emacs newbie: How can I hide the buffer files that emacs creates?

Question

I just started using emacs after having used vi for a long time. :) One thing which is annoying me is that whenever I modify a file, save it and exit emacs, I see a buffer file created in the same directory named filename~ (if the file I edited was "filename"). Is there any way I can get rid of this? Or hide these files? It is very annoying to see tons of buffer files when I do ls of the directory.

Answer 1

You can either move them to their own folder with the following code:

;; Don't clutter up directories with files~
(setq backup-directory-alist `(("." . ,(expand-file-name
                                    (concat dotfiles-dir "backups")))))

;; Don't clutter with #files either
(setq auto-save-file-name-transforms
      `((".*" ,(expand-file-name (concat dotfiles-dir "backups")))))

Or you can remove them completely, like so:

(setq make-backup-files nil)
(setq auto-save-default nil)

Personally I would be weary of removing them as they can come in useful. Further discussion is here:

• http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BackupDirectory
• http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AutoSave

I would recommend checking out the emacs-starter-kit it sorts out a load of issues that people have when coming to emacs, and is pretty heavily used.

http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit/blob/master/starter-kit-misc.el

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Update:

There seems to be much confusion over how to use the functions. I'm going to have a little play around later but here is some more information. Note that auto-save-file-name-transforms:

lets you specify a series of regular expressions and replacements to transform the auto save file name [emacs-manual]

so it's not just as simple as adding in a folder name. That said it seems from a quick google search the following might just do what you all want:

;;; backup/autosave
(defvar backup-dir (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d/backup/"))
(defvar autosave-dir (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d/autosave/"))
(setq backup-directory-alist (list (cons ".*" backup-dir)))
(setq auto-save-list-file-prefix autosave-dir)
(setq auto-save-file-name-transforms `((".*" ,autosave-dir t)))

http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=auto-save-file-name-transforms&sbtn=Search

Answer 2

In your .emacs:

(setq make-backup-files nil)

Edit: If you're unfamiliar with the .emacs file, it's a file named .emacs that resides in your user $HOME directory. If you don't have one already, you can just create it and emacs will load it on startup.

Answer 3

Here is a link to the same question answered on SuperUser and my response. And a StackOverflow question entitled Emacs: Don’t create #these# files when not saving modified buffer

And for completeness, as stated by others; to stop the backup files being created put this in your .emacs

(setq make-backup-files nil)

Answer 4

The following lines in ~/.emacs will put all of the auto-save and backup files in /tmp:

(setq backup-directory-alist
      `((".*" . ,temporary-file-directory)))
(setq auto-save-file-name-transforms
      `((".*" ,temporary-file-directory t)))