Key Lookup

Each time the event loop (see section Event Loop) receives an input event from the window system it searches for a binding of that event.

The variables keymap-path and next-keymap-path are used to determine the keymap environment, this is the list of keymaps which are searched when looking for the binding.

Function: lookup-event-binding event &optional reset-path

This function examines the current keymap environment for a binding of the event event (see section Input Events). If such a binding is found its command is returned, otherwise nil is returned.

If the optional reset-path argument is non-nil the next-keymap-path variable will be set to nil, otherwise it will be left with its original value.

Variable: keymap-path

A buffer-local variable providing the list of keymaps (or variables whose values are keymaps) which will be searched for a binding when the value of the next-keymap-path variable is nil.

keymap-path
    => (minor-mode-keymap texinfo-keymap global-keymap)

Variable: next-keymap-path

This variable is used to create multi-event key bindings. When it has a non-nil value it overrides the keymap-path variable when a key binding is being searched for.

After the value of this variable is used to search for a key binding it is set to nil. This means that, unless another prefix key occurred, the next input event received will be resolved through the keymap-path variable.

When this variable is set the value of the prefix-arg variable is set to the current value of the current-prefix-arg variable. This is so a prefix argument given to a multi-event command is transmitted through to the command.

For more details on multi-event bindings see section Prefix Keys.

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