8.2 kill-region

The zap-to-char function uses the kill-region function. This function clips text from a region and copies that text to the kill ring, from which it may be retrieved.

The Emacs 22 version of that function uses condition-case and copy-region-as-kill, both of which we will explain. condition-case is an important special form.

In essence, the kill-region function calls condition-case, which takes three arguments. In this function, the first argument does nothing. The second argument contains the code that does the work when all goes well. The third argument contains the code that is called in the event of an error.