How to change the buffer unification suffix for non local files?

Question

When I open for example the file syslog.conf on four different hosts with Tramp the buffer names are

• syslog.conf
• syslog.conf<2>
• syslog.conf<3>
• syslog.conf<4>

When I try to change the buffer with tab completion, this is all I see. The information which buffer belongs to which host is not visible.

Is it possible to tell Emacs to put the name of the remote host into the buffer name?

I would prefer the following buffer names for non local files.

• syslog.conf@host1
• syslog.conf@host2
• syslog.conf@host3
• syslog.conf@host4

Answer 1

If the files on each host are in a different directory, you might be able to distinguish them by setting the variable uniquify-buffer-name-style:

From (emacs) Uniquify:

When several buffers visit identically-named files, Emacs must give the buffers distinct names. The default method adds a suffix based on the names of the directories that contain the files. For example, if you visit files /foo/bar/mumble/name and /baz/quux/mumble/name at the same time, their buffers will be named ‘name’ and ‘name’, respectively. Emacs adds as many directory parts as are needed to make a unique name.

You can choose from several different styles for constructing unique buffer names, by customizing the option uniquify-buffer-name-style.

Emacs should do the right thing here. My settings are:

(setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'reverse)
(setq uniquify-separator "/")
(setq uniquify-after-kill-buffer-p t) ; rename after killing uniquified
(setq uniquify-ignore-buffers-re "^\\*") 

And I get the following buffer names when I open the same file on two hosts:

• local /etc/hosts is hosts
• remote /etc/hosts is hosts//scp:<username>@<remotehost>.