How can I get emacs to open a new buffer quickly?

Question

I'm not sure that's a great title so I'll describe what I'm trying to do.

I used to be able to open a new buffer in Emacs quickly using the command C-x b <non existent buffer name>

Somehow I've broken this in my version of Emacs (23.1). When ever I try to do this now I get the message [No match] in the command buffer.

Does anyone know what I might have done to break this functionality, or is it possible that I imagined being able to do this?

Answer 1

You probably enabled ido-mode. You need to press ENTER to confirm the creation of the buffer.

Answer 2

If you have enabled ido-mode, you can still switch to the behavior you're familiar with. I do this frequently when I know I'll be creating a new named buffer.

C-x b C-b

Answer 3

Set confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer to nil:

confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer is a variable defined in `files.el'.
Its value is after-completion

Documentation:
Whether confirmation is requested before visiting a new file or buffer.
If nil, confirmation is not requested.
If the value is `after-completion', confirmation is only
 requested if the user called `minibuffer-complete' right before
 `minibuffer-complete-and-exit'.
Any other non-nil value means to request confirmation.

This affects commands like `switch-to-buffer' and `find-file'.

You can customize this variable.

This variable was introduced, or its default value was changed, in
version 23.1 of Emacs.

Answer 4

You press C-j instead of hitting enter twice, which will bypass the confirmation and immediately open the new buffer. This works with or without ido-mode. This will have the same effect has pressing enter with confirm-nonexistent-file-or-buffer set to nil.