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While considering some refactoring, I made changes throughout a project.

Halfway through the changes, and before saving, I found it doesn't quite work. I exited emacs and restarted. (That's probably not the right approach. There must be some kind of "ignore-all-changes-done-so-far" command I'm missing.)

Regardless, I now have many filename.ext that are left with a trail of #filename.ext#.

I recursively insert directories in dired-mode starting from the project root, and flag (%-d) all files of the regexp ^#.*#$ for deletion.

This expression only captures the files at the root of the hierarchy. Why, and how can I modify it to also catch all files inside the hierarchy?

Comparison

By way of comparison, marking (or flagging) all files of the pattern ^.*\.js$ does indeed catch all files, in both the root and in recursive directories. So why is ^#.*#$ not good?

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  • There is a function diredp-mark-files-regexp-recursive in the package dired+.
    – Tobias
    Dec 18, 2017 at 17:27

1 Answer 1

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I think you are asking how to flag all files whose names look like auto-save files—that is, files whose names begin and end with #.

In Dired (including vanilla Dired and Dired+), the key # does exactly that.

C-h k # says:

# runs the command dired-flag-auto-save-files, which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in dired.el.

It is bound to #, menu-bar mark mark-flag marks-flag-auto-save-files.

(dired-flag-auto-save-files &optional UNFLAG-P)

Flag for deletion files whose names suggest they are auto save files.

A prefix argument says to unmark or unflag those files instead.

See also the Emacs manual, node Flagging Many Files.

You can also find this command as menu-item Flag Auto-save Files in menu-bar menu Mark. (In Dired+ this menu item is in menu Marks, submenu Flag.)


As for the question why regexp ^#.*#$ does not work (used with %d or %m, for example) in inserted subdirectories: It's because for subdirectories the full file name is picked up, i.e., including the directory part.

You can use regexp ^.*/?#.*#$ to do what you want for all #...# files in the current Dired buffer, i.e., including all inserted subdirs.

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  • That does solve the problem, though understanding the reason why the regex is incorrect would also be nice. I guess hunting in the code for what pressing '#' in Dired does will reveal the correct regexp, and then it will be a matter of understanding why the two do not capture the same set.
    – Calaf
    Dec 18, 2017 at 18:00
  • I've updated the answer to address this.
    – Drew
    Dec 18, 2017 at 19:30

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