Question

I want my emacs buffer to have a different name than the file name. Rather than setting this manually every time, I want to have this happen automatically based on the file contents, something like:

// Local Variables:
// buffer-name: MyName
// End:

But this doesn’t work because buffer-name is a function, not a variable. How can I do this?

Answer 1

You could say:

// Local Variables: // eval: (rename-buffer 'my-buffer-name-here') // end: 

It is a trick though.

You could otherwise program a find-file-hook hook in your .emacs which rename the buffer to a specific local variable contents. Something like:

(defvar pdp-buffer-name nil)  (defun pdp-rename-buffer-if-necessary ()   'Rename the current buffer according to the value of variable'   (interactive)   (if (and pdp-buffer-name (stringp pdp-buffer-name))       (rename-buffer pdp-buffer-name)))  (add-hook 'find-file-hook 'pdp-rename-buffer-if-necessary) 

Then in your specific file you have

// Local Variables: // pdp-buffer-name: 'pierre'  // end: 

With more brain power you could have a nicer solution.

Note that there could already exist an extension for your need. Look in the Emacs wiki.