miniaturising the file name displayed.

miniaturising the file name displayed.

[Abi]

In emasc, when I type C-x C-f, the file name completion displays the
entire path of the directory. Instead I'd like to customize it so that
it shows only relative to my home directory. how do i do this in
emacs?
thanks
abi

Re: miniaturising the file name displayed.

[Kai Grossjohann]

Abi <abi_kREMSPAM@myrealbox.com> writes:

> In emasc, when I type C-x C-f, the file name completion displays the
> entire path of the directory. Instead I'd like to customize it so that
> it shows only relative to my home directory. how do i do this in
> emacs?

Replacing the home dir with ~ should be done automatically.  Emacs
looks at the environment variable $HOME to do this.

Perhaps you might like ido.el which displays only the last couple of
components of the directory name.

Kai

Re: miniaturising the file name displayed.

[Kevin Rodgers]

Abi wrote:
 > In emasc, when I type C-x C-f, the file name completion displays the
 > entire path of the directory. Instead I'd like to customize it so that
 > it shows only relative to my home directory. how do i do this in
 > emacs?

,----[ C-h v abbreviated-home-dir RET ]
| abbreviated-home-dir's value is
| "^/home/kevinr\\(/\\|$\\)"
|
| Documentation:
| The user's homedir abbreviated according to `directory-abbrev-alist'.
|
| Defined in `files'.
`----

So when I'm visiting a file under /home/kevinr, C-x C-f displays this in
the minibuffer:

Find file: ~/foo/bar/etc/

Is that what you want?

-- 
Kevin Rodgers

Re: miniaturising the file name displayed.

[Abi]

yup, but i'd like to see ~/../../usr/etc/ when i access other files as
well.
or more preferable, the absolute path, or the path relative to my home
directory or the one from my CWD, whichever is shorter. I know this is
too much in the asking, but then if there is some elisp code to do
this, i'd be glad to add it to my .emacs.
thanks
abi

Re: miniaturising the file name displayed.

[Kevin Rodgers]

Abi wrote:
 > yup, but i'd like to see ~/../../usr/etc/ when i access other files as
 > well.
 > or more preferable, the absolute path, or the path relative to my home
 > directory or the one from my CWD, whichever is shorter. I know this is
 > too much in the asking, but then if there is some elisp code to do
 > this, i'd be glad to add it to my .emacs.

In emacs, your current working directory is different for every buffer
(default-directory is a buffer local variable), so every path is
relative to the default directory.  If you don't want the directory
included in the minibuffer, set insert-default-directory to nil.

But here's an attempt to always prompt you with a path relative to your
home directory:

(defadvice find-file (before read-relative-file-name activate)
   ;; -literally, -other-window, -other-frame,
   ;; -read-only, -read-only-other-window, -read-only-other-frame
   "Always read FILENAME relative to ~."
   (interactive (list (read-file-name "Find file: "
				     (file-relative-name default-directory "~"))
		     (prefix-numeric-value current-prefix-arg))))

-- 
Kevin Rodgers