Computer Science Department Unix Primer

Emacs

Some have said that emacs qualifies more as an entire operating system than just an editor. The sheer number of features contained within emacs can be overwhelming to the novice, but opens up great possibilities for the advanced user. Although you can edit directories, surf the web, browse newsgroups, read and send your email, and edit, compile, run, and debug programs within emacs, we'll just cover the basics of editing for new programmers.

Some notes: On some terminals (like sshwin for windows), the backspace key will generate a ^h character, which in emacs is the help command. If you keep ending up in a help screen when you try to use the backspace key in emacs, you can either use the delete key instead, or go into the terminal preferences for your ssh program, and set it so backspace sends delete instead of ^h.

Emergency procedure for getting out of trouble in emacs: If you've started accidently entering a command you didn't mean to, you can press C-g or hit [Esc] three times. To undo your last command(s) type C-x C-u. To exit emacs, first press C-x then C-c. (See conventions for an explanation of C-x, etc.)