Emacs: Move Cursor to Beginning of Line/Paragraph 🚀

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Here's a command that move cursor to beginning of line (of visible char) or previous paragraph.

It combines the following into one command:

(defun xah-beginning-of-line-or-block ()
  "Move cursor to beginning of line or previous paragraph.

• When called first time, move cursor to beginning of char in current line. (if already, move to beginning of line.)
• When called again, move cursor backward by jumping over any sequence of whitespaces containing 2 blank lines.

URL `http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/emacs_keybinding_design_beginning-of-line-or-block.html'
Version 2017-05-13"
  (interactive)
  (let (($p (point)))
    (if (or (equal (point) (line-beginning-position))
            (equal last-command this-command ))
        (if (re-search-backward "\n[\t\n ]*\n+" nil "NOERROR")
            (progn
              (skip-chars-backward "\n\t ")
              (forward-char ))
          (goto-char (point-min)))
      (progn
        (back-to-indentation)
        (when (eq $p (point))
          (beginning-of-line))))))

(defun xah-end-of-line-or-block ()
  "Move cursor to end of line or next paragraph.

• When called first time, move cursor to end of line.
• When called again, move cursor forward by jumping over any sequence of whitespaces containing 2 blank lines.

URL `http://xahlee.info/emacs/emacs/emacs_keybinding_design_beginning-of-line-or-block.html'
Version 2017-05-30"
  (interactive)
  (if (or (equal (point) (line-end-position))
          (equal last-command this-command ))
      (progn
        (re-search-forward "\n[\t\n ]*\n+" nil "NOERROR" ))
    (end-of-line)))

For these commands to be useful, you need to give it a key. For example:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-a") 'xah-beginning-of-line-or-block)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-e") 'xah-end-of-line-or-block)

[see Emacs: Define Keybinding]

These commands are great because, in GNU Emacs's default, you press a key to move to beginning of line, it's dead there. If you hold the key, nothing happens. This is a waste of key. With these commands, you can move to beginning/end of line, or hold the key to continuously move to previous/next paragraphs. [see Keybinding Design, Fast-Repeat Commands]

2017-05-10 thanks to @stasvlasov.