Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!jr@bbn.com
From: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: Re: block manipulation
Keywords: is there a way to manipulate columns
Message-ID: <51662@bbn.COM>
Date: 2 Feb 90 16:11:23 GMT
References: <1418@awdprime.UUCP>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: jr@bbn.com (John Robinson)
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation, Cambridge MA
Lines: 42
In-reply-to: ron@woan.austin.ibm.com (Ronald S. Woan/2113674)

In article <1418@awdprime.UUCP>, ron@woan (Ronald S. Woan/2113674) writes:
>Is there any support in GNU EMACS for manipulating blocks of texts
>(not regions) spanning multiple lines? Or how about a real simple one,
>how do you get rid of a column without having to write a lisp
>functions to go down line by line deleting a particular character
>position?

You want the rectangle package (I had to read a while before I
understood what you menat by "blocks"; in emacs they are called
rectangles).  For starters,

  (apropos "rectangle")

  clear-rectangle		      
    Function: Blank out rectangle with corners at point and mark.
  copy-rectangle-to-register    C-x R
    Function: Copy rectangular region into register REG.
  delete-extract-rectangle      
    Function: Return and delete contents of rectangle with corners at START and END.
  delete-rectangle	      
    Function: Delete (don't save) text in rectangle with point and mark as corners.
  extract-rectangle	      
    Function: Return contents of rectangle with corners at START and END.
  insert-rectangle	      
    Function: Insert text of RECTANGLE with upper left corner at point.
  kill-rectangle		      
    Function: Delete rectangle with corners at point and mark; save as last killed one.
  open-rectangle		      
    Function: Blank out rectangle with corners at point and mark, shifting text right.
  yank-rectangle		      
    Function: Yank the last killed rectangle with upper left corner at point.

(note: C-x r is the default binding for copy-rectangle-to-register,
but I rebind it to make room for mh-rmail.  Beats me why only that one
function of the whole list gets a default binding...)

Basically, a rectangle is the characters within the box formed by
point and mark.  Empty positions are filled up with spaces as
necessary.
--
/jr, nee John Robinson     Life did not take over the globe by combat,
jr@bbn.com or bbn!jr          but by networking -- Lynn Margulis