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You control the merging by typing special “merge commands” in the merge buffer. For each run of differences between the input texts, you can choose which one of them to keep, or edit them both together. The merge buffer uses a special major mode, Emerge mode, with commands for making these choices. But you can also edit the buffer with ordinary Emacs commands.
Normally, the merge buffer starts out with the A version of the text. But when the A version of a difference agrees with the common ancestor, then the B version is initially preferred for that difference.
At any given time, the attention of Emerge is focused on one particular difference, called the “selected” difference. This difference is marked off in the three buffers like this:
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv TEXT THAT DIFFERS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Emerge numbers all the differences sequentially and the mode line always shows the number of the selected difference.
Emerge leaves the merged text in the merge buffer when you exit.
save the merge buffer in a file. If you give a
numeric argument to ‘emerge-files’ or ‘emerge-files-with-ancestor’, it reads the name of the output file using the minibuffer. Then exiting from Emerge saves the merged text in the output file.
abort Emerge without saving.