If you open more than one file that has the same name (say test.txt), then by default Emacs will add a number to the end of the buffer name to distinguish them, so you would see test.txt <1> and test.txt <2> and so on. This is not very useful as it is easy to lose track of which file is which.
Luckily it is easy to fix with some simple tweaks (I’ve taken these from the configuration files for prelude). Add these to your emacs config file and your buffer names will be made unique by adding just enough of the path to the file. So you might see docs/test.txt and scratch/test.txt. Much nicer!
;; meaningful names for buffers with the same name ;; from prelude ;; https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude (require 'uniquify) (setq uniquify-buffer-name-style 'forward) (setq uniquify-separator "/") (setq uniquify-after-kill-buffer-p t) ; rename after killing uniquified (setq uniquify-ignore-buffers-re "^\\*") ; don't muck with special buffers