How do I change the scratch message in Emacs?

Question

The scratch message always says:

;; This buffer is for notes you don't want to save, and for Lisp evaluation.
;; If you want to create a file, visit that file with C-x C-f,
;; then enter the text in that file's own buffer.

How do I remove this and make the blank scratch message the default?

Answer 1

You can customize this variable 'initial-scratch-message to be whatever message you want.

(setq initial-scratch-message "")

Answer 2

You can turn off the initial splash screen with

(setq inhibit-startup-message t)

this appears to also remove the initial message in the scratch buffer.

Answer 3

For Emacs 23, you can do this:

(setq initial-scratch-message nil)

From the documentation: "Initial message displayed in scratch buffer at startup. If this is nil, no message will be displayed."