Redefine M-z from zap-to-char - emacs

Clicking Ctrl-h k Alt-z gives this:
M-z runs the command zap-to-char, which is an interactive compiled
Lisp function in `simple.el'.
It is bound to M-z.
(zap-to-char ARG CHAR)
Kill up to and including ARGth occurrence of CHAR. Case is ignored if
`case-fold-search' is non-nil in the current buffer. Goes backward if
ARG is negative; error if CHAR not found.
I never use this function, but the keys are located in a very good position. So I wanted to redefine this sequence. But I couldn't. Even when I execute this command in .emacs:
(global-set-key (kbd "\M-z") 'backward-delete-word) M-z is still bound to zap-to-char.
Approach, suggested here, didn't help:
Emacs can't reset Ctrl-d key behaviour

You don't need a \ in 'kbd'. Also, I think you're looking for backward-kill-word:
(global-set-key (kbd "M-z") 'backward-kill-word)
EDIT: I didn't notice that the page you linked to defines backward-delete-word. If you have that function defined, you can use it instead of backward-kill-word here.

Related

New Doom Emacs user - trying to set global-set-key

I've installed neotree in Doom Emacs. I would like to bind function key 8 ([f8]) using global-set-key. i've put
(global-set-key [f8] 'neotree-toggle)
in init.el, config.el, and custome.el. When I press f8, emacs says " is undefined".
if i type in ":neotree-toggle", it works.
Can you help?
In emacs-lisp (elisp), keys can be represented in different ways, vector or string. The usual way to represent them is to use the macro kbd (for keybinding of course) that transforms a simple string like "C-h f" to the key representing CTRL+h f.
If you want to learn more about that you can read the emacs manual about keys here, or this blog post that is pretty good here.
Finally, if you look at the description of the function global-set-key with C-h f RET global-set-key :
global-set-key is an interactive compiled Lisp function in ‘subr.el’.
(global-set-key KEY COMMAND)
Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 1.4.
Give KEY a global binding as COMMAND.
COMMAND is the command definition to use; usually it is
a symbol naming an interactively-callable function.
KEY is a key sequence; noninteractively, it is a string or vector
of characters or event types, and non-ASCII characters with codes
above 127 (such as ISO Latin-1) can be included if you use a vector.
Note that if KEY has a local binding in the current buffer,
that local binding will continue to shadow any global binding
that you make with this function.
You have to give it a key than a command, so in your case, it'll be something like :
(global-set-key (kbd "<f8>") 'neotree-toggle)
See how special keys are dealt with with kbd here.
I had a few minutes, and since I'm already using doom I did a little experimentation. This should work for you:
(global-set-key (kbd "<f8>") #'neotree)

How to set a keybinding to create and jump to the next line in emacs?

I have the following code that attempts to create a new line and then jump to it. The idea is that move-end-of-line will jump to the end of the current line, and ["C-m"] would act as return/enter. Yet executing this command gives the error: "wrong number of arguments". How do I fix this?
(global-set-key (kbd "C-.") 'new-line)
(defun new-line ()
(interactive)
(move-end-of-line)
["C-m"]
)
I think you need to read the Emacs & elisp manuals: these questions are pretty easy to answer. Here's one way to do it.
(defun insert-line-after-line (&optional n)
(interactive "p")
(end-of-line 1) ;end of current line
(open-line n) ;open n new lines
(forward-line 1)) ;go to start of first of them
But seriously: Emacs has very extensive self-documentation, it is easy to find out how to do these things.
An option is to record a macro and use that.
M-x kmacro-start-macro
C-e
C-m
M-x kmacro-end-macro
If you don't care about the macro persisting, just run it:
C-x e
But if you want it to persist you would save it:
M-x name-last-kbd-macro new-line
M-x insert-kbd-macro new-line
and paste the output into your initialisation file (with your shortcut definition):
(global-set-key (kbd "C-.") 'new-line)
(fset 'new-line
[end return])
["C-m"] is like the way you specify a key for doing a key binding, but this is not the same as how you programmatically tell Emacs to insert a character into a document. You could use (insert-char ?\^M) (see ref here), but that would result in a literal ^M character (try it; another way to do the same thing interactively is Ctrl-Q followed by Ctrl-M). (insert "\n") seems to be what you're looking for.
Also, the reason you're getting the message "wrong number of arguments" is because (move-end-of-line) requires an argument when called out of interactive context. (move-end-of-line 1) works.
That said, possibly an easier way to achieve the result you're looking for is with the following setting:
(setq next-line-add-newlines t)
This will allow you to just do C-n at the end of the file and not worry about the distinction between moving and inserting.

