Update
What's happening is that whenever I kill some text, it gets added to the kill-ring followed by an extra "". Then C-y just inserts the "". So the question is where is the extra "" coming from?
Original Question
I'm running emacs under tmux, and I can't get C-y (or even M-x yank) to insert content from the kill-ring. I do see Mark set in the minibuffer, which is normal behavior for yank; I just don't see anything getting yanked. I also see that "" gets added to the kill-ring each time I hit C-y.
I know that C-y is getting received by emacs by looking at the output of M-x view-lossage, and I know that C-y is bound to yank by looking at the keybindings with C-h b. Moreover, running M-x yank directly gives the exact same results.
When I repeat the experiment outside of tmux, it works as expected. For what it's worth, if I repeat the experiment with screen instead of tmux, C-y works as expected.
Some more details are that within tmux, I have tried running emacs with TERM=xterm-256color and TERM=screen-256color with the same result. Setting xterm-keys on or xterm-keys off in tmux doesn't seem to matter either. I've been closing every tmux session between each permutation I try, to make sure that my .tmux.conf is getting re-processed (And I know it is because other changes in my .tmux.conf do have an effect.)
In fact, I can even comment out my entire .tmux.conf, with the same result.
Also, I've tried it in both iTerm2 and Terminal.app (I'm on a mac), again with the same result.
So, I feel like I am at a dead-end here. Any ideas on how to better debug this problem?
I finally tracked it down to some code I had copied into my emacs init.el to allow copy-and-paste from my OSX clipboard. If I remove that code from my init.el, C-y works fine under tmux. (The code is here -- it worked great until I decided to try out tmux!) I'm still not sure exactly what the problem is, but it's easy to believe that it would affect the behavior of C-y.
Related
This is probably a very obvious question, but I seem to have missed something. When I first started using emacs about a month ago, pressing C-v would scroll down and leave two line at the top of the screen, à la tutorial. Somewhere along the line I must have upgraded packages, and it now places the cursor at the top of the screen - no context lines.
Running C-u -2 C-v works as expected, so I tried M-x set-variable RET next-screen-context-lines RET 2, which had absolutely no effect. According to C-h v RET next-screen-context-lines, I can set the variable to any positive or negative number I choose, but pressing C-v always results in the cursor moving to the top of the screen and now context lines. Incidentally, M-v has the same problem. I can't find a relevant setting in my .emacs, but I tried mv .emacs .emacs.bak and noticed no difference.
I'm running GNU Emacs 23.4.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.22) of 2013-12-22 on binet, modified by Debian according to C-h C-a
Other than that, emacs is an amazing program I wish I'd used before, and which has now all but replaced libreoffice for me (with the help of RST). Now to learn to touch type...
Many thanks in advance for your time.
[EDIT]: I was wrong, the point moves as well and I hadn't noticed (see below). The variables suggested below are useful, however.
Check your value of user option scroll-margin: C-h v RET scroll-margin RET. The default value is 0. Try setting it to 2.
There are also other scrolling-related options whose values you can check. Try M-x apropos-option RET ^scroll RET. (Ignore any hits for scroll-bar.)
I am trying to set [Ctrl]-[;] as a keybinding in my .emacs like this
(global-set-key "\C-;" 'comment-or-uncomment-region)
however it doesn't work when I try (i don't get any error messages, it just has no effect). It will work though if i try a normal character (such as setting it to "\C-p").
I have also tried
(global-set-key (kbd "C-;") 'comment-or-uncomment-region)
but I don't like this option because for me it doesn't work when i run "emacs -nw". Any thoughts on how I can do this?
EDIT:
When I run C-hcC-; in emacs -nw I get the output:
; runs the command self-insert-command
which is exactly the same as when I run C-hc; in emacs -nw
So I believe phils is right, that it is a terminal problem, because emacs never actually sees C-;, it only sees ;
Indeed C-; is typically not something your terminal is able to send to an underlying application like Emacs (so it works under a GUI but not in a terminal). But I wonder: why do you need such a binding anyway, given that M-; is already bound to comment-dwim which does comment/uncomment the region when the region is selected, so it provides a superset of comment-or-uncomment-region.
Using (kbd "C-;") is absolutely fine and correct.
I suspect when you type C-; when running emacs -nw, your terminal is not actually sending anything to Emacs.
So your problem is more likely to be a question of how to get your terminal to send C-; to Emacs (or alternatively how to get Emacs to recognise the sequence which is sent).
If you run emacs -Q -nw and type C-hcC-;, do you get a "C-; is undefined" message?
Assuming that it is a terminal issue, here are some related Q&As which may point you in the right direction, but it's going to depend upon the particular terminal you are using.
