Emacs Stack Exchange
Emacs Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [text-editing]

Questions about editing or manipulating text inside of Emacs.

221 questions
34
votes
6 answers

Opposite of fill-paragraph

Emacs has the function fill-paragraph. Is there any function which will do the opposite of that? I have a paragraph which is already filled and instead I want it in a plain single line?
Sibi
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21
votes
2 answers

Removing smart quotes automatically

Especially when copying text from things like Google docs, I would like Emacs to automatically remove smart double quotes, smart single quotes, and all manner of em-dash and en-dash characters, replacing them with their ascii equivalents. Is there a…
Lee H
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13
votes
1 answer

How do I delete all blank lines in a buffer?

Emacs 26.1 In buffer 1 2 3 4 I use command "delete-blank-lines". But it NOT delete ALL BLANK LINES. It's delete ONLY ONE BLANK LINE. Why? I need to delete ALL BLANK LINES. The result must be like this: 1 2 3 4
a_subscriber
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12
votes
4 answers

Hightlighting all occurances of selected text

Within Visual Studio and Notepad++, when I select a symbol (using the shift key or mouse), other occurrences of it within the buffer are also highlighted in another color. When editing JavaScript or AutoHotkey or any other dynamic language where you…
Tahir Hassan
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12
votes
4 answers

Replace text inside various delimiters (eg: brackets, quotes)

I often do some testing implementation with hardcoded values which I later want to change. Like ref = open('specific-file-name') Which I would like to change into ref = open(fname) I'm used to vim and there I can type ci(fname assuming that point…
kain88
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10
votes
3 answers

Repeat last text insert

In Vim you can press . to repeat the latest change, including inserting text. While in Emacs C-x z only repeats the last command. I am aware that macros can be used here, but more than often I realize that I need to re-insert the same text too late.…
ooi
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9
votes
1 answer

make `delete-duplicate-lines` ignore blank lines and certain words

I'm editing a text in org-mode, several lines are repeated since they where part of different files from the same topic. I want to use delete-duplicate-lines to delete the repeated lines, however, the command removes the blank lines too, which is…
shackra
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8
votes
1 answer

Editing a string with lots of escape characters

Let's say I'm editing my config file and there is a very long string like this: (setq my-string "very\nlong\nstring [...] \"hello world\"") How do edit the string without the escape characters (and maybe in a different mode) and than save the…
allikotsa
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7
votes
3 answers

How to blockquote text in one go

With this text: Play with it a few times you will see my point. The command you need is: $ echo hello How do I make it into: > Play with it a few times you will see my point. The > command you need is: > > $ echo hello Without using the…
Tankman六四
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7
votes
3 answers

What kinds of mistakes does transpose fix?

The only times I've ever found a use for transpose-words or transpose-chars is when I accidentally hit one of them unintentionally, in which case a backward-word followed by transpose-words again would undo the problem. It seems like the use case is…
VF1
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6
votes
4 answers

How to add a suffix to every line of a text?

Windows 10, Emacs 25.1 Suppose I have the following text (about 100 rows): ic_m_sales ic_m_activity_report ic_m_messanges ic_m_products_name ic_m_change_store ic_m_faq ... How to add the same suffix (_inactive) to every line…
lmdic
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5
votes
4 answers

How to swap words `true` and `false` in buffer text?

I found myself switching the text true to false, and vice versa, while coding very often. It's quite tedious to mark the entire thing and replace it with opposite. It would be great to have a function that replaces word under the cursor to true if…
Navidot
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5
votes
0 answers

how to convert camel case to snake case with vanilla emacs

When editing for example a ruby file, can't emacs toggle CamelCase to snake_case out of the box? Example ruby file def SecDecGov puts "abort" end
american-ninja-warrior
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4
votes
4 answers

Append region to the end of the lines of another region of same length

Here are two cases i am interested in: Case 1: lines of identical length Given some lines const int name1 const int name2 const int name3 const int name4 and some other lines = 1 = 2 = 3 = 4 I would like to move the other lines to the end of the…
Beginner
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4
votes
5 answers

How to swap strings in all lines?

Emacs 26.1 I have this text: "ADA-SGD" "ADT-SGD" "ADX-SGD" "AID-SGD" "AMP-SGD" "ANT-SGD" "ARDR-SGD" "ARK-SGD" I want to swap text in all these lines. The result must be like…
a_subscriber
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1
2 3 4