Emacs bookmarks -- a huge time-saver (Shallow Thoughts)

Emacs bookmarks -- a huge time-saver

Oh, wow. I can't believe I've used Emacs all these years without knowing about bookmarks.

I wanted something in Emacs akin to the "Open Recent" menu that a lot of GUI apps have. Except, well, I didn't want it to need a menu (I don't normally show a menubar in Emacs) and I didn't want it limited only to recently accessed files. So ... just like Open Recent, only completely different.

What I really wanted was a way to nickname files I access regularly, so I don't have to type ~/foo/bar/blaz/route-66/dufus/velociraptor/archaeopteryx/filename every time. Even with tab completion, remembering long paths gets old. Of course emacs must have a way to do that; it has everything. The trick was guessing what it might be called in order to search for it.

The answer is emacs bookmarks and they're super easy to use.

C-x r m sets a bookmark for the current location in the current file. It prompts for a bookmark name; give it a nickname, or hit return to default it to the current filename.

C-x r b bookmark-name jumps back to a bookmark, opening the file if it isn't already. Of course, tab completion works for the bookmark name.

Bookmarks are saved in ~/.emacs.bmk so they're persistent.

It's perfect. I just wish I'd thought to look for it years ago.

(Of course, Emacs can do recent files too.)

Tags: editors, emacs, bookmarks
[ 10:21 Mar 27, 2009    More linux/editors | permalink to this entry | ]