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(emacs)Exiting

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Exiting Emacs
=============

   There are two commands for exiting Emacs because there are two kinds
of exiting: "suspending" Emacs and "killing" Emacs.

   "Suspending" means stopping Emacs temporarily and returning control
to its parent process (usually a shell), allowing you to resume editing
later in the same Emacs job, with the same buffers, same kill ring,
same undo history, and so on.  This is the usual way to exit.

   "Killing" Emacs means destroying the Emacs job.  You can run Emacs
again later, but you will get a fresh Emacs; there is no way to resume
the same editing session after it has been killed.

`C-z'
     Suspend Emacs (`suspend-emacs') or iconify a frame
     (`iconify-or-deiconify-frame').

`C-x C-c'
     Kill Emacs (`save-buffers-kill-emacs').

   To suspend Emacs, type `C-z' (`suspend-emacs').  This takes you back
to the shell from which you invoked Emacs.  You can resume Emacs with
the shell command `%emacs' in most common shells.

   On systems that do not support suspending programs, `C-z' starts an
inferior shell that communicates directly with the terminal.  Emacs
waits until you exit the subshell.  (The way to do that is probably
with `C-d' or `exit', but it depends on which shell you use.)  The only
way on these systems to get back to the shell from which Emacs was run
(to log out, for example) is to kill Emacs.

   Suspending also fails if you run Emacs under a shell that doesn't
support suspending programs, even if the system itself does support it.
In such a case, you can set the variable `cannot-suspend' to a
non-`nil' value to force `C-z' to start an inferior shell.  (One might
also describe Emacs's parent shell as "inferior" for failing to support
job control properly, but that is a matter of taste.)

   When Emacs communicates directly with an X server and creates its own
dedicated X windows, `C-z' has a different meaning.  Suspending an
application that uses its own X windows is not meaningful or useful.
Instead, `C-z' runs the command `iconify-or-deiconify-frame', which
temporarily iconifies (or "minimizes") the selected Emacs frame (Note:
Frames).  Then you can use the window manager to get back to a shell
window.

   To exit and kill Emacs, type `C-x C-c' (`save-buffers-kill-emacs').
A two-character key is used for this to make it harder to type by
accident.  This command first offers to save any modified file-visiting
buffers.  If you do not save them all, it asks for reconfirmation with
`yes' before killing Emacs, since any changes not saved will be lost
forever.  Also, if any subprocesses are still running, `C-x C-c' asks
for confirmation about them, since killing Emacs will also kill the
subprocesses.

   If the value of the variable `confirm-kill-emacs' is non-`nil', `C-x
C-c' assumes that its value is a predicate function, and calls that
function.  If the result is non-`nil', the session is killed, otherwise
Emacs continues to run.  One convenient function to use as the value of
`confirm-kill-emacs' is the function `yes-or-no-p'.  The default value
of `confirm-kill-emacs' is `nil'.

   There is no way to resume an Emacs session once you have killed it.
You can, however, arrange for Emacs to record certain session
information when you kill it, such as which files are visited, so that
the next time you start Emacs it will try to visit the same files and
so on.  Note: Saving Emacs Sessions.

   The operating system usually listens for certain special characters
whose meaning is to kill or suspend the program you are running.  This
operating system feature is turned off while you are in Emacs.  The
meanings of `C-z' and `C-x C-c' as keys in Emacs were inspired by the
use of `C-z' and `C-c' on several operating systems as the characters
for stopping or killing a program, but that is their only relationship
with the operating system.  You can customize these keys to run any
commands of your choice (Note: Keymaps).