Hello Drew,

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> With Dired+ you can create a Dired buffer for any
> arbitrary list of files & dirs, even interactively,
> in several ways.  Such a buffer isn't connected
> with any particular directory listings (whether by
> `ls' or ls-lisp).
>
> E.g., commands `diredp-marked(-other-window)' do
> it for the marked files & dirs in a Dired buffer.
> (`C-M-*' is bound to `diredp-marked-other-window'.)
>
> You can then use WDired on such buffer, to make any
> changes you like.
>
> Dired+ hasn't tried to fix any WDired problems, so
> some WDired problems that you pointed to might
> still be problematic with Dired+; dunno.

Should work fine with emacs-29+ and broken before (needed a patched Wdired).

> I'm not an expert on WDired, and I haven't tried to look into use
> cases etc.  But for the case you describe it seems to work OK
> (superficial testing).
>
>
> https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/download/dired%2b.el


-- 
Thierry