10 Help
Emacs provides a wide variety of help commands, all accessible
through the prefix key C-h (or, equivalently, the function key
F1). These help commands are described in the following
sections. You can also type C-h C-h to view a list of help
commands ( help-for-help). You can scroll the list with
SPC and DEL, then type the help command you want. To
cancel, type C-g.
Many help commands display their information in a special help
buffer. In this buffer, you can type SPC and DEL to
scroll and type RET to follow hyperlinks. See Help Mode Commands.
If you are looking for a certain feature, but don’t know what it is called or where to look, we recommend three methods. First, try an apropos command, then try searching the manual index, then look in the FAQ and the package keywords.
C-h a topics RET
This searches for commands whose names match the argument topics. The argument can be a keyword, a list of keywords, or a regular expression (see Syntax of Regular Expressions). See Apropos.
C-h i d m emacs RET i topic RET
This searches for topic in the indices of the Emacs Info manual,
displaying the first match found. Press , to see subsequent
matches. You can use a regular expression as topic.
C-h i d m emacs RET s topic RET
Similar, but searches the text of the manual rather than the indices.
C-h C-f
This displays the Emacs FAQ, using Info.
C-h p
This displays the available Emacs packages based on keywords. See Keyword Search for Packages.
C-h or F1 mean “help” in various other contexts as
well. For instance, you can type them after a prefix key to view a
list of the keys that can follow the prefix key. (You can also use
? in this context. A few prefix keys don’t support C-h
or ? in this way, because they define other meanings for those
inputs, but they all support F1.)