Setting Emacs to Split Buffers Side-by-Side

Question

A lot of Emacs functions automatically split the screen. However, they all do so such that the windows are one on top of the other. Is there any way to make them split such

Answer 1

the simple answer of setting 2 variables to nil and 0 didn't work for me, so I wrote 2 simple functions: one just splits the window into NX vertical buffers and opens files named (for example) file.1 file.2 ... file.NX in each and another one does the same think, except does it in 2D (NY rows by NX columns for opening files f.1 f.2 ... f.[NX*NY]). To install, add this code to .emacs:

    (defun grid-files-h (nx wx pfx)
  "Using dotimes, split the window into NX side-by-side buffers of width WX and load files starting with prefix PFX and ending in numbers 1 through NX"
  (let (ox fn k)  ; ox is not used, but fn is used to store the filename, and k to store the index string
    (dotimes (x (- nx 1) ox) ; go through buffers, x goes from 0 to nx-2 and ox is not used here
;     (print x)
      (setq k (number-to-string (+ x 1) ) )  ; k is a string that goes from "1" to "nx-1"
;     (print k)
      (setq fn (concat pfx k) ) ; fn is filename - concatenate prefix with k
;     (print fn)
      (find-file fn) ; open the filename in current buffer
      (split-window-horizontally wx) ; split window (current buffer gets wx-columns)
      (other-window 1) ; switch to the next (right) buffer
      )
    (setq k (number-to-string nx )) ; last (rightmost) buffer gets the "nx" file
    (setq fn (concat pfx k) ) ; fn = "pfx"+"nx"
    (find-file fn ) ; open fn
    (other-window 1) ; go back to the first buffer
    )  
  )

   (defun grid-files-sq (ny wy nx wx pfx)
      "Using dotimes, split the window into NX columns of width WX and NY rows of height WY and load files starting with prefix PFX and ending in numbers 1 through NX*NY"
      (let (oy ox fn k)  
        (dotimes (y ny oy) ; go through rows, y goes from 0 to ny-1 and oy is not used here
          (split-window-vertically wy) ; create this row
          (dotimes (x (- nx 1) ox) ; go through columns, x goes from 0 to nx-2 and ox is not used here
        (setq k (number-to-string (+ 1 (+ x (* y nx) ) ) ) ) ; k must convert 2 indecies (x,y) into one linear one (like sub2ind in matlab)
        (setq fn (concat pfx k) ) ; filename
        (find-file fn ) ; open
        (split-window-horizontally wx) ; create this column in this row (this "cell")
        (other-window 1) ; go to the next buffer on the right 
        )
          (setq k (number-to-string (+ nx (* y nx) ) ) ) ; rightmost buffer in this row needs a file too
          (setq fn (concat pfx k) ) ; filename
          (find-file fn ) ; open
          (other-window 1) ; go to next row (one buffer down)
          )
        )
      )

and then to use the vertical one, I go to *scratch* (C-x b *scratch* RET,C-x 1), type in (grid-files-h 3 20 "file.") then C-x C-e, or if you want to test out the square qrid one, C-x 1, type in (grid-files-sq 2 15 3 20 "f.") and then C-x C-e and you should see something like

This probably can be done better/more efficiently, but it's a start and it does what I need it to do (display a bunch of sequentially named small files). Feel free to improve or reuse.