Using the 'multiple-cursor' emacs package,
when I mark a word and cut ('C-w') in different multiple cursors, the only word in the 'active' cursor I control is cut.
I want to select different words in multiple positions and yank it to other relative position.
When I first tried this I remember some yes or no option at the screen bottom, but I couldn't really notice this at first and some keystroke made it to "no". I guess this might have been an option for multiple-cut. But I don't know how to revert this choice.
How do you do multiple cut and yank in emacs?
This works by default, so at some point you have indeed asked the library not do do this.
These settings are stored (by default) in ~/.emacs.d/.mc-lists.el
Just edit that file appropriately, and then M-x eval-buffer RET to make those same changes in the running instance.
I am new emacs user and one of the things that irritates me is that when I want to replace current selected text with the one from clipboard I need to delete it first. Every other application that I know replaces pasted text with the current selection by default.
Here's a little bit more detailed description:
Select some block of text
Paste text from clipboard
Emacs just pastes text where the cursor was and previously selected text it is still there. I want that selected text was deleted first.
As artscan wrote in a comment, you can get this functionaly for the normal yank (paste) operations by adding:
(delete-selection-mode 1)
to your configuration.
If you want yank by mouse to also delete the current selection, you can add:
(put 'mouse-yank-primary 'delete-selection 'yank)
in your configuration as well.
In Aquamacs 2.2 I could do the following:
1) Set the mark with C-SPACE
2) Click somewhere to set the point
Consequently this would define the region. Since Aquamacs-2.3 this behaviour is gone: A click sets both the mark and the point. Is there a way to customize aquamacs to have the old behaviour?
For Emacs 24, here's what worked for me (and may also apply to Aquamacs): Unset the binding for the <down-mouse-1> event, which is what is setting the mark (but not the point; the point is set by a different binding, for the up-event <mouse-1>).
That seems to provide the behavior you are asking for: clicking the mouse after setting the mark via C-space sets the point, and one can see the corresponding region highlighted.
I determined this by reading the help for the bindings above, by doing:
M-x helpkclick, and reading the *Help* text, which explains that <down-mouse-1> is bound to command mouse-drag-region (which sets the mark).
I then tested the resulting behavior by interactively disabling the binding, by doing:
M-x global-unset-key and then clicking; but it is probably much safer to do it programmatically, e.g. in the scratch buffer, by evaluating:
(global-unset-key [down-mouse-1])
If you like the behavior that results, then just copy the above line into your .emacs
Employing the solution described above does seem to cause mouse-dragging to be a little funky, in that it does not highlight the selected region during the drag (but you still get to see what the region is once you let go, and you can now fine tune its end point via single clicks, which may be useful in some circumstances.)
Any time I try to move around in the buffer (besides moving up and down lines with C-p and C-n), my cursor is brought back to the command line so I cannot select and copy arbitrary text in the multi-term buffer. I can use my mouse to move to and highlight text, and all goes well from there, but is there a set of key bindings that will allow me to set the mark in other parts of the buffer? I looked in multi-term.el` but was not able to find anything that addressed this.
Try 'term-line-mode' and 'term-char-mode'
I want to select or highlight a block in Emacs without using the mouse, but doing it from the keyboard like Vim's visual mode. What is the easiest way to do this from a keyboard?
If I understand the question correctly, it is not about rectangular regions originally.
C-Spc puts a mark at the current position.
Wherever your cursor is afterwards, the text between the last mark and the current position is "selected" (you can highlight this by activating transient-mark-mode, but this will also mean that marks have to be deleted when you don't want highlight).
You can operate on that region with commands like:
C-w . . Kill region. This deletes and puts the region into the kill ring.
C-y . . Yank. This inserts the last snippet from the kill ring.
M-y . . Cycle kill ring. Immediately after C-y, this replaces the yanked part by the other snippets in the kill ring.
M-w . . Save region into kill ring. Like C-w, but doesn't delete.
This is just the basic usage. Marks have other uses, too. I recommend the tutorial (C-h t).
Take a look at region-rectangle in Emacs.
In short, you start selection like usual with Control-Space, then kill region with Control-x r k and paste (or yank) killed block with Control-x r y.
Emacs 24.4 now has rectangle-mark-mode. Use Ctrl + X, Space to invoke it.
Although C-SPC is a common way to start marking something from
wherever your point is, there are often quicker/easier ways that don't
involve explicitly moving to start/end points...
Built-in selection shortcuts
M-h — an important means to mark a paragraph. A "paragraph"
often means a block of code.
C-M-h and C-M-# — for marking sexps and defuns,
respectively. This works for several languages, not just lisps.
hold down shift — another slick way to highlight during
movement. E.g., M-S-f selects forward a whole word. This is
shift-select-mode,
and it is enabled by default in Emacs 24+. On some (non-chiclet)
keyboards, you should be able to hold down C-S- with a single
pinky.
You can press any of these repeatedly to grow the selection.
There are also a few special ways to mark things:
C-x h — mark the whole buffer
C-x SPC — enter rectangle mark mode
(NOTE: use C-g often to cancel marking while
experimenting.)
Add-ons
There are a few add-on packages that improve selecting regions and
things. These are all play nicely together and fit different use
cases. Use them all!
expand-region:
Expand region increases the selected region by semantic units. Just
keep pressing the key until it selects what you want. C-= is a
recommended binding for it. Hit it a few times to get what you
need.
easy-kill: Use M-w and
a mnemonic to select different types of things, like words, sexps,
lists, etc.
zop-to-char:
Like zap-to-char, but provides nice selection and other
menu-driven actions.
diff-hl: Highlight uncommitted changed regions. Use diff-hl-mark-hunk to select/mark a hunk.
symbol-overlay: Select symbol at point with a keystroke (M-i). Then you can do other things with it, like copy, search, jump, replace, etc.
Use Control-Space to set a mark and move your cursor.
The transient-mark-mode will highlight selections for you. M-x transient-mark-mode.
You can setup Emacs to enable this mode by default using a customization. M-x customize-option RET transient-mark-mode.
... and in case you are using Ubuntu and Ctrl + space is not working for you: you need to clear the Intelligent Input Bus (IBus) "next input method" key binding, as in
run ibus-setup and change the key binding for
"next input method" to something else (or delete it entirely by
clicking the "..." button and then the "Delete" button).
The quote is taken from an answer to a Stack Overflow question.
To expand answer of Edin Salkovic, if you use CUA mode, you can use Ctrl + Enter to begin a visual block selection. There are plenty of shortcuts to control block selection described in the documentation of CUA.
With Emacs 25, simply press Ctrl + Space and then move your cursor wherever you want to highlight/select the region of text which interests you. After that, you may need these commands:
Ctrl + W for cutting.
Alt + W for copying.
Ctrl + Y for pasting.