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Dired makes an Emacs buffer
containing a listing of a directory, and optionally
some of its subdirectories as well. You can use the normal Emacs commands to move around
in this buffer, and special Dired commands to operate on the files listed.
To invoke Dired, do C-x d or M-x dired. The command
reads a directory name or wildcard file name pattern as
a minibuffer argument to specify which files to list. Where dired
differs from list-directory
is in putting the buffer into Dired mode so that the special commands of Dired are available.
The variable dired-listing-switches
specifies the options to give to ls for listing directory; this string
must contain -l. If you use a numeric prefix argument with the dired command,
you can specify the ls switches with the minibuffer
after you finish entering the directory specification.
To display the Dired buffer
in another window rather than in the selected window, use C-x 4 d (dired-other-window)
instead of C-x d. C-x 5 d (dired-other-frame) uses a separate frame to display the Dired
buffer.
The Dired buffer
is ``read-only'', and inserting text in it is not
useful, so ordinary printing characters such as d and x are used for
special Dired commands. Some Dired commands mark
or flag the current file (that is, the file on the current line);
other commands operate on the marked files or on the flagged files.
All the usual Emacs cursor motion commands are
available in Dired buffers. Some special purpose cursor motion commands are also provided. The keys C-n
and C-p are redefined to put the cursor at
the beginning of the file name on the line, rather than at the beginning of the line.
For extra convenience, SPC and n in Dired are equivalent to C-n. p is
equivalent to C-p. (Moving by lines is so common in Dired that it deserves to be easy to type.) DEL
(move up and unflag) is often useful simply for moving up.
The primary use of Dired is to flag files
for deletion and then delete the files previously
flagged.
- d Flag this file for deletion. u Remove
deletion flag on this line. DEL Move point to previous line and remove the deletion flag on that line. x Delete the files that
are flagged for deletion.
You can flag a file for deletion by moving to the
line describing the file and typing d. The deletion
flag is visible as a D at the beginning of the line. This command moves point to
the next line, so that repeated d commands flag successive files. A numeric
argument serves as a repeat count.
The files are flagged for deletion rather than
deleted immediately to reduce the danger of deleting a file accidentally. Until you direct
Dired to expunge the flagged files, you can remove deletion flags using the commands u and DEL.
u works just like d, but removes flags rather than making flags. DEL
moves upward, removing flags; it is like u with numeric argument automatically
negated.
To delete the flagged files, type x (dired-expunge).
This command first displays a list of all the file names flagged for deletion, and requests confirmation with yes.
If you confirm, Dired deletes the flagged files, then
deletes their lines from the text of the Dired buffer. The
shortened Dired buffer
remains selected.
If you answer no or quit with C-g when asked to confirm, you
return immediately to Dired, with the deletion flags still present in the buffer, and no files actually deleted.
- # Flag all auto-save files (files whose names start and end with #)
for deletion (see section Auto-Saving:
Protection Against Disasters).
- ~ Flag all backup files (files whose names end with ~) for deletion (see section Backup
Files).
. (Period) Flag excess numeric backup files for deletion. The oldest and newest few backup files of any
one file are exempt; the middle ones are flagged.
% d regexp RET Flag
for deletion all files whose names match the regular
expression regexp (dired-flag-files-regexp).
The #, ~ and . commands flag many files for deletion, based on their file names. These commands are
useful precisely because they do not actually delete any files; you can remove the deletion flags from any flagged files that you really wish
to keep.
# flags for deletion all files whose
names look like auto-save files (see section Auto-Saving:
Protection Against Disasters)---that is, files whose names begin and end with #.
~ flags for deletion all files whose names
say they are backup files (see section Backup Files)---that
is, whose names end in ~.
. (Period) flags just some of the backup files for deletion: all but the oldest few and newest few backups of
any one file. Normally dired-kept-versions
(not kept-new-versions; that applies only when saving) specifies the number of newest versions of each
file to keep, and kept-old-versions specifies the number of oldest versions
to keep.
Period with a positive numeric argument, as in C-u 3 ., specifies the number
of newest versions to keep, overriding dired-kept-versions.
A negative numeric argument overrides kept-old-versions, using minus the
value of the argument to specify the number of oldest versions of each file to keep.
The % d command flags all files whose
names match a specified regular expression (dired-flag-files-regexp). Only the non-directory part of the file name is used in matching. You
can use ^ and $ to anchor matches. You can exclude
subdirectories by hiding them (see section Hiding
Subdirectories).
There are several Dired commands for visiting or examining the files listed in the Dired buffer. All of
them apply to the current line's file; if that file is really a directory, these commands invoke Dired on that subdirectory (making a separate Dired buffer).
- f Visit the file described on the current line, like typing C-x C-f
and supplying that file name (
dired-find-file).
See section Visiting Files.
