (thing-at-point 'symbol))
      (setq needle (or (read-string (concat "grep for <" default "> ")) default))
      (setq needle (if (equal needle "") default needle))
      (grep (concat "egrep -s -i -n " needle " * /dev/null")))
    (global-set-key "\C-x." 'my-grep)
    (global-set-key [f8] 'next-error)

  2. Lots of them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    M-x tetris
    M-x doctor
    M-x yow
    M-x phases-of-moon

  3. Some favorites by bjourne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    (global-set-key (kbd "C-c c") 'comment-dwim)

    C-c c to either comment out a region or uncomment it depending on context. Lovely feature.

    (global-set-key "\M-g" 'goto-line)

    M-g to go to specified line in buffer. Useful for emacs 21.x users where the keybinding is not yet standard.

    (menu-bar-mode nil) (scroll-bar-mode nil) (tool-bar-mode nil)

    Gets rid of the ugly TK widgets.

    (iswitchb-mode t)

    Superboosts C-x b.

    (global-set-key "\C-z" 'undo)

    The normal binding for C-z is suspend-emacs but having it bound as undo is much more useful imo.

    --
    Football Odds
  4. Outlines w/ org-mode by Khelder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've recently discovered and almost instantly become a fan of org-mode, which is a great outlining tool (including folding, numbering, and other similar things you'd probably expect).

    It's also good for lists of things to do, schedules, deadlines, and related stuff. It uses its own really simple markup langauge (similar to trac wiki), but you can include LaTeX and HTML inline.

    It comes with exporters to HTML and LaTeX (and iCal for date stuff). You can also put tables inline, and the table editor is excellent for simple tables.

    I use it every day for my list of things to do, and use it regularly for outlining text documents, pseudocode, and meeting notes.