Question

I want to start three files in emacs from a terminal, and split the window in emacs into three, so that the three windows contains one file each. It is also important to me that the windows is divided in a certain way. I can get the right split manually by opening emacs, and pressing C-x 3, C-x o, C-x 2. Anyone knows how to do this either by configurating .emacs or by bash-scripting? I am to open about 300 files this way, so doing it automatically would help me out a lot.

EDIT:
I am to open 3 different files each time. I would love if I could open from terminal like this:
emacs file1 file2 file3

then for the next three files
emacs file4 file 5 file6

Just in case:
– Running Linux
– Using emacs-newest

Answer 1

Does this do what you want?

(defun open-files (first second third)
  (interactive "fFirst: \nfSecond: \nfThird: ")
  (find-file first)
  (split-window-horizontally)
  (other-window 1)
  (find-file second)
  (split-window-vertically)
  (other-window 1)
  (find-file third))

Edit: I’ve made the function interactive, it is also possible to call it from the command line like so:

emacs --eval='(open-files "/tmp/first" "/tmp/second" "/tmp/third")'

You could probably wrap this in a bash script to make it easier to call.