efficient replacing – really faster compared to using the mouse?

[Ferdinand <Ferdinand.Gruebler@gmx.de>]

Hi,

I am currently trying to get used to emacs.
Before I heavily relied on TextMate (on Mac OS).

A lot of people claim that, once you learned all the shortcuts, emacs is much faster without ever using the mouse.


I just ran into a problem where I really couldn't figure out how to do this with emacs at all.
Eventually I switched back to TextMate ...


So, probably I just am not aware of some key-combinations or there are other tricks I don't know, so I thought I just ask some emacs-professionals here on the list.


Here is the specific problem:

I have a html table with a lot of radio buttons.
These radio buttons have names (xyz + a number).
Now I have to change all the numbers in the following way:


- orignal:
----------

print("<tr>\n");

    ... something else ...

	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz23' value='0'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz23' value='1'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz23' value='2'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz23' value='3'> </td>\n");
	
print("</tr>\n");


print("<tr>\n");

    ... something else ...

	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz54' value='0'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz54' value='1'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz54' value='2'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz54' value='3'> </td>\n");
	
print("</tr>\n");

[....]



edited:
-------

print("<tr>\n");

    ... something else ...

	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz1' value='0'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz1' value='1'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz1' value='2'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz1' value='3'> </td>\n");
	
print("</tr>\n");


print("<tr>\n");

    ... something else ...

	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz2' value='0'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz2' value='1'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz2' value='2'> </td>\n");
	print("<td class='Button'> <input type='radio' name='xyz2' value='3'> </td>\n");
	
print("</tr>\n");

[and so on]



Now in TextMate I just switch to column-mode with my mouse (by pressing alt while selecting).
Then I draw a rectangle with the mouse to select the number behind xyz of one <tr>-block and type in the right number.
This is fairly easy to me and quite quick.

In emacs I just have no idea how to do this in a reasonable amount of time.
Only to navigate to the next block with C-n / C-p and to get to the right place in the line with C-b / C-f takes a lot of time.
And then to mark the beginning (with C-space) navigate to the end to replace it ...

That is much less efficient compared to using the mouse (in my opinion).


So what am I doing wrong here?
How do you solve such edits in emacs efficiently?


Thanks for any suggestions!