Re: Can't type in Command Prompt

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

Christen Cromer <ccromer169@gmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I just downloaded Emacs on my laptop which has windows 10, everything seems
> to work fine but I can't type in the emacs command prompt for some
> reason.

What does "type in the emacs command prompt" mean?

There's no emacs command prompt.  The principle of an emacs, is to not
have any command prompt, but instead, to have an event loop, taking in
events, like key-down, and calling a command found in a key-map indexed
by the key you typed.  So as soon as you can type a key, and it's
received by emacs, emacs executes commands.


> And because of that I cannot run my programs. Is there any tips or tricks
> you can give me so that I can fully utilize the software?

There are several ways to run external programs from emacs.

* You can use the commands bound by defaults to: 

      M-!      M-x shell-command RET
      M-|      M-x shell-command-on-region RET

  (you may prefix those with C-u to have the output replace the current
  region).  But the commands you give are interpreted by an external
  command interpreter and I don't know anything about MS-Windows command
  interpreters, so I couldn't say much about the syntax and commands you
  can type here.


* You can run a "shell":

     M-x shell RET
     M-x eshell RET

  shell uses an external command interpreter.  On MS-Windows, it not
  bash by default, I don't know anything about MS-Windows, so I can't
  help here.
  
  eshell is implemented in emacs lisp and therefore uses an internal
  command interpreter.  On the other hand, apart from a few built-in
  commands, it obviously runs external, MS-Window commands (of which I
  know nothing, so I can't help here).


* You can run terminal emulators:

    M-x term RET
    M-x terminal-emulator RET

  They will be similar to shells, but will implement more terminal
  emulation (eg. they will process terminal control codes). The only
  down side, is that there's only one very specific key sequence to exit
  from a terminal emulator, since all the other key sequences are sent
  to the program running in the terminal.

  Since those programs ask you what program to run, you can directly run
  your programs, without going thru an external command interpreter.


When I have to use a MS-Windows box, I install cygwin
(http://cygwin.com) and run emacs in cygwin, so that I have a unix-like
environment and command interpreter (ie. bash).


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a
dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to
keep the man from touching the equipment.” -- Carl Bass CEO Autodesk