what is Emacs?

[SDBFG]

hello sir
i found Emacs what does it do?

[BradC]

i found Emacs what does it do?

Pretty much everything except make coffee (and I think that's on the todo).

"man emacs" might be a good start.

[AG6QR]

It's a text editor.  And a whole lot more.  it's very extendable, and can be programmed to do almost anything.  It works on virtually any system, including Unix, Linux, DOS, Windows, Mac, and more.  It's probably the most powerful and customizable text editor around.  Google "emacs tips" or "emacs tricks" for lots more info.

It's also free and open source.

[daqq]

All of your questions posted so far are vague questions that show zero initiative, zero work done to help yourself and can be answered by a few minutes on google. You are probably a troll.

[bd139]

An “editor” which mutated into something insane. Also known as Escape Meta Alt Control Shift. It’s like playing twister with your fingers. You need this guy’s fingers for optimum performance.

https://youtu.be/KlJ8eTuFe9U

Alas if you master it, the minds eye will be opened into the dimension of lisp.

I am merely mortal though so I can’t use it effectively.

[newbrain]

For about 25 years, emacs has been THE EDITOR for me.
I even wrote a clone in 8086 assembler in about ~13kB, a Forth (not(lisp)) compiler included, for MS-DOS 2.11...

Jokes on its all encompassing extensibility abound, one for all its own overflowing sink old icon:


If you are a vi user, emacs can give you good counselling:

Code: [Select]

M-x doctorM-x == Esc followed by x, or Alt-x on PCs

I am the psychotherapist.  Please, describe your problems.  Each time
you are finished talking, type RET twice.

Vi is better than emacs

Emacs?  Hah!  I would appreciate it if you would continue.

Vi is simpler to understand

Why do you say
vi is simpler to understand?

[helius]

For about 25 years, emacs has been THE EDITOR for me.
I even wrote a clone in 8086 assembler in about ~13kB, a Forth (not(lisp)) compiler included, for MS-DOS 2.11...

Hey, that's cool! I remember one of the best MS-DOS editors was Lugaru Epsilon, which was an Emacs clone using a C-like extension language.
I think it was quite a bit bigger than 13KB...

[Zero999]

hello sir
i found Emacs what does it do?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs

[T3sl4co1l]

Not vim.

/scurries away

[daqq]

Not vim.

/scurries away

Good.

/scurries away

[bd139]

New unix system users:

Emacs users:

"fuck it's only got vi on it"
...tries to edit file .... fuck shit fuckety fuck ... esc esc :q!
"install nano or emacs"
...edit file

Vim users:

...Edit file using vi, grumbling slightly about the one level undo and lack of syntax highlighting.

[NivagSwerdna]

i found Emacs what does it do?

I understand that religious discussions are frowned upon here.
However, welcome to the Church of EMACS.
EMACS is a life choice not an editor, TECO is an editor and vi[m] is a utility

[tggzzz]

i found Emacs what does it do?

I understand that religious discussions are frowned upon here.
However, welcome to the Church of EMACS.
EMACS is a life choice not an editor, TECO is an editor and vi[m] is a utility

Except that you misspelled "editor" when you clearly meant "abomination", and you should append "(allegedly)" to the sentence.

Apart from that, this is a remarkable prescient troll from someone that hasn't come across google (check the OP's other posts to see why I think that!)

[madires]

Isn't Emacs a Lisp interpreter?

[BravoV]

All of your questions posted so far are vague questions that show zero initiative, zero work done to help yourself and can be answered by a few minutes on google. You are probably a troll.

Nothing against certain countries, its just this is the typical "weird" questions from people at those areas where OP lives.

I've seen and experienced too many nice technical forums at the internet that were trashed and completely swarmed by this kind of behavior that abuse the community helpful & friendly atmosphere , definitely not language problem, I guess its cultural.

PS : The OP just made another "weird" new thread again -> HERE. 

[BradC]

definitely not language problem, I guess its cultural.

Yup. Saw a *lot* of this while I was in the Middle East, usually followed by "please do the needful ASAP".

[NivagSwerdna]

Anyone asking about Emacs can't be all that bad.  And they call me "Sir".   

[BravoV]

And they call me "Sir".   

This is one of the typical signature too. 

[Ampera]

I use nano because it seems to be the only Unix or Unix-like text editor that seems any bit reasonable.

[grumpydoc]

New unix system users:

Emacs users:

"fuck it's only got vi on it"
...tries to edit file .... fuck shit fuckety fuck ... esc esc :q!
"install nano or emacs"
...edit file

All Emacs users should know just enough vi to edit the Emacs Makefiles for their system. Real men use ed, however.

hello sir
i found Emacs what does it do?

