Shell Command Guessing
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Advanced Mark Commands
Using Virtual Dired means putting a buffer with Dired-like
contents in Dired mode. The files described by the buffer contents need
not actually exist. This is useful if you want to peruse an `ls -lR
'
output file, for example one you got from an FTP server. You can use
all motion commands usually available in Dired. You can also use
it to save a Dired buffer in a file and resume it in a later session.
Type M-x dired-virtual to put the current buffer into virtual
Dired mode. You will be prompted for the top level directory of this
buffer, with a default value guessed from the buffer contents. To
convert the virtual to a real Dired buffer again, type g (which
calls dired-virtual-revert
) in the virtual Dired buffer and
answer `y
'. You don't have to do this, though: you can relist
single subdirectories using l (dired-do-redisplay
) on the subdirectory
headerline, leaving the buffer in virtual Dired mode all the time.
The function `dired-virtual-mode
' is specially designed to turn on
virtual Dired mode from the auto-mode-alist
. To edit all
`*.dired
' files automatically in virtual Dired mode, put this into your
`~/.emacs
':
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("[^/]\\.dired$" . dired-virtual-mode) auto-mode-alist))
The regexp is a bit more complicated than usual to exclude ".dired" local variable files.