Opening two scratch-like buffers on GNU Emacs

{{< alert class="info" >}} tl;dr: Run C-x b <buffer-name> with different buffer names. {{< /alert >}}

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.