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.
This function returns a string containing the Emacs standard notation
for the input events in sequence. If prefix is
non-nil
, it is a sequence of input events leading up to
sequence and is included in the return value. Both arguments
may be strings, vectors or lists. See Input Events, for more
information about valid events.
(key-description [?\M-3 delete]) ⇒ "M-3 <delete>"
(key-description [delete] "\M-3") ⇒ "M-3 <delete>"
See also the examples for single-key-description
, below.
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, tab, etc., appear as ‘SPC’, ‘TAB’, etc. A function key symbol appears inside angle brackets ‘<…>’. An event that is a list appears as the name of the symbol in the CAR of the list, inside angle brackets.
If the optional argument no-angles is non-nil
, the angle
brackets around function keys and event symbols are omitted; this is
for compatibility with old versions of Emacs which didn’t use the
brackets.
(single-key-description ?\C-x) ⇒ "C-x"
(key-description "\C-x \M-y \n \t \r \f123") ⇒ "C-x SPC M-y SPC C-j SPC TAB SPC RET SPC C-l 1 2 3"
(single-key-description 'delete) ⇒ "<delete>"
(single-key-description 'C-mouse-1) ⇒ "C-<mouse-1>"
(single-key-description 'C-mouse-1 t) ⇒ "C-mouse-1"
This function returns a string describing character in the
standard Emacs notation for characters that can appear in
text—similar to single-key-description
, except that the
argument must be a valid character code that passes a
characterp
test (see Character Codes). The function
produces descriptions of control characters with a leading caret
(which is how Emacs usually displays control characters in buffers).
Characters with modifier bits will cause this function to signal an
error (ASCII characters with the Control modifier are an
exception, they are represented as control characters).
(text-char-description ?\C-c) ⇒ "^C"
(text-char-description ?\M-m) error→ Wrong type argument: characterp, 134217837
This function is used mainly for operating on keyboard macros, but it
can also be used as a rough inverse for key-description
. You
call it with a string containing key descriptions, separated by spaces;
it returns a string or vector containing the corresponding events.
(This may or may not be a single valid key sequence, depending on what
events you use; see Key Sequences.) If need-vector is
non-nil
, the return value is always a vector.