Emacs/emacs/Other-Kill-Commands

12.1.3 Other Kill Commands

C-w: Kill the region (kill-region).
M-w: Copy the region into the kill ring (kill-ring-save).
M-d: Kill the next word (kill-word). See Words.
M-DEL: Kill one word backwards (backward-kill-word).
C-x DEL: Kill back to beginning of sentence (backward-kill-sentence). See Sentences.
M-k: Kill to the end of the sentence (kill-sentence).
C-M-k: Kill the following balanced expression (kill-sexp). See Expressions.
M-z char: Kill through the next occurrence of char (zap-to-char).
M-x zap-up-to-char char: Kill up to, but not including, the next occurrence of char.

One of the commonly-used kill commands is C-w (kill-region), which kills the text in the region (see Mark). Similarly, M-w (kill-ring-save) copies the text in the region into the kill ring without removing it from the buffer. If the mark is inactive when you type C-w or M-w, the command acts on the text between point and where you last set the mark (see Using Region).

Emacs also provides commands to kill specific syntactic units: words, with M-DEL and M-d (see Words); balanced expressions, with C-M-k (see Expressions); and sentences, with C-x DEL and M-k (see Sentences).

The command M-z (zap-to-char) combines killing with searching: it reads a character and kills from point up to (and including) the next occurrence of that character in the buffer. A numeric argument acts as a repeat count; a negative argument means to search backward and kill text before point. A history of previously used characters is maintained and can be accessed via the M-p/M-n keystrokes. This is mainly useful if the character to be used has to be entered via a complicated input method. A similar command zap-up-to-char kills from point up to, but not including the next occurrence of a character, with numeric argument acting as a repeat count.