kill-paragraph(2)

NAME

kill-paragraph - Delete a paragraph

SYNOPSIS

n kill-paragraph

DESCRIPTION

kill-paragraph deletes the next n paragraphs from the current cursor position, the paragraphs that are killed are added to the kill buffer. If the cursor is in the middle of a paragraph then the text from the current cursor position to the end (or start, depending on direction) of the paragraph is deleted.

If n is positive then the kill direction is forwards, if n is negative then the kill direction is backwards. If n is 0 (zero) the command simply returns. The default value for n is +1.

DIAGNOSTICS

The following errors can be generated, in each case the command returns a FALSE status:

[end of buffer]


The positive argument n is greater than the number of remaining paragraphs, all of the remaining paragraphs to the end of the buffer are still removed.

[top of buffer]


The negative argument n is greater than the number of previous paragraphs, all of the previous paragraphs to the top of the buffer are still removed.

NOTES

A paragraph is terminated by a blank line. All text residing between two blank lines is considered to be a paragraph - regardless of the text layout.

HISTORY

The behavior of kill-paragraph was modified in November 2004 after which the numeric argument n was interpreted to control the number and direction of paragraphs to delete. Previous releases interpreted a negative value as a control to disable the deleted text from entering the kill buffer. If the existing behavior is required then kill-region(2) with a negative argument should be used to delete a region of marked text, forward-paragraph(2) and backward-paragraph(2) may be used to move to the appropriate kill position.

SEE ALSO

backward-paragraph(2), forward-paragraph(2), kill-region(2), undo(2), yank(2).

Ref: kill-paragraph(2) File: m2cmd080.2 Date: 2026/02/28

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