13.3 Other Kill Commands

C-w

Kill region (from point to the mark) (kill-region).

M-d

Kill word (kill-word). See section Words.

M-<DEL>

Kill word backwards (backward-kill-word).

C-x <DEL>

Kill back to beginning of sentence (backward-kill-sentence). See section Sentences.

M-k

Kill to end of sentence (kill-sentence).

C-M-k

Kill the following balanced expression (kill-sexp). See section Expressions with Balanced Parentheses.

M-z char

Kill through the next occurrence of char (zap-to-char).

The most general kill command is C-w (kill-region), which kills everything between point and the mark. With this command, you can kill any contiguous sequence of characters, if you first set the region around them.

A convenient way of killing is combined with searching: M-z (zap-to-char) reads a character and kills from point up to (and including) the next occurrence of that character in the buffer. A numeric argument acts as a repeat count. A negative argument means to search backward and kill text before point.

Other syntactic units can be killed: words, with M-<DEL> and M-d (see section Words); balanced expressions, with C-M-k (see section Expressions with Balanced Parentheses); and sentences, with C-x <DEL> and M-k (see section Sentences).