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Comment by neutronicus | Hacker News Reader

I kind of hate the kill ring, because I don't know how to suppress putting things into it. I would really like to be able to delete swatches of stuff I don't care about in such a manner that they aren't pushed onto a "paste" stack on top of other things I do care about.

I've also never really understood the benefit of not having "redo". What am I gaining in exchange for the annoyance of having to hit an arrow key before being allowed to "undo the undos" and duplicating a big chunk of my undo history?

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You can set delete-active-region to t; hitting DEL will then delete the region without adding it to the kill ring (i.e. delete it as opposed to kill it.) Alternatively, you can bind delete-region to a keystroke of your choice.

Regarding your second issue, I'm happy with the undo system as it is, but if you're not you could try and see if this works better for you: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/UndoTree

Also, instead of cursor motion to "break" the undo operation, you can use C-g. I.e. C-g C-_ will redo (undo the last undo) rather than going back further in the undo history.

UndoTree is a true godsend! It basically shows a graphic over the undo tree and lets you navigate it. Really handy. :)

If you routinely find yourself dredging up stuff from deep in the kill ring you might want the browse-kill-ring extension, but you also might want to think about using registers, which are emacs's idea of a solution to your problem: If you often find yourself wanting to explicitly distinguish between delete-forever and delete-for-recovery, you should probably try distinguishing between delete-for-recovery and add-to-the-kill-ring-in-case-of-emergency instead; it's safer.

I think registers sound like the sort of approach I want, thanks.

One of the clearest benefits of Emacs's undo system is that you never lose history the way you do with an undo/redo system. I also personally find it more convenient.

However, as somebody else mentioned, you should also check out the undo-tree plugin. Some of my friends really like it.

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