making buffer names unique

When you open a file in emacs, the buffer gets the name of that file. That's all fine, but what if you open multiple files with the same name? At least for me, it's a fairly common to have a number of different Makefile.am buffers Makefile.am<3> etc., but that does really help to find the right one at the same time. Emacs does make those names unique – Makefile.am<2>, quickly.

To do that, emacs provides uniquify – it makes buffer names unique. In your .emacs:

(require 'uniquify) 
(setq 
  uniquify-buffer-name-style 'post-forward
  uniquify-separator ":")

This is emacs, so you can influence the way in which the names are made unique. I prefer post-forward, and as separator I use a : rather than the default |. Note, instead of post-forward there are other bizarre styles, please see the documentation.

Anyway, now, when opening ('visiting') files test/a/foo and test/b/foo, their buffers get the names foo:a and foo:b. In other words, the name followed by a colon and part of the path. I think it's much clearer than the default names foo and foo<2>. One could ask why emacs should not use uniquify as its default behavior; it seems a clear improvement.

Uniquify is a small convenience that's been a documented part of emacs for 20 years. Still, somehow I missed it until this year. I suspect I am not the only one - which is why I write this.