What the Kill Ring Does

The kill ring has a default maximum length of sixty items; this number is too large for an explanation. Instead, set it to four. Please evaluate the following:

(setq old-kill-ring-max kill-ring-max)
(setq kill-ring-max 4)

Then, please copy each line of the following indented example into the kill ring. You may kill each line with C-k or mark it and copy it with M-w.

(In a read-only buffer, such as the *info* buffer, the kill command, C-k (kill-line), will not remove the text, merely copy it to the kill ring. However, your machine may beep at you. Alternatively, for silence, you may copy the region of each line with the M-w (kill-ring-save) command. You must mark each line for this command to succeed, but it does not matter at which end you put point or mark.)

Please invoke the calls in order, so that five elements attempt to fill the kill ring:

first some text
second piece of text
third line
fourth line of text
fifth bit of text

Then find the value of kill-ring by evaluating

kill-ring

It is:

("fifth bit of text" "fourth line of text"
"third line" "second piece of text")

The first element, ‘first some text’, was dropped.

To return to the old value for the length of the kill ring, evaluate:

(setq kill-ring-max old-kill-ring-max)