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4.5 Review

Here is a brief summary of the various functions discussed in this chapter.


Print the documentation for a function or variable. Conventionally bound to C-h f and C-h v.


Find the file containing the source for a function or variable and switch buffers to it, positioning point at the beginning of the item. Conventionally bound to M-. (that’s a period following the META key).


Save the location of point and mark and restore their values after the arguments to save-excursion have been evaluated. Also, remember the current buffer and return to it.


Set mark at a location and record the value of the previous mark on the mark ring. The mark is a location in the buffer that will keep its relative position even if text is added to or removed from the buffer.


Set point to the location specified by the value of the argument, which can be a number, a marker, or an expression that returns the number of a position, such as (point-min).


Copy a region of text from a buffer that is passed to the function as an argument and insert the region into the current buffer.


Mark the whole buffer as a region. Normally bound to C-x h.


Switch the attention of Emacs to another buffer, but do not change the window being displayed. Used when the program rather than a human is to work on a different buffer.


Find a named buffer or create one if a buffer of that name does not exist. The get-buffer function returns nil if the named buffer does not exist.
