Starting from emacs -Q: Create a new buffer named "a". Insert ten asterisks and move point to the beginning of the buffer. Split the window and select the scratch buffer in one of them, leaving buffer "a" visible in the other. In the scratch buffer, evaluate this Lisp expression: (with-current-buffer "a" (goto-char 5) (insert "foo")) You can see "foo" inserted at position 5 in buffer "a", but point remains at the beginning of the buffer. Go to buffer "a", delete the "foo", and move to the beginning of the buffer again. Go to the scratch buffer and make it the sole visible window. Evaluate the above Lisp expression again. Go to buffer "a". "foo" has been inserted at position 5 as before, but now point is at position 8, after the "foo". I would expect point to move to position 8 in both cases, and I don't see anything in the documentation for with-current-buffer or goto-char to suggest that it ever wouldn't. In GNU Emacs 26.2 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2019-04-19 built on SeanMc Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11906000 System Description: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS Recent messages: C-x C-g is undefined C-. is undefined Undo! C-. is undefined nil Undo! Mark activated nil Quit Undo! Configured features: XAW3D XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY ACL LIBSELINUX GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE M17N_FLT LIBOTF XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS LUCID X11 XDBE XIM THREADS LCMS2 Important settings: value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=ibus locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: Fundamental Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message rmc puny seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv cl-loaddefs cl-lib dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils elec-pair time-date mule-util tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote threads dbusbind inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 96878 15032) (symbols 48 20303 1) (miscs 40 69 168) (strings 32 29315 1561) (string-bytes 1 758564) (vectors 16 14757) (vector-slots 8 508710 8162) (floats 8 51 278) (intervals 56 278 13) (buffers 992 12))