Keymapping in emacs using semantic with interactive functions and default parameters invocation

In semantic; to move around function declarations it is possible to use C-c , J to open declaration, and just C-u C-SPC to return where the function was called. However to map those functions to some other short keybindings like that M-right (meaning alt key in combination with right arrow), so in our .emacs we can have:
(define-key global-map [(M-right)] 'semantic-complete-jump).
This indeed works because C-c , J is mapped to invoke the semantic-complete-jump function.
So two questions:
How to map M-left to the C-u C-SPC? remembering that C-u is not a part of the command, it is just the argument passed to the invoked function.
Is there any way to invoke semantic-complete-jump via C-c , J without being interactive and using by default always the default value (that it is mainly the word under where is the cursor)? This will allow to avoid one additional keystroke moving much faster around the code.
This is possible to do with M-. (mapped to find-tag) and M-* (mapped to pop-tag-mark) playing with tags and etags with emacs, but using semantic it seems to be much more powerful and ideal for big projects with large amount of code.
S̲o̲ ̲t̲h̲e̲ ̲p̲r̲e̲v̲i̲o̲u̲s̲ ̲t̲w̲o̲ ̲q̲u̲e̲s̲t̲i̲o̲n̲s̲ ̲w̲h̲a̲t̲ ̲a̲r̲e̲ ̲a̲s̲k̲i̲n̲g̲ ̲i̲s̲: what configuration lines are needed just to use M-right to move inside the function declarations (without being asked) and M-left to go to the previous point were this function was called using semantic.
Here's what I've got:
(add-hook
'c-mode-common-hook
(lambda()
(define-key c-mode-base-map
(kbd "C-x C-h") 'semantic-ia-fast-jump)))
(global-set-key
(kbd "M-p")
(lambda()(interactive) (set-mark-command 4)))

Cannot get to bind Enter to 'newline-and-indent in Emacs !!! Very annoying

Cannot get to bind Enter to newline-and-indent in Emacs !!! Very annoying.
I already tried everything on the following thread by changing 'mode' to ruby and still nothing:
How do I make Emacs auto-indent my C code?
I know that the problem is the RETURN key, since if I bind to something else, works fine.
I tried [enter], (kbd "enter"), (read-kbd-macro "enter"), (kbd "RET")
Follow-up 1.
This is what I get from C-hkRET
RET runs the command newline, which is an interactive compiled Lisp
function.
It is bound to RET.
(newline &optional ARG)
Insert a newline, and move to left margin of the new line if it's blank.
If use-hard-newlines' is non-nil, the newline is marked with the
text-propertyhard'.
With ARG, insert that many newlines.
Call auto-fill-function' if the current column number is greater
than the value offill-column' and ARG is nil.
I dont know what to make of it or how to figure out if it's a global
or local binding that gets in the way. trying to remap C-j
also doesnt work.
As a previous comment says, use C-h k (describe-key) to see what the key is bound to at the point when it's not doing what you want. The (kbd "foo") syntax will be correct for whichever foo describe-key refers to it as.
Chances are that you are simply not defining that key in the appropriate keymap.
Note that major and minor mode keymaps take precedence over the global keymap, so you shouldn't necessarily be surprised if a global binding is overridden.
edit:
Myself, I have a hook function for common behaviours for all the programming modes I use, and it includes the sort of remapping you're after. The relevant part looks like this:
(defun my-coding-config ()
(local-set-key (kbd "RET") (key-binding (kbd "M-j")))
(local-set-key (kbd "<S-return>") 'newline)
)
(mapc
(lambda (language-mode-hook)
(add-hook language-mode-hook 'my-coding-config))
'(cperl-mode-hook
css-mode-hook
emacs-lisp-mode-hook
;; etc...
))
See Daimrod's answer for the explanation of why I'm re-binding RET to the current binding of M-j -- although I'm using comment-indent-new-line (or similar) instead of newline-and-indent (or similar), which does what I want in both comments and non-comments.
In Emacs 24, programming modes seem to derive from prog-mode, so you could probably (un-tested) reduce that list to prog-mode-hook plus any exceptions for third-party modes which don't yet do that.
As said earlier, use C-hkC-j because
C-j is the standard key to do newline-and-indent.
If you open a new file, activate ruby-mode and try the previous
command you will see why it doesn't work. Because ruby-mode doesn't
have newline-and-indent but rather
reindent-then-newline-and-indent. Yes that's stupid but you can either ask
to the maintener to change it, or accept it.
However I suggest you to use C-j to do it because
ruby-mode is not the only mode to do so, like paredit-mode which
uses paredit-newline.

How do I bind a key to "the function represented by the following key sequence"?

