27 Shell mode commands
If you want to run another particular shell (for example, the zed shell) when you’re in Emacs, you can add the following command to your .emacs file:
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(setq shell-file-name "/bin/zsh")
When Emacs starts an interactive shell, it runs an additional initialization file after your shell’s normal startup files. The name of this file is .emacs_shell-name, where shell-name is the name of the shell you want to use in Emacs. It must be located in your home directory. For example, if you use the C shell, you can add Emacs-only startup commands by placing them in the file .emacs_csh. Let’s say that when you’re in Emacs, you want to change the prompt to emacs:% and you want an environment variable called WITHIN_EDITOR to be set to T. Here’s the contents of your .emacs_csh file:
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set prompt="emacs:% "
setenv WITHIN_EDITOR T
Within a shell buffer, Emacs also sets the environment variable EMACS to t, and sets your terminal type (the TERM variable) to emacs.
| Keystrokes | Command name | Action |
|---|---|---|
| (none) | shell | Enter shell mode. |
| C-c C-c Signals → BREAK | comint-interrupt-subjob | Interrupt current job; equivalent toC-c. |
| C-d | comint-delchar-or-maybe-eof | Send EOF character if at end of buffer; delete a character elsewhere. |
| C-c C-d Signals → EOF | comint-send-eof | Send EOF character. |
| C-c C-u | comint-kill-input | Erase current line; equivalent toC-u in Unix shells. |
| C-c C-z Signals → STOP | comint-stop-subjob | Suspend or stop a job;C-z in Unix shells. |
| M-p In/Out → Previous Input | comint-previous-input | Retrieve previous commands (can be repeated to find earlier commands). |
| M-n In/Out → Next Input | comint-next-input | Retrieve subsequent commands (can be repeated to find more recent commands). |
| Enter | comint-send-input | Send input on current line. |
| Tab | comint-dynamic-complete | Complete current command, filename, or variable name. |
| C-c C-o In/Out → Delete Current Output Group | comint-kill-output | Delete output from last command. |
| C-c C-r | comint-show-output | Move first line of output to top of window. |
| C-c C-e In/Out → Show Maximum Output | comint-show-maximum-output | Move last line of output to bottom of window. |
| C-c C-p In/Out → Backward Output Group | comint-previous-prompt | Move to previous command. |
| C-c C-n In/Out → Forward Output Group | comint-next-prompt | Move to next command. |