Buffer Attributes

All buffer objects store a set of basic attributes, some of these are:

name

Each buffer has a unique name.

Function: buffer-name &optional buffer

Returns the name of the buffer buffer, or of the current buffer if buffer is undefined.

(buffer-name)
    => "programmer.texi"

Function: set-buffer-name name &optional buffer

Sets the name of the buffer buffer (or the current buffer) to the string name. Note that name is not checked for uniqueness, use the make-buffer-name function if you want a guaranteed unique name.

Function: make-buffer-name name

Returns a unique version of the string name so that no existing buffer has the same string as its name. If a clash occurs a suffix `<N>' is appended to name, where n is the first number which guarantees the uniqueness of the result.

Function: get-buffer name

Returns the existing buffer whose name is name, or nil if no such buffer exists.

file name

Since buffers often contain text belonging to files on disk the buffer stores the name of the file its text was read from. See section Editing Files.

Function: buffer-file-name &optional buffer

Returns the name of the file stored in buffer. If no file is stored in the buffer the null string (`') is returned.

(buffer-file-name)
    => "man/programmer.texi"

Function: set-buffer-file-name name &optional buffer

This function sets the file-name of the buffer to the string name.

Function: get-file-buffer file-name

Searches for an existing buffer containing the file file-name then returns it, or nil if no such buffer exists.

contents

The contents of a buffer is the text it holds. This is stored as an array of lines. See section Text.

tab size

This is the spacing of tab stops. When the contents of the buffer is being displayed (in a window) this value is used.

Variable: tab-size

A buffer-local variable which holds the size of tab stops in the buffer.

glyph table

Each buffer has its own glyph table which is used when the buffer is being displayed. See section Buffer Glyph Tables.

local variables

Each buffer can have its own value for any variable, these local values are stored in an alist which lives in the buffer object. See section Buffer-Local Variables.

Function: buffer-variables &optional buffer

Returns the alist of local variables in the buffer. Each alist element is structured like, (symbol . local-value).

modification counter

Each modification made to the buffer increments its modification counter. See section Modifications to Buffers.

Function: buffer-changes &optional buffer

Returns the number of modifications made to the buffer since it was created.

undo information

When a modification is made to a buffer enough information is recorded so that the modification can later be undone. See section Controlling Undo.

All other buffer-specific information is kept in buffer-local variables.

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