30.5 Visiting Files in Dired

There are several Dired commands for visiting or examining the files listed in the Dired buffer. All of them apply to the current line’s file; if that file is really a directory, these commands invoke Dired on that subdirectory (making a separate Dired buffer).

f ¶

Visit the file described on the current line, like typing C-x C-f and supplying that file name ( dired-find-file). See Visiting Files.

RET ¶e

Equivalent to f.

o ¶

Like f, but uses another window to display the file’s buffer ( dired-find-file-other-window). The Dired buffer remains visible in the first window. This is like using C-x 4 C-f to visit the file. See Multiple Windows.

C-o ¶

Visit the file described on the current line, and display the buffer in another window, but do not select that window ( dired-display-file).

mouse-1 ¶mouse-2

Visit the file whose name you clicked on ( dired-mouse-find-file-other-window). This uses another window to display the file, like the o command.

v ¶

View the file described on the current line, with View mode ( dired-view-file). View mode provides convenient commands to navigate the buffer but forbids changing it; See View Mode.

^ ¶

Visit the parent directory of the current directory ( dired-up-directory). This is equivalent to moving to the line for .. and typing f there.

User Option: dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer ¶

When visiting a new sub-directory in Dired, Emacs will (by default) open a new buffer to display this new directory, and leave the old Dired buffer as is. If this user option is non- nil, the old Dired buffer will be killed after selecting the new directory. This means that if you’re traversing a directory structure in Dired, you won’t end up with more than a single Dired buffer.