A clarification on the Emacs Tutorial

A clarification on the Emacs Tutorial

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

So, I had some free time and was going through the tutorial and came
to this part

Note that a single C-k kills the contents of the line, and a second
C-k kills the line itself, and makes all the other lines move up.  C-k
treats a numeric argument specially: it kills that many lines AND
their contents.  This is not mere repetition.  C-u 2 C-k kills two
lines and their newlines; typing C-k twice would not do that.

Right, I *know* this,OK?  I understand this perfectly but could you
tell me what's that sentence "This is not mere repetition" for?  I
can't see what that sentence is trying to say in context.  If I remove
that sentence it makes perfect sense but maddeningly I can't figure
what that sentence is trying to convey.

Anyone?

 sivaram
 -- 

Re: A clarification on the Emacs Tutorial

[Perry Smith]

On Jul 22, 2011, at 12:50 PM, Sivaram Neelakantan wrote:

> So, I had some free time and was going through the tutorial and came
> to this part
> 
> Note that a single C-k kills the contents of the line, and a second
> C-k kills the line itself, and makes all the other lines move up.  C-k
> treats a numeric argument specially: it kills that many lines AND
> their contents.  This is not mere repetition.  C-u 2 C-k kills two
> lines and their newlines; typing C-k twice would not do that.
> 
> Right, I *know* this,OK?  I understand this perfectly but could you
> tell me what's that sentence "This is not mere repetition" for?  I
> can't see what that sentence is trying to say in context.  If I remove
> that sentence it makes perfect sense but maddeningly I can't figure
> what that sentence is trying to convey.
> 
> Anyone?

I believe the author with that sentence is mostly trying to say "hey!
look!. this might not be what you are expecting".  I think an English
prof (or teacher) would hammer that the "this" refers to something
outside of the sentence which is weak and in fact does not reference
anything concrete.  But, a creative writing prof would counter that it
is a deliberate attempt to pause the reader.

The gist is summarized with the last compound sentence.

HTH
pedz

Re: A clarification on the Emacs Tutorial

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Sivaram Neelakantan <nsivaram.net@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:20:30 +0530
> 
> So, I had some free time and was going through the tutorial and came
> to this part
> 
> Note that a single C-k kills the contents of the line, and a second
> C-k kills the line itself, and makes all the other lines move up.  C-k
> treats a numeric argument specially: it kills that many lines AND
> their contents.  This is not mere repetition.  C-u 2 C-k kills two
> lines and their newlines; typing C-k twice would not do that.
> 
> Right, I *know* this,OK?  I understand this perfectly but could you
> tell me what's that sentence "This is not mere repetition" for?  I
> can't see what that sentence is trying to say in context.  If I remove
> that sentence it makes perfect sense but maddeningly I can't figure
> what that sentence is trying to convey.

That sentence is trying to convey that "C-u 2 C-k" is not the same as
"C-k C-k".  The "normal" effect of "C-u 2" before a command is to
perform that command twice; the text is trying to explain that in this
case, "C-u 2" is not just repetition of "C-k" 2 times.

Re: A clarification on the Emacs Tutorial

[Johnny]

Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com> writes:

>> Note that a single C-k kills the contents of the line, and a second
>> C-k kills the line itself, and makes all the other lines move up.  C-k
>> treats a numeric argument specially: it kills that many lines AND
>> their contents.  This is not mere repetition.  C-u 2 C-k kills two
>> lines and their newlines; typing C-k twice would not do that.
>> 
>> Right, I *know* this,OK?  I understand this perfectly but could you
>> tell me what's that sentence "This is not mere repetition" for?  I
>> can't see what that sentence is trying to say in context.  If I remove
>> that sentence it makes perfect sense but maddeningly I can't figure
>> what that sentence is trying to convey.
>> 
>> Anyone?
>
> I believe the author with that sentence is mostly trying to say "hey!
> look!. this might not be what you are expecting".  I think an English
> prof (or teacher) would hammer that the "this" refers to something
> outside of the sentence which is weak and in fact does not reference
> anything concrete.  But, a creative writing prof would counter that it
> is a deliberate attempt to pause the reader.
>
> The gist is summarized with the last compound sentence.

I think the statement makes perfect sense.

By providing the universal argument to the command, you will "not
merely" repeat the command that number of times. In fact, providing
the universal argument 1 is not doing the same as just runnning the
command once; hence, it is not "merely repeating".

regards,
-- 
Johnny