Moving the Cursor

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Moving the cursor

Many people find that reading screens of text page by page is made easier when one is able to indicate particular pieces of text with some kind of pointing device. Since this is the case, GNU info (both the Emacs and standalone versions) have several commands which let you move the cursor about the screen. The notation in this documentation to describe keystrokes is identical to the notation used within the Emacs manual, and the GNU Readline manual. See “Characters, Keys and Commands” in GNU Emacs Manual, if you are unfamiliar with the notation.

The following table lists the basic info cursor movement commands.

Each entry consists of the key sequence to type to perform the cursor movement: a command like M-x, and a short description of what it does. M-x is also a command; it invokes execute-extended-command. See “Keyboard Input” in the GNU Emacs Manual for more detailed information.

Cursor motion also uses a numeric argument, as described in Miscellaneous commands. A numeric argument executes a command that many times; for example, 4 given to next-line moves the cursor down 4 lines.

A negative numeric argument reverses the motion; thus, an argument of -4 for the next-line command moves the cursor up 4 lines.

C-n (next-line)

Moves the cursor down to the next line.

C-p (prev-line)

Move the cursor up to the previous line.

C-a (beginning-of-line)

Move the cursor to the start of the current line.

C-e (end-of-line)

Moves the cursor to the end of the current line.

C-f (forward-char)

Move the cursor forward a character.

C-b (backward-char)

Move the cursor backward a character.

M-f (forward-word)

Moves the cursor forward a word.

M-b (backward-word)

Moves the cursor backward a word.

M-< (beginning-of-node)
b

Moves the cursor to the start of the current node.

M-> (end-of-node)

Moves the cursor to the end of the current node.

M-r (move-to-window-line)

Moves the cursor to a specific line of the window. Without a numeric argument, M-r moves the cursor to the start of the line in the center of the window. With a numeric argument of n, M-r moves the cursor to the start of the nth line in the window.

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