How to view files ordered by extension in dired?

Question

Instead of viewing dired buffers with files sorted by name, I want to view it with directories at the top followed by files grouped by extension (and then filename). Is there any package to install to do that? How do I set up my config?

Answer 1

You can use this:

(setq dired-listing-switches
      "-lX --group-directories-first")

The X option makes it sorted by extension. Basically you can just google whatever ls option you want, and then set dired-listing-switches accordingly.

Answer 2

Library dired-sort-menu.el lets you do this (and more): just choose Extension in the Sort By submenu of menu Subdir. (Subdir is Dir in Dired+.)

See also library dired-sort-menu+.el.

Answer 3

You can set dired-listing-switches to "-l --group-directories-first", and then toggle sorting by extension (and other keys) with:

(mapc (lambda (elt)
        (define-key dired-mode-map (car elt)
          `(lambda ()
            (interactive)
            (dired-sort-other (concat dired-listing-switches ,(cadr elt))))))
      '(([(control f3)]       ""     "by name")
        ([(control f4)]       " -X"  "by extension")
        ([(control f5)]       " -t"  "by date")
        ([(control f6)]       " -S"  "by size")
        ([(control shift f3)] " -r"  "by reverse name")
        ([(control shift f4)] " -rX" "by reverse extension")
        ([(control shift f5)] " -rt" "by reverse date")
        ([(control shift f6)] " -rS" "by reverse size")))