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If I execute a M-x find-name-dired command the output is a *Find* buffer containing the results.

However if I perform a subsequent find-name-dired the contents of the *Find* buffer are overwritten with the latest output.

Is there a means to execute multiple find-name-dired commands and keep the output buffer of each?

In other words, have multiple *Find* buffers?

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    Please don't post the same question to both StackOverflow and emacs.SE - choose one. Please delete one of the posts. Thx. – Drew Nov 15 at 18:08
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Looking at the code, find-name-dired delegates to find-dired.

Looking at the find-dired code, it opens a buffer with name "*Find*". From its source:

(get-buffer-create "*Find*")

So if we rename the first buffer we made, the second call to find-name-dired will not touch it. You can rename the buffer with M-x rename-buffer (lets you choose a name) or M-x rename-uniquely (adds a numerical suffix <2>, <3>, …).

Rather than renaming by hand, here's a wrapper function around find-name-dired that changes the buffer name after it's ran. Note that it will reuse any preexisting buffer called *Find*, so prior searches ran with find-name-dired or other find commands will go away.

(defun find-name-dired-with-unique-buffer-name (dir pattern)
  "Search DIR recursively for files matching the globbing pattern PATTERN,
and run Dired on those files.
PATTERN is a shell wildcard (not an Emacs regexp) and need not be quoted.
The default command run (after changing into DIR) is

    find . -name \\='PATTERN\\=' -ls

See `find-name-arg' to customize the arguments."
    (interactive
     "DFind-name (directory): \nsFind-name (filename wildcard): ")
    (find-name-dired dir pattern)
    (let ((buffer-name (format "*Find: %s in %s*" pattern dir)))
      "If we previously searched for the same thing, kill that buffer for reuse"
      (when (get-buffer buffer-name)
        (kill-buffer buffer-name))

      ;;we are left in a buffer called "*Find*"
      (rename-buffer buffer-name)))
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    Thanks! The only weakness of this solution is that if we search for the same pattern in two directories, the first is killed. That can be worked-around by also adding the directory to the buffer name. – Realraptor Nov 15 at 16:00
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    @Realraptor sure, why not? Added. – zck Nov 15 at 17:36
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If you use library find-dired+.el then the buffer used is not *Find*. Instead, it has same name (using directory-file-name) as argument DIR (the directory).

So if you change directory then you get a different buffer.

If that's not enough then you can always use hook find-dired-hook to rename the buffer each time (or whatever).

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