Emacs Lisp: Text Editing Functions

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)

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