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insert-bufferThe body in the GNU Emacs 22 version is more confusing than the original.
It consists of two expressions,
(push-mark (save-excursion (insert-buffer-substring (get-buffer buffer)) (point))) nil
except, and this is what confuses novices, very important work is done
inside the push-mark expression.
The get-buffer function returns a buffer with the name
provided. You will note that the function is not called
get-buffer-create; it does not create a buffer if one does not
already exist. The buffer returned by get-buffer, an existing
buffer, is passed to insert-buffer-substring, which inserts the
whole of the buffer (since you did not specify anything else).
The location into which the buffer is inserted is recorded by
push-mark. Then the function returns nil, the value of
its last command. Put another way, the insert-buffer function
exists only to produce a side effect, inserting another buffer, not to
return any value.