inserting a space in front of all lines

inserting a space in front of all lines

[Jade Dang]

Hi,
I have a file with thousands of lines and I want to indent all of them. Is there 
an easy way to do this?
Thanks,
Jade

Re: inserting a space in front of all lines

[Jesper Harder]

Jade Dang <jaddang@cisco.com> writes:

> I have a file with thousands of lines and I want to indent all of
> them. Is there an easy way to do this?

Mark the lines, `C-x h', and press `C-M-\' (indent-region).

Re: inserting a space in front of all lines

[Jade Dang]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I got it to work. I really appreciate the help!
Still learning all that emacs has to offer...


Jesper Harder wrote:
> Jade Dang <jaddang@cisco.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>I have a file with thousands of lines and I want to indent all of
>>them. Is there an easy way to do this?
> 
> 
> Mark the lines, `C-x h', and press `C-M-\' (indent-region).

Re: inserting a space in front of all lines

[Jeffery B. Rancier]

Jade Dang <jaddang@cisco.com> writes:

> I have a file with thousands of lines and I want to indent all of
> them. Is there an easy way to do this?

,----[ C-h k C-x h ]
| C-x h runs the command mark-whole-buffer
|    which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `simple'.
| (mark-whole-buffer)
| 
| Put point at beginning and mark at end of buffer.
| You probably should not use this function in Lisp programs;
| it is usually a mistake for a Lisp function to use any subroutine
| that uses or sets the mark.
`----

followed by:

,----[ C-h f indent-region RET ]
| indent-region is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `indent'.
| (indent-region START END COLUMN)
| 
| Indent each nonblank line in the region.
| With prefix no argument, indent each line using `indent-according-to-mode',
| or use `indent-region-function' to do the whole region if that's non-nil.
| If there is a fill prefix, make each line start with the fill prefix.
| With argument COLUMN, indent each line to that column.
| 
| When you call this from a program, START and END specify
| the region to indent, and COLUMN specifies the indentation column.
| If COLUMN is nil, then indent each line according to the mode.
`----
-- 
Thanks,
Jeff

Re: inserting a space in front of all lines

[kgold]

Jade Dang <jaddang@cisco.com> writes:

> I have a file with thousands of lines and I want to indent all of
> them. Is there an easy way to do this?

You've received replies for indenting.  

To insert arbitrary text, look at the rectangle commands.  In
particular, after defining a rectangle with all the lines of interest
and of zero width starting in the first column:

C-x r t runs the command string-rectangle
   which is an interactive autoloaded Lisp function in `rect'.

Replace rectangle contents with STRING on each line.
The length of STRING need not be the same as the rectangle width.