Emacs Cheatsheet

Posted on September 11, 2015

Tags: Emacs

These bindings should work for emacs from 24 upwards.
My emacs config is in my dotfiles.

Key binding	Name	Purpose	Package	From emacs version
C-x SPC	(rectangle-mark-mode)	Select a rectangular region.	None	24.4
C-c SPC	(ace-jump mode)	Jump to a letter at start of a word.	ace-jump	unknown
C-s C-w	(write-file)	Save current file as a different file	None	unknown
C-g C-/	Redo	Redo something you’ve undone.	None	unknown
C-/	Undo	Undo something you’ve done.	None	unknown
C-x k	(kill-buffer)	Close the current buffer.	None	unknown
C-x C-f	(find-file)	Visit a file	None	unknown
C-x C-v	(find-alternate-file)	Visit a different file	None	unknown
C-x C-r	(find-file-read-only)	Visit a file as read-only	None	unknown
C-x 4 f	(find-file-other-window)	Visit a file in another window/buffer	None	unknown
C-x 5 f	(find-file-other-frame)	Visit a file in a new frame	None	unknown
C-a	Jump to start of line	Not emacs specific but IBM home	None	all
C-e	Jump to end of line	Not emacs specific but IBM end	None	all
C-s M-%		Queried search and replace	None	all

For redo keep repeating C-/ to keep redoing, C-g isn’t repeated.
If you “visit” a file that is actually a directory, Emacs invokes Dired, the Emacs directory browser. See Dired. You can disable this behavior by setting the variable find-file-run-dired to nil; in that case, it is an error to try to visit a directory.
When the emacs version is unknown it will most likely work for your version of emacs.
Here’s an awesome emacs manual
Update emacs packages with M-x package-list-packages RET U x then follow the prompts as you wish.

Updating emacs packages: M-x package-list-packages U x then follow the prompts
emacs-nox: In the arch repos there’s emacs-nox described as “The extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor, without X11 support” Good for SSH.
My emacs config
Installing packages: “i” mark for install. “x” to install
M-x to run any command. e.g M-x erc to IRC from emacs.