Quickies for emacs

Quickies for emacs: "# Disabling control-Z from backgrounding emacs [permalink]
I find emacs' control-Z behavior to be pretty annoying (it backgrounds the program if you're in a shell, or hides the window if you're in X). Add this to your .emacs file:
(global-set-key 'C-Z' nil)

# Fixing 'no job control in this shell' [permalink]
Emacs in Mac OS X 10.1.3 (and other versions) has an annoying habit of having broken shells when you do M-x shell. You get an error like 'Inappropriate ioctl for device, no job control in this shell', which makes interrupting or backgrounding programs in shell mode impossible. Domo-kun gave me a one-line patch to the emacs source:
#define DONT_REOPEN_PTY
. Add that to darwin.h and build emacs. You can get the emacs source from the Darwin projects page. If you'd like a binary, drop us some mail.

# Fixing emacs C mode indenting [permalink]
Here's a way to change the C indenting style to a major style, and override some of the pre-set values (like how emacs 21 changed the bsd indent level from 4 to 8. Gee thanks guys):

(setq c-default-style 'bsd'
c-basic-offset 4)

# Fixing emacs backspace in screen [permalink]
When running emacs insde of screen, screen helpfully turns the backspace/delete key into '^[[3~', which gets turned into a forward-delete. Unfortunately, just bashing deletechar into backward-delete-char-untabify causes backspace in incremental search to cancel the search, which is annoying.

One option is to set the TERM env var to rxvt:

% setenv TERM rxvt

Before cranking up screen.

# Macro recording [permalink]
C-x ( : start recording keyboard macro
C-x ) : stop recording keyboard macro
C-x e : replay current keyboard macro

# Make emacs indent code with spaces instead of tabs [permalink]
Personally, I prefer emacs' default indentation with a mixture of tabs and spaces. If you're working on a project or for a client that requires indentation with spaces, add this to your .emacs file. This will make spaces the indent character, and use 4 spaces per indent level, for C, C++, and Objective C:

(setq c-mode-hook
(function (lambda ()
(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)
(setq c-indent-level 4))))
(setq objc-mode-hook
(function (lambda ()
(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)
(setq c-indent-level 4))))
(setq c++-mode-hook
(function (lambda ()
(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)
(setq c-indent-level 4))))

# Resetting shell mode's idea of the current working directory [permalink]
Sometimes the shell mode will get confused as to what the current working directory is (like if you use aliases to move to a new directory, or if you use the conveniences like !$). M-x dirs will tell the shell buffer to figure out what the current working directory is.

# Restrict editing to the region [permalink]
M-x narrow-to-region

Hides everything not in the current region.

# Revisiting / reloading a file in emacs [permalink]
The $Id: $ tags for CVS are nice, but it can be a pain when you're doing lots of checkins and have to re-load the file each time. You can either execute M-x revert-bufer or bind that to a key, or else use a trick by doing C-x C-v which invokes find-alternate-file, but just so happens to have the current buffer name, so you just have to do C-x C-v RET

# Running shell command pasting result back into the buffer [permalink]
So to run uuidgen, for instance:

C-U M-! ret uuidgen ret

# Scroll line with cursor to the top of the window [permalink]
C-U 0 C-L

(you can put in another number besides zero to scroll the line with the cursor to that particular line in the buffer)

# Setting variables when loading a file [permalink]
So say you're working on a project with two-space indents, but most of your other work happens with four-space indents. If the two-space crowd is amenable, add this to the bottom of the file:

/* For the emacs weenies in the crowd.
Local Variables:
c-basic-offset: 2
End:
*/

# Showing current column position [permalink]
M-x column-number-mode

# Toggling read-only mode in a buffer [permalink]
C-X C-Q

# Turning off command highlighting in shell mode [permalink]
Emacs 21, which comes with Mac OS X 10.2, 'helpfully' puts into bold the commands you execute in the shell. This drives me nuts, so I figured out how to turn it off. Add this to your .emacs file:

(setq comint-highlight-input nil)

# Turning off font-lock mode everywhere [permalink]
(global-font-lock-mode -1)

# Turning off incremental-search highlighting [permalink]
Emacs 21, which comes with Mac OS X 10.2, has highlighting enabled when doing incremental search (which drives me nuts). You can turn that off by setting this in your .emacs file:

(setq search-highlight nil)

You may also need to
(setq isearch-lazy-highlight nil)

To turn off underlining of matching results. Only some OS X installs need this setting.

# Turning off scroll-to-end in shell-mode [permalink]
(setq comint-scroll-show-maximum-output nil)

# Undo within a given region [permalink]
C-U C-_

# Unnarrowing the region [permalink]
M-x widen

# Use only spaces when indenting code [permalink]
(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)

# Using carriage returns in query-replace / replace-string [permalink]
Use C-Q C-J (control-Q control-J) each time you want to include a carriage return. e.g. to double-space everything

M-x replace-string RET C-Q C-J RET C-Q C-J C-Q C-J RET

Or to put 'bloogie ' at the beginning of every line

M-x replace-string RET C-Q C-J RET C-Q C-J b l o o g i e SPACE RET

# compiling emacs .el files [permalink]
Big emacs .el files take a long time to load. You can compile them into .elc files by using:
% emacs -batch -f batch-byte-compile filename.el

# emacs registers [permalink]
Stick something into a register:

(select stuff)
C-x r x 1

where '1' is the register identifier.

Getting stuff out of a register:

C-x r g 1"