Emacs tips

ITT we give fairly short tips or advice about Emacs.

1
If you want line numbers for Emacs, use Linum mode: http://stud4.tuwien.ac.at/~e0225855/linum/linum.html
You'll probably want to have a space between the line numbers and your buffer's content, so modify linum.el: on line 160 or so of linum.el, change (setq width (max width (length str))) to (setq width (max width (+ (length str) 1))).
Example here: http://www.emacswiki.org/pics/static/LinumGap.png

2
ido-mode for M-x:


    (defun ido-execute ()
      (interactive)
      (call-interactively
       (intern
        (ido-completing-read
         "M-x "
         (let (cmd-list)
           (mapatoms (lambda (S) (when (commandp S) (setq cmd-list (cons (format "%S" S) cmd-list)))))
           cmd-list)))))
   
    (global-set-key "\M-x" 'ido-execute)
Good for newbies.