Re: C-x C-b (switch-to-buffer) smarter suggestions?

[Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com>]

Jorgen Grahn wrote:
> This is a minor annoyance for me daily, and I'm hoping someone has a
> readymade elisp fix.  I'm not much of an elisp hacker -- my ~/.emacs
> has stayed basically the same since 1996.
> 
> Let's say I have a dozen buffers, including foo.c and foo.h.  I am in
> foo.c but I want to jump to foo.h. So I do
> 
>   C-x C-b foo TAB
> 
> But this doesn't complete to foo.h, because foo.c is also an
> alternative -- even though that's the buffer I'm explicitly trying to
> switch *from*.

(defvar switch-from-buffer nil)

(defadvice switch-to-buffer (before switch-from-buffer activate)
   "Temporarily bind `switch-from-buffer' to the current buffer
while reading args interactively.  See `internal-complete-buffer'."
   (interactive (let ((switch-from-buffer (current-buffer)))
		 (read-buffer "Switch to buffer: " (other-buffer)))))

(defun internal-complete-buffer (string predicate flag)
   "Just like Finternal_complete_buffer(), but exclude `switch-from-buffer'."
   ;; emulate buffer-alist:
   (let ((buffer-alist (mapcar (lambda (buffer)
				(cons (buffer-name buffer) buffer))
			      (delq switch-from-buffer (buffer-list)))))
     (cond ((null flag)
	   (try-completion string buffer-alist predicate))
	  ((eq flag t)
	   (all-completions string buffer-alist predicate t))
	  (t				; assume `lambda'
	   (test-completion string buffer-alist predicate)))))

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA