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38.1 Entering Dired
To invoke Dired, do C-x d or M-x dired. The command
reads a directory name or wildcard file name pattern as a minibuffer
argument to specify the files to list. C-x C-f given a
directory name also invokes Dired. Where dired
differs from
list-directory
is that it puts the buffer into Dired mode, so
that the special commands of Dired are available.
The variable dired-listing-switches
specifies the options to
give to ls
for listing the directory; this string must
contain ‘-l’. If you use a numeric prefix argument with the
dired
command, you can specify the ls
switches with the
minibuffer before you enter the directory specification. No matter
how they are specified, the ls
switches can include short
options (that is, single characters) requiring no arguments, and long
options (starting with ‘--’) whose arguments are specified with
‘=’.
On MS-Windows and MS-DOS systems, Emacs emulates ls
;
see Emulation of ls
on MS-Windows, for options and peculiarities of that emulation.
To display the Dired buffer in another window rather than in the
selected window, use C-x 4 d (dired-other-window
) instead
of C-x d. C-x 5 d (dired-other-frame
) uses a
separate frame to display the Dired buffer.