[comp.emacs] line number nonimportance

Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM (05/30/91)

>>>>> On 30 May 91 13:46:12 GMT, bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) said:

In article <1991May30.124131.4679@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> ury@mosque.huji.ac.il (ury segal) writes: 
>(By the way, How you get the current line number ?)

Bob> You didn't mention what version of Emacs you were trying to use, so
Bob> I'll answer from the perspective of a GNU Emacs user.  I said "M-x
Bob> apropos line", searched the resulting *Help* buffer for the string
Bob> "number", and quickly found

Bob> 	what-line		      
Bob> 	  Function: Print the current line number (in the buffer) of point.

Bob> 2) I only need to use what-line and friends on very, very rare
Bob>    occasions, like once in every two or three months of quite heavy
Bob>    Emacs use for a variety of tasks.  In fact, I didn't remember
Bob>    (what-line) from the last time I used it, so I actually needed to
Bob>    look it up, as described above, to answer your question.  I find it
Bob>    curious that you needed it within the first few hours of beginning
Bob>    to use the editor.  Your working style must be quite different from
Bob>    mine.

Bob fails to mention the key to why a GNU Emacs user wouldn't bother
with line numbers anymore than one keeps track of highway mile-marker
numbers on a trip from Memphis to Philadelphia.  It would be unfair
not to explain this further.  Here are some of Bob's secrets,
available via ESCAPE x

compile:
Compile the program including the current buffer.  Default: run `make'.
Runs COMMAND, a shell command, in a separate process asynchronously
with output going to the buffer *compilation*.
You can then use the command C-x ` to find the next error message
and move to the source code that caused it.

grep:
Run grep, with user-specified args, and collect output in a buffer.
While grep runs asynchronously, you can use the C-x ` command
to find the text that grep hits refer to.