JFGI

[BravoV]

definitely not language problem, I guess its cultural.

Yup. Saw a *lot* of this while I was in the Middle East, usually followed by "please do the needful ASAP".

Usually these created a situation that resides in grey area, that made moderator's life a lot harder as they are not fall into the spammer/troll category type.

Once the moderators team are completely overwhelmed and give up, you can expect the forum's quality begins to deteriorate like many I've seen & experienced. 

[grumpydoc]

Isn't Emacs a Lisp interpreter?

[Ignoring the on purpose]

The GNU implementation and many other Emacsen are indeed Lisp interpreters - or at any rate they are a set of bare bones editing functions (with bindings to make them callable from Lisp) plus a (basic) Lisp interpreter and then the complete editor is written in Lisp on top of that.

Originally, however, it was a set of macros for a heavily modified version of TECO and there are many emacs-like editors which are not built upon a Lisp framework.

Alternative names:
Esc-Meta-Alt-Ctrl-Shift
Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping (from the days when 8M was big)
Eventually Munches All Computer Storage
Emacs Makes A Computer Slow

[Cerebus]

The question was: "what is Emacs?"

The answer is an acronym for
Eight
Megs
And
Constantly
Swapping.

Anyone asking about Emacs can't be all that bad.  And they call me "Sir".   

You must be mistaken, it was clearly I who was addressed as Sir.   

[grumpydoc]

The question was: "what is Emacs?"

The answer is an acronym for
Eight
Megs
And
Constantly
Swapping.

Snap!

[BradC]

Usually these created a situation that resides in grey area, that made moderator's life a lot harder as they are not fall into the spammer/troll category type.

Yeah, I never saw it on a forum. It was in the office, on site, in the contractors office.. you get the idea. There appears to be a particular branch there somewhere that are educated to be completely spoon fed. It's like "Here's the book. Learn what's in the book. Never question the book. All you ever need to know is in the book.". When something arises that isn't in the book it becomes a case of turn to the first person you see and ask "what is that, what does it do and how do I work it?". The problem is as the answers to those questions aren't in the book either, it just becomes a snake eating its own tail.

[NivagSwerdna]

I see no point in engaging with non believers. 

... actually I can't resist...

EMACS used to be Windows for VT100 terminals.    C-x 2  it was like magic.

[tggzzz]

I see no point in engaging with non believers. 

... actually I can't resist...

EMACS used to be Windows for VT100 terminals.    C-x 2  it was like magic.

Too damn right it was.

Anybody remember the VMS EDT editor? My "favourite" feature was that the "delete" key would remove either the word/character before or after the cursor, depending on the history of editor actions.

[tpowell1830]

Does anyone use Komodo Edit? I like it alot... (AFTER trying Emacs) 

[Cerebus]

Anybody remember the VMS EDT editor?

Pah! EDT was for people who weren't man enough to use TECO. 

From "Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL":


...

Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into
editors running on more reasonably named operating systems -- EMACS and VI
being two.  The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers
consider `What You See Is What You Get' to be just as bad a concept in
Text Editors as it is in women.  No, the Real Programmer wants a `you
asked for it, you got it' text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful,
unforgiving, dangerous.  TECO, to be precise.

It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles
transmission line noise than readable text [4].  One of the more
entertaining games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command
line and try to guess what it does.  Just about any possible typing error
while talking with TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse
-- introduce subtle and mysterious bugs in a once working subroutine.

...

[BillB]

So, I'm guessing I shouldn't mention Notepad?   

[BravoV]

So, I'm guessing I shouldn't mention Notepad?   

Only after you mentioned EDLIN. 

[BradC]

Real men use echo, cat and dd.

What would I know thought? I know/use Pascal and eat quiche.

[Ampera]

just sitting over here with my Notepad++, sipping the NT poison.

If I had to pick an XWS compatible text editor, it would have to be SciTE, as the closest denominator to Notepad++ which is the Windows user's friend. For terminal activities, GNU Nano is good on Windows, Linux, and Unix.

[BillB]

So, I'm guessing I shouldn't mention Notepad?   

Only after you mentioned EDLIN. 

HaHa!  Oh yeah, forgot about EDLIN! 

Real men use echo, cat and dd.

Actually, if you aren't entering your data using panel mounted toggle switches and need to rely on a keyboard, you aren't a man at all.

[Ampera]

Puh, toggle switches? Real men don't even need line editors. They can modify their text files by punching holes directly into their paper tapes. Who needs all this fancy programming?

