EMACS TEXT EDITOR BASIC COMMANDS

Emacs is one of the oldest and most versatile text editors available for Linux and UNIX-based systems. It's been around for a long time and is well known for its powerful and rich editing features. Emacs is also more than just a text editor; it can be customized and extended with different "modes", enabling it to be used like an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for programming languages like Java, C or Python

emacs EDITOR:

emacs

emacs  file.txt

1.  emacs Navigation:

• ctrl+n  -  Next line 
• ctrl+p  -  Previous line 
• ctrl+f  -  Move cursor forward one character 
• ctrl+b  -  Move cursor backward one character 
• alt+f  -  Forward one word 
• alt+b  -  Backward one word 
• ctrl+a  -  Move to beginning of line 
• ctrl+e  -  Move to end of line 
• alt+a  -  Move to beginning of sentence 
• alt+e  -  Move back to end of sentence 
• alt+<  -  Goto the beginning of the file 
• alt+>  -  Goto the end of the file

2.  emacs Searching:

• ctrl+s  -  Start forward search 
• ctrl+r  -  Start a reverse search 

3.  emacs Repeating command:

• ctrl+u {num} {command}  -  Repeat {command} {num} times

4. emacs Find and Replace:

• alt+% {old} {new}!  -  Subtitute {new} for {old} in the entire file 

5.  emacs Deleting Text:

• ctrl+d  - Delete a character 
• alt+d  -   Delete a word

6.  emacs  copy/paste:

• ctrl+k  -  Kill (cut) the rest of the current line to text 
• ctrl+y  -  Paste from the previously killed text 

7.  emacs Undo:

• ctrl+x  u  -  Undo

8.  emacs Save and Quit:

• ctrl+x  ctrl+s   -  Save the file 
• ctrl+x  ctrl+c  -  Exit 

9.  emacs Help:

• ctrl+h  -  Help 
• ctrl+h  t  -  Tutorial 
• ctrl+h  k {key}  -  Describe {key}

To change the major mode from within emacs, press the alt+x keys. The mini buffer will wait for your response. Examples of some major modes are: 

•   c-mode
• python-mode
• java-mode
• html-mode
• perl-mode
• shell-script-mode
• text-mode and press Enter.

To give an idea of the power of emacs, here are some extras available from its Tools menu:

• Calendar 
• Simple calculator 
• Programmable calculator 
• Searching a directory 
• Encrypting and decrypting document 
• Send and read e-mails 
• Search files using grep 
• Spell checking 
• Running shell commands and compiling codes 
• Version control 
• Compare and merge files