- RET Equivalent to f.
o Like f, but
uses another window to display the file's buffer (dired-find-file-other-window). The Dired
buffer remains visible in the first window. This is like using C-x 4 C-f to visit
the file. See section Multiple Windows.
C-o Visit the file described on the current line, and display the buffer in another window,
but do not select that window (dired-display-file).
Mouse-2 Visit the file named by the line you click on (dired-mouse-find-file-other-window). This uses another window to display the file, like the o command.
v View the file described on the current line, using M-x view-file (dired-view-file).
Viewing a file is like visiting it, but is slanted
toward moving around in the file conveniently and does not allow changing the file. See
section Miscellaneous File Operations.
Instead of flagging a file with D, you can mark
the file with some other character (usually *).
Most Dired commands to operate on files, aside from
``expunge'' (x), look for files marked with *.
Here are some commands for marking with * (and also for unmarking). (See
section Deleting Files with Dired, for commands to flag
and unflag files.)
- m Mark the current file with * (
dired-mark).
With a numeric argument n, mark the next n
files starting with the current file. (If n is negative, mark the previous -n files.)
- * Mark all executable files with *
(
dired-mark-executables).
With a numeric argument, unmark all those files. @ Mark all symbolic links with * (dired-mark-symlinks).
With a numeric argument, unmark all those files.
/ Mark with * all files which
are actually directories, except for . and .. (dired-mark-directories).
With a numeric argument, unmark all those files.
M-DEL markchar Remove all marks that use the character markchar (dired-unmark-all-files). If you specify RET
as markchar, this command removes all marks,
no matter what the marker character is.
With a numeric argument, this command queries about
each marked file, asking whether to remove its mark.
You can answer y meaning yes, n meaning no, ! to remove
the marks from the remaining files without asking about them.
c old new Replace all marks that use the character old with marks that use the character new (dired-change-marks). This command is the primary way to create or use marks other
than * or D. The arguments are single characters---do not use RET
to terminate them.
You can use almost any character as a mark character by means
of this command, to distinguish various classes of
files. If old is a space ( ), then the command operates on all unmarked files; if new
is a space, then the command unmarks the files it acts
on.
To illustrate the power of this command, here is how
to put * marks on all the files that are unmarked, while unmarking all those
that have * marks:
c * t c SPC * c t SPC
% m regexp RET Mark (with *) all files whose names match the
regular expression regexp (dired-mark-files-regexp). % m is like % d,
except that it marks files with * instead of flagging with D.
See section Flagging Many Files.
Only the non-directory part of the file name is used
in matching. Use ^ and $ to anchor matches. Exclude
subdirectories by hiding them (see section Hiding
Subdirectories).
This section describes the basic Dired commands to
operate on one file or several files. All of these commands are capital letters; all of
them use the minibuffer, either to read an argument or
to ask for confirmation, before they act. All use the following convention to decide which
files to manipulate:
- If you give the command a numeric prefix argument n,
it operates on the next n files, starting with the current file. (If n
is negative, the command operates on the -n
files preceding the current line.)
- Otherwise, if some files are marked with *, the command operates on all those files.
- Otherwise, the command operates on the current file
only.
Here are the file-manipulating commands that operate on files in this way. (Some other Dired commands, such as ! and the %
commands, also use these conventions to decide which files to work on.)
- C new RET Copy the specified files (
dired-do-copy). The argument new is the directory to copy into, or (if copying a single file) the
new name.
- If
dired-copy-preserve-time is non-nil,
then copying with this command sets the modification
time of the new file to be the same as that of the old file. R new RET
Rename the specified files (dired-do-rename).
The argument new is the directory to rename
into, or (if renaming a single file) the new name.
Dired automatically changes the visited file name of
buffers associated with renamed files so that they refer to the new names.
H new RET Make hard links to the specified files (dired-do-hardlink). The argument new is
the directory to make the links in, or (if making just
one link) the name to give the link.
S new RET Make symbolic links to the specified files (dired-do-symlink). The argument new is
the directory to make the links in, or (if making just
one link) the name to give the link.
M modespec RET Change the mode (also called ``permission
bits'') of the specified files (dired-do-chmod).
This uses the chmod program, so modespec can be any argument that chmod
can handle.
G newgroup RET Change the group of the specified files to newgroup
(dired-do-chgrp).
O newowner RET Change the owner of the specified files to newowner
(dired-do-chown). (On most systems, only
the superuser can do this.)
The variable dired-chown-program
specifies the name of the program to use to do the work (different systems put chown
in different places).
P command RET Print the
specified files (dired-do-print). You must
specify the command to print them with, but the minibuffer starts out with a suitable guess made using
the variables lpr-command and lpr-switches
(the same variables that lpr-file uses; see section Hardcopy Output).
Z Compress or uncompress the specified files (dired-do-compress). If the file appears to be a
compressed file, it is uncompressed; otherwise, it is compressed.
