There are two general classes of commands that remove text from the buffer: delete commands and kill commands. Delete commands remove text from the buffer, and throw it away. Kill commands remove text from the buffer, but save the text in a special place called the kill buffer . Kill commands clear the kill buffer only if the previous command was not a kill command. Multiple kill commands executed sequentially append text to the kill buffer.

C-D (forw-del-char)

Delete characters to the left of dot. If an argument is specified then that number of characters is deleted. If no argument is specified then 1 character is deleted. In addition, if an argument is specified, the rubout command kills the text instead of deleting it. The command fails if there is not enough text between the start of the buffer and dot.

Rubout,C-H,Backspace (back-del-char)

Delete characters to the left of dot. If an argument is specified then that number of characters is deleted. If no argument is specified then 1 character is deleted. In addition, if an argument is specified, the rubout command kills the text instead of deleting it. The command fails if there is not enough text between the start of the buffer and dot.

C-K (kill-line)

This is the basic killing command. If there is no argument it kills from dot to the end of the line, unless dot is at the end of line, when it kills the end of line. If a positive argument is specified, C-K kills that many lines, including the newlines. If an argument of 0 is specified, C-K kills from the start of the current line to dot. Finally, if a negative argument is specified, C-K kills backwards over abs(arg) newlines. This command fails if there aren't enough characters left in the buffer to be killed.

C-W (kill-region)

Kill all of the text enclosed in the region, and put it into the kill buffer. If an argument is specified, then delete the text instead of killing it; this is useful when memory fills up and MicroEMACS can't allocate space for the kill buffer. The value of the argument, if any, is ignored.

C-Y (yank)

Insert the text from the kill buffer into the current buffer at dot. If an argument is specified, it specifies the number of times the text is yanked. If no argument is specified, yank the text back once. Dot is advanced over the inserted text, as if the text had been typed in normally. Always succeeds.

M-W (copy-region)

Put all of the text enclosed in the region into the kill buffer, without deleting it from the current buffer. This is similar to C-W followed by C-Y, except that the buffer is not flagged as having been changed.

C-X C-O (del-blank-lines)

Delete blank lines around dot. If dot is sitting on a blank line, this command deletes all the blank lines above and below the current line. If it is sitting on a non blank line then it deletes all of the blank lines after the line. Any argument is ignored.