A few weeks ago I wrote an article called “Delete File and Buffer”. Today we’ll revisit the article in a way, by exploring a pretty similar topic - renaming of a file and its associated buffer. I’ve taken the liberty to use pretty much the same wording I used in the aforementioned post to spare me the effort of thinking up something original.

From time to time(most often when I refactor code) I need to quickly(this removes dired from the equation) rename a file and the buffer associated with it. Since most of the files I work with are under version control I can just use the tried and true M-x vc-rename-file. Unfortunately the command does not act on the current file and will prompt you for a file to rename. Looks like we need to create a simple wrapper around it to get the job done:

(defun er-rename-file-and-buffer ()
  "Rename the current buffer and file it is visiting."
  (interactive)
  (let ((filename (buffer-file-name)))
    (if (not (and filename (file-exists-p filename)))
        (message "Buffer is not visiting a file!")
      (let ((new-name (read-file-name "New name: " filename)))
        (cond
         ((vc-backend filename) (vc-rename-file filename new-name))
         (t
          (rename-file filename new-name t)
          (set-visited-file-name new-name t t)))))))

The wrapper is extra smart and will work on files that are not under version control as well! I’m pretty fond of commands that do what you mean instead of throwing errors. Now that we have this neat little command we should probably bind it to some each to press keys, like C-c r:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c r")  #'er-rename-file-and-buffer)

This command is available in crux as crux-rename-file-and-buffer. This command is also available in prelude via the crux package.