The emacs editor is a powerful editor found on some Unix systems. This handout is only a brief guide to using the emacs editor. The control key is like a shift key that is held down while another key is pressed. For example, to type Ctrl-U , press and hold the Ctrl key and press the U key. The Esc key sends a special character, called the escape character to the computer.
Meta characters are unique to emacs.
In this handout and in most Unix documentation, the use of a meta character is shown as M-x . This means that you must first type the meta key and then the x key. In most versions of emacs, the Esc key is used as the meta key. Starting and stopping emacs To start the emacs editor, type the emacs command with the name of the file to be edited. If you've made changes to the file, emacs will ask you whether you want to save the changes.