emacs lisp, how to get buffer major mode?

Question

hey guys

I have tried to search Google and look in the manual, but still cannot find how to get major mode of a buffer object. Can you help me with an example or a reference. Thanks

only solution I could find was to query major-mode after changing the buffer and then changing back to original buffer. Is there a better way to do it?

Answer 1

Well, describe-mode takes an optional buffer argument, but that displays the help... and I'm not exactly sure what it returns...

But that's the best I could find in a brief search... sorry...

Answer 2

Is there a problem with that?

(defun buffer-mode (buffer-or-string)
  "Returns the major mode associated with a buffer."
  (save-excursion
     (set-buffer buffer-or-string)
     major-mode))

save-excursion will restore your buffer when it returns.