A cool trick not everybody knows with Visual Studio and JetBrains’
IDEs is that it is possible to navigate back to previous positions
with Ctrl -.
A similar trick also works with Bash:
cd -
and with Git:
git checkout -
Neat, right?
Of course, there are way more powerful tools built around this idea
(such as z, autojump and zoxide). And
— did you doubt? — similar powerful features are in Emacs
too. Let’s explore them.
So you want to leave a track while you move around buffers and you
want to retrace your steps, right?
As far as I know, Emacs offers 3 tools:
| Tool | Main characteristics | When it is the best fit |
| mark ring | - buffer local and global - unnamed - both manual and automated - volatile - It’s related to the region |
- Quick, impromptu navigation |
| registers | - global - short-named - manual - not persistent by default |
- Within a working session - Can store more than positions |
| bookmarks | - named - manual - persisted |
- The longterm cornerstones for organizing your work environment - Can store more than positions |
In this series, we will explorer them all!