Emacs Lisp Function Guide

elispemacs

I have been using Emacs for more than three years now but it still takes me days to write even small functions in Lisp. I've looked through GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual but it's huge and structured completely opposite from JavaDoc, not from functions to descriptions but the other way around.

What will make my life much easier is some sort of small JavaDoc like document with most commonly used Emacs internal functions and they quick description.

    (point) - returns current position in buffer
    (save-excursion (p)) - saves current position in buffer before 
                           executing (p) and restores it afterward.

Does anyone know where I can find something like that?

Best Answer

This site has some emacs lisp summary information that may be useful: http://xahlee.org/emacs/elisp.html.

In particularly, check out these links on that page: Basic Text-editing Functions, Emacs Lisp Idioms and Batch Text Processing

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How to control how Emacs makes backup files

If you've ever been saved by an Emacs backup file, you probably want more of them, not less of them. It is annoying that they go in the same directory as the file you're editing, but that is easy to change. You can make all backup files go into a directory by putting something like the following in your .emacs.

(setq backup-directory-alist `(("." . "~/.saves")))

There are a number of arcane details associated with how Emacs might create your backup files. Should it rename the original and write out the edited buffer? What if the original is linked? In general, the safest but slowest bet is to always make backups by copying.

(setq backup-by-copying t)

If that's too slow for some reason you might also have a look at backup-by-copying-when-linked.

Since your backups are all in their own place now, you might want more of them, rather than less of them. Have a look at the Emacs documentation for these variables (with C-h v).

(setq delete-old-versions t
  kept-new-versions 6
  kept-old-versions 2
  version-control t)

Finally, if you absolutely must have no backup files:

(setq make-backup-files nil)

It makes me sick to think of it though.

(repeat-last-command) in Emacs

Repeat functionality is provided by the repeat.el Emacs Lisp package, which is included with standard Emacs distributions. From repeat.el's documentation:

This package defines a command that repeats the preceding command, whatever that was, including its arguments, whatever they were. This command is connected to the key C-x z. To repeat the previous command once, type C-x z. To repeat it a second time immediately after, type just z. By typing z again and again, you can repeat the command over and over.

To see additional information about the repeat command, type C-h F repeat RET from within Emacs.

Best Answer

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How to control how Emacs makes backup files

(repeat-last-command) in Emacs

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