When I talk with people about Emacs, they often complain about the missing project navigator.

Dired has a lot to offer that doesn't fit in just one article, so I decided to split it into several parts. I start by showing the navigation abilities of Dired.

Throughout the article I won't refer to keybindings but instead to the function names. At the end there will be a list of the functions including the corresponding default keybindings.

Here's how to use it

Dired is built into Emacs, so you don't have to install anything.

Enter Dired by calling the function dired. The minibuffer opens and prompts you to choose a directory to open.

Example of an open Dired buffer:

  /Users/samuel/Projects/basement:
  total used in directory 48 available 151364824
  drwxr-xr-x  10 samuel  staff   340 24 Aug 16:16 .
  drwxr-xr-x  37 samuel  staff  1258  5 Okt 13:54 ..
  drwxr-xr-x  12 samuel  staff   408  5 Okt 22:29 .git
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    33 24 Aug 15:55 .gitignore
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    92 24 Aug 15:55 Gemfile
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff   194 24 Aug 16:16 Gemfile.lock
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    71 24 Aug 15:57 README.markdown
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    28 24 Aug 15:55 Rakefile
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff   757 24 Aug 16:04 basement.gemspec
  drwxr-xr-x   4 samuel  staff   136 24 Aug 15:55 lib

Dired creates a read-only buffer and lists all the files from your chosen directory.

In the Dired buffer you're able to move around with the usual movement functions. Only the next-line and previous-line functions are redefined. Generally when you use these functions, the cursor will be positioned at the beginning of the line, but in the Dired buffer it goes to the beginning of the file name.

Next what you want to know is the dired-goto-file function, which prompts for a file name in the minibuffer. It moves the cursor in the Dired buffer to the file you've chosen. Most of the time, you want to visit the file of the currently selected line. In this case you use dired-find-file which opens the file straight away without prompting for a file name input.

Maybe you're asking yourself now, but what about sub directories? You have seen how easy it is to navigate in a single directory and visit specific files, maybe you found out that when you use dired-goto-file on a sub directory it will list the files from this directory. But you want a solution with a better overview, something that gives you the parent and the sub directory at one glance. So lets check out what Dired has in store for that scenario.

As you know, Dired just displays one directory at the time. But with the dired-maybe-insert-subdir function, Dired takes the directory on the current line and lists the content of the directory below the parent directory in the current Dired buffer.

Let's see how this looks like:

  /Users/samuel/Projects/basement:
  total used in directory 48 available 151364824
  drwxr-xr-x  10 samuel  staff   340 24 Aug 16:16 .
  drwxr-xr-x  37 samuel  staff  1258  5 Okt 13:54 ..
  drwxr-xr-x  12 samuel  staff   408  5 Okt 22:29 .git
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    33 24 Aug 15:55 .gitignore
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    92 24 Aug 15:55 Gemfile
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff   194 24 Aug 16:16 Gemfile.lock
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    71 24 Aug 15:57 README.markdown
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff    28 24 Aug 15:55 Rakefile
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff   757 24 Aug 16:04 basement.gemspec
  drwxr-xr-x   4 samuel  staff   136 24 Aug 15:55 lib

  /Users/samuel/Projects/basement/lib:
  total used in directory 8 available 151364824
  drwxr-xr-x   4 samuel  staff  136 24 Aug 15:55 .
  drwxr-xr-x  10 samuel  staff  340 24 Aug 16:16 ..
  drwxr-xr-x   3 samuel  staff  102 24 Aug 15:55 basement
  -rw-r--r--   1 samuel  staff   75 24 Aug 15:55 basement.rb

You see, the parent directory is on top and the sub directory you jumped to is listed below. It's an easy and great overview. At this point Dired gives you a few functions to move between the directories. dired-prev-subdir to move up in the directory tree and the vice-versa function dired-next-subdir. Also useful is the function dired-up-directory which runs Dired in the parent directory. It searches in the current buffer for the parent directory or in another buffer, or creates a new one if needed.

Some customization

The variable dired-listing-switches contains the options which are used when ls is called. That means you could define how the command ls should be called when you open a new directory in Dired.

Example:

(setq dired-listing-switches "-lRS")

The - in the dired-listing-switches variable is a must or Dired wont work. I also recommend to add the l option to the variable, as by default just the single file and directory names would be listed. Just fire up the ls man page if you want to see all available options for ls.

Functions and default keybindings

Summary

Dired has everything you need to navigate through your daily projects and a lot more. I just scratched the surface and recommend the official Emacs Dired manual for further information.