How to mark current line and move cursor to next line?

Question

How do I mark the current line and then move the cursor to the beginning of the next line? I'd like it to behave like Sublime Text's Ctrl-L.

Answer 1

Below works with brief testing:

• If no region is selected to begin with, the current line will be selected and the cursor will move to the next line (default, if no prefix arg is used).
• If a region is already selected, all this command will do is move the cursor to the next line (default, if no prefix arg is used).

With that functionality, hitting C-l once will select only the current line. But hitting C-l consecutive times will keep on adding consecutive lines to the selection.

(defun my/select-current-line-and-forward-line (arg)
  "Select the current line and move the cursor by ARG lines IF
no region is selected.

If a region is already selected when calling this command, only move
the cursor by ARG lines."
  (interactive "p")
  (when (not (use-region-p))
    (forward-line 0)
    (set-mark-command nil))
  (forward-line arg))
;; Note that I would not recommend binding this command to `C-l'.
;; From my personal experience, the default binding to `C-l' to
;; `recenter-top-bottom' is very useful.
(global-set-key (kbd "C-l") #'my/select-current-line-and-forward-line)

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I'd like to add that I personally prefer simply doing C-a C-SPC followed by C-n or C-p or M-{ or M-}.

• C-a C-SPC will take the cursor to the beginning of the line and set the mark.
• After that the selection will expand based on the navigation command you use.

Using this generic approach will give you much more flexibility on how you change your selection.

Answer 2

Shift Selection Mode

If the cursor is at the beginning of a line: C-S-n or in another notation C-N. If not, please type: C-a C-S-n (which is in my notation C-aN, since you have to type the <CTRL> key just once). By the way shift-selection-modeis t by default.

Answer 3

Could you mean a combination of C-e and C-j? If yes, you can remap it via a keyboard macro :

(global-set-key (kbd "<C-return>") (kbd "C-e C-j"))