On Fri, 24 Mar 2006, Mark Wooding wrote:
(Aside: `C-u 38 0' doesn't work because Emacs hears `C-u 380' and waits
for a key. `M-: (insert-char ?0 38) RET' does the right thing, but is
ugly. Any better suggestions?)
I don't do GNU emacs, but the way to do it in some other editors that do
repeats somewhat similarly is to do the action that starts with a number
as a macro, and do that macro 37 more times.
On uemacs: ^X '(' '0' ^X ')' ESC '3' '7' ^X 'E'
(Of course, the easier way is to just do '0' LEFT ^K to put the 0 in the
buffer, and than ESC '3' '8' ^Y to yank it 38 times, but the macro trick
is generic, even if it's a few more keystrokes).
Linus "teaching people the one true editor" Torvalds