Emacs: Fun Features

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Emacs Curve

You probably heard that emacs can do lots of things. This page shows some.

emacs learning curve
A comic on emacs's learning curve. [Original source appears to be Steve Rowe's blog. A friend of mine put this together @ http://blogs.msdn.com/steverowe/archive/2004/11/17/code-editor-learning-curves.aspx]

Emacs Tetris

emacs tetris 49994
tetris in emacs

Alt+x tetris to start it. Use arrow keys to move the blocks.

Alt+x kill-buffer to close it.

Split Windows

You can split your window into two or more panes, vertically or horizontally. 〔see Emacs: Split Window〕

wildly split emacs screen
Wildly split emacs screen. From top to bottom: calendar, Unicode, shell, hexl-mode , html-mode, dired, calculator.

View Calendar

emacs calendar
M-x calendar. 〔see Emacs Calendar〕

Directory Navigation and Managing Files

To start, Alt+x dired, then, type a dir path. To exit, press q. See Emacs: File Manager, dired.

emacs dired 2022-10-03
emacs dired 2022-10-03

Pretty Colors

Alt+x list-colors-display

emacs list-colors-display 2021-07-19
emacs list-colors-display 2021-07-19

Command Line Interface (aka Shell)

Alt+x shell to start a shell interface. 〔see Emacs: Run Shell〕

emacs cmdexe pwsh 2024-07-03
emacs cmdexe pwsh 2024-07-03

LISP in Emacs

Sometime you hear that emacs has the artificial intelligence language LISP built-in. That's right. Here's how you can run a short example.

emacs lisp eval 2022-07-25
eval emacs lisp code

〔see Evaluate Emacs Lisp Code〕

In emacs, open a file, any file. In the file, type (+ 1 2), then, select the whole text, then Alt+x eval-region. You will see the result “3”. CONGRADULATIONS, you've just evaluated a lisp program!

See: Elisp: Quick Start.

emacs basics