Moving Around Buffers

Here is a selection of the most commonly used commands which move the cursor around the current buffer.

Up

Ctrl-p

Move one line up.

Down

Ctrl-n

Move one line down.

Left

Move one column to the left, stopping at the first column.

Ctrl-b

Move to the previous character, at the beginning of the line moves to the end of the previous line.

Right

Move one column to the right. This keeps moving past the end of the line.

Ctrl-f

Move to the next character, at the end of a line moves to the start of the next line.

Shift-Up

Move to the first line in the buffer.

Shift-Down

Move to the last line in the buffer.

Meta-<

Move to the first character in the buffer.

Meta->

Move to the last character in the buffer.

Shift-Left

Ctrl-a

Move to the beginning of the current line.

Shift-Right

Ctrl-e

Move to the last character in the current line.

Ctrl-Up

Meta-v

Move to the previous screen of text.

Ctrl-Down

Ctrl-v

Move to the next screen of text.

Meta-Left

Meta-b

Move to the previous word.

Meta-Right

Meta-f

Move to the next word.

Meta-Up

Meta-[

Move to the start of the previous paragraph.

Meta-Down

Meta-]

Move to the start of the next paragraph.

TAB

Meta-i

Insert a tab character, indenting the cursor to the next tab position. Note that some editing modes redefine TAB to make it indent the current line to its correct depth.

Shift-TAB

Move to the position of the previous tab.

Ctrl-TAB

Move to the position of the next tab.

Meta-j

Prompt for a line number and go to it.

Meta-m

Move to the first non-space character in the current line.

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