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(emacs)Saving Emacs Sessions

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Saving Emacs Sessions
=====================

   You can use the Desktop library to save the state of Emacs from one
session to another.  Saving the state means that Emacs starts up with
the same set of buffers, major modes, buffer positions, and so on that
the previous Emacs session had.

   To use Desktop, you should use the Customization buffer (Note: Easy
Customization) to set `desktop-enable' to a non-`nil' value, or add
these lines at the end of your `.emacs' file:

     (desktop-load-default)
     (desktop-read)

The first time you save the state of the Emacs session, you must do it
manually, with the command `M-x desktop-save'.  Once you have done
that, exiting Emacs will save the state again--not only the present
Emacs session, but also subsequent sessions.  You can also save the
state at any time, without exiting Emacs, by typing `M-x desktop-save'
again.

   In order for Emacs to recover the state from a previous session, you
must start it with the same current directory as you used when you
started the previous session.  This is because `desktop-read' looks in
the current directory for the file to read.  This means that you can
have separate saved sessions in different directories; the directory in
which you start Emacs will control which saved session to use.

   The variable `desktop-files-not-to-save' controls which files are
excluded from state saving.  Its value is a regular expression that
matches the files to exclude.  By default, remote (ftp-accessed) files
are excluded; this is because visiting them again in the subsequent
session would be slow.  If you want to include these files in state
saving, set `desktop-files-not-to-save' to `"^$"'.  Note: Remote
Files.

   The Saveplace library provides a simpler feature that records your
position in each file when you kill its buffer (or kill Emacs), and
jumps to the same position when you visit the file again (even in
another Emacs session).  Use `M-x toggle-save-place' to turn on
place-saving in a given file.  Customize the option `save-place' to
turn it on for all files in each session.