Re: Where to start with recursive file operations

[Pascal Bourguignon <spam@mouse-potato.com>]

Andrei Stebkov <stebakov@tht.net> writes:

> Hi!
> 
> I would like to write a function that finds files recursively starting from
> the current directory, opens files based on given extension and does some
> operations on them. For instance, checks out the file (from CVS or
> Perforce), selects the whole buffer, indents the contents and save it.
> Also I'd like to have same kind of function that would search and replace in
> multiple files. 
> As all the problems that I listed here stem from the same root (recursive
> search) I need a few pointers about the basic built-in emacs functions of
> this domain. The function of this nature must be already written, I just
> couldn't find them.

There's a couple of little know commands in emacs that you should learn: 

    M-x apropos RET <pattern> RET

and: 

    C-h f TAB

For example, searching for "file" with:

    M-x apropos RET file RET

or for "directory" with:

    M-x apropos RET directory RET

you'd get a list of interesting functions, like directory-files or
file-expand-wildcards.


(defun map-files (function directory &optional full)
  (dolist (item (file-expand-wildcards (concat directory "/*") full))
    (if (file-directory-p item)
      (map-files function item full)
      (funcall function item))))

(map-files (function print) "/tmp" t)


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

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