How can I hide the backup files that emacs creates?

Question

I just started using emacs after having used vi for a long time. :)

One thing which is annoying me is that whenever I modify a file, save it and exit emacs, I see a back

Answer 1

In your .emacs:

(setq make-backup-files nil)

Edit: If you're unfamiliar with the .emacs file, it's a file named .emacs that resides in your user $HOME directory. If you don't have one already, you can just create it and emacs will load it on startup.