10.3 Saving Rectangles in Registers

A register can contain a rectangle instead of lines of text. The rectangle is represented as a list of strings. See Rectangles, for basic information on rectangles and how to specify rectangles in a buffer.

C-x r r r

Copy the region-rectangle into register r (copy-rectangle-to-register). With a numeric argument, delete it as well.

C-x r g r

C-x r i r

Insert the rectangle stored in register r (if it contains a rectangle) (insert-register).

The C-x r i r command inserts linear text if the register contains that, or inserts a rectangle if the register contains one.

See also the command sort-columns, which you can think of as sorting a rectangle. See Sorting.