# kill-rectangle(2)

[Home] [Commands] [Variables] [Macro-Dev] [Glossary]

## NAME

kill-rectangle - Delete a column of text
yank-rectangle - Insert a column of text

## SYNOPSIS

kill-rectangle (esc C-w)
n yank-rectangle (esc C-y)

## DESCRIPTION

kill-rectangle deletes a rectangle (or column) of text defined between the cursor and the set-mark position. The text between the mark column and the cursor column is removed from every line between the mark line and the cursor line inclusive and copied to the kill buffer. The delete text may then be extracted from the kill buffer using yank(2), yank-rectangle or yank-rectangle-overwrite(3).

The mark position may be ahead or behind the current cursor position. If the rectangle column boundary divides a tab character which spans multiple columns, the tab character is replaced with the equivalent number of spaces. Similarly if the boundary divides an unprintable character which is displayed using multiple characters (e.g. '`^A`' for character 0x01) then spaces are inserted before the character to move it to the right of the boundary.

yank-rectangle inserts the current kill buffer (which may or may not have been generated using kill-rectangle) into the current buffer in a column fashion. That is to say that the first line of text in the kill buffer is inserted into the current line of text in the current buffer from the current cursor column, the cursor is then moved the the next line and placed at the same column. The process is then repeated for the second line of text in the kill buffer etc.

## SEE ALSO

copy-rectangle(3), copy-region(2), kill-region(2), reyank(2), set-mark(2), string-rectangle(3), undo(2), yank(2), yank-rectangle-overwrite(3).

(c) Copyright JASSPA 2009
Last Modified: 2009/08/29
Generated On: 2009/10/12

</HMTL>