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Delete the character before point, or the region if it is active
(delete-backward-char).
Delete the character or grapheme cluster after point, or the region if
it is active (delete-forward-char).
Delete the character after point (delete-char).
Kill to the end of the line (kill-line).
Kill forward to the end of the next word (kill-word).
Kill back to the beginning of the previous word
(backward-kill-word).
The DEL (delete-backward-char) command removes
the character before point, moving the cursor and the characters after
it backwards. If point was at the beginning of a line, this deletes
the preceding newline, joining this line to the previous one.
If, however, the region is active, DEL instead deletes the text in the region. See The Mark and the Region, for a description of the region.
On most keyboards, DEL is labeled BACKSPACE, but we refer to it as DEL in this manual. (Do not confuse DEL with the Delete key; we will discuss Delete momentarily.) On some text terminals, Emacs may not recognize the DEL key properly. See If DEL Fails to Delete, if you encounter this problem.
The Delete (delete-forward-char) command deletes in the
opposite direction: it deletes the character after point, i.e., the
character under the cursor. If point was at the end of a line, this
joins the following line onto this one. Like DEL, it
deletes the text in the region if the region is active (see The Mark and the Region).
If the character after point is composed with following characters and
displayed as a single display unit, a so-called grapheme cluster
representing the entire sequence, Delete deletes the entire
sequence in one go. This is in contrast to DEL which always
deletes a single character, even if the character is composed.
C-d (delete-char) deletes the character after point,
similar to Delete, but regardless of whether the region is
active.
See Deletion, for more detailed information about the above deletion commands.
C-k (kill-line) erases (kills) a line at a time. If
you type C-k at the beginning or middle of a line, it kills all
the text up to the end of the line. If you type C-k at the end
of a line, it joins that line with the following line.
See Killing and Moving Text, for more information about C-k and related commands.
Next: Undoing Changes, Previous: Changing the Location of Point, Up: Basic Editing Commands [Contents][Index]