4.3 Movement Commands

CC Mode contains some useful commands for moving around in C code.

C-M-a

C-M-e

Move to the beginning or end of the current or next function. Other constructs (such as a structs or classes) which have a brace block also count as “functions” here. To move over several functions, you can give these commands a repeat count.

The start of a function is at its header. The end of the function is after its closing brace, or after the semicolon of a construct (such as a struct) which doesn't end at the brace. These two commands try to leave point at the beginning of a line near the actual start or end of the function. This occasionally causes point not to move at all.

These functions are analogous to the Emacs built-in commands beginning-of-defun and end-of-defun, except they eliminate the constraint that the top-level opening brace of the defun must be in column zero. See Defuns, for more information.

C-M-a (AWK Mode) (c-awk-beginning-of-defun)

C-M-e (AWK Mode) (c-awk-end-of-defun)

Move to the beginning or end of the current or next AWK defun. These commands can take prefix-arguments, their functionality being entirely equivalent to beginning-of-defun and end-of-defun.

AWK Mode defuns are either pattern/action pairs (either of which might be implicit) or user defined functions. Having the `{' and `}' (if there are any) in column zero, as is suggested for some modes, is neither necessary nor helpful in AWK mode.

M-a (c-beginning-of-statement)

M-e (c-end-of-statement)

Move to the beginning or end of the innermost C statement. If point is already there, move to the next beginning or end of a statement, even if that means moving into a block. (Use C-M-b or C-M-f to move over a balanced block.) A prefix argument n means move over n statements.

If point is within or next to a comment or a string which spans more than one line, these commands move by sentences instead of statements.

When called from a program, these functions take three optional arguments: the repetition count, a buffer position limit which is the farthest back to search for the syntactic context, and a flag saying whether to do sentence motion in or near comments and multiline strings.

C-c C-u (c-up-conditional)

Move back to the containing preprocessor conditional, leaving the mark behind. A prefix argument acts as a repeat count. With a negative argument, move forward to the end of the containing preprocessor conditional.

`#elif' is treated like `#else' followed by `#if', so the function stops at them when going backward, but not when going forward.

This key sequence is not bound in AWK Mode, which doesn't have preprocessor statements.

M-x c-up-conditional-with-else

A variety of c-up-conditional that also stops at `#else' lines. Normally those lines are ignored.

M-x c-down-conditional

Move forward into the next nested preprocessor conditional, leaving the mark behind. A prefix argument acts as a repeat count. With a negative argument, move backward into the previous nested preprocessor conditional.

`#elif' is treated like `#else' followed by `#if', so the function stops at them when going forward, but not when going backward.

M-x c-down-conditional-with-else

A variety of c-down-conditional that also stops at `#else' lines. Normally those lines are ignored.

C-c C-p (c-backward-conditional)

C-c C-n (c-forward-conditional)

Move backward or forward across a preprocessor conditional, leaving the mark behind. A prefix argument acts as a repeat count. With a negative argument, move in the opposite direction.

These key sequences are not bound in AWK Mode, which doesn't have preprocessor statements.

M-x c-backward-into-nomenclature

M-x c-forward-into-nomenclature

A popular programming style, especially for object-oriented languages such as C++ is to write symbols in a mixed case format, where the first letter of each word is capitalized, and not separated by underscores. E.g. `SymbolsWithMixedCaseAndNoUnderlines'.

These commands move backward or forward to the beginning of the next capitalized word. With prefix argument n, move n times. If n is negative, move in the opposite direction.

Note that these two commands have been superseded by c-subword-mode, which you should use instead. See Subword Movement. They might be removed from a future release of CC Mode.