How to repeat the last yank command N times?

Question

I'm just not able able to replicate the answer on this. Starting with:

lipsum

I do (my interpretaton):

1. Alt-W over the word (copy)
2. Enter (new line)
3. Ctrl-Y (paste)
4. Alt-2 Ctrl-X z (repeat last two commands)

What I expected:

lipsum
lipsum
lipsum

What I get:

lipsum
lipsumlipsum

How did I do wrong?

PS1: breakdown of 1.

• C-SPC before lipsum
• C-E
• M-W

Effect: selected region=lipsum(cursor at end of line).

Answer 1

If you want to yank something N times, the simplest approach is probably to use a keyboard macro: See https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Keyboard-Macros.html.

For example, mark and copy the text, then:

1. F3 C-y F4 ; record a keyboard macro that does the yank
2. C-u 20 C-x e ; run last macro 20 times

Why didn't your approach work?

Your assumption here is incorrect:

Alt-2 Ctrl-X z (repeat last two commands)

From the doc for repeat-command:

Repeat most recently executed command. If REPEAT-ARG is non-nil (interactively, with a prefix argument), supply a prefix argument to that command. Otherwise, give the command the same prefix argument it was given before, if any.

So C-x z will only repeat the last command. In your example you are calling yank with prefix arg 2. Checking what yank does with that:

With argument N, reinsert the Nth most recent kill.

So actually you are yanking the 2nd most recent kill. Try this to see it work. Start with a buffer with this and point at the beginning:

one
two

Mark and kill one and then two (with trailing newline), e.g.

1. C-SPC C-n M-w ; mark, go down a line, copying one
2. C-SPC C-n M-w ; same again, copying two
3. C-y ; yank (most recent)
4. M-2 C-x z ; repeat with argument 2 (yank 2nd most recent)

And the end result is this:

one
two
two
one

Answer 2

You copied only a word, not that word plus the newline character that follows it.

You then yanked the copied word twice. The yanked words aren't separated by newline chars because you didn't include such a char in what you copied to the kill-ring.

1. C-SPC before the word you want to copy.

2. Then C-n to move down a line (to the beginning of the next line).

3. Then M-w to copy the word and newline.

4. Then do your yanking (whether by repeating or not).