Low-Level Kill Ring

These functions and variables provide access to the kill ring at a lower level, but still convenient for use in Lisp programs. They take care of interaction with X Window selections. They do not exist in Emacs version 18.

Function: current-kill n &optional do-not-move

The function current-kill rotates the yanking pointer which designates the "front" of the kill ring by n places (from newer kills to older ones), and returns the text at that place in the ring.

If the optional second argument do-not-move is non-nil, then current-kill doesn't alter the yanking pointer; it just returns the nth kill, counting from the current yanking pointer.

If n is zero, indicating a request for the latest kill, current-kill calls the value of interprogram-paste-function (documented below) before consulting the kill ring.

Function: kill-new string

This function puts the text string into the kill ring as a new entry at the front of the ring. It discards the oldest entry if appropriate. It also invokes the value of interprogram-cut-function (see below).

Function: kill-append string before-p

This function appends the text string to the first entry in the kill ring. Normally string goes at the end of the entry, but if before-p is non-nil, it goes at the beginning. This function also invokes the value of interprogram-cut-function (see below).

Variable: interprogram-paste-function

This variable provides a way of transferring killed text from other programs, when you are using a window system. Its value should be nil or a function of no arguments.

If the value is a function, current-kill calls it to get the "most recent kill". If the function returns a non-nil value, then that value is used as the "most recent kill". If it returns nil, then the first element of kill-ring is used.

The normal use of this hook is to get the X server's primary selection as the most recent kill, even if the selection belongs to another X client. See section X Selections.

Variable: interprogram-cut-function

This variable provides a way of communicating killed text to other programs, when you are using a window system. Its value should be nil or a function of one argument.

If the value is a function, kill-new and kill-append call it with the new first element of the kill ring as an argument.

The normal use of this hook is to set the X server's primary selection to the newly killed text.

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