I'm just starting to learn emacs (woohoo!) and I've been mucking around in my .emacs quite happily. Unfortunately, I don't know Lisp yet, so I'm having issues with the basics.
I've already remapped a few keys until I fix my muscle memory:
(global-set-key (kbd "<f9>") 'recompile)
That's fine. But how can I tell a key to 'simulate pressing several keys'? For instance, I don't know, make <f1> do the same as C-u 2 C-x } (widen buffer by two chars).
One way is to look up that C-x } calls shrink-window-horizontally, and do some sort of lambda thing. This is of course the neat and elegant way (how do you do this?). But surely there's a way to define <f1> to send the keystrokes C-u 2 C-x }?
Sure there is, and it's the obvious way:
(global-set-key (kbd "<f1>") (kbd "C-u 2 C-x }"))
For anything long-term, I would recommend the approach shown by seh, as that will naturally be more robust in most situations. It requires a little more work and know-how, of course, but it's all worthwhile :)
angus' approach is like a cut-down version of the keyboard macros feature that gives Emacs its name (and slightly simpler to use than macros for the example in question). You should definitely be aware of macros, however -- they can be exceedingly useful, and for anything more complicated it quickly becomes far easier to record one dynamically than to write out all the individual keys manually.
Here's the summary I wrote myself of the most important bits:
;;;; * Keyboard macros
;; C-x ( or F3 Begin recording.
;; F3 Insert counter (if recording has already commenced).
;; C-u <n> C-x ( or F3 Begin recording with an initial counter value <n>.
;; C-x ) or F4 End recording.
;; C-u <n> C-x ) or F4 End recording, then execute the macro <n>-1 times.
;; C-x e or F4 Execute the last recorded keyboard macro.
;; e or F4 Additional e or F4 presses repeat the macro.
;; C-u <n> C-x e or F4 Execute the last recorded keyboard macro <n> times.
;; C-x C-k r Apply the last macro to each line of the region.
;; C-x C-k e Edit a keyboard macro (RET for most recent).
;; C-x C-k b Set a key-binding.
;;
;; If you find yourself using lots of macros, you can even name them
;; for later use, and save them to your init file.
;; M-x name-last-kbd-macro RET (name) RET
;; M-x insert-kbd-macro RET (name) RET
;;
;; For more documentation:
;; C-h k C-x (
;; M-: (info "(emacs) Keyboard Macros") RET
If we play with the example from the question, you'll see how some of these things tie together...
To begin with, you can define the macro with F3C-u2C-x}F4
You could then bind it temporarily to F1 with C-xC-kbF1 (actually that's not true if F1 is currently a prefix key for an existing keymap, as typing it interactively will simply prompt for the remainder. You can circumvent this in code with (global-set-key (kbd "<f1>") ...), but I would suggest sticking to the reserved bindings).
If you then use describe-key (C-hk) to examine what is bound to that key, Emacs will show you a (lambda) expression which you could copy to your init file if you so wished.
Alternatively, you could name the macro and ask Emacs to insert the code into the current buffer:
M-x name-last-kbd-macro RET (name) RET
M-x insert-kbd-macro RETRET
This code will look different to the lambda expression shown by describe-key, but if you evaluate the inserted macro, you'll see the equivalence. You can likewise show that the (kbd "...") expression also evaluates to the same value, and therefore these are all just alternative ways of doing the same thing.
(You can use the *scratch* buffer to evaluate the code by moving point after the end of the expression, and either typing C-xC-e to show the value in the minibuffer, or C-j to insert the value into the buffer).
Note that the 'inserted' code uses fset to assign the macro to a symbol. You could bind the macro to a key either by executing the (fset) and then assigning that symbol to a key with (global-set-key), or you could ignore the (fset) and simply assign the macro value directly. This, of course, is directly equivalent to angus' answer.
Edit: I've just noticed that there's a kmacro-name-last-macro function bound to C-xC-kn which is nearly identical in form to name-last-kbd-macro, but which generates the lambda expression form seen when using kmacro-bind-to-key (C-xC-kb) and describe-key.
I'll use shrink-window-horizontally as the example function, but you can generalize the idea to any bindings you'd like to define.
If you want to use two as the default amount to shrink the window, rather than one, try the following:
(global-set-key [f9]
(lambda (&optional n)
(interactive "P")
(shrink-window-horizontally (or n 2))))
That binds the F9 key to an interactive function accepting a prefix argument. If you just press F9, you'll pass no argument, which summons the default value of 2, as the parameter n will receive nil as an argument. However, if you press, say, C-u 10 F9, you'll pass ten as the argument for n. This allows you to use your binding more flexibly.
general-simulate-key from general.el works better (in my case a sequence with popups and changing keymaps that I couldn't get to work with macros): https://github.com/noctuid/general.el#simulating-keypresses