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26.15: Dired and find

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. See also M-x grep-find, in Compilation. Remember to write the regular expression for grep, not for Emacs.

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 `-ld' for ls. If your listings are corrupted, you may need to change the value of this variable. Dired Updating Dired