18 Registers

Emacs registers are compartments where you can save text, rectangles, positions, and other things for later use. Once you save text or a rectangle in a register, you can copy it into the buffer once, or many times; you can move point to a position saved in a register once, or many times.

Each register has a name, which consists of a single character. A register can store a number, a piece of text, a rectangle, a position, a window configuration, or a file name, but only one thing at any given time. Whatever you store in a register remains there until you store something else in that register. To see what a register r contains, use M-x view-register.

M-x view-register <RET> r

Display a description of what register r contains.

• Position: Saving positions in registers.
• Text: Saving text in registers.
• Rectangle: Saving rectangles in registers.
• Configurations: Saving window configurations in registers.
• Numbers: Numbers in registers.
• Files: File names in registers.
• Bookmarks: Bookmarks are like registers, but persistent.