Learning GNU Emacs, Second Edition

Chapter 6. Emacs as a Work Environment

Many of the everyday things you do from your UNIX shell can be done from within Emacs. You can execute UNIX commands, work with directories, and print files—all without leaving Emacs. Changing tasks is as simple as jumping between buffers or windows. If you have room for several windows on your screen, you can move between tasks by typing C-x o.

What’s important about this? Of course, it’s nice to be able to move between tasks easily. What’s even more important is that you have the same editing environment no matter what you’re doing: you can use all of the Emacs editing commands to work on a file, give shell commands, then start up the directory editor to do some file maintenance, and so on. It is trivial to move text from one window to another. You can execute a UNIX command and then use Emacs commands to cut the result and paste it into a file. Despite the many advantages of modern window systems, Emacs often provides the best way to integrate the many kinds of work you do daily. In subsequent chapters, we’ll describe using Emacs for email, Usenet news, Telnet, FTP, and the World Wide Web. The topics discussed in this chapter are only the beginning of how you can integrate many kinds of work in Emacs.

Executing UNIX Commands in Shell Buffers

One of the most important features of Emacs is its ability to run a UNIX shell in a buffer. Once you have started a shell buffer, you can do all of your normal UNIX work within Emacs. What does this ...