Moving the Cursor

Many people find that reading screens of text page by page is made easier when one is able to indicate particular pieces of text with some kind of pointing device. Since this is the case, GNU Info (both the Emacs and standalone versions) have several commands which allow you to move the cursor about the screen. The notation used in this manual to describe keystrokes is identical to the notation used within the Emacs manual, and the GNU Readline manual. See section `Character Conventions' in the GNU Emacs Manual, if you are unfamilar with the notation.

The following table lists the basic cursor movement commands in Info. Each entry consists of the key sequence you should type to execute the cursor movement, the M-x(2) command name (displayed in parentheses), and a short description of what the command does. All of the cursor motion commands can take an numeric argument (see section Miscellaneous Commands), to find out how to supply them. With a numeric argument, the motion commands are simply executed that many times; for example, a numeric argument of 4 given to next-line causes the cursor to move down 4 lines. With a negative numeric argument, the motion is reversed; an argument of -4 given to the next-line command would cause the cursor to move up 4 lines.

C-n (next-line)

Moves the cursor down to the next line.

C-p (prev-line)

Move the cursor up to the previous line.

C-a (beginning-of-line)

Move the cursor to the start of the current line.

C-e (end-of-line)

Moves the cursor to the end of the current line.

C-f (forward-char)

Move the cursor forward a character.

C-b (backward-char)

Move the cursor backward a character.

M-f (forward-word)

Moves the cursor forward a word.

M-b (backward-word)

Moves the cursor backward a word.

M-< (beginning-of-node)

b

Moves the cursor to the start of the current node.

M-> (end-of-node)

Moves the cursor to the end of the current node.

M-r (move-to-window-line)

Moves the cursor to a specific line of the window. Without a numeric argument, M-r moves the cursor to the start of the line in the center of the window. With a numeric argument of n, M-r moves the cursor to the start of the nth line in the window.