Re: how to stop delete key putting a region into kill ring

[Thierry Volpiatto <thierry.volpiatto@gmail.com>]

Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> writes:

> [Somewhat off-topic for this list, so it might be better to follow up
> on gnu.emacs.help or some such.]
>
> Ivanov Dmitry <usr345@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> When I am editing a text in Emacs - not only in org-mode - when I
>> select a region and press <Del> to remove it, it's being placed into
>> the clipboard and when I want to paste some text instead I have to get
>> rid of it.
>> 
>
>> Does anybody know, how to stop it and make <Del> simply kill the
>> region without putting it into the clipboard?
>> 
>
> My <delete> key is (normally) bound to delete-char and it does not
> behave at all the way you describe: in particular, it does not matter
> whether a region is selected or not - it deletes one character (and that
> is *not* saved in the kill ring.) In order to delete a selected region,
> I use C-w (kill-region) which *does* save the killed region to the kill
> ring (it also copies it to the X cut buffer - or the successors
> thereof - if emacs is running under X.) The kill-region function is also
> bound to S-<delete> in my case, which may be what you mean - or it may
> be that you have customized your keys somehow.

Things have changed in Emacs24:

,----
| *** New option `delete-active-region'.
| If non-nil, C-d, [delete], and DEL delete the region if it is active
| and no prefix argument is given.  If set to `kill', these commands
| kill instead.
`----

Before i had to use this:

,----
| (defun tv-delete-char (arg beg end)
|   (interactive "p\nr")
|   (if (region-active-p)
|       (delete-region beg end)
|       (delete-char arg)))
| 
| (global-set-key (kbd "C-d") 'tv-delete-char)
`----

> You can delete the region without saving it to the kill ring by calling
> the function delete-region (which in my case is bound to the Clear item
> in the Edit menu). And you can rebind any key you want to call this
> function (in particular, the <delete> key, however inadvisable that
> would be)[1], at the risk of being incompatible with everybody else in
> the universe and therefore having a harder time getting help. In
> particular, if you do that, mentioning keys is not going to help: you
> will have to use C-h c (describe-key-briefly) or C-h k (describe-key) on
> the key in order to find out the function that it is bound to and then
> mention that. You might want to do that now with <delete> and see what
> function it is bound to.
>
> <opinion>
> This latter problem is partly the reason that having command names, as
> well as key descriptions, in the manual is useful. It is also why
> things like ErgoEmacs (see Don Womick's posting in this list a little
> while ago) make whatever hair I have left on my head stand on end.
> </opinion>
>
> BTW, I mention X and assume that you are running on some Unix variant.
> If you are running on Windows of some sort, things are probably different,
> at least in some details.
>
> HTH,
> Nick
>
> [1] see section 57.4, "Customizing Key Bindings", in the Emacs manual
>     for details.
>
>
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-- 
Thierry Volpiatto
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