Dired
The command find-dired lets you generate a dired buffer out of Find results.
wdired lets you edit file names and attributes with normal buffer editing commands. You know how C-x C-q is the standard "toggle read-only" binding? Well, C-x C-q toggles wdired.
What's often not mentioned about WDired is:
- As well as renaming a file you can move it, e.g. Change the name to ../../name and it moves up two parent folders as well as changing name.
- if the file is a symlink you can just change its target too
- file attributes, sure just change them in WDired too. (Needs wdired-allow-to-change-permissions set to t)
- change the name to blank, the file will be deleted
You can use any character to mark files and then perform an operation on a specific type of mark. That's why deleting uses its own mark character. So go through lots of files marking some a and others b and yet others c and then move them all to different places.
In fact any shell command can be run on selected files using the ! command.
For subdirs, i calls dired-maybe-insert-subdir, and an alternative is dired-subtree from Fuco1's dired-hacks. But I suspect it's better to adopt a buffer-proliferate approach than to try to keep everything in one Dired buffer. One use i can see is mass renaming recursively with wdired, where you first have to insert all the subdirectories. To do that, C-u C-8 C-x C-j (any numeric arg) and add the -R switch.
o |
(also mouse-2) |
C-o |
|
m D |
(to delete a file, instead of d x) |
^ |
(cd ..) |
DEL |
(like u but go upwards) |
j |
(jump) |
~ |
(flag all backup files for deletion) |
# |
(flag all auto-save files for deletion) |
Marking files: you can mark a region and then press m to mark all files within.
The m key is really a shorthand for * m, but there are other marking commands like as follows. Note that these can be a transient map / hydra.
- * m mark this file
- * * mark all executables
- * @ mark all symlinks
- * s mark everything
- * ! (shorthand:
U) unmark all files - * C-n (or
M-})move to next marked file - * t toggle marks (colloquially, "invert selection")
- * % REGEXP mark files whose names match REGEXP
- % m REGEXP (synonym to above)
- % g REGEXP mark files whose contents contain a match for REGEXP
What links here
- Incremental reading with Dired
- Stupid tricks to quickly learn Eshell and Dired