A register can contain a rectangle instead of linear text. The rectangle is represented as a list of strings. See Rectangles, for basic information on how to specify a rectangle in the buffer.
C-x r r r |
Copy the region-rectangle into register 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 a text string if the register contains one, and 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.