Binding M-<up> / M-<down> in Emacs 23.1.1
Send "C-(" to Emacs in VT100/xterm terminal (Mac OS X's Terminal)?
How does one send S-RET to Emacs in a terminal?
emacs -nw issues with cscope and terminals
Something in my config is unsetting/overwriting some standard keybindings for C-c C-e so that commands in various major modes don't work properly. In AUCTeX C-c C-e should start the "insert environment" dialogue and in org-mode the same keys should start the export/publish dialogue, but in both of these modes C-c C-e is undefined and emacs just waits for more input.
I know I could start emacs with -Q and load packages until something breaks (and if I load emacs that way and open a file in org-mode, the keybindings work as they should) but, like lots of people, at some point my init file became monstrously big. Is there a quicker, smarter way?
[EDIT] Nothing in my config is unsetting C-c C-e explicitly.
The debugger might give you enough clues to sort it out. Try adding the following to the beginning of your .emacs:
(debug-on-entry 'global-unset-key)
You might need to try 'local-unset-key as well. For details see the debugger manual.
Binary search is your friend.
Go to the middle of your .emacs and add (error "here"), then launch Emacs and see if the problem persists.
If it does, then insert another error line half way between the current and the top of the file, if not, comment out the current error and add one half way between the current and the bottom.
Repeat the bisection process until you isolate the line or two which are responsible for causing the problem.
You could use C-h k C-c C-e to find out which function is bound to your combination.
In the popped up help buffer, you will get the function name, its documentation and a link to the file where it is defined. Follow that link and you will end up at the place of the function definition.
At this point, it should be simple to identify which package that is responsible for redefinition of your keybinding using the name of the file.
If this does not help, you could M-x rgrep in your customization directory for 'C-c C-e' or 'C-e' and manually check everything.
I load GNU emacs in it's own window by typing emacs in the terminal.
I like to use the keybindings from pc-selection-mode, which allows you to highlight characters using shift-right or shift-left, or entire lines by pressing shift-up or shift-down.
The problem is that when I run emacs in the terminal by typing emacs -nw, the latter 2 keybindings don't work. I can highlight characters using shift-left and shift-right, but pressing shift-up and shift-down doesn't do anything. The cursor stays where it is.
How do I fix this problem? Why is it even occurring? I'm using GNU Emacs 23.1.1, and I've confirmed that the same version is being used both when emacs is in it's own window and when emacs is running inside the terminal.
Thanks for any help
A lot of times the bindings just aren't listed, or are mapped wrong. You can try M-x show-lossage (or C-h l) to see if the escape sequences reach emacs or not. If they do, you might want to try xterm-extras -- it's always worked even as I migrate between different versions of linux and solaris, and as I ssh between them (which is often a source of problems).
I am unable to yank text into a terminal running in Emacs.
This is my procedure:
I killed the string "date" from one buffer and yanked it into the terminal in another buffer and hit return.
The terminal behaves as if I typed nothing. It just returns the prompt back.
I am using OS X 10.5.8 and Emacs 23.1. I have tried this procedure on Aquamacs, Carbon Emacs, and the release from http://emacsformacosx.com/. They all show this weird behaviour even in their default configurations with my .emacs file empty. What could possibly be causing this?
By "in a terminal" I assume you mean you're running Emacs's built-in terminal emulator. Ordinarily, the terminal emulator transmits most keys exactly as typed to the shell process. Type C-c C-j in the terminal buffer to put it into a state where ordinary Emacs key bindings are available. You'll see the mode line change from (Term: char run) to (Term: line run).
Addendum:
Yanking text without leaving char mode is a little tricky; the relevant function, however, is term-paste (not yank, which merely inserts the text into the terminal buffer without sending it to the inferior process). term-paste will immediately send the most recent kill to the inferior process, but doesn't provide the fancy yank functionality you're probably used to (like M-y to cycle through prior kills). You could run term-paste as an extended command: C-c M-x term-paste RET.
Probably the easiest solution is just to temporarily go into line mode (C-c C-j) when you have something to paste, and then immediately go back into char mode (C-c C-k). Or even easier, just stay in line mode all the time. I often do this when I have a terminal logged into an Oracle SQL*Plus session. I rarely notice the difference, but I get all sorts of convenient Emacs functionality, like being able to type M-p to cycle through a long, previously-typed SQL statement.
I would have assumed that you could always start off in line mode like this:
(add-hook 'term-mode-hook 'term-line-mode)
...but it doesn't work for me. Don't know why.
In the buffer with the terminal running, put the terminal into line mode with C-c C-j. To paste in your text, now press S-Insert (that's Shift-Insert). If you need the terminal to go back to char mode afterwards, it's C-c C-k.
When all else fails I just highlight the text and click Edit->Copy then right click in the other emacs buffer and click paste.