Open files and switch buffers with less effort in Emacs

Enabling ido mode makes opening files and switching buffers a little more descriptive by lising all the possible completions in the minibuffer. It also makes editing the path of a file more speedy. For example, pressing the backspace to delete a directory name deletes the entire directory name rather than a single character of the directory name. This will require some practice but once you are comfortable, ido is a powerful tool. If ido is being too smart and you want to temporary disable it, simply press Ctrl-f. This will revert to the traditional minibuffer behavior for specifying file and buffer names. Add the following code to your .emacs file to enable ido mode.

(when (fboundp 'ido-mode)

  (ido-mode t)

  (setq ido-save-directory-list-file nil)

  )