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I'm using the built-in table editor of org-mode.
As described in the documentation, I can use M-S-Down to insert a row above my current row. Using the universal argument, I can create my new line below my current line instead of above: C-u M-S-Down.
However, when trying to create multiple lines at the same time, it does not work: C-- C-5 M-S-Down: this only create one line.
How can I insert a specific number of line below my current line?
AFAICS the function org-shiftmetadown is not implemented to handle the numeric prefix argument as a count of actions.
You can use a keyboard macro to use the prefix argument as a count for the number of repetitions.
One recipe which might do what you want goes like this:
C-x ( M-S-down C-x )
C-x C-k b F5
With the lines above F5 calls the macro (which does the M-S-down.)
The macro can handle numeric prefix arguments. E.g.
C-u 23 F5
calls the macro 23 times.
C-x ( and C-x ).
Jun 26, 2019 at 9:53
C-x C-k b F5 step and execute the macro 23 times with C-u 23 C-x e. Only the most recently defined macro can be executed with C-x e.
<f3> and <f4> instead of C-x ( and C-x ) (and <f4> can also replace C-x e). They're not just different bindings, they run slightly different commands you might prefer: <f3> starts recording or inserts the macro counter, <f4> stops recording or runs the last keyboard macro.
For a handful of rows, I wouldn't bother: pressing M-S-<down> a few times is easy. If you are adding rows at the end of the table, pressing RET a bunch of times is even easier.
The next step up in complexity is Marco Wahl's macro-based solution.
The next step up is to write your own function which takes a numeric prefix and does the row insertion that many times:
(defun n-org-insert-row (n)
(interactive "p")
(dotimes (i n) (org-table-insert-row 'below)))
You call it like this: C-u 23 M-x n-org-insert-row. If you leave out the numeric prefix, n defaults to 1. You can also bind the function to a key but I won't go into that here: you can find
out about it elsewhere on this site, e.g. here, although there is no substitute for the documentation.
In the next step up, you can write a generic "do this n times" function and tell it explicitly when you call it what "this" (the thing that you want to repeat) is:
(defun n-do-this (n this)
(dotimes (i n) (funcall this)))
where this is a function of no arguments. You can do what you want by evaluating this form:
(n-do-this 23 (lambda () (org-table-insert-row 'below)))
where you pass in an anonymous function that inserts a row. You can then define n-org-insert-row like this:
(defun n-org-insert-row (n)
(interactive "p")
(n-do-this n (lambda () (org-table-insert-row 'below)))
This is a different implementation from the earlier one, but "it looks the same from the outside": it is called the same way and it behaves the same way.
The nice thing about n-do-this is that it can be asked to do anything n times, not just insert a row in a table.
I'll stop here, but as I hope you can see, the sky's the limit.
