Running out of L:/ etters: shortcut for path needed

Question

I'm working with files which are stored on a server. The structure on the server is:

//SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2007/
//SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2008/
//SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2009/
...
//SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2015/

In every years folder are the folders of the year, sometimes up to 1000.

Emacs 24.4 is running on a Win 7 machine. I used to map the folders of the years with letters (X:), but I'm running out of letters now, 2015 is mapped to Z:.

If I wish to open a file of the year 2015, I do: C-x C-f, delete whatever appears in the minibuffer, type Z:, followed by the first letters of the folder. Without mapping the share to Z:, I'd have to type much more: //SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2015/

Emacs can't handle the Windows shortcuts *.lnk. Windows can't map more shares than 26.

My general idea is that I could customise the command "find file" (C-x C-f) somehow.

What I'd like to have that I just type something like C-x C-f 2015 and get in the minibuffer the line:

Find file: //SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2015/

with the cursor on the point after the last "/" and the usual auto-complition working, so that typing foo will be completed to foo.tex, if this exists (or a folder called foo).

Answer 1

1. I'd echo the suggestion of using bookmarks.

2. You can use environment variables (define your own, to correspond to whatever directory prefixes you want).

3. You can define directory abbreviations, using option directory-abbrev-alist. That's what it is for. See the Emacs manual, node File Aliases.

   The doc focuses on the use of directory-abbrev-alist with symbolic links, but you can use it for any directory abbreviations.

   Vanilla Emacs does not complete your directory abbreviations, but Icicles does. (RMS gave as the reason that vanilla Emacs should not do this: "I don’t think Emacs should alter the names that the user enters."

   Here is the doc string for option directory-abbrev-alist:

   directory-abbrev-alist is a variable defined in `files.el'.
   Its value is nil
   
   Documentation:
   Alist of abbreviations for file directories.
   A list of elements of the form (FROM . TO), each meaning to replace
   FROM with TO when it appears in a directory name.  This replacement is
   done when setting up the default directory of a newly visited file.
   
   FROM is matched against directory names anchored at the first
   character, so it should start with a "\\`", or, if directory
   names cannot have embedded newlines, with a "^".
   
   FROM and TO should be equivalent names, which refer to the
   same directory.  Do not use `~' in the TO strings;
   they should be ordinary absolute directory names.
   
   Use this feature when you have directories which you normally refer to
   via absolute symbolic links.  Make TO the name of the link, and FROM
   the name it is linked to.
   
   You can customize this variable.
   

   So as an example, you might have an entry like this in directory-abbrev-alist:

    (\`2015 . //SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2015)

Then if you use C-x C-f 2015 TAB (in Icicles) your input of 2015 is completed to //SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2015, and you can type more to complete to something in that directory.

And if you had an entry like this (same thing, but with a trailing /):

    (\`2015 . //SBS/share/path/to/somewhere/2015/)

Then C-x C-f 2015 TAB shows you all of the files in that directory as completion candidates.

Answer 2

You open these files frequently so the paths will be in history. Use C-x C-f C-r 2015 to bring the last file you opened with 2015 in it's path into the mini-buffer and use normal completion from there. Pressing C-r again will get the next to last used path with 2015, and so on.

Answer 3

As an alternate method you could use symbolic links in Windows 7 to map your network shares to folders (and thus spare your Drive Letters). (Source: SuperUser: How to mount a network drive to a folder )

Suppose you have folder c:\yearly\ to store the various year folders

mklink /D c:\yearly\2015 \\SBS\share\path\to\somewhere\2015

Then you can directly use: C:\yearly\2015\... as your path to access the files.

I've tested this on a desktop with a fixed access to the destination server. A laptop may run into connection issues (due to lack of availability of the folder).

Note: This will not work on WindowsXP without a third party tool. mklink was only introduced in Vista.