Node:See variable current value, Next:defvar and asterisk, Previous:defvar, Up:defvar

Seeing the Current Value of a Variable

You can see the current value of a variable, any variable, by using the describe-variable function, which is usually invoked by typing C-h v. If you type C-h v and then kill-ring (followed by <RET>) when prompted, you will see what is in your current kill ring--this may be quite a lot! Conversely, if you have been doing nothing this Emacs session except read this document, you may have nothing in it. Also, you will see the documentation for kill-ring:

Documentation:
List of killed text sequences.
Since the kill ring is supposed to interact nicely with cut-and-paste
facilities offered by window systems, use of this variable should
interact nicely with `interprogram-cut-function' and
`interprogram-paste-function'.  The functions `kill-new',
`kill-append', and `current-kill' are supposed to implement this
interaction; you may want to use them instead of manipulating the kill
ring directly.

The kill ring is defined by a defvar in the following way:

(defvar kill-ring nil
  "List of killed text sequences.
...")

In this variable definition, the variable is given an initial value of nil, which makes sense, since if you have saved nothing, you want nothing back if you give a yank command. The documentation string is written just like the documentation string of a defun. As with the documentation string of the defun, the first line of the documentation should be a complete sentence, since some commands, like apropos, print only the first line of documentation. Succeeding lines should not be indented; otherwise they look odd when you use C-h v (describe-variable).