How to check whether a buffer is visiting a file?

Question

I'd like to check whether some (say, current) buffer is visiting a file or not. I could say:

(if (buffer-file-name) ...)

but it seems to be not very elegant - what I'm interested in is only the boolean value, not the actual name of the buffer in question. If the buffer-file-name function were written in Elisp, I could look into its source to find out what it uses - but it is written in C, and while I could install the Emacs sources, I'm afraid that I wouldn't find an elisp name for the function that checks what I'm after there anyway.

What I need it for is I want to create a directory based on the name of the current buffer's file, and currently I'm doing more or less this:

(make-directory (if (buffer-file-name) (file-name-base) "default-dir"))

So, what would be the Elisp-idiomatic way of doing this?

Answer 1

I'd argue that your usage is idiomatic elisp, since the buffer's name is a perfectly appropriate boolean value in its own right. Quoting from the manual:

There is an important aspect to the truth test in an if expression. So far, we have spoken of `true' and `false' as values of predicates as if they were new kinds of Emacs Lisp objects. In fact, `false' is just our old friend nil. Anything else—anything at all—is `true'.

To further the point, check out the code for clone-buffer. I expect you'll see the following:

(interactive
 (progn
   (if buffer-file-name
       (error "Cannot clone a file-visiting buffer"))
...

Note that this is testing the variable binding of buffer-file-name instead of calling the function without argument, (buffer-file-name), but the two should always behave the same.

Answer 2

You can use either (buffer-file-name) (with optional buffer argument) or the buffer-local buffer-file-name variable. Both evaluate to the same value for a given buffer.

That is the idiomatic way to do this in Elisp, though, so your code is fine. If you desperately wanted to you could always make a buffer-has-file-p wrapper function.

Answer 3

Just use buffer-file-name. In Lisp we often use a non-nil value to mean true.

The only times you might want to avoid this is if the function is costly or has unwanted side effects.

Answer 4

From the "Buffer List" chapter of the documentation :

The list returned by buffer-list is constructed specifically; it is not an internal Emacs data structure, and modifying it has no effect on the order of buffers.

So you have to find a way to search in the list of live buffers. Here's one:

  (if (string-match-p (regexp-quote "My buffer name") (format "%s" (buffer-list)))
      (message "Open")
    (message "Not open"))