GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual

25.6: Buffers and Windows

This section describes low-level functions to examine windows or to display buffers in windows in a precisely controlled fashion. See Displaying Buffers, for related functions that find a window to use and specify a buffer for it. The functions described there are easier to use than these, but they employ heuristics in choosing or creating a window; use these functions when you need complete control.

Function: set-window-buffer window buffer-or-name

This function makes window display buffer-or-name as its contents. It returns nil.

(set-window-buffer (selected-window) "foo")
     => nil

Function: window-buffer &optional window

This function returns the buffer that window is displaying. If window is omitted, this function returns the buffer for the selected window.

(window-buffer)
     => #<buffer windows.texi>

Function: get-buffer-window buffer-or-name &optional all-frames

This function returns a window currently displaying buffer-or-name, or nil if there is none. If there are several such windows, then the function returns the first one in the cyclic ordering of windows, starting from the selected window. See Cyclic Window Ordering.

The argument all-frames controls which windows to consider.

• If it is nil, consider windows on the selected frame.
• If it is t, consider windows on all frames.
• If it is visible, consider windows on all visible frames.
• If it is 0, consider windows on all visible or iconified frames.
• If it is a frame, consider windows on that frame.