Want compile-goto-error variant that replaces compilation buffer in current window

Question

I have a personal elisp function that performs an multi-directory grep. It uses compilation-start, which creates a compilation-mode buffer with the results, in which I can press RET (bound to compile-goto-error) to jump to the corresponding location.

However, compile-goto-error always visits the location in another window, leaving the compilation buffer up. Half the time I am just searching for one particular location, so what I would like to do is bind some other key (say C-RET) to also visit the corresponding location in a buffer, but stay in the current window, replacing the compilation buffer with the location's buffer.

I've traced the relevant execution from compile-goto-error to next-error-internal to next-error-function to compilation-next-error-function to compilation-find-file, but can't find a nice place to hook in my differing behavior. Is there a simple way (or, failing that, a complicated one) to create a compile-goto-error variant that switches to the new buffer in-place in the window that held the compilation buffer?

Answer 1

I suggest just advising the compile-goto-error function to do the right thing, rather than creating a custom function and keybinding. The following does the right thing for me (following Stefan's suggestion):

(defadvice compile-goto-error (around my-compile-goto-error activate)
  (let ((display-buffer-overriding-action '(display-buffer-reuse-window (inhibit-same-window . nil))))
    ad-do-it))

Answer 2

I think you should be able to get what you want by let-binding display-buffer-overriding-action, something like:

(defun my-next-error ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((display-buffer-overriding-action '(display-buffer-same-window)))
    (next-error)))