How do I close an automatically opened window in Emacs?

Question

This is probably a very naive Emacs question - I'm new to it.

When I'm evaluating a lisp expression, if there's an error the debugger automatically comes up in another window. If I have *scratch* and *info* open (the former for trying out lisp and the latter for reading about it), then the debugger opens up in the window that *info* was in. At the moment, I have to switch to that window, then change it back to *info*, before returning to *scratch*. (The same thing happens if I do C-x C-b for a list of buffers.) I'm guessing there has to be a way to just close that window without this long sequence of commands. Can anyone enlighten me?

Answer 1

At least here on my emacs (22.3), when the debugger pops up, its window becomes the active one. There, pressing q just quits the debugger, if that's what you want. At that point, it also gets out of recursive editing.

Answer 2

From what I understand, you want to close the buffer in the other window without moving your cursor from the current window.

I don't any existing function does that, so I rolled my own.

(defun other-window-kill-buffer ()
  "Kill the buffer in the other window"
  (interactive)
  ;; Window selection is used because point goes to a different window
  ;; if more than 2 windows are present
  (let ((win-curr (selected-window))
        (win-other (next-window)))
    (select-window win-other)
    (kill-this-buffer)
    (select-window win-curr)))

You can bind it to something like "C-x K" or some other somewhat difficult-to-press key so you won't press it by mistake.

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x K") 'other-window-kill-buffer)

I use this a LOT! (for Help buffers, Compilation buffers, Grep buffers, and just plain old buffers I want to close now, without moving the point)