Emacs Macros and the Power-Macros Package

Writing Emacs macros doesn't have to be hard—Mr. Pedersen helps you get “more power”.
Managing Power-Macros

When you have defined a number of macros, you might want to perform various functions to manage your macros. This is done by pressing CTRL-c m. It will bring up a buffer like:

the one shown in Figure 1.

What you see in this buffer is your power-macros, each separated with a line of dashes. Many keys have special meanings in this buffer (just like the keys have special meanings in the buffer-managing buffer or in the dired buffer).

Pressing the ENTER key on top of one of the fields allows you to edit the given field. Editing a field means either to change its content or copy the macro to a new one with the given field changed. You specify whichever of these meanings you intend, when you have pressed ENTER on the field.

Figure 1. Emacs Power-Macro Buffer

Deletion of macros is done in two steps. First, you mark the macros you want to delete, and next you tell Emacs to actually delete them. If you know either the buffer-managing buffer or dired-mode, you will be familiar with this two-step process.

If you are now ready to learn more about Emacs, visit my home page at the URL mentioned earlier.

This article was first published in Issue 47 of LinuxGazette.com, an on-line e-zine formerly published by Linux Journal.

Jesper Pedersen Jesper Pedersen is the author of the book Teach Yourself Emacs in 24 Hours, the program “The Dotfile Generator”, the Emacs package “Power Macros”, and is chairman for the Linux User Group on Funen in Denmark.

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Scribbled notes

thomasn's picture

* To run a command stored by "C-x (", use "C-x e". To run it again, just tap "e".

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