19.9 Replacement Commands

Emacs provides several commands for performing search-and-replace operations. In addition to the simple M-x replace-string command, there is M-% (query-replace), which presents each occurrence of the pattern and asks you whether to replace it.

The replace commands normally operate on the text from point to the end of the buffer. When the mark is active, they operate on the region instead (see Mark). The basic replace commands replace one search string (or regexp) with one replacement string. It is possible to perform several replacements in parallel, using the command expand-region-abbrevs (see Expanding Abbrevs).

• Unconditional Replace: Replacing all matches for a string.
• Regexp Replace: Replacing all matches for a regexp.
• Replacement and Case: How replacements preserve case of letters.
• Query Replace: How to use querying.