Opening two scratch-like buffers on GNU Emacs
🗒️ tl;dr: Run
C-x b <buffer-name>with different buffer names.
This week, I had a task that involved comparing two pieces of text
against each other. GNU Emacs has a perfect function for this, called
“ediff-buffers”. You call it typing by “M-x ediff-buffers”, and
then selecting the two buffers you want to compare. Quite easy, right?
However, I tried to open two scratch buffers to paste my text and
discovered you can’t just C-u 2 M-x scratch-buffer to open two
scratch buffers.
It turns out you can use the function “switch-to-buffer” to the same
effect. Press “C-x b” (default keybinding) and type a name for your
new buffer. This should be enough to give you an empty buffer.
However, some time afterwards, I discovered the functions
“ediff-regions-wordwise” and “ediff-regions-linewise”. These
functions made the entire task easier because I could paste both texts
into the same buffer and then select the regions individually to
compare them.