Emacs custom command help

Question

I am pretty new to Emacs. Could someone please help me to write a custom command which I can add to my init file? It would do the following:

1. Split the screen vertically to get two windows.
2. Check if a buffer named '* ansi-term *' (without spaces) exists. If so, it would open this buffer in the one of vertically split windows.
3. If a buffer with such a name doesn't exist it would run command ansi-term (ignoring all prompting) to start a new terminal instance in one of the vertically windows.

Answer 1

Here's a command which might do what you want:

(defun my-ansi-term ()
  (interactive)
  (select-window (split-window-right))
  (let ((buffer (get-buffer "*ansi-term*")))
    (if buffer
        (switch-to-buffer buffer)
      (ansi-term shell-file-name))))

If you're not happy with the window layout, try to figure it out by yourself, try switch-to-buffer-other-window etc.