Dired

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Revision as of 13:31, 9 September 2014 by Elvince (talk | contribs) (find files recursively (in Dired))
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Usage

Dired has countless functionality. The best way to learn it is to try it out. Open a dired buffer and look at the commands listed in the menus.

[C-x d] (or M-x dired)
ask for a directory and puts you into a buffer with direct listing of that directory.
[C-x C-j] (or M-x dired-jump)
jump to a dired buffer corresponding to the current buffer (This require loading Dired Extra).

In the minibuffer, while doing 'Find File':

[C-d]
jump to a dired buffer corresponding to the directory in the minibuffer.

Basic commands

[ RET]
Open the file/Directory
[ q]
Close the dir
[C]
Copy file
[R]
Rename file
[D]
Delete file
[+]
create a new dir

Mark/unmark files

[m]

mark a file

[u]

unmark a file

[U]

unmark all marked

[m]

mark by pattern

Find files recursively

find-name-dired

With M-x find-name-dired, you'll be asked for the base directory, a file wildcard and the matching files will be displayed in a Dired buffer. It uses the find GNU utility.

Similar commands are find-grep-dired or find-dired. More information can be read in the documentation.

Interactive selection with Projectile

Projectile, coupled with M-x helm-projectile, lets you find recursively and interactively files in your project. This command does not use a Dired buffer.


View image thumbnails

Viewing images is a builtin feature of Dired (press Enter or v on an image file). On Emacs24.4, pressing n and p will show the next or previous image file. But if you want to navigate between image thumbnails, use the (builtin too) image-dired. You can directly call it with M-x image-dired, or mark the images you want to look at in the dired buffer (with m) and then type C-t d (image-dired-display-thumbs).

Tag images

More advanced features include image tags, which are metadata used to categorize image files. The tags are stored in a plain text file configured by image-dired-db-file.

To tag image files, mark them in the dired buffer and type C-t t (image-dired-tag-files). This reads the tag name in the minibuffer.

To mark files having a certain tag, type C-t f (image-dired-mark-tagged-files). After marking image files with a certain tag, you can use C-t d to view them.

You can also tag a file directly from the thumbnail buffer by typing t t and you can remove a tag by typing t r.

There is also a special “tag” called “comment” for each file (it is not a tag in the exact same sense as the other tags, it is handled slightly different). That is used to enter a comment or description about the image. You comment a file from the thumbnail buffer by typing c. You will be prompted for a comment. Type C-t c to add a comment from Dired (image-dired-dired-comment-files).

Rotate images

Image-Dired also provides simple image manipulation. In the thumbnail buffer, type L to rotate the original image 90 degrees anti clockwise, and R to rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. This rotation is lossless, and uses an external utility called JpegTRAN.

See Also

Dired+ - a package that extends the functionalities of Dired

Direx - a general purpose directory/tree explorer

dired-subtree - insert the subdirectory (with the i key) directly below its line

Speed_bar - navigate files and sources in another frame

emacs-nav - a simple files and sources browser popup