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CloudWatcher

(1,947 posts)
10. Yes, and Emacs key bindings too!
Fri May 29, 2020, 12:06 PM
May 2020

And beyond copy/paste and undo ... if you can touch-type and plan on doing more than a little bit of typing, learning at least some of the ancient emacs-style key shortcuts can save a lot of time! I was recently shocked that my kids (in their 20s, Mac users since they were infants) didn't even know they existed

They let you navigate and edit without having to leave the keyboard and use the mouse/trackpad. And they work in almost all editing situations in macOS. Even with a trackpad, I find I'm using them all the time. E.g. it's faster to position the cursor and hit control-d to delete a character than to carefully drag over a single character and then hit delete.

They all use the control-key ... so if you're not comfortable hitting control with a pinky finger, you can stop reading now.

But ... some of the more useful ones:

control-d delete the next character
control-a go to beginning of the line
control-e go to the end of the line

There are the same as the arrow keys, but faster to hit:

control-f go forward a character
control-b go backward a character
control-n go to next line (trying to leave x-coordinate the same)
control-p go to previous line (trying to leave x-coordinate the same)

Using the kill buffer:
control-k delete from cursor to end of line (*)
control-y yanks back the text deleted by control-k (inserts at current cursor position)

(*) if the line is empty, it deletes the line (the linefeed). Else it deletes up to but not including the linefeed. And you can hit control-k several times to delete a small number of lines. Each time you control-k it adds the deleted text to the end of the "kill" buffer. Doing another control-k deletes more and adds it to the end of the buffer. Moving the cursor and doing a control-k in a new "place" will discard the kill buffer and replace it with the newly killed text. Note the kill buffer is not the same as the normal copy/paste buffer!

Ok, probably too much info. But I feel more people should know about the editing shortcuts too

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

1. Notifications. 2. Battery. 3. Brightness. 4. Bluetooth Tetrachloride May 2020 #1
Thank you! cwydro May 2020 #3
back up back up back up... mitch96 May 2020 #2
Thanks! cwydro May 2020 #4
+1000000 CloudWatcher May 2020 #11
iPad Air or MacBook Air? HuskyOffset May 2020 #5
MacBook Air. cwydro May 2020 #6
One thing you could try HuskyOffset May 2020 #7
Good idea. cwydro May 2020 #8
Learn the keyboard shortcuts PJMcK May 2020 #9
Yes, and Emacs key bindings too! CloudWatcher May 2020 #10
Latest Discussions»Culture Forums»Apple Users»So I bought an Air...than...»Reply #10