Name of the active buffer

Name of the active buffer

[hfleming]

Suppose I want to run, from emacs, the program "prog" with the active buffer,
"buffer", say, as argument.
Of course I can do "Meta-! prog buffer". Some editors, however, have a
default name for the active buffer. In vi, for instance, one can do ":! prog
%" . In ultraedit, the buffer is called "%f". How can we do that in emacs?

Thanks!

hfleming

"Doubt, one of the forms of intelligence..."
(J.L. Borges)
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Re: Name of the active buffer

[Robert D. Crawford]

hfleming <hfleming38@gmail.com> writes:

> Suppose I want to run, from emacs, the program "prog" with the active buffer,
> "buffer", say, as argument.
> Of course I can do "Meta-! prog buffer". Some editors, however, have a
> default name for the active buffer. In vi, for instance, one can do ":! prog
> %" . In ultraedit, the buffer is called "%f". How can we do that in emacs?

Maybe this is what you are looking for:

buffer-name is a built-in function in `C source code'.
(buffer-name &optional BUFFER)

Return the name of BUFFER, as a string.
With no argument or nil as argument, return the name of the current buffer.

rdc
-- 
Robert D. Crawford                                      rdc1x@comcast.net

I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.

Re: Name of the active buffer

[Daniel Jensen]

hfleming <hfleming38@gmail.com> writes:

> Suppose I want to run, from emacs, the program "prog" with the active buffer,
> "buffer", say, as argument.
> Of course I can do "Meta-! prog buffer". Some editors, however, have a
> default name for the active buffer. In vi, for instance, one can do ":! prog
> %" . In ultraedit, the buffer is called "%f". How can we do that in emacs?

I assume you want to pass the buffer /file/ name as an argument to the
program, not the name.

Normally this is what you want for the compile command. It's a good idea
to use that even if the program is not strictly a compiler.

There is no built-in feature for taking the file name and using it with
M-x compile. One way to do it is to have a local variable in the file:

    compile-command: program and arguments...

See <http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/CompileCommand> for possible
other ways.

Re: Name of the active buffer

[Kevin Rodgers]

hfleming wrote:
> Suppose I want to run, from emacs, the program "prog" with the active buffer,
> "buffer", say, as argument.
> Of course I can do "Meta-! prog buffer". Some editors, however, have a
> default name for the active buffer. In vi, for instance, one can do ":! prog
> %" . In ultraedit, the buffer is called "%f". How can we do that in emacs?

If it is a "normal" command that reads from standard input when no file 
name argument is given: C-x h M-| prog RET


-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA