Re: previous-history-element at switch-to-buffer prompt doesn't span full list

[Eli Zaretskii]

On 1 Mar 2001, Dan Jacobson wrote:

> Do C-x b M-p M-p M-n M-n etc.  Notice that it isn't going up and down
> the full list of choices as would be seen from C-x b TAB, nor even a
> reasonable subset.  E.g., files directly visited from dired buffers
> wouldn't end up in that subset, well, anyway, it should loop directly
> in the order of *Buffer list*, M-p going 1,2,3 M-n going Last,
> Last-1... and both looping at the end, e.g. for M-p:  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4.

This is a feature: "C-x b" records a history of buffers you visited
via "C-x b" and similar commands.  It does NOT record all the buffers, 
nor does it access the list of buffers known to Emacs.

The utility of this feature will become clear if you imagine the
(quite frequent) case that a user has dozens of buffers in her
session, but only switches between a handful of them while working on
some particular project.

If you want an efficient method of switching between all the buffers,
try some package that is designed for that, such as iswitchb.

> By the way, too bad ^P ^N can't be used here

If your keyboard has arrow keys, you should be able to use Up and Down
arrows for navigating history.