Emacs key-binding to shell command with no output - emacs

My question may be split into two perhaps? I have a tex file (main.tex) that, through \subfile, calls on a bunch of files in a subfolder. Eg, main.tex:
\chapter{Introduction}
\subfile{chapters/introduction}
When I edit introduction.tex in emacs, I need to compile main.tex to see it. I'd like to have a shortcut key so that, whilst editing introduction.tex, it can call "pdflatex main.tex" and then suppress the output so it doesn't open up in a minibuffer.

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emacs as an external editor for other applications (Houdini, Joplin)

I am trying to use emacs as an editor with other applications which allow people to open text in an editor (Sublime in this case), save it, and see it updated in the application. For example, in Houdini, a 3D software, I can type code in an external editor (in this case, Sublime), modify, save... and see it update in the application (Houdini). When I use emacs, it doesn't work. As an example, here I am adding a line of text using Sublime in Houdini:
Once I save and close, the text is updated in Houdini, and I can continue working:
Try as I might, I can't get this to work in emacs. I am sure the file has the same name, and when I save, it confirms the right file path.
What am I missing? I have run into the same problem with an application called Joplin: Sublime works, emacs does not.
A wild guess: Emacs has different behaviour when saving files than Sublime, and Houdini gets confused by that.
When you save a file in Emacs, Emacs creates a backup of the previous contents of the file, suffixing the file name with a tilde. By default it does this by renaming the existing file to the backup name, and then writing the contents to the real filename, thereby creating a new file.
(You can observe this by running ls -i before and after: the backup file will have the inode number that the main file had previously. Note that Emacs doesn't make backups after the first save during the same editor session, so you might need to restart Emacs or kill the buffer with C-x k to see this.)
I suspect that Houdini keeps the file open while Emacs is editing it, and so when you save the file from Emacs, the file that Houdini has open is actually the backup file.
You can configure Emacs to make backups by copying instead of renaming by setting the variable backup-by-copying to t. Add this to your ~/.emacs file (creating it if it doesn't exist):
(setq backup-by-copying t)

Shell script mode automatically at each emacs start

Each time when I edit bash script I type a command M-x shell-script-mode. And then I get nice shell code higlighting. How to get it automatically each time I start emacs so I do not have to type the command. When I added (shell-script-mode) to init.el it did not help.
You can set the default major mode to be whatever you want by adding
(setq-default major-mode 'shell-script-mode)
to your init file. That will ensure that any newly created buffer will be in shell-script-mode unless its mode is specified otherwise (e.g. through auto-mode-alist). Whether it's a good idea or not, I don't know: I probably would not want that to be my default setting - but to each her/his own.
One of the simplest ways to have Emacs set the desired mode for a buffer editing a file is to include a special comment in the first line of that file, e.g. for a shell script your first line might be:
# -*-sh-*-
For scripts it is also common, or and often even required, to have an interpreter file comment on the very first line of the file, which of course would preclude having an Emacs mode comment, so Emacs also looks for interpreter file comments and associates those with a major mode, so the first line of your shell script might be:
#!/bin/sh
There are a number of other ways to tell Emacs how to set the buffer mode when visiting a file. See, for example, Emacs Manual: Choosing File Modes

Open file from Emacs terminal without find-file

If I'm in a term-mode buffer and there is a file path displayed, how would I go about making the path "clickable", opening the file in a new buffer? It doesn't have to be mouse-clickable, in fact I'd prefer a key binding that works when the point is on the file path. Other than the common case of using ls, this function could be used when viewing a log file. Some debug info contains the file path and line number. Something like lib/library.rb:34 for example. Ideally, Emacs could open a new buffer and move the cursor to line 34.
The short answer is: don't work against Emacs. Let Emacs work for you.
While you can use find-file-at-point or put together something yourself, you will be much better off running make, grep and other stuff which prints "dir/file:pos" using M-x compile or M-x grep.
If you need to interact with your program which prints "dir/file:pos", you can pass a prefix argument to compile and the compilation buffer will be interactive.
If you have an arbitrary program whose output starts with "dir/file:pos", e.g., rails server, all you need to do is run it as (grep "rails server").

