Kill Functions

Killing a piece of text means to delete it then store a copy of it in a special place. This string is later available to other functions, such as yank which inserts it into a buffer.

Function: kill-string string

This function adds the string string to the kill buffer. If the last command also killed something string is appended to the current value of the kill buffer.

The this-command variable is set to the value kill to flag that the current command did some killing.

Returns string.

Function: killed-string &optional depth

Returns the string in the kill buffer number depth, currently only the last kill is stored so depth must either be zero or undefined.

Command: kill-area start-pos end-pos

This command kills a region of text in the current buffer, from start-pos up to, but not including, end-pos.

When called interactively the currently marked block (if one exists) is used to provide the two arguments, then the block is unmarked.

Command: copy-area-as-kill start-pos end-pos

Similar to kill-area except that the region killed is not actually deleted from the buffer.

Command: kill-block

Kills the block marked in the current window.

Command: copy-block-as-kill

Kills the block marked in this window but doesn't actually delete it from the buffer.

Command: kill-line &optional arg

This command kills lines from the cursor position. arg is a raw prefix argument (see section Prefix Arguments). What gets killed depends on arg,

• When arg is nil it kills from the cursor position to the end of the line, if the cursor is already at the end of the line it kills the newline character.
• If the numeric value of arg is greater than zero it kills from the cursor for that many whole lines.
• If the numeric value is less than or equal to zero it kills that number of whole lines backwards from the cursor.

Command: kill-whole-line count

Kills all of the count (an integer) next following lines.

Command: kill-word count

Kills count words, starting at the cursor position.

When called interactively count is the numeric prefix arg.

Command: backwards-kill-word count

Kills the count previous words, starting from the cursor.

When called interactively count is the numeric prefix arg.

Command: kill-exp &optional count

Kill count expressions from the cursor position. See section Mode-Specific Expressions.

Command: backward-kill-exp &optional count

Kills count expressions, working backwards from the cursor. See section Mode-Specific Expressions.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.