Re: Q: Is there a built-in way to read multiple file names?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: mardani29@yahoo.es, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2024 18:52:00 +0000
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> 3. What does not seem to be trivial is selecting multiple files residing
>    in different folders. What do you think should be done to dired to
>    get this?

Why do you need to change anything?  It should be possible to mark
some files, then go to a different directory and mark some more files,
etc.  When the user eventually types "C-c C-c", the list of all the
selected files in all the directories is returned to the caller.

An alternative could be for the user to insert another directory into
the buffer, like 'i' in Dired does.

>    I am thinking about something similar to my previous ideas - having a
>    separate section in dired buffer that lists marked files.
> 
>    --------------  dired-select -------------------
>   [ Selected files ]
> * -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92  1.2M Jul  6 15:31 xdisp.c (from Git/emacs/src/)
> * -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92 2.5K May  3 15:24 local.mk (from Git/org-mode)
> * -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92 3.8K Jul 13 18:16 Makefile (from Git/org-mode)
>   [ Dir ]
>   /home/yantar92/Git/org-mode:
>   drwxr-xr-x 3 yantar92 4.0K Jul 15 09:48 doc
>   drwxr-xr-x 5 yantar92 4.0K Jul 15 09:06 etc
>   drwxr-xr-x 2 yantar92  20K Jul 15 16:30 lisp
>   drwxr-xr-x 2 yantar92 4.0K Jul 13 18:16 mk
>   drwxr-xr-x 2 yantar92 4.0K Jun 12  2022 paches
>   drwxr-xr-x 5 yantar92 4.0K Jul 15 10:45 testing
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92  936 Jun 25 10:22 CONTRIBUTE.org
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92 1.9K Jun 25 10:22 README.org
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92  35K Jun 25 10:22 COPYING
> * -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92 2.5K May  3 15:24 local.mk
> * -rw-r--r-- 1 yantar92 3.8K Jul 13 18:16 Makefile

This has two disadvantages:

  . if there are many files, moving too far down will scroll the
    selected files out of view
  . it is unusual, and so at least some users will be confused

> > Files that have common names are usually listed together, so I don't
> > think this problem is as serious as you describe it.  A useful feature
> > for selecting files is, when the user types a characters, to move
> > point the first file whose name begins with that character.  If we
> > implement that, you get the best of all worlds.
> 
> Why only to file that _begins_ with a character? Why not also moving to
> a file that have specific work in its name? regexp?

Because it is unusual and idiosyncratic.  By contrast, what I describe
exists in many selection dialogs, and so will be familiar.

But if you want to have selection based on regexps, then Dired has the
"% m REGEXP" command.  So this, too, is already available.