Custom Emacs key bindings are not working

Question

The key bindings I've defined in my .emacs file aren't working. Here's the file:

;init modes
(menu-bar-mode 0)
(tool-bar-mode 0)
(cua-mode)
(column-number-mode)
(fset 'perl-mode 'cperl-mode)
(cperl-set-style PerlStyle)

;keymappings
(global-set-key [f12] 'save-buffer)
(global-set-key [S-f12] 'write-file)
(global-set-key [f7] 'ispell)
(global-set-key [up] 'scroll-one-line-up)
(global-set-key [down] 'scroll-one-line-down)

;functions
(defun scroll-one-line-up (&optional arg)
  (interactive "p")
  (scroll-up (or arg 1)))
(defun scroll-one-line-down (&optional arg)
  (interactive "p")
  (scroll-down (or arg 1)))

I know Emacs parses the file since everything else seems to work. It's just that the keys are not being bound.

How can I make it work?

Answer 1

It is hard to say what your problem might be without more information, like is it all your keybindings or just one or two that do not work. I will hazard a guess that it is the last two ([up] and [down]). In those cases the on-line documentation below seems to indicate that you might be shadowing the global definitions with local ones defined by the mode.

global-set-key is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `subr.el'.

(global-set-key key command)

Give key a global binding as command. command is the command definition to use; usually it is a symbol naming an interactively-callable function. key is a key sequence; noninteractively, it is a string or vector of characters or event types, and non-ASCII characters with codes above 127 (such as ISO Latin-1) can be included if you use a vector.

Note that if key has a local binding in the current buffer, that local binding will continue to shadow any global binding that you make with this function.

Answer 2

You have an error in your .emacs at line:

(cperl-set-style PerlStyle)

It should be written as:

(cperl-set-style 'PerlStyle)

Since it raises an error that stops parsing .emacs at that point, your key bindings won't be evaluated.

Answer 3

To follow up to my previous answer, you would have to change the binding in the local keymap using a hook variable. Here's an example that I use with java-mode:

(defun java-setup ()
   (setq tab-stop-list '(4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 68 72 76 80 84 88 92)
         indent-tabs-mode nil
         tab-width 4
         fill-column 96
         c-comment-start-regexp "\\(@\\|/\\(/\\|[*][*]?\\)\\)"))

 (add-hook 'java-mode-hook 'java-setup)

In your case you would use something like:

 (defun mysetup ()
    (define-key local-map [f12] 'func))

 (add-hook 'your-mode-hook 'mysetup)

Also, fwiw, I do the following to define my global keys:

(defun function-key-help ()
  (interactive)
  (switch-to-buffer "*Help*")
  (erase-buffer)
  (insert-file (expand-file-name "~/lib/fkeys.help"))
  (message "Type C-x b <nl> to remove help window."))

(define-key global-map [f12] 'function-key-help)

And it works perfectly in my Emacs 23 setup.