Emacs: Cut, Copy & Paste

1. Emacs Cut, Copy & Paste

Cut, Copy and Paste in Emacs, is a bit different when compared to the standard commands. The parallelism is:

However, Emacs has a futher very useful tools: a clipboard (called kill-ring) history of copy/cut content.

You can see your copy history in two ways:

• via GUI-menu Edit -> Paste from kill Menu;
• via CLI by calling describe-variable F1-v and then typing kill-ring.

You can paste a previous copy content by calling yank-pop M-y one or more time to insert from earlier history:

1. First, do a paste C-y;
2. M-y to swap the paste content from previous entry;
3. Repeat M-y for earlier content.

2. Multiple Clipboards: Emacs register

If you want to have a total control on the memorized content, you need to use the registers of Emacs. When a piece of text has been saved in a register, you can paste it all the times you want, by calling the proper register.

How to do it:

• Select a text, then call copy-to-register C-x r s, then type 1. This will store the text in register ‘1’ (register can be any digit or letter).
• To paste, call insert-register C-x r i, then type the register name.