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These functions convert events, key sequences or characters to textual
descriptions. These descriptions are useful for including arbitrary
text characters or key sequences in messages, because they convert
non-printing and whitespace characters to sequences of printing
characters. The description of a non-whitespace printing character is
the character itself.
- Function: key-description sequence
-
This function returns a string containing the Emacs standard notation
for the input events in sequence. The argument sequence may
be a string, vector or list. See section Input Events, for more information
about valid events. See also the examples for
single-key-description
, below.
- Function: single-key-description event
-
This function returns a string describing event in the standard
Emacs notation for keyboard input. A normal printing character appears
as itself, but a control character turns into a string starting with
`C-', a meta character turns into a string starting with `M-',
and space, linefeed, etc. appear as `SPC', `LFD', etc. A
function key symbol appears as itself. An event that is a list appears
as the name of the symbol in the CAR of the list.
(single-key-description ?\C-x)
=> "C-x"
(key-description "\C-x \M-y \n \t \r \f123")
=> "C-x SPC M-y SPC LFD SPC TAB SPC RET SPC C-l 1 2 3"
(single-key-description 'C-mouse-1)
=> "C-mouse-1"
- Function: text-char-description character
-
This function returns a string describing character in the
standard Emacs notation for characters that appear in text--like
single-key-description
, except that control characters are
represented with a leading caret (which is how control characters in
Emacs buffers are usually displayed).
(text-char-description ?\C-c)
=> "^C"
(text-char-description ?\M-m)
=> "M-m"
(text-char-description ?\C-\M-m)
=> "M-^M"
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