L Load the specified Emacs Lisp files (dired-do-load).
See section Libraries of Lisp Code for Emacs.
B Byte compile the specified Emacs Lisp files (dired-do-byte-compile). See section 'Byte Compilation' in The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
A regexp RET Search
all the specified files for the regular expression regexp
(dired-do-search).
This command is a variant of tags-search.
The search stops at the first match it finds; use M-, to resume the search and
find the next match. See section Searching and Replacing
with Tags Tables.
Q from RET to RET Perform query-replace-regexp on each of the specified files, replacing
matches for from (a regular expression) with the string to (dired-do-query-replace).
This command is a variant of tags-query-replace.
If you exit the query replace loop, you can use M-, to resume the scan and
replace more matches. See section Searching and Replacing
with Tags Tables.
One special file-operation command is + (dired-create-directory).
This command reads a directory
name and creates the directory if it does not already
exist.
The dired command
! (dired-do-shell-command) reads a shell command string in the minibuffer and runs that shell command on all the specified files. There are two ways of
applying a shell command to multiple files:
- If you use * in the shell command, then
it runs just once, with the list of file names
substituted for the *. The order of file names is the order of appearance in
the Dired buffer.
Thus,
! tar cf foo.tar * RET runs tar on the entire list of file names, putting them into one tar file foo.tar.
- If the command string
doesn't contain *, then it runs once for each file, with the file
name added at the end.
For example, ! uudecode RET runs uudecode
on each file.
What if you want to run the shell command once for
each file but with the file name inserted in the middle? Or if you want to use the file
names in a more complicated fashion? Use a shell loop. For example, this shell command would run uuencode on each of the
specified files, writing the output into a corresponding .uu file:
for file in *; uuencode $file $file >$file.uu; done
The working directory for the shell command is the top level directory
of the Dired buffer.
The ! command does not attempt to update
the Dired buffer to
show new or modified files, because it doesn't really understand shell commands, and does
not know what files the shell command changed. Use the g
command to update the Dired
buffer (see section Updating
the Dired Buffer).
Here are commands that alter file names in a systematic way:
- % u Rename each of the selected files to an upper case name (
dired-upcase). If the old file names are Foo
and bar, the new names are FOO and BAR.
- % l Rename each of the selected files to a lower case name (
dired-downcase). If the old file names are Foo
and bar, the new names are foo and bar. % R from
RET to RET % C from RET to
RET % H from RET to RET %
S from RET to RET These four commands
rename, copy, make hard links and make soft links, in each case computing the new name by
regular expression substitution from the name of the old file.
The four regular expression substitution commands effectively perform a
search-and-replace on the selected file names in the Dired
buffer. They read two arguments: a regular expression from,
and a substitution pattern to.
The commands match each ``old'' file name against the regular expression from,
and then replace the matching part with to. You can use \& and
\digit in to to refer to all or part of what the
pattern matched in the old file name, as in query-replace-regexp (see section Query
Replace). If the regular expression matches more than once in a file name, only the
first match is replaced.
For example, % R ^.*$ RET x-\& RET renames each selected file
by prepending x- to its name. The inverse of this, removing x-
from the front of each file name, is also possible: one method is % R ^x-\(.*\)$ RET
\1 RET; another is % R ^x- RET RET. (Use ^
and $ to anchor matches that should span the whole filename.)
Normally, the replacement process does not consider
the files' directory names; it operates on the file
name within the directory. If you specify a numeric
argument of zero, then replacement affects the entire
absolute file name including directory name.
Often you will want to apply the command to all
files matching the same regexp that you use
in the command. To do this, mark those files with % m regexp RET, then use the same
regular expression in the command to operate on the
files. To make this easier, the % commands to operate on files use the last
regular expression specified in any % command
as a default.
Here are two Dired commands that compare specified
files using diff.
- = Compare the current file (the file at point)
with another file (the file at the mark) using the
diff
program (dired-diff). The file at the mark is the first argument of diff, and the
file at point is the second argument.
- M-= Compare the current file with its latest backup file (
dired-backup-diff). If the current file is itself a
backup, compare it with the file it is a backup of; this way, you can compare a file with
any backup version of your choice. The backup file is the first file given to diff.
A Dired buffer
displays just one directory in the normal case; but you
can optionally include its subdirectories as well.
The simplest way to include multiple directories in one Dired
buffer is to specify the options -lR for
running ls. (If you give a numeric argument when you run Dired, then you can specify these options in the minibuffer.) That produces a recursive directory listing showing all subdirectories at all
levels.
But usually all the subdirectories are too many; usually you will prefer to include
specific subdirectories only. You can do this with the i command:
- i Insert the contents of a subdirectory later in the buffer.
