Displaying Buffers

There are two main commands for switching to a different buffer,

Ctrl-x b

Prompt for the name of a buffer and display it in the current window.

Ctrl-x 4 b

In a different window (opens a new window if there is currently only one) prompt for the name of a buffer and display it in that window.

Both commands are very similar, the Ctrl-x 4 b variant simply invokes a command to switch to a different window before calling the Ctrl-x b command.

When typing the name of the new buffer you can use the prompt's completion mechanism to expand abbreviations (see see section The Buffer Prompt). If you just press RET with an empty prompt the default choice will be used. This will be the the buffer that was being shown in this window before the current buffer was selected (its name is displayed in the prompt's title).

The Ctrl-x Ctrl-f command and its variants also switch buffers since they look for an existing copy of the file in a buffer before loading it from disk, see section Commands To Load Files.

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