Emacs provides special modes for many different programming languages, such as perl-mode, c-mode, c++-mode, ada-mode, makefile-mode, lisp-mode, etc. Each mode has specific knowledge on how to structure your code, about the keywords for syntax highlighting, about subexpressions and list structures for the MC-p family commands, and others. Everybody has his own style for structuring the code, so you can define your preferences in the .emacs file. Please check the info system for more information on this topic, or load my .emacs file from my homepage. The variables that affect the code indentation, are described in the mode help, try C-h m when you are in your favorite programming mode.
See table 10 for special programming commands.
| Programming | |
| Key, Action | Explanation |
MC-  , M-x indent-region | Restructures the marked region. This command only restructures the spacing before the beginning of the line, the rest of the line is unchanged. It is not as powerful as the indent command, which is described in section 4.2. |
| M-x compile | Executes the command specified in the variable compile-command, which can be set in .emacs with (setq compile-command "make -k"). |
| C-x ` | Parses the *make* buffer for errors and jumps to the point in the file where the error occurred. To use this feature, it is necessary to compile with M-x compile. |