In article <252d8155-845e-4eb2-8cef-56b5ba97926f@b13g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
Xah Lee  <xahlee@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mar 20, 5:20 pm, Kevin Ryde <use...@zip.com.au> wrote:
>> When renaming a file with dired "R" (dired-do-rename), I'd like it to
>> rename the backup file too.  So foo -> bar and foo~ -> bar~.  Is there a
>> secret option or other command to do that?
>>
>> I only use the single foo~ backup style, not the numbered backups, if
>> that makes it easier.
>
>not a solution to your question, but these days hardly call R anymore,
>but use wdired-change-to-wdired-mode. It has a shortcut since emacs
>23.1 (Ctrl+x Ctrl+q). (for me, i just aliased it to “rn”).
>

One problem with (the really cool) wdired is that after you
do your renaming, deleting, etc, you can't do "g" and still
be in a dired (wdired) of that same set of files -- it
has to kill off the wdired and go back to a regular
dired.

David