Re: how to activate region

[Barry Margolin]

In article <mailman.7100.1242253215.31690.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
 Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> wrote:

> When transient-mark-mode is off, there must be a way to activate the
> existing region for commands that require it to be active.  Anybody
> know what it is?  The manual and apropos have yielded nothing so far.

I just noticed that you said "when transient-mark-mode is off".  That 
changes my answer.

When transient-mark-mode is off, the commands that require the region 
should always succeed as long as you've set the mark.  Are you talking 
about commands that change their behavior depending on whether the 
region is active?  Like M-x replace-string, which operates on the region 
if it's active, or the rest of the buffer otherwise.  That's the point 
of this feature of C-x C-x:

With prefix arg, `transient-mark-mode' is enabled temporarily.

So type C-u C-x C-x, then M-x replace-string, and it should do what you 
want.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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