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To do more than insert characters, you have to know how to move point (see Point). The keyboard commands C-f, C-b, C-n, and C-p move point to the right, left, up and down respectively. These are equivalent to the commands <right>, <left>, <down>, and <up>, entered using the arrow keys present on many keyboards. Many Emacs users find that it is slower to use the arrow keys than the equivalent control keys. You can also click the left mouse button to move point to the position clicked. Emacs also provides a variety of additional keyboard commands that move point in more sophisticated ways.
move-beginning-of-line).
move-end-of-line).
forward-char).
backward-char).
forward-word).
backward-word).
next-line). This command attempts
to keep the horizontal position unchanged, so if you start in the
middle of one line, you move to the middle of the next.
previous-line). This command
preserves position within the line, like C-n.
move-to-window-line-top-bottom).
A numeric argument says which screen line to place point on, counting
downward from the top of the window (zero means the top line). A
negative argument counts lines up from the bottom (−1 means the
bottom line).
beginning-of-buffer). With
numeric argument n, move to n/10 of the way from the top.
See Arguments, for more information on numeric arguments.
end-of-buffer).
scroll-up). If your keyboard has a
<PageDown> key (sometimes labelled <next>), it does the same
thing as <C-v>. Scrolling commands are described further in
Scrolling.
scroll-down). If your keyboard has a <PageUp>
key (sometimes labelled <prior>), it does the same thing as
M-v.
goto-line). Line 1 is the beginning of the buffer. If
point is on or just after a number in the buffer, that is the default
for n. Just type <RET> in the minibuffer to use it. You can
also specify n by giving M-g M-g a numeric prefix argument.
See Select Buffer, for the behavior of M-g M-g when you give it
a plain prefix argument.
set-goal-column). When a
semipermanent goal column is in effect, those commands always try to
move to this column, or as close as possible to it, after moving
vertically. The goal column remains in effect until canceled.
When a line of text in the buffer is longer than the width of the
window, Emacs usually displays it on two or more screen lines.
For convenience, C-n and C-p move point by screen lines,
as do the equivalent keys <down> and <up>. You
can force these commands to move according to logical lines
(i.e., according to the text lines in the buffer) by setting the
variable line-move-visual to nil; if a logical line
occupies multiple screen lines, the cursor then skips over the
additional screen lines. Moving by logical lines was the default
behavior prior to Emacs 23.1. For details, see Continuation Lines. See Variables, for how to set variables such as
line-move-visual.
Unlike C-n and C-p, most of the Emacs commands that work
on lines work on logical lines. For instance, C-a
(move-beginning-of-line) and C-e
(move-end-of-line) respectively move to the beginning and end
of the logical line. Whenever we encounter commands that work on
screen lines, such as C-n and C-p, we will point these
out.
When line-move-visual is nil, you can also set the
variable track-eol to a non-nil value. Then C-n
and C-p, when starting at the end of the logical line, move to
the end of the next logical line. Normally, track-eol is
nil.
C-n normally stops at the end of the buffer when you use it on
the last line of the buffer. However, if you set the variable
next-line-add-newlines to a non-nil value, C-n on
the last line of a buffer creates an additional line at the end and
moves down into it.