Man1 - kak.1

is a code editor heavily inspired by

and

As such, most of its commands are similar to

sharing its

model.

operates in two modes, normal and insertion. In insertion mode, keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.

has a strong focus on interactivity. Most commands provide immediate and incremental results, while still being competitive in keystroke count with vim.

works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive ranges of characters. Selections have an anchor and a cursor. Most commands move both of them except when extending selection, where the anchor character stays fixed and the cursor moves around.

The options are as follows:

Display a help message and quit.

Display Kakoune version and quit.

Do not load the system’s kakrc.

List existing sessions.

Run as a headless session

Execute

after the client initialization phase.

Execute

after the server initialization phase.

Enter in

select the whole file, then execute

Backup the files on which a filter is applied, using the given suffix.

When in

don’t print any errors

Send the commands written on the standard input to session

Connect to the given session

Set the current session name to

Select the user interface type, which can be

or

Remove sessions that were terminated in an incorrect state

Begin in

all the buffers opened will not be written to disk.

Specify a target line and column for the first file. When the plus sign is followed by only a colon, then the cursor is sent to the last line of the file.

One or more

to edit.

Overrides the POSIX shell used for

expansion, which is

if unset.

Overrides the location of the directory containing Kakoune user configuration. If unset,

is used.

Path to the user’s configuration directory. If unset,

is used.

Path to the user’s session’s sockets. If unset,

is used.

In the paths documented below,

refers to the runtime directory, whose value is determined in relation to the path to

binary location:

=

If not started with the

switch,

will first load

which will in turn load the following additional files:

If the

directory exists, recursively load every

file in it, and its sub-directories.

If it does not exist, fall back to the system-wide autoload directory in

and recursively load all files in a similar way.

if it exists; this is a user-defined system-wide configuration.

if it exists; this is the user configuration.

Consequently, if the

directory exists, only scripts stored within that directory will be loaded — the built-in

files will not be.

Users who still want the built-in scripts to be loaded along their own can create a symbolic link to

in their user-configuration directory:

For the complete on-line documentation, use the

command after starting

and many others.