Xah's Emacs Lisp Tutorial

Xah Lee, 2005, ..., 2008.

This is a emacs lisp tutorial. The tutorial is focused on practical needs, and gives many examples.

This tutorial is designed so that each lesson is self-contained. However, it is recommened you read all items in the Elisp Basics section, and in order.

Elisp Basics

• 1. Emacs Lisp Basics
• 2. Overview to Text-Edit Programing In Emacs
• 3. Simple Elisp Examples!
• 4. Tips For Editing Lisp Code With Emacs

• 5. Elisp Basic Text-editing Functions
• 6. Emacs Lisp Idioms (Some basic programing patterns for text processing)

• Introduction to Elisp References

Real-World Examples

Generic Tasks

• Regex Replace with a Function. Writing a function for the replacement string.
• Creating Next/Previous Navigation Bars. Use a custom function for replacement string, to create the navigation bars for pages of a htmlized book.
• Repeated Find Replace. A command that cleans the current file by multiple Find-Replace operations.
• Execute/Compile Current File. A command that executes the current file (“.sh”, “.pl”, “.py”, “.java”...).

Interactive Command Examples

The following are examples of writing a command to be used interactively. Typically, the command acts on the current word, line, or region.

• Writing a wrap-url Function. Turn a url into a html link
• Writing image-linkify Function. Turn a file path into a HTML inline image.
• Writing make-html-table. Turn a text block into a HTML table.
• Writing a Custom HTML Link Function. Turn a word into a html link to local file, according to local dir structure.

More complex cases.

• Writing a google-earth Function. Create a google-earth link, and KML file, with words under cursor as input.
• Writing htmlize-block Function for Syntax Coloring Code In HTML. Turn the current block of source code into syntax-colored html marked-up.

Batch-style or Complex Text Processing

In the following examples, typically a function is applied to hundreds or thousands of text files, either to generate a report or modify each file.

• Text Processing with Elisp. HTML tag transformation on a set a files.
• Text Processing HTML. HTML tags transformation.

• Generate a Web Links Report. Create a report by searching links in thousands of html files.
• Create sitemap. Create a sitemap report.
• Make Downloadable Archive of a Website. Create a downloadable version of a website.

Emacs Lisp Language Detail

• Elisp Lesson: Hash-table. Elisp hash-table tutorial.

Misc

• Emacs Command Frequency
• Emacs Lisp Function Frequency
• How Purely Nested Notation Limits The Language's Utility