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emacsclient works in conjunction with the built-in Emacs server.

You can either call emacsclient directly or let other programs run it for you when necessary. On GNU and Unix systems many programs consult the environment variable EDITOR (sometimes also VISUAL) to obtain the command used for editing. Thus, setting this environment variable to ’emacsclient’ will allow these programs to use an already running Emacs for editing. Other operating systems might have their own methods for defining the default editor.

For emacsclient to work, you need an already running Emacs with a server. Within Emacs, call the functions ‘server-start’ or ‘server-mode’. (Your ‘.emacs’ file can do this automatically if you add either ‘(server-start)’ or ‘(server-mode 1)’ to it.)

When you’ve finished editing the buffer, type ‘C-x #’ (‘server-edit’). This saves the file and sends a message back to the ‘emacsclient’ program telling it to exit. The programs that use ‘EDITOR’ wait for the "editor" (actually, ‘emacsclient’) to exit. ‘C-x #’ also checks for other pending external requests to edit various files, and selects the next such file.

If you set the variable ‘server-window’ to a window or a frame, ‘C-x #’ displays the server buffer in that window or in that frame.

Options

-a, --alternate-editor=EDITOR

if the Emacs server is not running, run the specified editor instead. This can also be specified via the ‘ALTERNATE_EDITOR’ environment variable. If the value of EDITOR is the empty string, run ‘emacs --daemon’ to start Emacs in daemon mode, and try to connect to it.

-c, --create-frame

create a new frame instead of trying to use the current Emacs frame

-F, --frame-parameters=ALIST

set the parameters of a newly-created frame.

-d, --display=DISPLAY

tell the server to display the files on the given display.

-e, --eval

do not visit files but instead evaluate the arguments as Emacs Lisp expressions.

-f, --server-file=FILENAME

use TCP configuration file FILENAME for communication. This can also be specified via the ‘EMACS_SERVER_FILE’ environment variable.

-n, --no-wait

returns immediately without waiting for you to "finish" the buffer in Emacs.

-nw, -t, --tty

open a new Emacs frame on the current terminal

-s, --socket-name=FILENAME

use socket named FILENAME for communication.

-V, --version

print version information and exit

-H, --help

print this usage information message and exit

Exit Status

See Also

Author

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Table of Contents

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• Description
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