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Emacs Help

An Emacs reference card is available in the tutors room. Complete documentation is available in the info system under Emacs. Printed version of the same documentation is also avialable.

One of the big advantages of Emacs over other editors is the extensive availability of on-line help. To acess on-line help use ESC-? or C-h depending on which is enabled in your system. Here is a list of the help functions and a brief explanation of them.

• a command-apropos.
  • Give a substring, and see a list of commands (functions interactively callable) that contains that substring. See also the apropos command. This command is similiar to using the -k option with man. It does a keyword search of all commands. This is a very usefull command when learning Emacs.

• b describe-bindings.
  • Display table of all key bindings.

• c describe-key-briefly.
  • Type a command key sequence; it prints the function name that sequence runs.

• f describe-function.
  • Type a function name and get documentation of it.

• i info.
  • The info documentation reader.

• k describe-key.
  • Type a command key sequence; it displays the full documentation.

• l view-lossage.
  • Shows last 100 characters you typed.

• m describe-mode.
  • Print documentation of current major mode, which describes the commands peculiar to it.

• n view-emacs-news.
  • Shows emacs news file.

• p finder-by-keyword.
  • Find packages matching a given topic keyword.

• s describe-syntax.
  • Display contents of syntax table, plus explanations

• t help-with-tutorial.
  • Select the Emacs learn-by-doing tutorial.

• v describe-variable.
  • Type name of a variable and it displays the variable's documentation and value.

• w where-is.
  • Type command name; it prints which keystrokes invoke that command.

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