Learning GNU Emacs, Second Edition

Getting Help

GNU Emacs has extensive online help, which is discussed further in Chapter 16. To enter help, type C-h or select an option from the Help menu. ^[10] Pressing C-h gives you a list of options. Pressing C-h t starts a tutorial that is an excellent introduction to Emacs.

To get information about the meaning of a keystroke combination, press C-h k for describe-key. For example, if you type C-h k C-x i, Emacs displays a description of the insert-file command, which is bound to C-x i. Pressing C-h f (for describe-function) asks Emacs to describe a function (really just a command’s full name, such as find-file). Essentially, C-h k and C-h f give you the same information; the difference is that with C-h k, you press a key and ask what it does, whereas with C-h f, you type a command name and ask what it does.

Assume you want to find out about what C-x i does. First, type C-h k (as shown in Figure 1-3).

Figure 2-3. Asking for help about a keyboard command

Type C-x i to get help information about insert-file (as shown in Figure 1-4).

Figure 2-4. Emacs help screen

A few things to notice: the screen is now split into two parts because you’re looking at two separate buffers. Each buffer has its own mode line. The lower buffer is the *Help* buffer; it contains the information about ...