Emacs Lisp: Text Editing Functions

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Here's the most used functions related to text editing.

Insert Text

;; insert string at current cursor position
(insert "sun and moon")

(info "(elisp) Text")

Delete Text

delete-char
Delete n characters to the right. Use negative number to delete to the left.
;; delete 9 chars starting at cursor pos
(delete-char 9)
delete-region
Delete text btween 2 positions. Often used with point-min for getting the minimal position in a buffer. because minimal position is not 1, when narrow-to-region is in effect. And use point-max for getting buffer max position.
;; deleting text btween positions 59 and 896
(delete-region 59 896)
erase-buffer
Delete all next in buffer, ignores narrow-to-region.
(erase-buffer)
delete-and-extract-region
Delete between 2 positions and return the deleted text.
(delete-and-extract-region 3 20)

Practical Elisp ⭐

Writing Command

Text Processing

Get User Input

File/Buffer

Writing Script