variables list

[M. R.P.]

I am wanting to learn how to change variables in emacs for customizing
but where and how do I see a list of variables that can be changed?
Where is their a list of variables?

[Ben Bacarisse]

Post by M. R.P.
I am wanting to learn how to change variables in emacs for customizing
but where and how do I see a list of variables that can be changed?
Where is their a list of variables?

There a great deal of them -- far too many for any list to make much
sense.

And there are two types -- those whose values can be changed via the
customize interface, and those that can't. The latter often work at a
lower level and I try to avoid fiddling with them unless it's the only
way to get what I want.

You can change customizable variables outside the interface provided,
but the customize interface gives you access to some helpful hints and
some extra documentation.

You can start by running the customize command. The will give you a
menu of topics with subtopics.

If you know the kind of thing you want to change, you might find
customize-apropos useful (though I think that's only quite recent
versions). Since that command takes a regexp you can, technically, get
a list of things that can be customized using a pattern like ., but I
don't advise it!

[Ivan Shmakov]

Post by Ben Bacarisse

Post by M. R.P.
I am wanting to learn how to change variables in emacs for
customizing but where and how do I see a list of variables that can
be changed? Where is their a list of variables?

There a great deal of them -- far too many for any list to make much
sense.
And there are two types -- those whose values can be changed via the
customize interface, and those that can't. The latter often work at
a lower level and I try to avoid fiddling with them unless it's the
only way to get what I want.
You can change customizable variables outside the interface provided,
but the customize interface gives you access to some helpful hints
and some extra documentation.

I also find the Customize facility useful for getting overview
of variables related to a specific package or function, but
I still prefer a readable (and occasionally commented) ~/.emacs
file over an autogenerated list of customized (key . value) pairs.

At some point, its "overview function," however, was affected
by the code being changed to only show variable values when
explicitly requested by the user; like, e. g.:

Show Value Sql Postgres Program
Command to start psql by Postgres. More

Versus the former:

Hide Sql Postgres Program: psql
[ State ]: STANDARD.
Command to start psql by Postgres. More

Which I've fixed with the following code run from my ~/.emacs:

;;; cus-edit: Tools for customizing Emacs and Lisp packages
(eval-after-load 'cus-edit
'(progn
;; This is to show the values back (reverting e30bb2f10554.)
(widget-put (get 'custom-variable 'widget-type)
:hidden-states nil)))

(I also have set custom-file to '/non/existent and redefine the
custom-save-all function to no-op in the progn above, so I don't
get any of my settings spilled over by accident to a
custom-set-variables form, or whole new file altogether I may
easily forget about.)

[...]

[h***@gmail.com]

Post by M. R.P.
I am wanting to learn how to change variables in emacs for customizing
but where and how do I see a list of variables that can be changed?
Where is their a list of variables?

The list is enormous. One way you see them incrementally, is enter Ctrl-h v at the keyboard, which activates the "Describe-variable" command and then type prefixes on the keyboard, then hit the tab key. You should get a window showing all variables beginning with the current prefix. When you select an item from that window, you'll the current contents, where it is defined, etc.