38 Dired, the Directory Editor

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.

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.

The Dired-X package provides various extra features for Dired mode. See Dired-X.

• Enter: How to invoke Dired.
• Navigation: Special motion commands in the Dired buffer.
• Deletion: Deleting files with Dired.
• Flagging Many Files: Flagging files based on their names.
• Visit: Other file operations through Dired.
• Marks vs Flags: Flagging for deletion vs marking.
• Operating on Files: How to copy, rename, print, compress, etc. either one file or several files.
• Shell Commands in Dired: Running a shell command on the marked files.
• Transforming File Names: Using patterns to rename multiple files.
• Comparison in Dired: Running `diff' by way of Dired.
• Subdirectories in Dired: Adding subdirectories to the Dired buffer.
• Subdirectory Motion: Moving across subdirectories, and up and down.
• Hiding Subdirectories: Making subdirectories visible or invisible.
• Updating: Discarding lines for files of no interest.
• Find: Using `find' to choose the files for Dired.
• Wdired: Operating on files by editing the Dired buffer.
• Misc: Various other features.