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RE: What's the meaning of "^A" in emacs?


From: Drew Adams
Subject: RE: What's the meaning of "^A" in emacs?
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2015 08:22:13 -0700 (PDT)

> > It is common to use `C-j' when you interactively enter a regexp
> > that contains a newline char (Control J).
> 
> I take that part back; sorry.

No, I don't.  (Sorry for the noise.  For a second I thought
maybe Emacs had wised up wrt `C-j'.)

The problem is that `C-j' and `C-m' do not self-insert in
the minibuffer keymaps.  So when a command such as
`query-replace' reads a pattern (string of chars) it does
not include any `C-j' or `C-m' (aka `RET') chars that you
hit in the search string.

Instead, it interprets them as commands to enter the other
(self-inserting) chars you have typed so far as the search
string.  So to enter these control chars you need to "quote"
them, using `C-q'.



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