keelerm
2014-03-22 00:51:29
C-x h will select the entire buffer.
You can search for help within Emacs using the built-in help system.
C-h f will look for help for specific functions. In this case, you could have searched for whole-buffer to find mark-whole-buffer.
Other help commands of interest would be:
- C-h m to show available commands for the current modes
- C-h v for help related to variables
- C-h k to find which functions keys are bound to
- C-h w to see which key bindings are defined for a given function
- C-h ? to see which other options are available.
Note that C-x h will only highlight all the text. To actually copy the selected text, you must use C-w for cut (kill-region) or M-w for copy (kill-ring-save).
I tried C-x h but it's not working. It puts the cursor in the beginning of the file and says mark set. But if I try to paste then it does not paste the file contents.
You probably don't have transient-mark-mode enabled. Do M-x tranient-mark-mode. This will show your selected region. Once you do C-x h, make sure you are copying with C-w.
Thanks. It's working after I did M-x transient-mark-mode. Thanks again for the quick response.
Sajib Mahmood: Note that
C-x hshould still work regardless of that mode; you just won't see the marked region. SoC-x h M-wshould always copy the buffer's contents. Also,transient-mark-modeis enabled by default, so you may want to figure out why it's disabled in your config.Good point. Also, 21.4 is nine years old. Updating would be well worth considering.