I'm looking for a way in emacs to shift text to the right or to the left by n
spaces. A similar functionality that it in vim <<
or >>
. It should work on a region or if no region is selected on a current line and not move the cursor from its current location.
The solution from EmacsWiki does not work very well as the M-x indent-rigidly
since it somewhat remembers the last region used and shifts that one instead. The closest seems to be the one here but I did not managed to make it work. I'm not a lisp developer so it's difficult to modify the code. I will appreciate any help.
Thanks!
Maybe this works the way you want.
(defun shift-text (distance)
(if (use-region-p)
(let ((mark (mark)))
(save-excursion
(indent-rigidly (region-beginning)
(region-end)
distance)
(push-mark mark t t)
(setq deactivate-mark nil)))
(indent-rigidly (line-beginning-position)
(line-end-position)
distance)))
(defun shift-right (count)
(interactive "p")
(shift-text count))
(defun shift-left (count)
(interactive "p")
(shift-text (- count)))
You could select the region then C-u C-x <tab>
will shift 4 spaces. You can type a number after C-u to change 4 to anything else.
To achieve this I usually do a trick:
- activate CUA mode
- go to the beginning of line
- C-RET, now if you move the cursor you should see a rectangular red region
- Move the cursor down the lines and type space until you've obtained the correct shifting.
This can be done also programmatically in some way (in the same way).
EDIT:
I've just read the article in emacs wiki, it's the same solution except for the CUA mode that is infinitely more powerful than the "common" rectanguar selection (since it's visual).