[BillB]

RIP OP, we hardly knew ye. 

[Cerebus]

So, I'm guessing I shouldn't mention Notepad?   

Boy, I say boy, only if y're wearing pink and got a pink bow in yer hair". 

(I hope I'm not the only guy here who remembers how Foghorn Leghorn talked.)

[mbless]

RIP OP, we hardly knew ye. 

This is the first time I witnessed a real-time ban! Either OP is that clueless about everything or a terrible troll.

[andyturk]

I've been using emacs since the mid 80s, initially on an actual lisp machine. For a long time, I just used it out-of-the-box without a lot of extensions, but lately I'm really liking some of the extensions like "org mode" and C/C++ support. Emacs goes well with my mechanical keyboard (HHKB). :-) I've almost forgotten my command line git because I use "magit" in emacs all the time.

Emacs and its various extensions are really good at dealing with information represented in text form. That's a philosophical commitment more than anything else, and it's incompatible with proprietary file formats and things like IDEs.

IMO, emacs has a huge learning curve and I've never actually recommended it to anyone else. However, I couldn't live without it. People that could benefit from emacs usually find it on their own.

[andyturk]

Eight
Megs
And
Constantly
Swapping.

That was funny back when "8 megs" was significant. I used to do homework assignments on a timeshared PDP-11 with a whopping 10 megs of disk for the entire machine. No emacs there--we used ed.

My emacs process is clocking 159MB now (not doing a whole lot) with no swapping. But the box it's running on has 64GB of RAM.

[andyturk]

EMACS used to be Windows for VT100 terminals.    C-x 2  it was like magic.

Or keeping your editor process running for weeks at a time (with screen).

[bsudbrink]

XEDIT

[tggzzz]

So, I'm guessing I shouldn't mention Notepad?   

Only after you mentioned EDLIN. 

Thank you for reminding me of that. Not.

[tggzzz]

Actually, if you aren't entering your data using panel mounted toggle switches and need to rely on a keyboard, you aren't a man at all.

Quite right.

It helps if you have a machine with core memory, so that removal of power is irrelevant.

[tggzzz]

Puh, toggle switches? Real men don't even need line editors. They can modify their text files by punching holes directly into their paper tapes. Who needs all this fancy programming?

That's the way I started, albeit with 5cps 5channel teletypes.

[tpowell1830]

DOS

echo The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On The Plain > The_Rain_File.txt

type the_rain_file.txt

[bsudbrink]

CP/M:

A>PIP TEST.TXT=CON:
THIS IS A TEST<ctrl-Z>
A>

[ebastler]

That's the way I started, albeit with 5cps 5channel teletypes.

5 cps sounds way too slow. 45 bits/s and 7.5 bits/char give you a whopping 6 char/s!
(Or even 6.6 if you were in Europe and operating at 50 Baud!)

And you could backspace and overwrite typos with the "letters" code (all holes punched) for comfortable editing.

[tggzzz]

That's the way I started, albeit with 5cps 5channel teletypes.

5 cps sounds way too slow. 45 bits/s and 7.5 bits/char give you a whopping 6 char/s!
(Or even 6.6 if you were in Europe and operating at 50 Baud!)

And you could backspace and overwrite typos with the "letters" code (all holes punched) for comfortable editing.

Naturally we preferred the 10cps machines, but they were often in use by other people - leaving the 5cpc machines.

There were many different 5 channel teletypes codes. My first assembler program converted from one to another.

In the Elliott code, IiRC, all holes punched was "ignore" and the letter shift and figure shift were other codes.

[boffin]

CP/M:

A>PIP TEST.TXT=CON:
THIS IS A TEST<ctrl-Z>
A>

CP/M's PIP was a copy of RSX-11's.

[tggzzz]

DOS

echo The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On The Plain > The_Rain_File.txt

type the_rain_file.txt

8.3?

[Ampera]

IT'S AN IMPOSTER!

HISS

[bsudbrink]

CP/M:

A>PIP TEST.TXT=CON:
THIS IS A TEST<ctrl-Z>
A>

CP/M's PIP was a copy of RSX-11's.

Yup.  I didn't write it.  Only used (and use) it.

[boffin]

Editor wars, always going to create a firestorm.

My history:
EDT - VAX screen editor (still remember what GOLD stands for)
EDIX - Obscure DOS editor...
QEDIT/TSE - switched as it was more available under DOS
JOE - Under Unix, still my fave editor on my Unix/Linux systems (I watch over 1400 of them for work)
EDITPLUS, later NOTEPAD++ under Windows.  Very capable

I always laugh, for years in Unix interviews they'd always ask "do you know vi well", and my stock response was "well enough to use it to configure the Makefile for something better (like joe)"

[bsudbrink]

Editor wars, always going to create a firestorm.

