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#78785
29.3; docs: switch-to-prev-buffer-skip is hard to find
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On 6/17/25 4:02 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>
> Meanwhile, I don't think I understand what was your practical problem
> with kill-buffer. Can you tell what you tried to achieve and what
> information was missing in the documentation which would have helped
> you do what you wanted? Because this discussion started without a
> clear description of the original problem (and the StackExchange
> discussion doesn't clarify that, either).
>
> Thanks.
I'll reframe my original problem that led to the report. Meanwhile, I'll
concede that I don't get how the two phase process that chooses a window
and then a buffer to display (or is it vice-versa?) works, but I don't
need to, I think.
A thing that often happens to me is that I'm working on editing several
files in multiple windows in a single frame to get some task done. At
some point, I decide that I'm done, and I want to sequentially kill all
the buffers, checking that they were saved (and I wasn't in the middle
of something in each) as I go.
Long ago, it was the case that each time I deleted one buffer, it would
be replaced by a different relatively recently visited buffer, which I
could take a look at, and then delete or edit, and then continue with
clean-up. More recently, the behavior changed, so that after I had
killed a few buffers, it would replace the killed buffer with another
that was already visible. This meant I would kill a buffer, then ask
emacs to give me a different recently-visited buffer, and then look at
that one. If I have 3 or 4 windows open, when I kill the current one,
showing in more than one window, both buffers are replaced in their
windows by the same buffer.
Now with (setq switch-to-prev-buffer-skip 'visible), I get the behavior
I want. When I kill a buffer, I get to see a different recent buffer. If
I kill a buffer that is displayed in more than one window, each window
gets is replaced by a different recently visited buffer.
I'm satisfied with this behavior, but I started this long discussion
because I thought the manual on kill-buffer said that it did what I
wanted in the default case. I don't think it does.
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Kill-Buffer.html#:~:text=C%2Dx%20k%20(%20kill%2Dbuffer%20),displayed%20in%20any%20window%20now.
"If you kill the current buffer, another buffer becomes current: one
that was current in the recent past but is not displayed in any window now."
Chris
--
Competition is virtually indistinguishable from anticompetitive
behavior. Every firm strives to undercut its rivals, to put its
rivals out of business, ... or to steal its rivals' customers.
--- Geoffrey Manne and Justin Hurwitz, ICLE
Chris Hibbert
hibbert <at> mydruthers.com
Blog: http://www.pancrit.org
http://mydruthers.com
This bug report was last modified 2 days ago.
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