Roberto Aloi » Emacs

Numbered lists in Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:35:51 +0000

Imagine that you’re using Emacs and you have a list of items that you would like to convert into a numbered list.

We’re going from:

first

second

third

To:

1. first

2. second

3. third

Obviously, there are many ways to achieve this, but one is to use the Emacs Keyboard Macro Counter.

Put the cursor one line ABOVE your list.
Start a macro: `F3`
Insert the counter value: `C-x C-k C-i`. A 0 will appear
Insert the DOT and a space: `.`
Move the cursor to the next line
Stop the macro: `F4`
Select your list
`M-x apply-macro-to-region-lines`
You can delete the 0 you added on the top and enjoy

PHP Mode for Emacs – Flymake

Roberto Aloi — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:29:46 +0000

I always find flymake extremely useful when editing code in Emacs.

In this period, I’m working a bit with PHP and I’ve immediately thought that enabling flymake for Emacs was indeed a good idea.

Well, someone has apparently already thought about it, so everything you need to know about it is explained here.

I tried it on my machine and it worked like a charm. Combined with some PHP documentation integrated in Emacs, I’m now starting to have a complete and powerful development environment for PHP.

I’m now wondering if there’s any way to get this a step forward. First of all, I’m trying to identify errors different from the parsing ones. What I would really love, for example, is to have Emacs showing me all the unused variables in a PHP file. If you have any idea on how to achieve this, don’t be shy and share your thoughts with me, as a post comment or, if you prefer, as a private e-mail or through twitter.

Special Pasting in Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:56:39 +0000

Sometimes you want to paste some old content from the clipboard, instead of the last copied thing.
In this case, just paste as usual:
C-y

Then, browse the clipboard history by typing:
M-y

SVN Revert within Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:52:38 +0000

If you want to revert your changes to the last revision, just type:
C-x v u

SVN View Diff within Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:50:48 +0000

If you want to see the differences for a buffer before committing it, just type:
C-x v =

Running Shell Commands within Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:52:53 +0000

If you want to run a shell command within Emacs, you can simply type:
M-!
If you want to include the output into the current buffer, then:
C-u M-!

Macros in Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:19:13 +0000

You can start recording a keyboard macro by typing:
C-x (

Do whatever you want and stop recording with:
C-x )

Then, you can select a region and type:
C-x C-k r

To apply the macro to the selected region.
Emacs Macros are a really powerful tool. Just think if you need to prepone/postpone a string to a group of lines, for example from:

First Line Second Line Third Line

To:

First Line


Second Line
Third Line

Swapping in Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:12:10 +0000

Here are some very useful tips for Emacs, regarding swapping.

SWAP WORDS:
If you have a text like the following and you want to change the order of the parameters for the foo function:
foo(First, Second) ->; ok.
Just put the cursor on the comma or on the space between First and Second and press:
M-t

You will get the following:
foo(Second, First) ->; ok.

SWAP LINES:
Start from:
First Line Second Line

Put the cursor at the beginning of the second line and press:
C-x C-t

You will get:
Second Line First Line

Easy, right?

SVN Commit from Emacs

Roberto Aloi — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:59:31 +0000

To commit a single file directly from Emacs, just:

C-x v v
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