Shift a region or line in emacs

Question

I'm looking for a way in emacs to shift text to the right or to the left by n spaces. A similar functionality that it in vim << or >>. It should work on a region or if no region is selected on a current line and not move the cursor from its current location.

The solution from EmacsWiki does not work very well as the M-x indent-rigidly since it somewhat remembers the last region used and shifts that one instead. The closest seems to be the one here but I did not managed to make it work. I'm not a lisp developer so it's difficult to modify the code. I will appreciate any help.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Maybe this works the way you want.

(defun shift-text (distance)
  (if (use-region-p)
      (let ((mark (mark)))
        (save-excursion
          (indent-rigidly (region-beginning)
                          (region-end)
                          distance)
          (push-mark mark t t)
          (setq deactivate-mark nil)))
    (indent-rigidly (line-beginning-position)
                    (line-end-position)
                    distance)))

(defun shift-right (count)
  (interactive "p")
  (shift-text count))

(defun shift-left (count)
  (interactive "p")
  (shift-text (- count)))

Answer 2

You could select the region then C-u C-x <tab> will shift 4 spaces. You can type a number after C-u to change 4 to anything else.

Answer 3

To achieve this I usually do a trick:

• activate CUA mode
• go to the beginning of line
• C-RET, now if you move the cursor you should see a rectangular red region
• Move the cursor down the lines and type space until you've obtained the correct shifting.

This can be done also programmatically in some way (in the same way).

EDIT: I've just read the article in emacs wiki, it's the same solution except for the CUA mode that is infinitely more powerful than the "common" rectanguar selection (since it's visual).