Ok. Finally a new emacs trick. Actually I had come across this a while back but then I went on a short vacation and later picked up a John Grisham book (one of the hard-to-put-down types) and so the delay.

This one is about adding stuff vertically in a line in the buffer. It might seem to be a bit vague and useless at first but it perfectly fits a problem I face everyday in php-mode.

Now php-mode is not all that great if compared to the rest of the emacs awesomeness.

The problem is that when I try to comment a region, it wraps each line of the region in block comments ie. /* */ which looks kind of ugly and may be objectionable by fellow team members too.

So I started using this command as a work around to comment out a region in php by prefixing each line with //

The way I do this is as follows:

Set the mark at the required position on the starting line (in my case column 0 or the start of the line)

Then move the cursor to the ending line using C-n normally.

Then type, C-x r t

String Rectangle : will appear in the mini buffer.

Type // to comment out each line and press RET.