Re: Quickly finding out a function or a variable you need?

[Stefan Monnier]

> while writing Emacs Lisp code, I often use `describe-function' and
> `describe-variable' to search for functions and variables related to
> the task at hand.
> This commands, however - unlike `apropos' - require you to know the
> first characters. This means you'll have an hard time, for instance,
> finding `kill-buffer' when looking for functions which operate on
> buffers.

While these are clearly not the end-all-be-all of documentation, the
particular problem above is somewhat addressed in Emacs-23 by the new
completion facility where * is understand as a glob-character.  I.e.
C-h f *buffer TAB will list all functions that contain "buffer" in
their name.  Sadly, these are probably too many if you're looking for
kill-buffer.


        Stefan