I find negative repetitions counts frequently useful, e.g. if I am
entering…
mastodon / lispwizard@techhub.social

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lispwizard · 2026-10-07 22:08

I find negative repetitions counts frequently useful, e.g. if I am
entering plain text and realize that I want to capitalize the last
word I typed, I use m-- m-c and just continue typing (or m-- m-3 m-c
to capitalize the last three words).There are alternate ways to
specify that negative repetition count,
e.g. c-u - 3 or c-- c-3, but I chose the one above so I could just
hold down the platform-specific key for meta (usually alt) while
typing - 3 c in succession.Negative repetition counts are also useful
for many other operations,
e.g. upcase (m-u), downcase (m-l), delete a word (m-d), kill an
expression (c-m-k), etc.One specific (and perhaps less obvious)
situation in which I use a
negative repetition count: in a two-window split configuration where
the other (non-selected) window has lots of text to read (e.g. after
c-h k c-s to remind myself of the incremental-search internal
keystrokes), I use c-m-v to scroll the other window forward and c-m--
c-m-v to scroll it backward (without leaving the selected window).
#emacs #tidbit