Operating on Files

GNU Emacs Manual. Node: Operating on Files

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26.7: Operating on Files

This section describes the basic Dired commands to operate on one file or several files. All of these commands are capital letters; all of them use the minibuffer, either to read an argument or to ask for confirmation, before they act. All of them give you several ways to specify which files to manipulate:

If you give the command a numeric prefix argument n, it operates on the next n files, starting with the current file. (If n is negative, the command operates on the n files preceding the current line.)
Otherwise, if some files are marked with `*', the command operates on all those files.
Otherwise, the command operates on the current file only.

Here are the file-manipulating commands that operate on files in this way. (Some other Dired commands, such as ! and the `%' commands, also use these conventions to decide which files to work on.)

`C new RET`	Copy the specified files (`dired-do-copy`). The argument `new` is the directory to copy into, or (if copying a single file) the new name. If `dired-copy-preserve-time` is non-`nil`, then copying with this command sets the modification time of the new file to be the same as that of the old file.
`D`	Delete the specified files (`dired-do-delete`). Like the other commands in this section, this command operates on the marked files, or the next `n` files. By contrast, `x` (`dired-expunge`) deletes all flagged files.
`R new RET`	Rename the specified files (`dired-do-rename`). The argument `new` is the directory to rename into, or (if renaming a single file) the new name. Dired automatically changes the visited file name of buffers associated with renamed files so that they refer to the new names.
`H new RET`	Make hard links to the specified files (`dired-do-hardlink`). The argument `new` is the directory to make the links in, or (if making just one link) the name to give the link.
`S new RET`	Make symbolic links to the specified files (`dired-do-symlink`). The argument `new` is the directory to make the links in, or (if making just one link) the name to give the link.
`M modespec RET`	Change the mode (also called ``permission bits'') of the specified files (`dired-do-chmod`). This uses the `chmod` program, so `modespec` can be any argument that `chmod` can handle.
`G newgroup RET`	Change the group of the specified files to `newgroup` (`dired-do-chgrp`).
`O newowner RET`	Change the owner of the specified files to `newowner` (`dired-do-chown`). (On most systems, only the superuser can do this.) The variable `dired-chown-program` specifies the name of the program to use to do the work (different systems put `chown` in different places).
`P command RET`	Print the specified files (`dired-do-print`). You must specify the command to print them with, but the minibuffer starts out with a suitable guess made using the variables `lpr-command` and `lpr-switches` (the same variables that `lpr-buffer` uses; see Hardcopy).
`Z`	Compress the specified files (`dired-do-compress`). If the file appears to be a compressed file already, it is uncompressed instead.
`L`	Load the specified Emacs Lisp files (`dired-do-load`). See Lisp Libraries.
`B`	Byte compile the specified Emacs Lisp files (`dired-do-byte-compile`). See Byte Compilation.
`A regexp RET`	Search all the specified files for the regular expression `regexp` (`dired-do-search`). This command is a variant of `tags-search`. The search stops at the first match it finds; use `M-,` to resume the search and find the next match. See Tags Search.
`Q from RET to RET`	Perform `query-replace-regexp` on each of the specified files, replacing matches for `from` (a regular expression) with the string `to` (`dired-do-query-replace`). This command is a variant of `tags-query-replace`. If you exit the query replace loop, you can use `M-,` to resume the scan and replace more matches. See Tags Search.

One special file-operation command is + (dired-create-directory). This command reads a directory name and creates the directory if it does not already exist.

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