How do I get list of recent files in GNU Emacs?

Question

When I use Emacs I want to be able to easily display and navigate through a list of files I worked on from not just the current session but from previous sessions. (BTW, running Emacs 22.2 on Windows)

Answer 1

From Joe Grossberg's blog:

But if you're using GNU Emacs 21.2 (the latest version, which includes this as part of the standard distro), you can just put the following lines into your .emacs file

;; recentf stuff
(require 'recentf)
(recentf-mode 1)
(setq recentf-max-menu-items 25)
(global-set-key "\C-x\ \C-r" 'recentf-open-files)

Then, when you launch emacs, hit CTRL-X CTRL-R. It will show a list of the recently-opened files in a buffer. Move the cursor to a line and press ENTER. That will open the file in question, and move it to the top of your recent-file list.

(Note: Emacs records file names. Therefore, if you move or rename a file outside of Emacs, it won't automatically update the list. You'll have to open the renamed file with the normal CTRL-X CTRL-F method.)

Jayakrishnan Varnam has a page including screenshots of how this package works.