Wouldn't be any fun otherwise...

My history:

Hmmm...
1) Does an IBM 026 count as an editor?
2) Does the interactive mode of HP timeshare BASIC count as an editor?
3) WordStar! <ctrl-K><ctrl-D>
4) XEDIT CMS/VM370 and MS-DOS
5) vi,vim,Brief,Emacs
6) Abysmal Micro$oft IDE editors (no choice)

[TerraHertz]

RIP OP, we hardly knew ye. 

"Posts:   16 (16 per day)"   
An appropriately nice round number in binary.

Edit:
SDBFG'a post history reads like someone wrote a first attempt at an AI that is mostly a Markov chain text generator, and gave it Net access. The programmers could have had more success with it, if they hadn't permitted it to create threads.

[grumpydoc]

I always laugh, for years in Unix interviews they'd always ask "do you know vi well", and my stock response was "well enough to use it to configure the Makefile for something better (like joe)"

See previous comment - my only motivation for learning (minimal) vi was to be able to edit emacs Makefiles 

[bd139]

I always laugh, for years in Unix interviews they'd always ask "do you know vi well", and my stock response was "well enough to use it to configure the Makefile for something better (like joe)"

See previous comment - my only motivation for learning (minimal) vi was to be able to edit emacs Makefiles 

Back when I was a (part time) Unix admin, we actually banned Emacs due to resource problems using it on the main "user" shell server, a respectably equipped but near EOL Sun 4/690. However 20 instances of GNU Emacs running every conceivable extension could bring the damn thing to its knees.

So one afternoon we static linked /usr/bin/emacs to vi and set "no more emacs!" in motd.

Joy of joys, resource usage went down that day bar some email flames. That was until around 3pm when everyone suddenly started compiling copies of GNU emacs to run out of their home dir ... Eventually the machine thrashed itself into the ground and we had to bounce it.

Lesson learned: on 1990s kit, don't leave the compiler suite installed. Also don't piss off the Emacs users.

[HoracioDos]

My first DOS editor....
copy con myfile.txt <press enter>
CTRL-Z
Now I'm a nano user

[tggzzz]

Also don't piss off the Emacs users.

A very wise rule of thumb

By definition they are "power users", and emacs is their shell.

[bd139]

Actually perhaps more correctly, if you’re going to piss off the emacs users, ulimit them first

[Ampera]

Well, funny thing, normally when I do DOS programming in a Unix/Linux environment, I start off using GNU Nano to do the work because of it's ease of use (to a plebeian like myself) and (normally) nice text highlighting. After a few runs to DOSBox and TC (now BC++ for me) I end up having to fix a minor thing in the 80 column TC editor until I say screw it and end up purely using that editor.

[helius]

I think (almost) nothing of loading a 60 megabyte sized text file into emacs and actually expect it to be responsive to searching and editing it.

Since MULE was added to Emacs 20, this is much less of a sure thing, since you cannot in general expect roundtrip data preservation in the presence of different character encodings.

[JonM]

I have been "99% Emacs" for the past 34 years. I will resort to vi when doing minor edits as root.

A friend of mine had a license plate frame that read: "vi not emacs" when he lived in Silicon Valley.
It triggered quite a few red light conversations.
 

[BradC]

Years ago I spent a lot of time building minimal embedded systems and forced myself to learn vi as it was one thing I could rely on to be ever-present (the busybox implementation is reasonable). These days I can't imagine using anything else, although when given the opportunity I cheat and install vim. That at least buys me syntax highlighting.
 

[ivaylo]

I have been "99% Emacs" for the past 34 years. I will resort to vi when doing minor edits as root.

Same here. Tried to search through a 60MB log file with Sublime on a 16GB RAM Mac lately just to bring the machine to a halt (had to kill the damn thing). Emacs would fly through the results. They were written differently (with all the jokes what a hog it was on a 640KB machine or whatever)...

[newbrain]

Only reason I answered the OP was for  . Some fun cannot be missed.

My history:
A frigging IBM card puncher at uni. Unfortunately the mainframe was Univac. The different EBCDIC flavour made it a mess to use.
The various editors in Turbo-whatever. ETA: and Brief, a revelation!
EDT on VMS.
EVE on VMS, with a lot of personal macros/keydefs.
sed to edit the emacs makefile. I gave up on vi really quickly.
Emacs and EVE with an emacs keymap. It was fun the day someone thought of reconfiguring all the VT220 terminals for XON/XOFF, and any Ctrl-S would block the screen...
Emacs...
Emacs...
Take a walk on the dark side
Visual Studio and emacs
VS Code

Edit: I almost forgot an early love!

