Programming Environment for C-based Courses

Emacs is Number One!

I recommend using emacs19 to do your programming. Forget that ancient and obsolete VI stuff! Emacs is the happening place! To run emacs19 just use the 'emacs19' command in the departmental Unix environment. (When not working in an X windowing environment, run version 18 of emacs, via the 'emacs' command.)

Learning emacs

Emacs is the world's most powerful editor, but this comes at a price: Emacs has a steep learning curve. I have been using emacs for 13 years, and pick new stuff up all the time. Still, you only need to know a little about the editor to use it. You will pick up more powerful features as you become more comfortable with the editor. There are four good ways to learn about emacs:

1. Run the emacs tutorial. To do this, use the Help menu, or just type C-h t.
2. Check out Keith Waclena's Web-based emacs tutorial.
3. Use emacs' built-in Info facility. C-h i. Use the middle mouse-button to select topics.
4. Ask other emacs users. If you see somebody doing something neat, ask them how they do it.

Modifications to Emacs for Programmers

There are a couple of modifications you should make to your emacs environment to make it C or C++ friendly: Put the following code in your ~/.emacs file (before fiddling with your .emacs files, always make a copy someplace safe, in case something goes wrong):

• M-return is part of the completion system. If there are at least three non-space characters in front of the cursor, emacs will replace that character sequence with the most recently referenced symbol having that prefix. Repeated M-returns will rotate through all symbols matching that prefix. The completion functionality should work in all buffers, by the way, not just in Lisp. This extremely powerful feature should allow you to work with fairly long, mneumonic symbol names, as you won't have to type them more than once. You can use the completion facility for subsequent references.
• The TAB key should properly indent a line according to mode. So if you are working in a C buffer, it should indent the line properly for a C program. If you are writing a Lisp program, it should properly indent for that mode.