Re: Rename, delete and move current buffer and file

[net june <netjune@outlook.com>]

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I have a command my-rename-file for my own use for long time. It does thing as following:
1. When run with no prefix arg, rename the the visiting file in its directory, prompting for new name(read-string) with the old name as init input.
2. in 1, if user input an empty string, delete the file on disk.
3. when run with prefix arg, rename the visiting file to anywhere user choose, prompting for new file path(read-file-name)

?? Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/ghei36>

________________________________
From: Emacs-devel <emacs-devel-bounces+netjune=outlook.com@gnu.org> on behalf of Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler@online.de>
Sent: Monday, May 7, 2018 11:29:50 PM
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Rename, delete and move current buffer and file



On 07.05.2018 15:58, Jarosław Rzeszótko wrote:
> It is surprisingly hard to do this in Emacs, and I think it is a common
> problem, as evidenced by e.g.:
>
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/384284/how-do-i-rename-an-open-file-in-emacs
> http://emacsredux.com/blog/2013/05/04/rename-file-and-buffer/
> http://rejeep.github.io/emacs/elisp/2010/03/26/rename-file-and-buffer-in-emacs.html
>
> You can use dired, but I personally find it to be a distraction for this
> use case.
>
> There is set-visited-file-name, but:
> a) it creates a copy of the file by default
> b) the name is not intuitive and I doubt many people looking to rename a
> file will find it
> c) the best UI/UX is IMO different for different use cases, rename is
> different from move
>
> A very similar related pain point is that it is hard to get the path and
> directory of the current buffers visited file. There exist ways to do
> it, but this is a pair of related use cases and the handling is
> completely different: for the path you have default-directory, an elisp
> variable, and pwd, a command capable of displaying the path in
> minibuffer or yanking it at point. For file name I am only aware of the
> elisp function: buffer-file-name. Again, two closely related use cases,
> handled very differently, I by now looked those up like 10 times and
> every time I forget how to get this info because the names are so far
> from what you would expect.
>
> How can we fix or improve those issues?
>
> For rename/delete/move I would create three distinct commands:
> rename-visited-file-with-buffer
> move-visited-file-with-buffer
> delete-visited-file-with-buffer
>
> Those names make the functions easy to discover if you are using
> something like ivy or ido for M-x, while they are still precise from the
> standpoint of Emacs concepts. It seems good to me to separate rename,
> which should prefill the minibuffer prompt with the current name, and
> ask only for a new filename, WITHOUT directory selection, from move,
> which should prompt for a full new path, WITH directory selection.
>
> For the current buffers file and directory name, I think aliasing
> default-directory as visited-file-name-directory, and introducing
> visited-file-name is one option. Another option: introduce
> buffer-directory-name as a complement to the existing buffer-file-name
> function. That would cleanup the elisp part, and then at least the names
> are something you can remember, and with M-: you can kill, insert or
> display those.
>
> Question remains how to fix those things also on an user interface
> level. I think it's a pity clicking on the filename in the modeline
> changes the current buffer, I am happy to hear if I am mistaken, but
> today this behavior is rather unexpected and I would be very surprised
> to see somebody switching buffers this way. On the other hand it looks
> like a nice place for a menu where all the operations mentioned could be
> triggered (rename, move and delete file+buffer, display/kill/insert
> directory name or file name). Providing default key bindings under a
> common prefix for them could be nice too.
>
> Maybe someone has some more, or better, ideas for this.
>
> Finally, while we are discussing functions everyone re-implements in
> their .emacs, please lets make transpose-windows happen as an Emacs
> builtin :)
>
> Cheers,
> Jarosław Rzeszótko


Good question.

My workflow is the following:

[(control a)]         ;; Store the buffer-name in kill-ring, code see below
[(control x) (d)]     ;; dired, commonly the wanted working dir
[(control s)(meta y)] ;; yank the buffer-name as argument to
                      ;; isearch-forward
[(control c) (w)]     ;; or M-x wdired-change-to-wdired-mode RET

                       ;; then edit, save.

(defun puffername-an-car-killring ()
   "Store buffer-name at first place in ‘kill-ring’."
   (interactive)
   (let* ((name-raw (split-string (buffer-name) "<"))
         (name (car name-raw)))
     (kill-new name)
     (message "%s" name)))

Best,
Andreas


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