Emacs Lisp: Cursor Position Functions

Here's the most useful cursor related functions.

• Cursor position is considered to be between characters.
• The beginning of buffer has cursor position 1. (unless Narrow to Region is in effect.)

Get Cursor Position

point

(point)

Return cursor's current position. (beginning of buffer is 1. Position is best thought of as between characters.)

(point)
;; sample result:
;; 770

region-beginning

(region-beginning)

Return start position of text selection. [see Emacs Lisp: Region, Active Region]

region-end

(region-end)

Return end position of text selection.

point-min

(point-min)

Return the start position of visible buffer. (respect Narrow to Region)

point-max

(point-max)

Return the end position of visible buffer. (respect Narrow to Region )

• Positions (ELISP Manual)

Move Cursor

goto-char

(goto-char POSITION)

Move cursor to a given position.

;; move cursor to position 392
(goto-char 392)

forward-char

(forward-char &optional N)

Move cursor forward by N characters.

see also backward-char

;; move cursor by 9 chars
(forward-char 9)

beginning-of-line

(beginning-of-line &optional N)

Move cursor to beginning of line. If N is given, move forward N-1 lines first. [see Emacs Lisp: Functions on Line]

see also end-of-line

skip-chars-forward

(skip-chars-forward STRING &optional LIM)

• Move cursor forward by skip a given set of characters.
• LIM should be a buffer position.
• Returns the distance traveled.

Also skip-chars-backward.

;; move cursor to the first char that's not a newline or tab
(skip-chars-forward "\n\t")

• Motion (ELISP Manual)

Save Cursor Position

When moving cursor, you often want to preserve user's original cursor position, so the cursor won't end up somewhere unexpected when your command is finished.

save-excursion

(save-excursion BODY)

Run BODY, and restore cursor position and buffer. See also: Emacs Lisp: Save narrow-to-region

(save-excursion
  ;; code here that moved cursor
)