[tpowell1830]

Ok, the original poster is back again as nhdyhh asking terse questions again... 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/how-this-processor-work/msg0/?topicseen#new

[BravoV]

Ok, the original poster is back again as nhdyhh asking terse questions again... 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/how-this-processor-work/msg0/?topicseen#new

Oh no, hopefully its not the swarm coming, another one is happening ...

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/help-needed-to-repair-hp-spectrum-analyser/

[amyk]

Ok, the original poster is back again as nhdyhh asking terse questions again... 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/how-this-processor-work/msg0/?topicseen#new

Oh no, hopefully its not the swarm coming, another one is happening ...

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/help-needed-to-repair-hp-spectrum-analyser/

Although still sub-par, that guy has far more intelligence than this one. AT least he continues by saying what he did. This one just writes single-sentence posts.

[mitchty]

> By definition they are "power users", and emacs is their shell.

We're just very... opinionated. >.< And well the shell is just more text, why bother opening a shell when you got emacs open already?

I use org-mode to compile my emacs configuration. I'm a... odd duck even amongst emacs users.

[tggzzz]

> By definition they are "power users", and emacs is their shell.

We're just very... opinionated. >.< And well the shell is just more text, why bother opening a shell when you got emacs open already?

I use org-mode to compile my emacs configuration. I'm a... odd duck even amongst emacs users.

Does emacs allow you to press the "quote" link on the top right of a posting?

[brucehoult]

The question was: "what is Emacs?"

The answer is an acronym for
Eight
Megs
And
Constantly
Swapping.
/quote]

That was big once. Of course now eight megs is smaller than a snapshot of your lunch from your "phone", and your web browser is using eight GIGs.

I can no longer distinguish between the startup times of vi and emacs, so I use "emacs -nw" for even the most trivial tasks.

[mitchty]

> By definition they are "power users", and emacs is their shell.

We're just very... opinionated. >.< And well the shell is just more text, why bother opening a shell when you got emacs open already?

I use org-mode to compile my emacs configuration. I'm a... odd duck even amongst emacs users.

Does emacs allow you to press the "quote" link on the top right of a posting?

Yes, but I use too many forums to remember which site I'm on and end up being lazy.

[ebastler]

Does emacs allow you to press the "quote" link on the top right of a posting?

Yes, but I use too many forums to remember which site I'm on and end up being lazy.

Hmm, either emacs or you really seem to struggle with quotes and replies...
Never mind; be lazy and let the readers deal with it. 

[bd139]

 Should have used vim 

[tggzzz]

> By definition they are "power users", and emacs is their shell.

We're just very... opinionated. >.< And well the shell is just more text, why bother opening a shell when you got emacs open already?

I use org-mode to compile my emacs configuration. I'm a... odd duck even amongst emacs users.

Does emacs allow you to press the "quote" link on the top right of a posting?

Yes, but I use too many forums to remember which site I'm on and end up being lazy.

At least you can alter emacs' functions so that it requires you to press the "preview" button before "post" button. Doubt you could do that with vi(le)

[andyturk]

I use org-mode to compile my emacs configuration. I'm a... odd duck even amongst emacs users.

Org-babel is not odd at all... perfectly reasonable! 

[Bassman59]

I have been "99% Emacs" for the past 34 years. I will resort to vi when doing minor edits as root.

A friend of mine had a license plate frame that read: "vi not emacs" when he lived in Silicon Valley.
It triggered quite a few red light conversations.

emacs has its vhdl-mode, which is the best goddamn code-editing thing for any language ever.

pr<tab> and wham, a process template, filled in with my clock and preferred reset style.
sig<tab> and start the template for creating a signal.
ent<tab> and start creating an entity.

Put the cursor in the port list of an entity, then ctrl-c ctrl-p ctrl-w and it copies the port list. Then visit a new file, type ctrl-c ctrl-p ctrl-t and wham, now you have the basis of a test bench, with all signals declared and the DUT port map built.

Or, after copying the port list of an entity, type  ctrl-c ctrl-p ctrl-i and wham, now you have a wired-up instance of your entity.

Code completion? Type the first couple of letters of a signal and then <tab> and it completes.

And so on. It's utterly brilliant.

Plus, you can play Tetris in emacs.

[Vtile]

Emacs is, along with vi, one of the two main contenders in the traditional editor wars of Unix culture.

I think this sums it up, along so many other silliness around certain computer tech.