Summary

In summary, when moving forward, the forward-paragraph function does the following:

• Move point to the beginning of the line.
• Skip over lines between paragraphs.
• Check whether there is a fill prefix, and if there is:
  • Go forward line by line so long as the line is not a paragraph separating line.
• But if there is no fill prefix,
  • Search for the next paragraph start pattern.
  • Go to the beginning of the paragraph start pattern, which will be the end of the previous paragraph.
  • Or else go to the end of the accessible portion of the buffer.

For review, here is the code we have just been discussing, formatted for clarity:

(interactive "p")
(or arg (setq arg 1))
(let* (
       (fill-prefix-regexp
        (and fill-prefix (not (equal fill-prefix ""))
             (not paragraph-ignore-fill-prefix)
             (regexp-quote fill-prefix)))

       (paragraph-separate
        (if fill-prefix-regexp
            (concat paragraph-separate
                    "\\|^"
                    fill-prefix-regexp
                    "[ \t]*$")
          paragraph-separate)))

  backward-moving-code (omitted) ...

  (while (> arg 0)                ; forward-moving-code
    (beginning-of-line)

    (while (prog1 (and (not (eobp))
                       (looking-at paragraph-separate))
             (forward-line 1)))

    (if fill-prefix-regexp
        (while (and (not (eobp))  ; then-part
                    (not (looking-at paragraph-separate))
                    (looking-at fill-prefix-regexp))
          (forward-line 1))
                                  ; else-part: the inner-if
      (if (re-search-forward paragraph-start nil t)
          (goto-char (match-beginning 0))
        (goto-char (point-max))))

    (setq arg (1- arg)))))        ; decrementer

The full definition for the forward-paragraph function not only includes this code for going forwards, but also code for going backwards.

If you are reading this inside of GNU Emacs and you want to see the whole function, you can type M-. (find-tag) and the name of the function when prompted for it. If the find-tag function first asks you for the name of a `TAGS' table, give it the name of the `TAGS' file in your `emacs/src' directory, which will have a pathname such as `/usr/local/lib/emacs/19.23/src/TAGS'. (The exact path to the `emacs/src' directory depends on how your copy of Emacs was installed. If you don't know the path, you can sometimes find out by typing C-h i to enter Info and then typing C-x C-f to see the path to the `emacs/info' directory. The path to the `TAGS' file is often the corresponding `emacs/src' path; sometimes, however, Info files are stored elsewhere.)

You can also create your own `TAGS' file for directories that lack one.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.