A key sequence, or key for short, is a sequence of one
or more input events that form a unit. Input events include
characters, function keys, mouse actions, or system events external to
Emacs, such as iconify-frame (see Input Events).
The Emacs Lisp representation for a key sequence is a string or
vector. Unless otherwise stated, any Emacs Lisp function that accepts
a key sequence as an argument can handle both representations.
In the string representation, alphanumeric characters ordinarily
stand for themselves; for example, "a" represents a
and "2" represents 2. Control character events are
prefixed by the substring "\C-", and meta characters by
"\M-"; for example, "\C-x" represents the key C-x.
In addition, the TAB, RET, ESC, and DEL events
are represented by "\t", "\r", "\e", and
"\d" respectively. The string representation of a complete key
sequence is the concatenation of the string representations of the
constituent events; thus, "\C-xl" represents the key sequence
C-x l.
Key sequences containing function keys, mouse button events, system events, or non-ASCII characters such as C-= or H-a cannot be represented as strings; they have to be represented as vectors.
In the vector representation, each element of the vector represents
an input event, in its Lisp form. See Input Events. For example,
the vector [?\C-x ?l] represents the key sequence C-x l.
For examples of key sequences written in string and vector representations, Init Rebinding in The GNU Emacs Manual.
This function converts the text keyseq-text (a string constant)
into a key sequence (a string or vector constant). The contents of
keyseq-text should use the same syntax as in the buffer invoked
by the C-x C-k RET (kmacro-edit-macro) command; in
particular, you must surround function key names with
‘<…>’. See Edit Keyboard Macro in The GNU Emacs
Manual.
(kbd "C-x") ⇒ "\C-x" (kbd "C-x C-f") ⇒ "\C-x\C-f" (kbd "C-x 4 C-f") ⇒ "\C-x4\C-f" (kbd "X") ⇒ "X" (kbd "RET") ⇒ "^M" (kbd "C-c SPC") ⇒ "\C-c " (kbd "<f1> SPC") ⇒ [f1 32] (kbd "C-M-<down>") ⇒ [C-M-down]
The kbd function is very permissive, and will try to return
something sensible even if the syntax used isn’t completely
conforming. To check whether the syntax is actually valid, use the
key-valid-p function.