Emacs Mastery
Emacs Mastery
Attaining Coding Supremacy
Jim Menard

Learn more

About the Book

Emacs is the ultimate extensible editing environment. There's a reason it's been around for so long and is used by so many programmers.

Like with any flexible, powerful tool, learning Emacs is a major investment. Emacs Mastery will help by covering basic, intermediate, and advanced topics that will improve your effectiveness and by showing you some things Emacs can do that you might not know about. Tetris, anyone?

This book is a personal meandering through Emacs. It's a collection of tips and hints I've collected over decades of using Emacs, organized and expanded into a useful compendium of ideas for you to try and make your own.

Emacs Mastery is not a tutorial, though it does cover some basic things because I've found even some experienced Emacs users don't always remember some of the simpler, easier ways to do things like navigate on the page.

Current Table of Contents (subject to change):

  • Introduction
    • About This Book
      • The Code
      • Conventions
      • Copyright
    • Credits and Thanks
  • Installing and Running Emacs
    • Installing
      • OS X
      • Linux
      • Windows
        • Cygwin
    • Running Emacs
  • Terminology
    • Keys
    • The Emacs Interface
      • Frame
      • Buffer
        • The Minibuffer
      • Window
    • Point, Mark, and the Region
  • Getting Help
    • Info
      • Adding Info Nodes
      • Jumping to Info Nodes
      • Opening Any Info File
    • Help
    • The Internet
    • The Emacs Lisp Source Code
  • Basic Editing
    • Open, Save, Quit
      • Opening a File
        • Entering File Names
        • Compressed Files and Archives
      • Saving a File
        • Autosave and Lock Files
      • Quitting Emacs
    • Inserting Characters
    • Movement
      • Line Numbers and Jumping to Specific Lines
    • Killing and Yanking Text
      • Killing
      • Yanking
      • The Kill Ring
      • More Ways to Kill
      • The System Clipboard
    • Transposing Text
    • Searching and Replacing
      • Incremental Search
        • Non-Incremental Search
      • Searching and Replacing
      • Regular Expressions
    • Changing Case
    • Point and Mark
    • Transient Mark Mode
    • Window, Buffer, and Frame Manipulation
      • Windows
      • Buffers
      • Frames
    • Suspending Emacs
    • Numeric Prefix ("Universal Argument")
    • Extended Commands
  • Emacs Lisp
    • Character Constants
    • defvar and `defcustom`
    • Buffer Local Variables
    • Evaluating an Expression
      • The Minibuffer
      • The Scratch Buffer
      • ielm
    • Anonymous Functions
    • Interactive Functions
    • Aliases
    • Macros
    • mapcar and Friends
    • Common Lisp Extensions
      • EIEIO
    • Dynamic vs. Lexical Binding
    • Compiling
    • Browsing Emacs Code
    • Advice
    • Testing Emacs Lisp Code
    • String Manipulation
    • Miscellaneous
  • Customizing Emacs
    • The Initialization File
    • Loading Files and the Load Path
    • Modes
      • Using Modes
        • Loading the Code
        • Associating Files With a Mode
        • Hooks
    • ELPA
    • Killing the Menu Bar and Toolbar
    • Customizing Your Customizations
    • File-Local Variables
    • Per-Directory Settings
  • Key Bindings
    • Bound Functions Must Be Interactive
    • Defining Prefix Key Combinations
    • Remapping Keyboard Keys
      • Caps Lock -> Control
      • Command/Alt Key -> Meta
        • OS X
      • The Hyper and Super Keys
  • Intermediate Editing
    • Finding Text Across Files and Buffers
      • grep
      • rgrep
      • grep-find
      • find-grep-dired
      • deft
    • Finding, Counting, and Deleting All Lines Containing Text
    • Undoing changes
      • Undo
      • Reverting Buffer Changes
    • Additional Movement Commands
    • Bookmarks
    • More Editing Commands
    • What Is That Character?
    • What Did I Just Type?
    • Indentation
    • Recentering Lines On the Page
      • Moving the Cursor Instead
    • Zapping to Char
    • Deleting Extra Spaces and Empty Lines
    • Filling and Fill Prefix
    • Unicode
    • Rectangles
    • Hooks
  • Finding Files
    • Dired
    • find-dired
    • Ido
    • find-file-at-point
    • locate-dominating-file
    • ef
    • Tramp
    • ff-find-other-file
  • Registers
    • Strings and Numbers
    • Rectangles
    • Positions and Window Layouts
    • Keyboard Macros
    • Manipulating Registers Programmatically
  • Just Another Pretty Face
    • Terminals
    • Font Lock Mode
      • State of Confusion
    • Displaying Colors
    • Font Names
    • Customizing Font Faces
    • Themes
    • Embiggening
  • Even More Arbitrarily Collected Subjects
    • Narrowing
    • Encryption
      • The EasyPG Assistant
        • A Tip: Entering Passwords in Emacs
      • pgg
      • crypt++
    • Executable Molasses? Advantage: Client / Server
      • Shell Interaction
      • emacsclient Tricks
    • Comparing Files
      • compare-windows
      • diff-buffer-with-file
      • ediff
      • Diff Mode
    • Info About the Character at Point
    • smex
    • Wrapping Text
      • Long Lines
    • Read-Only and View Modes
    • Reading PDFs
    • Displaying Images
    • Bar Charts
    • Amusements
    • Screen Saver
    • Calc
    • SES
  • Type Less, Output More
    • Dabbrev Expand
    • YASnippet
    • Keyboard Macros
      • Inserting Numbers
      • Editing Keyboard Macros
    • Abbreviations
    • Skeletons
    • Yes or No?
  • Programming: Editing, Running, and Debugging Code
    • Programming Language Modes
      • Random Mode Thoughts
        • web-mode
    • Flymake and Flycheck
    • Compiling
    • Running Scripts
    • Tags and find-tag
    • Intellisense, CEDET
    • Showing and Hiding Code (Folding)
    • REPLs and Inferior Modes
      • Lisp
        • Emacs Lisp
        • Clojure
        • SBCL and CLisp
      • Ruby / Python
    • HTTP-Twiddle and restclient
      • HTTP-Twiddle
      • restclient.el
    • Single Shell Commands
    • SQL
    • Tailing Log Files
    • Man Pages
    • Looking Up Javadocs
    • Source Code Control
    • Hex Editor
  • Org Mode
    • Overview
    • Outlining
    • Markup
    • To Do Lists
    • Agenda
    • Blocks
    • Tables
    • Links
      • Your Own Link Types
    • Encryption
    • Exporting
    • Publishing
    • Running Code
    • Macros
    • Sparse Tree
    • Random Notes
  • Publishing
    • ispell
    • LaTeX
    • Markdown and Textile
    • Org Mode
    • Slides
  • Shells
    • Environment Variables
      • Mac OS X and Environment Variables
    • Eshell Mode
    • Shell Mode
    • Term Mode
    • Ansi-Term
  • Dates and Times
    • Calendar
    • Diary
    • Time Zone, Latitude, and Longitude
    • Timed Events
  • Writing New Modes
    • Generic
    • Major Mode
  • The Outside World
    • Email
      • Sending Email
    • The World Wide Web
    • RSS
      • Gnus for RSS
      • Elfeed
    • IRC
    • OS X and AppleScript
    • Emacs Multimedia System
  • Enumerated Miscellaneous Advice, Collected Sporadically
    • Emacs Modes Are Copious, Serviceable
    • Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping
    • Emacs Meanderings Are Concluded Suddenly

About the Author