If you wish to save a keyboard macro for longer than until you define the
next one, you must give it a name using M-x name-last-kbd-macro.
This reads a name as an argument using the minibuffer and defines that name
to execute the macro. The macro name is a Lisp symbol, and defining it in
this way makes it a valid command name for calling with M-x or for
binding a key to with global-set-key (see section Keymaps). If you
specify a name that has a prior definition other than another keyboard
macro, an error message is printed and nothing is changed.
Once a macro has a command name, you can save its definition in a file. Then it can be used in another editing session. First, visit the file you want to save the definition in. Then use this command:
M-x insert-kbd-macro RET macroname RET
This inserts some Lisp code that, when executed later, will define the
same macro with the same definition it has now. (You need not
understand Lisp code to do this, because insert-kbd-macro writes
the Lisp code for you.) Then save the file. You can load the file
later with load-file (see section Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs). If the file you
save in is your init file `~/.emacs' (see section The Init File, `~/.emacs') then the
macro will be defined each time you run Emacs.
If you give insert-kbd-macro a numeric argument, it makes
additional Lisp code to record the keys (if any) that you have bound to the
keyboard macro, so that the macro will be reassigned the same keys when you
load the file.
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.