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I'm trying to configure Ctrl-Alt-Enter to insert a new top-level heading and the current date in the following format:

* [2023-02-07 Tue]

This is what I've come up with:

(defun heading-date ()
    (interactive)
    (org-insert-heading)
    (insert (format-time-string "[%Y-%m-%d %a]"))
)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-M-return") 'heading-date)

However, when I press Ctrl-Alt-Enter I get this error in Emacs:

<C-M-return> is undefined

I've also tried reversing the order of C and M for experimentation's sake but of course that did not help:

(global-set-key (kbd "M-C-return") 'heading-date)

How can I capture the Ctrl-Alt-Enter combination to run this function?

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Ten minutes after posting I come up with the solution! ))

It turns out to bind return the entire binding must be surrounded with brackets <>. So this is the binding:

(global-set-key (kbd "<C-M-return>") 'heading-date)

Answer found from this post after noticing the error on startup error C-M- must prefix a single character, not return. Lesson learned: Watch those startup errors!

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  • 1
    When you are unsure about the notion of a key, just C-h k and press the key[s].
    – nichijou
    Feb 7 at 15:29
  • @nichijou Thank you. That is useful information, but I do not believe that it would have helped identify how to bind that key combination.
    – dotancohen
    Feb 7 at 15:49
  • Presumably this is only useful in an Org mode buffer. If that's the case, then you'd be better off binding the key in org-mode-map, rather than the global map: (define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-M-<return>") #'heading-date). Note also that you can evaluate the kbd function with any argument in your *scratch* buffer to see what it returns: switch to that buffer, type the first form you tried, (kbd "M-C-return"), press C-j after the closing paren to evaluate it and in this case, you'll get an error, so you know the string is wrong.
    – NickD
    Feb 8 at 20:41
  • Terrific, thank you NickD!
    – dotancohen
    Feb 9 at 9:00

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