Emacs: how to delete text without kill ring?

Question

I\'d like to just delete some text so I can yank some other text instead of it. How can I do that? C-w cuts the selected text to kill ring and I end up with

Answer 1

Here's a version of kill-region that doesn't force values into the kill-ring.

(defun kill-or-delete-region (beg end prefix)
  "Delete the region, storing it in the kill-ring.
If a prefix argument is given, don't change the kill-ring."
  (interactive "r\nP")
  (if prefix
      (delete-region beg end)
    (kill-region beg end)))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-w") 'kill-or-delete-region)

This enables you to do C-w as before, but C-u C-w now deletes text without changing the kill-ring.