The kill ring gets my vote.
Regional undo/redo is a close second.
The single most useful Emacs feature
11–20 of 112 posts
Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#12This is not really a feature, as such, but it is a classic work-around for one emacs' many silly defaults:
; Ask for y/n on all queries that normally ask for yes/no.
(fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p)Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#13`ansi-term` is probably is for me. Integrating your terminal closer with your editor is really amazing. Using `multi-term` to make it easier to handle multiple terminals, and you've got a really nice integrated environment.
That's probably the killer feature for me.
Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#14on a side note, whenever i asked such open ended question on stackoverflow, it would quickly get closed by some other user claiming that "there is no right answer" and the question must be closed. But there are so many great open ended questions on there that score so high among users. i guess it's a matter of luck that some anal retentive person doesn't get to it first?
Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#15hi-lock-mode! Hi-lock lets you specify regexes to highlight anywhere in a file; it's like domain-specific font-lock. It's astoundingly useful in code review. For instance, given a giant blob of J2EE web handler code, I can eyeball one handler, recognize the annotation mapping the method to URL syntax, and then punch in a hi-lock regex to light up similar annotations everywhere in the file, then glance through the who…
I've been trying to figure out a good way to do this for a while in vim, and can't say I've found much. The best i can figure is something to this effect:
highlight LowVis ctermbg=233 guibg=233 ctermfg=240
syn region LowVis start="\s*log_" end=";" contains=LowVis onelineRe: The single most useful Emacs feature
#16C-x C-t
Transpose the current line with the previous line.
Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#17I like idomenu, which lists variable/function definitions in your file. When you combine it with ido-menu, it's magic. Bind it to C-c s, and you get a list of symbols you can navigate extremely fast.
The downside is that if the symbol locations change in a file, you'd have to refresh it. :(
Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#18For Vim users like myself, there's a related Stack Overflow Discussion: What is your most productive shortcut with Vim?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most...
Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#19The single most useful Emacs feature is the design of Emacs as a platform for hosting ELisp. Without ELisp, and the OS and text editing services provided by the Emacs run-time, none of these extensions would be possible.
Trite but true!
Re: The single most useful Emacs feature
#20on a side note, whenever i asked such open ended question on stackoverflow, it would quickly get closed by some other user claiming that "there is no right answer" and the question must be closed. But there are so many great open ended questions on there that score so high among users. i guess it's a matter of luck that some anal retentive person doesn't get to it first?
It's not exactly luck. Until today this question hasn't been active since 2009, when opened-ended questions were permitted. Now that it's been bumped it'll be closed shortly.