dired-x 'mother knows best' shell guess attitude

dired-x 'mother knows best' shell guess attitude

[Dan Jacobson]

Gentlemen, isn't emacs rather rude when it second guesses the user's
idea of a good command to run:
$ mkdir x; cd x; touch a.tar
$ emacs -l dired-x .
! w c RET ! ESC p

It now already knows I want to use wc.  However it insists mother
knows best and still offers tar.  I could have already used wc 1000
times and it still wouldn't get a hint about what I like.

Worse yet is when there are several of its "better choices", not just
one. In this case we have to plod thru each one of those with ESC p
till we get to the one we just used, now way in the back of the bus.
E.g. for .dvi, see dired-guess-shell-alist-default.

Note, if I used wc on tar files, and sum on cpio files, then if I am
on a cpio file, it should prompt like: sum, cpio -iv <, wc
In that order, I suppose.
-- 
http://jidanni.org/ Taiwan(04)25854780

Re: dired-x 'mother knows best' shell guess attitude

[Kevin Rodgers]

Dan Jacobson wrote:

> Gentlemen, isn't emacs rather rude when it second guesses the user's
> idea of a good command to run:
> $ mkdir x; cd x; touch a.tar
> $ emacs -l dired-x .
> ! w c RET ! ESC p
> 
> It now already knows I want to use wc.  However it insists mother
> knows best and still offers tar.


Yes, M-p should put "wc" in the minibuffer.  "tar xvf" should be available via
M-n.

> I could have already used wc 1000
> times and it still wouldn't get a hint about what I like.
> 
> Worse yet is when there are several of its "better choices", not just
> one. In this case we have to plod thru each one of those with ESC p
> till we get to the one we just used, now way in the back of the bus.
> E.g. for .dvi, see dired-guess-shell-alist-default.
> 
> Note, if I used wc on tar files, and sum on cpio files, then if I am
> on a cpio file, it should prompt like: sum, cpio -iv <, wc
> In that order, I suppose.
 
Interesting idea.  Why don't you implement it?


-- 
<a href="mailto:&lt;kevin.rodgers&#64;ihs.com&gt;">Kevin Rodgers</a>