5 Using TRAMP

Once you have installed TRAMP it will operate fairly transparently. You will be able to access files on any remote host that you can log in to as though they were local.

Files are specified to TRAMP using a formalized syntax specifying the details of the system to connect to. This is similar to the syntax used by the Ange-FTP package.

Something that might happen which surprises you is that Emacs remembers all your keystrokes, so if you see a password prompt from Emacs, say, and hit RET twice instead of once, then the second keystroke will be processed by Emacs after TRAMP has done its thing. Why, this type-ahead is normal behavior, you say. Right you are, but be aware that opening a remote file might take quite a while, maybe half a minute when a connection needs to be opened. Maybe after half a minute you have already forgotten that you hit that key!