Use the i (dired-maybe-insert-subdir)
command on a line that describes a file which is a directory. It inserts the contents of that directory into the same Dired
buffer, and moves there. Inserted subdirectory contents
follow the top-level directory of the Dired buffer, just as
they do in ls -lR output.
If the subdirectory's contents are already present in the buffer, the i command
just moves to it.
In either case, i sets the Emacs mark
before moving, so C-u C-SPC takes you back to the old position in the buffer (the line describing that subdirectory).
Use the l command (dired-do-redisplay)
to update the subdirectory's contents. Use k to delete the subdirectory. See
section Updating the Dired Buffer.
When a Dired buffer
lists subdirectories, you can use the page motion
commands C-x [ and C-x ] to move by entire directories.
The following commands move across, up and down in the tree of directories within one Dired buffer. They move
to directory header lines, which are the
lines that give a directory's name, at the beginning of
the directory's contents.
- C-M-n Go to next subdirectory header line, regardless of level (
dired-next-subdir).
- C-M-p Go to previous subdirectory header line, regardless of level (
dired-prev-subdir). C-M-u Go up to the
parent directory's header line (dired-tree-up).
C-M-d Go down in the directory tree, to the
first subdirectory's header line (dired-tree-down).
Hiding a subdirectory means to make it invisible, except for its header
line, via selective display (see section Selective Display).
- $ Hide or reveal the subdirectory that point
is in, and move point to the next subdirectory (
dired-hide-subdir). A numeric argument serves as a
repeat count.
- M-$ Hide all subdirectories in this Dired buffer, leaving only their header lines (
dired-hide-all). Or, if any subdirectory is
currently hidden, make all subdirectories visible again. You can use this command to get an overview in very deep directory trees or to move quickly to subdirectories far
away.
Ordinary Dired commands never consider files inside
a hidden subdirectory. For example, the commands to operate on marked files ignore files
in hidden directories even if they are marked. Thus you can use hiding to temporarily
exclude subdirectories from operations without having to remove the markers.
The subdirectory hiding commands toggle; that is, they hide what was visible, and show
what was hidden.
This section describes commands to update the Dired buffer to reflect outside (non-Dired) changes in the directories and files, and to delete
part of the Dired buffer.
- g Update the entire contents of the Dired buffer (
revert-buffer).
- l Update the specified files (
dired-do-redisplay). k Delete the specified file
lines---not the files, just the lines (dired-do-kill-lines).
s Toggle between sorting by file name and sorting by date/time (dired-sort-toggle-or-edit).
C-u s switches RET Refresh the Dired buffer using switches
as dired-listing-switches.
Type g (revert-buffer) to
update the contents of the Dired buffer, based on changes in the files and directories
listed. This preserves all marks except for those on files that have vanished. Hidden
subdirectories are updated but remain hidden.
To update only some of the files, type l (dired-do-redisplay).
This command applies to the next n files, or
to the marked files if any, or to the current file. Updating them means reading their
current status from the file system and changing the buffer
to reflect it properly.
If you use l on a subdirectory header line, it updates the contents of the
corresponding subdirectory.
To delete the specified file lines---not the files, just the lines---type k
(dired-do-kill-lines). This command applies to the next n files, or to the
marked files if any, or to the current file.
If you kill the line for a file that is a directory,
the directory's contents are also deleted from the buffer. Typing C-u k on the header line for a
subdirectory is another way to delete a subdirectory from the Dired buffer.
The g command brings back any individual
lines that you have killed in this way, but not subdirectories---you must use i
to reinsert each subdirectory.
The files in a Dired buffers are normally in listed
alphabetical order by file names. Alternatively Dired
can sort them by date/time. The Dired command s (dired-sort-toggle-or-edit)
switches between these two sorting modes. The mode line in a Dired buffer indicates
which way it is currently sorted---by name, or by date.
C-u s switches RET lets you specify a new value for dired-listing-switches.
You can select a set of files for display in a Dired
buffer more flexibly by using the find
utility to choose the files.
To search for files with names matching a wildcard pattern use M-x find-name-dired. It reads arguments directory and pattern, and chooses
all the files in directory or its
subdirectories whose individual names match pattern.
The files thus chosen are displayed in a Dired buffer in which the ordinary Dired commands are available.
If you want to test the contents of files, rather than their names, use M-x
find-grep-dired. This command reads two minibuffer
arguments, directory and regexp; it chooses all the files in directory or its subdirectories that contain a
match for regexp. It works by running the
programs find and grep.
The most general command in this series is M-x
find-dired, which lets you specify any condition
that find can test. It takes two minibuffer
arguments, directory and find-args;
it runs find in directory,
passing find-args to tell find what condition to test. To use this
command, you need to know how to use find.
The format of listing produced by these commands is controlled by the variable find-ls-option,
whose default value specifies using options -ldi for ls. If your
listings are corrupted, you may need to change the value of this variable.
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