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Re: A clarification on the Emacs Tutorial


From: Johnny
Subject: Re: A clarification on the Emacs Tutorial
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:56:37 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.110018 (No Gnus v0.18) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux)

Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com> writes:

>> Note that a single C-k kills the contents of the line, and a second
>> C-k kills the line itself, and makes all the other lines move up.  C-k
>> treats a numeric argument specially: it kills that many lines AND
>> their contents.  This is not mere repetition.  C-u 2 C-k kills two
>> lines and their newlines; typing C-k twice would not do that.
>> 
>> Right, I *know* this,OK?  I understand this perfectly but could you
>> tell me what's that sentence "This is not mere repetition" for?  I
>> can't see what that sentence is trying to say in context.  If I remove
>> that sentence it makes perfect sense but maddeningly I can't figure
>> what that sentence is trying to convey.
>> 
>> Anyone?
>
> I believe the author with that sentence is mostly trying to say "hey!
> look!. this might not be what you are expecting".  I think an English
> prof (or teacher) would hammer that the "this" refers to something
> outside of the sentence which is weak and in fact does not reference
> anything concrete.  But, a creative writing prof would counter that it
> is a deliberate attempt to pause the reader.
>
> The gist is summarized with the last compound sentence.

I think the statement makes perfect sense.

By providing the universal argument to the command, you will "not
merely" repeat the command that number of times. In fact, providing
the universal argument 1 is not doing the same as just runnning the
command once; hence, it is not "merely repeating".

regards,
-- 
Johnny



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