When I press C-x b (ido-switch-buffer) I get a lot of buffers that I don't want to see. I'd like to clear the buffer history.
I tried evaluating this expression (using M-x eval-buffer):
(setq ido-buffer-history '())
And it took effect; I can tell because I looked at the variable with C-h v ido-buffer-history. However, the change did not get reflected in the minibuffer when I press C-x b.
What else should I do? Are there other variables I should be clearing?
UPDATE : The 'extra' buffers that I'm seeing are not active. Interestingly, C-x C-b (ido-fallback-command) shows exactly what I would expect. It is the buffer history that I'm interested in. (See the buffer-name-history and ido-buffer-history variables for more context.)
Note: Perhaps it will help to mention that I'm using the emacs-starter-kit which has ido-ubiquitous installed.
Add the following to your init.el: (setq ido-use-virtual-buffers nil)
For posterity:
Those are all the active buffers in your session. You can clean them with the following commands:
M-x clean-buffer-list will close any clean buffers you haven't used in a while
M-x kill-some-buffers will visit each buffer and ask if you want to close it
M-x kill-matching-buffers will prompt for a regex over buffer names, which you can just leave blank
Edit:
There's also the boring old buffer menu you get with C-x C-b. In this menu, you can hold d until it marks each buffer for deletion, then press x to commit.
Thanks to Chris, I learned about ido's virtual buffers. I don't want to disable ido-use-virtual-buffers altogether. I want to clear the history as needed; these commands accomplish that goal:
(setq ido-virtual-buffers '())
(setq recentf-list '())
(Note that clearing ido-virtual-buffers was not sufficient -- recentf-list also must be cleared.)
I found this entry on emacswiki.
The variable that stores the buffer history you are referring to is buffer-name-history
If you run M-x describe-variable RET buffer-name-history RET you will see all of the dead buffers that no longer really exist. The wiki recommends creating a hook that removes the buffer name from the list whenever you kill a buffer.
I just did: M-x eval-expression RET (setq buffer-name-history '()) RET
This seems to have worked. The next time I ran C-x b I only cycled-through my real buffers.
That said, setting the variable to nil seems to completely disable the functionality (the variable doesn't seem to be re-populated once I open more buffers).
Related
With C-x C-b the buffer list is displayed. First in it's natural order with most recently used buffers on top, and buried buffers at the bottom.
There, I can now sort the Buffer by name, size, mode and file. But once I click on such an option I cannot go back to the original ordering.
Also killing the buffer and recreating it does not change that order. (Using 25.2)
So how can I get that ordering back without restarting emacs?
There is another mode that's nowadays built-in to Emacs that can be used to display the buffer list: ibuffer-mode.
If you are not using it already, you can experiment with M-x ibuffer and find out its capabilities with C-h m. Note that in particular, it can sort the buffer list in various ways, one of which is by recency with s v, which is what the OP asked for; but note also that it has many other ways to sort that make it very flexible.
Once you are convinced that that's the way to go, you can redefine the C-x C-b keybinding in your init file with:
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-b") 'ibuffer)
I did that a long time ago and have never looked back. IMO, it should be the default: that may come to pass, but AFAIK that is still not the case.
Sorting order goes away as expected when I kill buffer named *Buffer List* and reopen using C-x C-b (Using emacs 27.1 & 28.1). From the EmacsWiki
Once sorted, there is no nice way to restore the default MRU sort. You
have to ‘kill-buffer’ the buffer menu buffer, and then re-open it.
(Sorting sets the variable ‘tabulated-list-sort-key’ in
tabulated-list.el. Its default is ‘nil’. No way to restore the nil
value is provided.)
May be worth adding a custom function which can disable the sort without closing the buffer.
(defun disable-buffer-sort()
(interactive)
(save-excursion
(set-buffer (get-buffer "*Buffer List*"))
(setq tabulated-list-sort-key 'nil)
(revert-buffer)
))
(disable-buffer-sort)
As #NickD mentioned in other answer ibuffer-mode is also a good alternative with more features.
A question already has been asked how to reload a .emacs file after changing it.
