I've been using ViM, TextMate, and GNU Emacs for years.
For example here is the text I want to edit
foo
foo
foo
And here is the text result I want to have
bar foo
bar foo
bar foo
When I'm on Vim, I can do "Ctrl v" on the very first line and first column, then press "2 j", then press "i", then type "bar", done.
When I'm on Textmate, I can press "Apple Command Option" both while selecting down (by my mouse), then type "bar", done.
But when I'm on GNU Emacs 23.1, I don't know how to do it. :((
I searched EmacsWiki and googling around but didn't get the solution. Please guide me if you know my solution. Would be grateful for that.
Best Answer
Two options come to mind. The first is rectangles (as mentioned in another answer). The explicit directions for that are:
Another option, which provides very nice rectangle/column editing commands is CUA mode. Here's a blog post (disclosure: my blog) that describes how to use it. To see the power of CUA mode it's totally worth watching this three minute video.
I integrate CUA mode with the following (because I prefer not to have transient mark mode):