How can I check if a current buffer exists in Emacs?

Question

I would like to write a function which takes action if a give buffer name already exists. For example:

(if (buffer-exists "my-buffer-name")     ; do something  ) 

Does elisp have a function that will check the for the existence of a buffer similar to how my made up "buffer-exists" function does?

Thanks

Answer 1

From the documentation:

 (get-buffer name)  Return the buffer named name (a string). If there is no live buffer named name, return nil. name may also be a buffer; if so, the value is that buffer.  (get-buffer-create name)  Return the buffer named name, or create such a buffer and return it. A new buffer is created if there is no live buffer named name. If name starts with a space, the new buffer does not keep undo information. If name is a buffer instead of a string, then it is the value returned. The value is never nil. 

Answer 2

This is what I did:

(when (get-buffer "*scratch*")   (kill-buffer "*scratch*")) 

This checks for the buffer scratch. If there's such a thing, kill it. If not, do nothing at all.