Use special character in emacs init file with “global-set-key”

Question

I want to be able to automatically insert pre-defined strings when pressing a certain keybinding. Currently this is being done with the following code snippet:

;;;;; Personal keybindings                                                
(global-set-key [f6] "\autocite[--]{}")

The problem is, that this does not work (the one in the example). Instead, Emacs will tell me "After 0 kbd macro iterations: Quit" which does not show up, when just doing the string without the "\". So how could I fix this and enter pre-defined strings which include special character such as "\"?

Answer 1

You need to double backslashes within strings:

(global-set-key [f6] "\\autocite[--]{}")

A more reliable binding uses the insert function explicitly:

(global-set-key [f6] #'(lambda ()
                         (interactive)
                         (insert "\\autocite[--]{}")))

and you'll probably want to move point within the braces:

(global-set-key [f6] #'(lambda ()
                         (interactive)
                         (insert "\\autocite[--]{}")
                         (forward-char -1)))