Emacs: File Manager, dired

What is Dired

Emacs is a excellent tool for file management. e.g. list files, copy, delete, rename, move, or create, delete directory.

“dired” is short for Directory Edit. It is a old term for file management.

Start Dired

To start viewing directory, Alt+x dired.

When in dired, most commands have a single letter key.

Copy, Delete, Rename File

Here's the most useful commands:

dired-find-file 【Enter】

Open the file or directory.

quit-window 【q】

hide the dired buffer. (when you are done) Display last buffer.

dired-do-copy 【C】

Copy file

dired-do-rename 【R】

Rename/move file

dired-do-delete 【D】

Delete file or directory

dired-create-directory 【+】

Create new dir

dired-do-compress 【Z】

Compress/decompress the file by gzip

Mark Files for an Operation

Sometimes you want to copy or delete many files. You can mark the files, then apply a command on all marked files.

Here's basic marking commands:

dired-mark 【m】

Mark a file

dired-unmark 【u】

Unmark

dired-unmark-all-marks 【U】

Unmark all marked

dired-mark-files-regexp 【% m】

Mark by regex. [see Emacs: Regular Expression]
For example, if you want to mark all HTML files, type % m, then type html$.

• When there are marked files, dired command applies to the marked files.
• When no files are marked, dired command applies to the file under cursor.

Dir Navigation

revert-buffer 【g】

Refresh dir listing

dired-up-directory 【^】

Go to parent dir

dired-next-dirline 【>】

Move cursor to next subdirectory.

dired-prev-dirline 【<】

Move cursor to previous subdirectory.

Shell Command on File

dired-do-shell-command 【! 】

Prompt a shell command to run on the file the cursor is on.

Dired Help

When in dired, Alt+x describe-mode