GNU Emacs Manual - List Buffers

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## Listing Existing Buffers

`C-x C-b`
  List the existing buffers (`list-buffers`).

To display a list of all the buffers that exist, type `C-x C-b`. Each line in the list shows one buffer's name, major mode and visited file. The buffers are listed in the order that they were current; the buffers that were current most recently come first.

``*'` at the beginning of a line indicates the buffer is "modified." If several buffers are modified, it may be time to save some with `C-x s` (see section Saving Files). ``%'` indicates a read-only buffer. ``.'` marks the selected buffer. Here is an example of a buffer list:

     MR Buffer         Size  Mode           File
     -- ------         ----  ----           ----
    .*  emacs.tex      383402 Texinfo       /u2/emacs/man/emacs.tex
        *Help*         1287  Fundamental
        files.el       23076 Emacs-Lisp     /u2/emacs/lisp/files.el
      % RMAIL          64042 RMAIL          /u/rms/RMAIL
     *% man            747   Dired          /u2/emacs/man/
        net.emacs      343885 Fundamental   /u/rms/net.emacs
        fileio.c       27691 C              /u2/emacs/src/fileio.c
        NEWS           67340 Text           /u2/emacs/etc/NEWS
        *scratch*	   0	 Lisp Interaction

Note that the buffer ``*Help*'` was made by a help request; it is not visiting any file. The buffer `man` was made by Dired on the directory ``/u2/emacs/man/'`.

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