10. Registers

XEmacs registers are places in which you can save text or positions for later use. Once you save text or a rectangle in a register, you can copy it into the buffer once or many times; a position saved in a register is used by moving point to that position. Rectangles can also be copied into and out of registers (see section Rectangles).

Each register has a name which is a single character. A register can store a piece of text, a rectangle, a position, a window configuration, or a file name, but only one thing at any given time. Whatever you store in a register remains there until you store something else in that register. To see what a register r contains, use M-x view-register.

M-x view-register <RET> r

Display a description of what register r contains.

M-x view-register reads a register name as an argument and then displays the contents of the specified register.

10.1 Saving Positions in Registers

Saving a position records a place in a buffer so that you can move back there later. Moving to a saved position switches to that buffer and moves point to that place in it.

C-x r <SPC> r

Save position of point in register r (point-to-register).

C-x r j r

Jump to the position saved in register r (jump-to-register).

To save the current position of point in a register, choose a name r and type C-x r <SPC> r. The register r retains the position thus saved until you store something else in that register.

The command C-x r j r moves point to the position recorded in register r. The register is not affected; it continues to record the same location. You can jump to the same position using the same register as often as you want.

If you use C-x r j to go to a saved position, but the buffer it was saved from has been killed, C-x r j tries to create the buffer again by visiting the same file. Of course, this works only for buffers that were visiting files.

10.2 Saving Text in Registers

When you want to insert a copy of the same piece of text many times, it can be impractical to use the kill ring, since each subsequent kill moves the piece of text further down on the ring. It becomes hard to keep track of the argument needed to retrieve the same text with C-y. An alternative is to store the text in a register with C-x r s (copy-to-register) and then retrieve it with C-x r i (insert-register).

C-x r s r

Copy region into register r (copy-to-register).

C-x r g r

C-x r i r

Insert text contents of register r (insert-register).

C-x r s r stores a copy of the text of the region into the register named r. Given a numeric argument, C-x r s r deletes the text from the buffer as well.

C-x r i r inserts the text from register r in the buffer. By default it leaves point before the text and places the mark after it. With a numeric argument (C-u), it puts point after the text and the mark before it.

10.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers

A register can contain a rectangle instead of lines of text. The rectangle is represented as a list of strings. See section Rectangles, for basic information on rectangles and how to specify rectangles in a buffer.

C-x r r r

Copy the region-rectangle into register r (copy-rectangle-to-register). With a numeric argument, delete it as well.

C-x r g r

C-x r i r

Insert the rectangle stored in register r (if it contains a rectangle) (insert-register).

The C-x r i r command inserts linear text if the register contains that, or inserts a rectangle if the register contains one.

See also the command sort-columns, which you can think of as sorting a rectangle. See section Sorting Text.

10.4 Saving Window Configurations in Registers

You can save the window configuration of the selected frame in a register, or even the configuration of all windows in all frames, and restore the configuration later.

C-x r w r

Save the state of the selected frame’s windows in register r (window-configuration-to-register).

M-x frame-configuration-to-register <RET> r

Save the state of all frames, including all their windows, in register r (frame-configuration-to-register).

Use C-x r j r to restore a window or frame configuration. This is the same command used to restore a cursor position. When you restore a frame configuration, any existing frames not included in the configuration become invisible. If you wish to delete these frames instead, use C-u C-x r j r.

10.5 Keeping Numbers in Registers

There are commands to store a number in a register, to insert the number in the buffer in decimal, and to increment it. These commands can be useful in keyboard macros (see section Keyboard Macros).

C-u number C-x r n reg

Store number into register reg (number-to-register).

C-u number C-x r + reg

Increment the number in register reg by number (increment-register).

C-x r g reg

Insert the number from register reg into the buffer.

C-x r g is the same command used to insert any other sort of register contents into the buffer.

10.6 Keeping File Names in Registers

If you visit certain file names frequently, you can visit them more conveniently if you put their names in registers. Here’s the Lisp code used to put a file name in a register:

(set-register ?r '(file . name))

For example,

(set-register ?z '(file . "/usr/src/xemacs/src/ChangeLog"))

puts the file name shown in register ‘z’.

To visit the file whose name is in register r, type C-x r j r. (This is the same command used to jump to a position or restore a frame configuration.)

10.7 Bookmarks

Bookmarks are somewhat like registers in that they record positions you can jump to. Unlike registers, they have long names, and they persist automatically from one Emacs session to the next. The prototypical use of bookmarks is to record “where you were reading” in various files.

Note: bookmark.el is distributed in edit-utils package. You need to install that to use bookmark facility (see section Packages).

C-x r m <RET>

Set the bookmark for the visited file, at point.

C-x r m bookmark <RET>

Set the bookmark named bookmark at point (bookmark-set).

C-x r b bookmark <RET>

Jump to the bookmark named bookmark (bookmark-jump).

C-x r l

List all bookmarks (list-bookmarks).

M-x bookmark-save

Save all the current bookmark values in the default bookmark file.

The prototypical use for bookmarks is to record one current position in each of several files. So the command C-x r m, which sets a bookmark, uses the visited file name as the default for the bookmark name. If you name each bookmark after the file it points to, then you can conveniently revisit any of those files with C-x r b, and move to the position of the bookmark at the same time.

To display a list of all your bookmarks in a separate buffer, type C-x r l (list-bookmarks). If you switch to that buffer, you can use it to edit your bookmark definitions or annotate the bookmarks. Type C-h m in that buffer for more information about its special editing commands.

When you kill XEmacs, XEmacs offers to save your bookmark values in your default bookmark file, ‘~/.emacs.bmk’, if you have changed any bookmark values. You can also save the bookmarks at any time with the M-x bookmark-save command. The bookmark commands load your default bookmark file automatically. This saving and loading is how bookmarks persist from one XEmacs session to the next.

If you set the variable bookmark-save-flag to 1, then each command that sets a bookmark will also save your bookmarks; this way, you don’t lose any bookmark values even if XEmacs crashes. (The value, if a number, says how many bookmark modifications should go by between saving.)

Bookmark position values are saved with surrounding context, so that bookmark-jump can find the proper position even if the file is modified slightly. The variable bookmark-search-size says how many characters of context to record, on each side of the bookmark’s position.

Here are some additional commands for working with bookmarks:

M-x bookmark-load <RET> filename <RET>

Load a file named filename that contains a list of bookmark values. You can use this command, as well as bookmark-write, to work with other files of bookmark values in addition to your default bookmark file.

M-x bookmark-write <RET> filename <RET>

Save all the current bookmark values in the file filename.

M-x bookmark-delete <RET> bookmark <RET>

Delete the bookmark named bookmark.

M-x bookmark-insert-location <RET> bookmark <RET>

Insert in the buffer the name of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.

M-x bookmark-insert <RET> bookmark <RET>

Insert in the buffer the contents of the file that bookmark bookmark points to.

This document was generated by Aidan Kehoe on December 27, 2016 using texi2html 1.82.