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I'm using GUI emacs 24.4.9.0, so I can click to move the cursor, and double-click to select a word under the mouse pointer as a region.

How can I configure emacs so that right-click selects a character under the mouse pointer? I know that I can assign a function by writing 

(global-set-key (kbd "<mouse-3>") 'foobar)

in the init file, but when I wrote a function for this purpose a while ago, it didn't put the cursor under the place I right-clicked, it just started marking a character forward from where the mouse pointer is currently at. What kind of function I can use for placing the cursor right under the mouse pointer?

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Reset to default
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You can do it:

(defun select-char-at-click (event) "Select char at EVENT position. EVENT should be a mouse-click event." (interactive "e") (run-hooks 'mouse-leave-buffer-hook) ; Give Isearch etc. a chance to turn off. (let ((pos (cadr (event-start event)))) (unless (>= pos (point-max)) (push-mark pos) (goto-char (1+ (mark))))) (setq mark-active t deactivate-mark nil)) (global-set-key [mouse-3] 'select-char-at-click) (global-set-key [down-mouse-3] 'ignore)

But you really do not want to do that. Mouse-3 (right button) is used in Emacs to extend the region from the point you set using mouse-1. It is also used in several contexts to pop up a right-click contextual menu.

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  • Thank you! I could manage to find the function that's originally assigned to mouse-3, which is mouse-save-then-kill, and bound it to S-mouse-1 so that it behaves like the Mac OS system keyboard shortcut, so it won't be a problem. As for the contextual menu, I've almost never found a chance to use it except on the mode line. Am I missing some really convenient uses of it? Assigning the command you wrote to mouse-3 didn't affect the behavior of mouse-3 on the mode line. Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 9:08
  • Wrt useful mouse-3 contextual menus: you might want to take a look at my library mouse3.el. It is described here. Commented Jan 17, 2016 at 17:45

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