Re-open *scratch* buffer in Emacs?

Question

If I accidentally closed the scratch buffer in Emacs, how do I create a new scratch buffer?

Answer 1

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x M-z")
                '(lambda ()
                   (interactive)
                   (switch-to-buffer "*scratch*")))

This will not only quickly switch to *scratch* buffer(since I do this frequently), but recreate a *scratch* buffer and enable lisp-interaction-mode automatically if you kill it accidentally. Change the binding as you like.

Answer 2

GNU Emacs default bindings:

C-xb *scratch* RET

or, more verbosely

M-x switch-to-buffer *scratch* RET

The *scratch* buffer is the buffer selected upon startup, and has the major mode Lisp Interaction. Note: the mode for the *scratch* buffer is controlled by the variable initial-major-mode.

In general you can create as many "scratch" buffers as you want, and name them however you choose.

C-xb NAME RET

switches to a buffer NAME, creating it if it doesn't exist. A new buffer is not associated with a file on disk until you use C-xC-w (or M-x write-file RET) to choose a file where it should be saved.

M-x text-mode RET

changes the current buffer's major mode to Text mode. To find all the modes available (that is, without requiring any new packages), you can get a list by typing:

M-x apropos-command -mode$ RET

Answer 3

There are a whole bunch of tips on this EmacsWiki page.

Here's the first one:

A very simple function to recreate the scratch buffer:

(defun create-scratch-buffer nil
   "create a scratch buffer"
   (interactive)
   (switch-to-buffer (get-buffer-create "*scratch*"))
   (lisp-interaction-mode))             

Answer 4

I have scratch as an interactive command for opening a new scratch buffer (I like to have several):

(defun scratch ()
  "create a new scratch buffer to work in. (could be *scratch* - *scratchX*)"
  (interactive)
  (let ((n 0)
        bufname)
    (while (progn
             (setq bufname (concat "*scratch"
                                   (if (= n 0) "" (int-to-string n))
                                   "*"))
             (setq n (1+ n))
             (get-buffer bufname)))
  (switch-to-buffer (get-buffer-create bufname))
  (if (= n 1) initial-major-mode))) ; 1, because n was incremented

adopted from: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1038451

Answer 5

C-x b *scratch* RET y RET with iswitchb-mode enabled.

Just C-x b *scratch* RET otherwise.

Answer 6

Just to note emacs package unkillable-scratch in MELPA will do this. There is also scratch-persist that will automatically save and restore the buffer between sessions.