The proposed solutions were to use M-x load-file or M-x eval-region RET on the changed region.
Neither of these solutions affect other open buffers for me. Is there a way to reload the .emacs file for all open buffers?
I should also note that the M-x load-file does not have the desired effect for reasons outlined in the comments to that answer.
Your .emacs file is a global configuration that gets evaluated once only. It does not get applied to each buffer individually.
How you actually achieve what you want is really going to depend on what those .emacs changes are. Some elisp will only take effect the first time it is evaluated; or when a buffer changes major modes; or when a file is loaded; etc, etc...
If you want to reload some or all of the file buffers, ibuffer makes that pretty easy:
M-x ibuffer RET to start ibuffer (I recommend binding this to C-xC-b).
/f.RET to filter by filename regexp . so as to match any filename.
m (on [default]) to mark all filtered buffers.
V (uppercase) to revert all marked buffers.
or you could replace steps 2+3 with M-x ibuffer-mark-by-file-name-regexp RET . RET. You may wish to bind that command to *f:
;; Bind `ibuffer-mark-by-file-name-regexp' to *f
(eval-after-load "ibuffer"
'(define-key ibuffer-mode-map (kbd "* f") 'ibuffer-mark-by-file-name-regexp))
type *c-h to see all the other ibuffer-mark-* commands which are bound by default.
This may strike you as brute force, but
it will certainly reload your init file (consider alternatives to .emacs)
it will reload all open buffers (provided you are using desktop, which you should)
it is easy
C-x C-c
emacs --debug-init &
The problem occurs when customizing options in Emacs. Every time I click on a link a new buffer is created. How to force Emacs to use single buffer?
Try this:
(defadvice custom-buffer-create (before my-advice-custom-buffer-create)
"Exit the current Customize buffer before creating a new one, unless there are modified widgets."
(if (eq major-mode 'Custom-mode)
(let ((custom-buffer-done-kill t)
(custom-buffer-modified nil))
(mapc (lambda (widget)
(and (not custom-buffer-modified)
(eq (widget-get widget :custom-state) 'modified)
(setq custom-buffer-modified t)))
custom-options)
(if (not custom-buffer-modified)
(Custom-buffer-done)))))
(ad-activate 'custom-buffer-create)
As an alternative to my original answer (which I am not inclined to use myself), I thought I might suggest other ways in which you might deal with getting rid of lots of Customize buffers once you have finished customising things.
First, do note that simply pressing q will "Exit current Custom buffer according to `custom-buffer-done-kill'" (i.e. either bury it or kill it).
Second is to use M-x kill-matching-buffers RET \*Customize RET (and then confirm each one), but that's a bit tedious.
What I'd actually do is use ibuffer.
If you don't use it already, I recommend binding C-x C-b to ibuffer, which is a greatly enhanced alternative to the default list-buffers. I love it primarily for its filtering and grouping abilities, but it can do a great deal besides that.
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-b") 'ibuffer)
I also use the advice which can currently be found here at the Emacs Wiki so that ibuffer always opens with the buffer I came from selected.
That done, and from a Customize buffer, C-x C-b * M RET D y will kill all the Customize buffers. That is:
C-x C-b Open ibuffer (with point on the current Customize buffer entry)
* M Mark buffers by major mode...
RET ...select the mode (which defaulted to the major mode of the selected buffer, or otherwise type Custom-mode RET)
D y kill all marked buffers
Try it out; you'll probably like it. Searching for ibuffer will turn up other handy uses.
For instance, you could use / n ^\* RET / g tmp RET to separate out all buffers starting with * into a "tmp" group, so that they don't clutter up the group of buffers you are more likely to be interested in.
As with any major mode, use C-h m to read the built-in documentation.
This happens to me all the time:
I have a file open in emacs,
I save it ('save-buffer),
the file changes on disk (or get's deleted, moved, etc.)
but I want it back, so I try to save again in emacs ('save-buffer) and instead of saving it says "(no changes need to be saved)" and does nothing.
Is there a different function, or a setting, that I can use to force emacs to save?
