26
votes
Accepted
Result of arithmetic evaluation in buffer, not echo area
Short version: yes
Instead of C-x C-e to evaluate the expression, give it a prefix
argument. C-u C-x C-e will print the output to the buffer.
How I found this information
You can investigate how ...
Dan♦
- 33.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Insert into specific buffer (not the active buffer)?
Perhaps something like:
(with-current-buffer "*scratch*" (insert "Test"))
is what you want.
- 12k
13
votes
Accepted
Insert line above/below
The special form which saves and restores the current point and buffer is save-excursion. So you could write your functions as:
(defun insert-line-below ()
"Insert an empty line below the current ...
- 12.5k
9
votes
Result of arithmetic evaluation in buffer, not echo area
Bind this to some key.
(defun foo ()
"Replace sexp before point by result of its evaluation."
(interactive)
(let ((result (pp-to-string (eval (pp-last-sexp) lexical-binding))))
(delete-...
- 78.5k
9
votes
Accepted
How to insert a formatted string into a specific buffer?
An example of what you are trying to do is contained in the manual.
You need either with-current-buffer or save-current-buffer:
(with-current-buffer destination-buffer
(insert (propertize (format-...
- 6,174
9
votes
Accepted
Insert multiple minus ('-') characters using the universal argument (C-u)
For example, C-u C-u C-q -.
You can C-h k C-q for more details.
- 5,795
8
votes
Accepted
How to insert character or word N times in a buffer or file?
There are many ways to write loops/iterative/repetitive behaviour in elisp.
C-hig (elisp)Iteration has the basic options, including dotimes, which is the canonical way to repeat something N times. E....
- 52.4k
6
votes
Insert text or overwrite region
For Emacs setting:
(delete-selection-mode t) ; delete seleted text when typing
For lisp code, add following line before insert:
(if (region-active-p) (delete-region (region-beginning) (region-end))...
- 1,103
6
votes
How to insert character or word N times in a buffer or file?
If you want to insert the character interactively, do
C-u 10 X. This will give you XXXXXXXXXX.
This repeats the self-insert-command (here, for "X"), 10 times. See the manual node on repeating.
6
votes
Accepted
How can I insert the backslash character ( \ ) before quotation marks (" ") in Emacs?
This is a feature of paredit. If you look at the minibuffer (the line at the bottom of your Emacs window) when you press \, you'll see you're being prompted for "Character to escape:". The ...
- 22.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Way to keybind «» in Emacs
I tried the following, but apparently the quotation mark is interpreted as a macro: [...]
You’re almost there, « and » are non-ASCII characters with codes above 127, so you have to use vectors ...
- 1,473
5
votes
Accepted
How to programmatically insert a string at the end of some file?
You can use the append-to-file and write-region functions, for example,
~ $ echo hello > file.txt
~ $ emacs --batch --eval '(append-to-file "xyz\n" nil "file.txt")'
~ $ cat file.txt
hello
xyz
~ $
...
- 14.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Insert a string from eval-expression without the quotes
Rather than ask M-: to insert the output of the Elisp code, just write the Elisp code that inserts the text you want:
Try M-: (insert (format-time-string "%m/%d/%Y")) RET
- 26.6k
5
votes
Accepted
How can I type simple underline "_" in Auctex
You can always insert a character literally by typing C-q first (quoted-insert).
Many “electric” characters (that's what Emacs usually calls characters whose insertion has extra effects such as ...
5
votes
Key bound to string does not handle some chars in string correctly
global-set-key is just a thin wrapper around define-key, ignoring some error checking it is
(defun global-set-key (key def)
(define-key (current-global-map) key def))
The documentation for define-...
- 1,934
5
votes
Quickly inserting a single Greek letter
There are several ways. A key difference is how close H-g a is to typing an actual character α would be if you had that key on your keyboard. For example, you can make H-g a a macro that inserts the ...
5
votes
Result of arithmetic evaluation in buffer, not echo area
If you want to do an arithmetic operation and insert the value into the buffer, but don't care where you do the operation, then you can also do C-u M-: and type the operation info the minibuffer.
...
- 1,934
4
votes
Accepted
Inserting the plus minus unicode symbol ± as a keyboard macro
With respect to why you saw what you saw:
As Eli Zaretskii said in a reply to bug report #33829, the string is interpreted as a keyboard macro, and Emacs "interprets ±, which is a single byte with ...
- 78.5k
4
votes
Inserting the plus minus unicode symbol ± as a keyboard macro
You can get what you want with
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c m") [177])
or if you prefer
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c m") [?±])
Another solution uses the package key-chord which allows you to assign ...
- 514
4
votes
Accepted
Key bound to string does not handle some chars in string correctly
What is going on is that string in Emacs have historically been used in this context for 2 different purposes:
sequence of characters.
sequence of events.
In your case, you're writing what you think ...
- 26.6k
4
votes
Accepted
How to create a file from a template if it does not exist or open existing copy?
You could use this version of the function:
(defun journal-entry ()
(interactive)
(let* ((daily-name (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d)"))
(journal-path "~/Dropbox (Personal)/journal/")
(...
- 1,437
4
votes
Accepted
Spacemacs : insert single character in normal mode
I'm not sure whether there's an Evil-specific way to do this. However, you can write a short Elisp snippet that does this:
(defun my/insert-char (char count)
(interactive "c\np")
(insert-char ...
- 671
4
votes
Insert multiple minus ('-') characters using the universal argument (C-u)
To type a minus sign with a numeric prefix argument, you can enter the number by typing the digits: C-u 6 4 - or ESC 6 4 - or M-6 M-4 - or C-6 C-4 - (or a few other combinations). This method doesn't ...
3
votes
Accepted
Cover the active region with a character
(defun cover-active-region (beg end char)
"Replace space with CHAR in the region."
(interactive
(if (use-region-p)
(list
(region-beginning)
(region-end)
(read-...
- 14.7k
3
votes
Accepted
Using quail input-method to insert a string
Using quail-define-rules is overkill (note the rules, plural, in the function name) — an alternative is quail-defrule (one rule...)
Directly from my scratch buffer
(quail-defrule "á" ["something"])
[...
- 614
3
votes
Result of arithmetic evaluation in buffer, not echo area
I prefer to do (also complex) computations in Emacs' calc C-x * * and then copy its result in the buffer where my cursor was with y, q closes the calc buffers and I'm back at this location.
- 1,946
2
votes
Accepted
Insert space but don't move point
There's no built-in command to insert a character before the point, presumably because any key binding for it would have to include at least one key stroke in addition to the character, and if you're ...
2
votes
Accepted
The insert function seems to be inheriting the read-only property
It seems it is intentional according to read-only's info manual (info "(elisp) Special Properties"):
read-only
Insertion next to a read-only character is an error if inserting
ordinary text ...
- 14.7k
2
votes
All Greek letters are capitals, no small Greek letters
As per the comments: lower case and upper case lambda were displayed similarly, but changing the font to DejavuSans resolved the issue.
- 5,385
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible