Questions tagged [files]
Use this tag for questions about moving, deleting, or opening files. Or for questions about the difference between a buffer and its file. For topics such as "Saving Files", use "buffers" instead.
43
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
5
votes
0
answers
242
views
Why is cloning of file buffers prohibited?
Why does clone-buffer not work on file buffers.
I can make it work by the following advice:
(advice-add 'clone-buffer :around
(lambda (oldfun &rest args)
"Allow cloning file buffers."
...
- 32.8k
5
votes
0
answers
3k
views
Emacs hitting "too many files open"
I am using Ubuntu 14.04LTS 64bit.
I encounter this problem when I opened too many files by a emacs function.
Error is signaled as a message and prevent me from opening more files.
I checked my ...
- 365
4
votes
0
answers
2k
views
Emacs won’t access Documents directory on MacOS Big Sur
I am running Emacs 26.3 on MacOS 11.2.1 “Big Sur”. When I try to open the directory ~/Documents, it fails with the message “Listing directory failed but ‘access-file’ worked.” Emacs.app is given ...
4
votes
0
answers
2k
views
When using emacsclient, how can I open the file in the active buffer?
When I open a file with emacsclient without invoking -c, Emacs visits the file in a new buffer in the background while leaving my current window configuration in place. I'd like to change this, e.g. ...
- 41
3
votes
0
answers
335
views
How to make find-file-other-window reuse existing window
Is it possible to make find-file-other-window open the file in a pre-existing window instead of creating a new one?
Currently:
|A---|B---| |A-|C-|B---|
|----|----| -> ...
- 149
2
votes
0
answers
66
views
How to save a Slime Debugger buffer into a file, preserving all its data?
I am using Common Lisp, SBCL, Emacs, and Slime. Often, an error will happen while programming.
When an error occurs, Slime opens a Debugger buffer. Sometimes, I would like to save this debugger buffer ...
- 1,409
2
votes
0
answers
152
views
global-auto-revert-mode with confirmation first?
I know I can use (global-auto-revert-mode 1) to automatically revert a buffer if the buffer has been changed in another editor.
However, when Emacs detects (automatically) that the buffer has changed, ...
- 173
2
votes
0
answers
61
views
Is there a predefined way to detect if a file is a Unix socket?
Are there predefined Emacs functions to check if a file is a Unix socket?
The best I could come up with is the following code.
(defun socket-p (fname)
"Return non-nil if FNAME is a Unix Socket, ...
- 786
2
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Open file in orgmode with external application. Check if file exists and create file from template if necessary
I want to create a file with org-open-at-point from a template if that file does not exist. If it exists, I want to open it in an external app.
In org-mode, file-links are created by [[file:path-to-...
2
votes
0
answers
89
views
Simple Atom-style jump-to-file
I'm upgrading Emacs and moving from macOS to Windows after quite a few years getting by with a very old setup (eg, custom scripts for Anything). I've installed Helm. I'm interested in a simple way to:
...
- 86
2
votes
0
answers
55
views
find-library equivalent for C internal source code files
Is there a built-in Emacs equivalent of find-library for the C internal source code files?
If there is an additional step needed to create an index of the files (e.g., make tags) when building Emacs, ...
- 18.9k
2
votes
0
answers
141
views
Accidentally visiting a FIFO
I'm in Dired, and one of the files in the current directory is a named pipe (FIFO)
prw-r--r--+ 1 ivan staff 0 Feb 6 11:13 some_pipe
If I (accidentally) visit it (with dired-visit-file), ...
- 1,938
2
votes
0
answers
298
views
How to find/grep in Python virtualenv with projectile/helm easier?
How I can customize helm/projectile behaviour to find files and grep in $VIRTUALENV dir easier? Or maybe I can write some function(s) to find/grep in virtualenv of current project?
- 516
2
votes
1
answer
178
views
Manage freedesktop trashcan with dired mode
Trashed files are stored in the FreeDesktop standard location:
~/.local/share/Trash/files. How do I restore or permanently delete files in that folder using dired?
- 1,207
1
vote
0
answers
46
views
What causes "file changed on disk; really edit the buffer?" for files on a network share?
What causes "file changed on disk; really edit the buffer?" for files on a network share?
I edit files on an SMB share and I get constantly this question: "changed on disk; really edit ...
- 591
1
vote
2
answers
94
views
How to indicate in the mode-line that current-buffer's file has changed on disk?
How can I show if a file has changed on disk, in the mode-line?
(I'm trying to troubleshoot why auto-revert doesn't work for me, and such an indication would help.)
- 591
1
vote
0
answers
55
views
How to open file with it being editable but not writeable?
I teach, and I like to use real files as examples in class. I want to be able to edit the buffer to show student things, but I don't want to risk accidentally writing the changes on the file.
What I ...
1
vote
0
answers
55
views
How to rename files to numbers in Eshell?
List of files:
$ ls -1 *.jpg
IMG_20210909_0003.jpg
IMG_20210909_0004.jpg
IMG_20210909_0005.jpg
IMG_20210909_0006.jpg
IMG_20210909_0007.jpg
…
I want to rename these files to 1.jpg, 2.jpg, …, and I ...
- 1,049
1
vote
0
answers
171
views
Sharing .org file between two users
My secretory creates a daily agenda for me by capturing task to shared org file mytodo.org. When I open the agenda or mark the task done, her ability to capture new task gets limited as the mytodo.org ...
- 11
1
vote
0
answers
187
views
Problem saving (C-x C-s) files on a NFS drive with emacs 24/25
Starting with Emacs 24 (using various different versions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint), if I open a file on an NFS drive, modify it and attempt to save it C-x C-s, I get the message of: Saving <...
1
vote
0
answers
464
views
How to mount/unmount devices?
I'm interested in mounting/umounting usb and other devices directly from emacs.
In many file managers (like nautilus) the devices are automatically discovered and indicated with an icon, it's possible ...
- 337
1
vote
0
answers
124
views
f.el: f-split behaviour
Using f-split from f.el:
(require 'f)
(f-split "c:/a/b")
returns
("/" "c:" "a" "b")
What is the rationale? Shouldn't it be ("c:" "a" "b")?
Also in Emacs for Windows the value of:
(f-path-...
- 1,792
1
vote
1
answer
987
views
Test file permissions in Windows
The file-writable-p docstring says:
Return t if file FILENAME can be written or created by you.
In Windows you cannot usually write on files when they are used by a different app. In these ...
- 1,792
1
vote
0
answers
97
views
Dired+: Copy to nonexistent directory
Windows 10, Emacs 25.1, Dired+
I try to copy a file from test folder to nonexistent folder new:
But I get this error:
Is it possible to make Emacs autocreate folder new and copy the file to it?
It ...
- 791
1
vote
0
answers
49
views
How to write custom read-file-name with expanded set of completions?
I am seeking advice for how to get tab completion in the minibar with a custom set of completion candidates that are either subdirectories or build targets from Makefiles.
For context, I'm using the ...
- 111
1
vote
0
answers
48
views
How to write a function for editing a file and then running a command?
I would like to write a function that does the equivalent of the shell command:
vim $MY_FILE && $MY_COMMAND
In other words, I would like to open a file in a buffer, and then when I save/...
- 544
1
vote
0
answers
148
views
Mac OS X problem accessing file via symlink
GNU Emacs 24 on El Capitan. When opening a file whose path includes a directory which is a symlink, Emacs emits the following error:
*ERROR*: Wrong type argument: numberp, "Bus error: 10"
If I ...
- 196
1
vote
0
answers
40
views
Is it possible to display and edit the contents of a linked file?