Wrap a function around save-buffer that marks the buffer modified first:
(defun save-buffer-always ()
"Save the buffer even if it is not modified."
(interactive)
(set-buffer-modified-p t)
(save-buffer))
You can save as, with C-x C-w. That should save unconditionally. You can also just type a space then backspace over it. Emacs is smart enough to realize that if you undo everything you've done so far the buffer has no changes, but if you make changes and then manually reverse them it will consider the buffer to have been changed.
You can mark the current buffer as modified using the Emacs-Lisp function not-modified with a prefix arg, bound to:
C-u M-~
The answer above won't work if you don't call the new function directly.
If you want to seamlessly change emacs saving behavior. The best solution is to create an advice:
(defadvice save-buffer (before save-buffer-always activate)
"always save buffer"
(set-buffer-modified-p t))
As a slight alternative to scottfrazer's answer:
(defun my-save-buffer-always-sometimes (prefix)
"Save the buffer even if it is not modified."
(interactive "P")
(when prefix
(set-buffer-modified-p t))
(save-buffer))
This was you can force it when you want to with a prefix (C-u C-x C-s) but not unnecessarily change a file otherwise. The last modified timestamp is very useful (e.g. source code control) that it seems a shame to change it arbitrarily. YMMV, of course.
A similar problem brought me online to look for a solution. Then it hits me that all I have to do is type a space (or any character) and delete it, which marks the buffer as changed. Then I can type C-x C-s as normal. Maybe not sophisticated or advanced, but it works.
Like Tagore Smith said, you can force Emacs to save the buffer with C-x C-w.
If you're using Evil mode, you can also achieve this behavior by typing :w! in normal state. Unlike C-x C-w, :w! will not prompt you for the filename to save to.
When I use dired mode to browse around and find a file I want to open in Emacs, dired opens a new buffer for each directory I visit when looking for the file each time I select a directory with Enter, which means I can end up with a lot of buffers I don't want:
. * newer 0 Fundamental c:/work/stackoverflow/batch/mydir/newer
% mydir 302 Dired by name c:/work/stackoverflow/batch/mydir/
% batch 616 Dired by name c:/work/stackoverflow/batch/
% stackoverflow 1017 Dired by name c:/work/stackoverflow/
% work 2545 Dired by name c:/work/
* *scratch* 190 Lisp Interaction
% *Completions* 162 Completion List
* *Messages* 2163 Fundamental
Is there any way to make dired re-use a single buffer? I tried M-x customize-group for group dired but didn't see anything promising in there.
Alternatively, does anyone have a macro to close all open dired buffers?
Use a (dired-find-alternate-file) instead of Enter
Also, see this page:
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DiredReuseDirectoryBuffer
When browsing in dired instead of hitting enter to see a directory use i then it adds that directory to the current buffer.
I've never managed to get toggle-dired-find-file-reuse-dir to work reliably - I still end up with a variety of dired buffers open, and I'm never quite sure how.
Recently I discovered dired-single (http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/dired-single.el) which seems to work better for me. If you want it guarantees a single dired buffer, and also has a nice command dired-single-magic-buffer which will take you to the open dired buffer if you have one, and opens one if you don't.
There are some other alternatives if it isn't the multiple dired buffers per se that annoy, so much as the way they pollute your buffer lists. For example, elscreen.el has a dired plugin that keeps the dired buffers in their own tab, and the excellent ibuffer mode allows you to group dired buffers together when you list buffers.
Hope that helps!
Simon
From Xah Lee, at http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_dired_tips.html
;; Make dired open in the same window when using RET or ^
(put 'dired-find-alternate-file 'disabled nil) ; disables warning
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "RET") 'dired-find-alternate-file) ; was dired-advertised-find-file
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "^") (lambda () (interactive) (find-alternate-file ".."))) ; was dired-up-directory
In Emacs 28, you can just (setf dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer t). This works for either dired-find-file (RET) or dired-up-directory (^).
Dired+ lets you do this optionally, and it lets you toggle it on/off anytime.
See also http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DiredReuseDirectoryBuffer.