13.3 Other Kill Commands
- C-w
- Kill region (from point to the mark) (
kill-region
).
- M-d
- Kill word (
kill-word
). See Words.
- M-<DEL>
- Kill word backwards (
backward-kill-word
).
- C-x <DEL>
- Kill back to beginning of sentence (
backward-kill-sentence
).
See Sentences.
- M-k
- Kill to end of sentence (
kill-sentence
).
- C-M-k
- Kill the following balanced expression (
kill-sexp
). See Expressions.
- M-z char
- Kill through the next occurrence of char (
zap-to-char
).
The most general kill command is C-w (kill-region
),
which kills everything between point and the mark. With this command,
you can kill any contiguous sequence of characters, if you first set
the region around them.
A convenient way of killing is combined with searching: M-z
(zap-to-char
) reads a character and kills from point up to (and
including) the next occurrence of that character in the buffer. A
numeric argument acts as a repeat count. A negative argument means to
search backward and kill text before point.
Other syntactic units can be killed: words, with M-<DEL>
and M-d (see Words); balanced expressions, with C-M-k
(see Expressions); and sentences, with C-x <DEL> and
M-k (see Sentences).