JED Editor Quick Reference

JED is a drop-in replacement for the EMACS editor, which has gotten very large and slow. The keybindings are almost entirely the same as gnu-emacs. It can be found as /usr/local/bin/jed on most vendor systems. It is must more lightweight and faster than gnu-emacs, and should be used for most simple text editing tasks, such as e-mail. It is especially recommended for users on the central mail servers as an faster alternative to emacs.


CONTROL                               ESCAPE (META)
-------                               -------------
 ^a   Go to start of line             ESC q    Format paragraph
 ^b   Move backward by characters     ESC s    Center line
 ^d   Forward delete character        ESC v    Move backword by pages
 ^e   Go to end of line               ESC w    Copy region to kill buffer
 ^f   Move forward by characters      ESC x    Execute JED command
 ^g   Abort out of things             ESC y    Yank and pop
 ^h   Help                            ESC %    Query search and replace
                                      ESC <    Move to start of buffer
    ^ha  Show related functions       ESC >    Move to end of buffer
    ^hf  Help on function             ESC $    Invoke ispell
    ^hh  Show basic key bindings
    ^hk  Show key binding
    ^hi  Bring up Info Browser        CONTROL-X
    ^hm  Display Unix man page        ---------
    ^hw  Show what key is             ^x b     Switch to buffer
         bound to a command           ^x d     Invoke directory editor
    ^h?  Show Menus                   ^x f     Set fill column
                                      ^x i     Insert file
 ^i (TAB) "Smart" line indent         ^x k     Kill buffer
 ^k   Kill to end of line             ^x s     Save buffers
 ^l   Put current line in center      ^x u     Undo
 ^n   Move forward by lines           ^x ^b    Display buffer list
 ^o   Open up a blank line            ^x ^c    Exit JED
 ^p   Move backward by lines          ^x ^f    Find file
 ^r   Search backwards                ^x ^o    Collapse blank lines to one  
 ^s   Search forward                  ^x ^a    Save current buffer
 ^v   Move forward by pages           ^x ^w    Write buffer to file
 ^w   Kill region           
 ^x   Command prefix
 ^y   Yank back from kill buffer 
 ^z   Suspend JED                
 ^_   Undo                       
 ^@   Set mark
A full listing of keybindings is available in the document /afs/cs.cmu.edu/misc/jed/src/jed/doc/emacs.txt

Common Questions

Most jed configuration is done via settings in a file called the .jedrc -- if you need one and do not already have one, create a file named ".jedrc" in your home directory (i.e. issue the command "jed ~/.jedrc" to create the new file and edit it).

  1. Tab doesn't seem to be working...

    If TAB is not indenting, try inserting this line into your .jedrc:
    setkey("self_insert_cmd", "^I");

  2. I do/don't want autoindenting...

    Set autoindenting through the WRAP_INDENTS variable (in your .jedrc):
    WRAP_INDENTS = 0;
    Set this value to 1 to enable autoindenting.
    To completely disable all auto-indenting, (the above controls code-style autoindenting) add this to your .jedrc:
    setkey("newline", "^M");