Emacs: File Manager, dired

What is Dired

Dired is a emacs feature to manage files. (dired stand for “Directory Edit”. Its an old term for file management.)

Dired lets you list files, copy, delete, rename, move, or create, delete, file or directory. It is better than using shell commands. Visual control, less errors, more efficient (less keystrokes).

Start Dired

To start viewing directory, Alt+x dired.

Exit Dired

quit-window 【q】

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

or, you can just kill-buffer to close the buffer.

Copy, Delete, Rename File

Here's the most useful commands:

dired-find-file 【Enter】

Open the file or directory.

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 or decompress the file by gzip

Mark Files

You can mark the files, then apply a command on all marked files.

• 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.

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 Regular Expression. e.g. % m, then type jpg$, mark all jpeg image files.

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-jump

dired-jump 【Ctrl+x Ctrl+j】

go to dired of the current file, and place cursor on the file.

if in dired, it goes to the parent dir.

💡 TIP: with this command, you never have to call dired and manually type a path. It is efficient to always goto dired by this method. Emacs: Bookmark files, not dirs. Change your workflow to file based, not dir based.

Dired Help

When in dired, Alt+x describe-mode