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Operating on Files

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chmod can handle.
  • G newgroup <RET>
    Change the group of the specified files to newgroup (dired-do-chgrp).
  • O newowner <RET>
    Change the owner of the specified files to newowner (dired-do-chown). (On most systems, only the superuser can do this.)

    The variable dired-chown-program specifies the name of the program to use to do the work (different systems put chown in different places).

  • P command <RET>
    Print the specified files (dired-do-print). You must specify the command to print them with, but the minibuffer starts out with a suitable guess made using the variables lpr-command and lpr-switches (the same variables that lpr-buffer uses; see Hardcopy).
  • Z
    Compress the specified files (dired-do-compress). If the file appears to be a compressed file already, it is uncompressed instead.
  • L
    Load the specified Emacs Lisp files (dired-do-load). See Lisp Libraries.
  • B
    Byte compile the specified Emacs Lisp files (dired-do-byte-compile). See Byte Compilation.
  • A regexp <RET>
    Search all the specified files for the regular expression regexp (dired-do-search).

    This command is a variant of tags-search. The search stops at the first match it finds; use M-, to resume the search and find the next match. See Tags Search.

  • Q regexp <RET> to <RET>
    Perform query-replace-regexp on each of the specified files, replacing matches for regexp with the string to (dired-do-query-replace-regexp).

    This command is a variant of tags-query-replace. If you exit the query replace loop, you can use M-, to resume the scan and replace more matches. See Tags Search.

    One special file-operation command is + (dired-create-directory). This command reads a directory name and creates the directory if it does not already exist.

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