How can I "Save As..." in Emacs without visiting the new file?

Question

If I use C-xC-w (write-file) to write the current buffer's content to a new location, then afterwards my buffer will be visiting the new file instead of the original one. Sometimes I would like to save off a copy of the buffer to a new location, but then keep editing at the original location.

I know I can kill the existing filename from the (write-file) minibuffer history, and then yank that back at the C-xC-f (find-file) prompt immediately afterwards to re-visit the original file, and this is the work-around I use at the moment. However, this feels inelegant.

I had wondered if (write-file) might take a prefix argument of some kind to not visit the buffer, but this only appears to affect overwrite confirmation.

So: Is there any simpler way to save my buffer content to a file without altering which file I'm visiting?

Answer 1

Select the entire buffer with C-xh, then use M-xwrite-region.

Answer 2

If you do this regularly enough that it's getting annoying for you, you could define this function

(defun write-file-copy (filename)   (interactive "F")   (write-region (point-min) (point-max) filename)) 

and bind it to something that makes sense to you.