How to get a list of all the buffers in elisp?

Question

I am trying to get a list of buffers through elisp. So I created the following function:

(mapcar (function buffer-name) (buffer-list))

This works when I do something like:

(minibuffer-message (mapcar (function buffer-name) (buffer-list)))

However, the following line of code does not work:

(insert (mapcar (function buffer-name) (buffer-list)))

Q: Could this just be a noob mistake? Is there a better way of doing it?

Answer 1

insert takes an arbitrary number of strings or characters as arguments, so it bails when you hand it a list of strings.

Try this:

(insert (mapconcat (function buffer-name) (buffer-list) " "))

Or this:

(apply #'insert (mapcar (function buffer-name) (buffer-list)))