In a Stack Overflow question, another poster wants to write OpenGL shader programs near to where they are used. However, performance tuning indicates that you should compile these shaders once at the ...
- 267
1
vote
0
answers
160
views
deactivate saveplace.el for filetype
Saveplace is a nice tool to remember where I have left of in a file. But for Org files it causes me problems when I quit emacs in the middle of a heading.
My current try to deactivate it in org-files ...
- 835
0
votes
1
answer
39
views
Visual Glitch whenever loading emacs
I am running emacs on WSL, and whenever I load emacs I get the following screen:
It goes away for a half second whenever I click on it, but then it comes back. Very new to this so am unsure what is ...
0
votes
1
answer
24
views
Emacs macro variables
Does Emacs have 'macro variables'?
Midnight Commander allows the use of macro substitution expressions like %f %D %t which can be use when running commands. eg %f is the name of the current file in a ...
- 115
0
votes
0
answers
53
views
"touch file" in dired mode
I found this answer:
(eval-after-load 'dired
'(progn
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "c") 'my-dired-create-file)
(defun create-new-file (file-list)
(defun exsitp-untitled-...
- 135
0
votes
0
answers
33
views
Visit New File doesn't create new directories
Maybe I am completely misremembering but I am sure that Emacs used to create missing directories when using Visit New File command.
Let say that ~/Documents exists. And I want to create a new file in ...
0
votes
0
answers
29
views
Turn directory to file in dired
I often make the mistake of creating a directory instead of a file in Dired (by hitting +). I then have to delete it and recreate the file, with the same name.
Sometimes, I tried to edit the d file ...
- 1,575
0
votes
1
answer
77
views
Option similar to `vc-directory-exclusion-list` but for files create by build tools
I'm missing an option variable similar to vc-directory-exclusion-list that holds of a list of auto-generated directory names that contain temporary files that are typically but not exlusively created ...
- 497
0
votes
0
answers
27
views
Introducing functionality stored in a file into another file defining a minor-mode
I am debugging a minor-mode and have split the file into two files. How would one introduce the functionality in the second file into the minor-mode file?
I have my minor-mode called rk-bracemarks ...
- 1
0
votes
0
answers
46
views
Are there any low-level functions for reading files in elisp?
I am looking for something equivalent to this in Python
f = open('2021-11-10.org')
print(f.readline())
I know you can insert the file-contents into a buffer and do something like this, but that is ...
- 11.6k
0
votes
0
answers
107
views
Detect whether a file is "binary" from elisp
I am wondering whether current versions of Emacs have any built in mechanism for guessing whether a file (that my elisp code is about to load, or perhaps has just loaded, into a buffer) is 'binary' ...
- 272
0
votes
0
answers
133
views
Show progress bar for long operation?
Linux Mint 20.2
Emacs 27.2
When I do some long operation not show progress bar.
Is it possible to show progress bar in this situation?
Examples of long operations:
Copy many files
Copy big files
...
- 3,926
0
votes
0
answers
158
views
Setting up Emacs as an external editor on windows 10
Apologies if this has been asked multiple times already, haven't found a useful answer.
I am trying to use Emacs as an external editor on two separate applications in windows 10, one is a notes app (...
- 1
0
votes
0
answers
68
views
Can image-dired track renamed files?
I would like to view images using image-dired, then rename them. What I do at the moment:
Open image-dired with my directory of choice.
Mark an image that I want to rename.
In the corresponding dired+...
- 1,049
0
votes
0
answers
48
views
How to get a list of all folder names under a folder?
I have a folder structure like this,i want get a list that all folder names in pack folder. Then traverse the list and load them
├── pack
│ ├── completion
│ │ ├── company
│ │ │ └── pack-...
0
votes
0
answers
153
views
How to get thing-at-point between separators
I'm trying to get hold of the current filename at point.
In an arbitrary buffer.
Say I have list of files in a buffer and I want to be able to do something with each file. For that I need to ...
- 1,233