How to make man replace the same buffer?

Question

Instead of open many buffers I wish to have the same buffer for all calls to the man.

somthing like `dired-find-alternate-file` but for man is desiderable — Francesco Cadei, Oct 05 '18 at 16:53
Define a command that calls `kill-buffer` and then calls `man`... — Drew, Oct 06 '18 at 00:34
In the commentary in `man.el` there is a TODO item that says: "Allow a user option to mean that all the manpages should go in the same buffer, where they can be browsed with M-n and M-p." :) — Omar, Oct 06 '18 at 00:38
I found that what you're asking is the default behaviour of `woman`, an Elisp replacement of man already present in Emacs. (M-x `woman`) — kotchwane, May 13 '20 at 18:41

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 06 '18 at 00:49

3

Here's a function following @Drew's excellent suggestion:

(defun last-man-standing ()
  (interactive)
  (kill-matching-buffers "^\*Man .*\*" nil t)
  (call-interactively #'man))

A couple of notes:

I used call-interactively to preserve man's fancy guessing of which man page you want.
I didn't know that kill-matching-buffers existed, but since Emacs often has exactly the function you need I went C-h f kill-match TAB and sure enough, it was there.

answered Oct 06 '18 at 00:49

Omar

and then: (bind-key [remap man] 'last-man-standing) – Heikki Oct 06 '18 at 06:51
This will not work for hyperlinks in the man buffer. – ceving Dec 17 '22 at 10:28

1 Answers1