Emacs filesets: how to run other (elisp, not shell) commands?

There are 5 Elisp commands that can be run on an Emacs fileset, plus the ability to run any shell command. What about all the other Emacs commands? Just to give one example, it would be nice to be able to run M-x occur on a fileset.
I know its possible to mark several files in dired and then run any Emacs command on them (is that true, or am I confused with shell commands?), but it would be very convenient to define a fileset once and then be able to use it like one single file for all kinds of text editing.
Thanks for any advice
The commands that can operate on file sets are specified in the global custom variable "filesets-commands". You can add your own commands to that list. The default value for this variable is:
("Isearch" multi-isearch-files
(filesets-cmd-isearch-getargs))
("Isearch (regexp)" multi-isearch-files-regexp
(filesets-cmd-isearch-getargs))
("Query Replace" perform-replace
(filesets-cmd-query-replace-getargs))
("Query Replace (regexp)" perform-replace
(filesets-cmd-query-replace-regexp-getargs))
("Grep <<selection>>" "grep"
("-n " filesets-get-quoted-selection " " "<<file-name>>"))
("Run Shell Command" filesets-cmd-shell-command
(filesets-cmd-shell-command-getargs)))
The values consist of an association list of names, functions, and an argument list (or a function that returns one) to be run on a filesets' files. So, if you wanted to add a command that does an "occur" command on the file set, you could use the "Isearch" entry as an example to create your own new entry (that you would add to the "filesets-commands" global variable) that would look something like:
("Occur (regexp)" multi-occur-files-regexp
(filesets-cmd-occur-getargs))
You would need to write the "multi-occur-files-regexp" and "filesets-cmd-occur-getargs" functions (you could use the existing "multi-isearch-files-regexp" and "filesets-cmd-isearch-getargs" functions as a basis since they would be similar). The same would apply for any additional Emacs command that you wanted to add to work on file sets.
Dired has several operations on filesets. An example is dired-do-search (bound to A), where you can navigate through search results on several files with M-, just like with tags-search. Similarly, you can query-replace in tagged files (with Q).
The recent posts on irreal.org describe some nice dired features.
With Icicles you can use filesets for anything you might want to do with a set of files and directories. And you can create a fileset from any set of file and directory names in buffer Completions during completion. And you can use substring and regexp matching during completion to get such a set of file names in Completions.
These links might help:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Persistent_Completions#Filesets
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Dired_Enhancements#OpenDiredOnSavedFiles
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Dired_Enhancements#MarkedFilesAsProject
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Customization_and_General_Tips#icicle-filesets-as-saved-completion-sets-flag
Dired+ has command diredp-fileset, which opens Dired on an Emacs fileset. You are prompted for the fileset to use.

Opening multiple files at once in Emacs

In Emacs using ido-mode allows me to open a file from the minibuffer with C-xC-f. This method opens only one file at a time.
How do I open all the files in a directory or specify more than one file to open?
You can just provide * as the file name and press Enter; you'll be asked for a confirmation and if you press Enter a second time, all files in the directory will be opened.
Note that "opening all files in a directory" involves opening dired buffers for all of its subdirectories.
When not using ido-mode -- at the basic Emacs find-file prompt -- you can use the same * to open all files in a directory. When you do use ido-mode to find files, you can always press C-f to drop back to the usual Emacs find-file prompt. (You can use ido to speed up getting to some directory you're interested in first and drop to the basic find-file in there.) That's one way of creating a new file with ido (the other being the C-j binding); also, it gives you another way of using the above mentioned * trick.
File-name groking is nowhere near as useful as more general pattern-matching.
In Icicles file-name completion, you can open any number of files matching any number of patterns, from the same minibuffer. Pattern-matching can be substring, regexp, fuzzy, or prefix, and you can combine patterns using intersection and complementing.
Just as in Ido, in Icicles your minibuffer input dynamically filters the file-name candidates. You can choose individual candidates or choose all that currently match (using C-!).
(You can of course use file-name groking also. As with Emacs file-name input generally, hitting RET on a wildcard (grok) pattern sends it to find-file, which opens all matching files.)