Save place in files but don't move the cursor to the saved position automatically

Question

I'd like to have a command that moves the cursor to the last position it was in when I left the buffer (either by killing it or by killing Emacs).

I know I can use saveplace.el to save the position for when I visit that file again, but then saveplace also takes the cursor to that position automatically, while I would like to leave the cursor at the beginning of the buffer, and move to the last position only when I want to do it, using a command. (Basically, like `" does in Vim.)

Answer 1

I have written something that after some quick testing seems to be working.

save-place-mode does the automatic restoring of the cursor position by adding save-place-find-file-hook – which takes the cursor to the saved position – to find-file-hook. To change the behaviour so that the restoring can be done on demand, I removed save-place-find-file-hook from the hook and wrapped it in an interactive function.

(save-place-mode)
(remove-hook 'find-file-hook #'save-place-find-file-hook)
(remove-hook 'dired-initial-position-hook #'save-place-dired-hook)

(defun goto-saved-place ()
  (interactive "^")
  (save-place-find-file-hook))
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c '") #'goto-saved-place)

Answer 2

You can put the current position in a variable of your choosing and save that variable persistently. Put a function that sets the variable value on kill-buffer-hook, since you say (in a comment) that you want to do this just before killing the buffer. Or on kill-emacs-hook.

You can add your variable for this to savehist-additional-variables, and use savehist-mode to save such variables. You can also invoke savehist-save explicitly in your hook function.