Re: Simple useful function

[Thierry Volpiatto <thierry.volpiatto@gmail.com>]

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

>> Is there a way to do this sort of stuff with dired (perhaps involving
>> magit)? E.g. how would one limit dired to showing just the files that
>> git is tracking?
>
> If you have an Emacs function that returns those file names (absolute or
> relative), then you can open a Dired buffer for just those files.
>
> You do that by calling `dired' with a cons arg: the list of file names.  If the
> files are not all in the same directory, then use absolute names.  For example:
>
>  (dired "My GIT Files" '("/my/first/file" "/my/2nd/file"...))

Isn't it?

,----
| (dired (cons "My GIT Files" '("/my/first/file" "/my/2nd/file"...)))
`----

It seem nice to use that with:

,----
| (dired (cons "my files" (dired-get-marked-files)))
`----

Nice feature anyway.

> `C-h f dired':
>
> ,----
> | dired is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `dired.el'.
> ...
> | (dired DIRNAME &optional SWITCHES)
> ...
> | If DIRNAME is a cons, its first element is taken as the directory name
> | and the rest as an explicit list of files to make directory entries for.
> | You can move around in it with the usual commands.
> ...
> `----
>
> You can do more than "move around in it"!  All Dired operations work normally on
> the files listed.
>
> The file names can be a mix of local and remote, absolute and relative.
>
> This is an important and little known Dired feature.  IMHO, it is not well
> documented.  And that's probably why it had a few bugs wrt remote files until
> this year.  Little attention is drawn to this feature, yet it is very useful.
> You can use it to organize files into projects etc.  Define specific commands
> that give you just the sets of files you want.
>
> Combine this feature with an ability to bookmark Dired buffers and you have a
> flexible way to get quickly to and operate on a given set of files, without
> defining specialized commands.  With Bookmark+, you can not only bookmark an
> arbitrary Dired buffer (saving the current Dired switches, markings, and subdir
> showings).  You can also open a Dired buffer on the bookmarks currently marked
> in the `*Bookmark List*'.  http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BookmarkPlus
>
>
>
>

-- 
Thierry Volpiatto
Gpg key: http://pgp.mit.edu/