Info Catalog elisp: Contents of Directories elisp: Files elisp: Magic File Names

elisp: Create/Delete Dirs

 
 24.10 Creating, Copying and Deleting Directories
 ================================================
 
 Most Emacs Lisp file-manipulation functions get errors when used on
 files that are directories.  For example, you cannot delete a directory
 with ‘delete-file’.  These special functions exist to create and delete
 directories.
 
  -- Command: make-directory dirname &optional parents
      This command creates a directory named DIRNAME.  If PARENTS is
      non-‘nil’, as is always the case in an interactive call, that means
      to create the parent directories first, if they don’t already
      exist.
 
      ‘mkdir’ is an alias for this.
 
  -- Command: copy-directory dirname newname &optional keep-time parents
           copy-contents
      This command copies the directory named DIRNAME to NEWNAME.  If
      NEWNAME names an existing directory, DIRNAME will be copied to a
      subdirectory there.
 
      It always sets the file modes of the copied files to match the
      corresponding original file.
 
      The third argument KEEP-TIME non-‘nil’ means to preserve the
      modification time of the copied files.  A prefix arg makes
      KEEP-TIME non-‘nil’.
 
      The fourth argument PARENTS says whether to create parent
      directories if they don’t exist.  Interactively, this happens by
      default.
 
      The fifth argument COPY-CONTENTS, if non-‘nil’, means to copy the
      contents of DIRNAME directly into NEWNAME if the latter is an
      existing directory, instead of copying DIRNAME into it as a
      subdirectory.
 
  -- Command: delete-directory dirname &optional recursive trash
      This command deletes the directory named DIRNAME.  The function
      ‘delete-file’ does not work for files that are directories; you
      must use ‘delete-directory’ for them.  If RECURSIVE is ‘nil’, and
      the directory contains any files, ‘delete-directory’ signals an
      error.
 
      ‘delete-directory’ only follows symbolic links at the level of
      parent directories.
 
      If the optional argument TRASH is non-‘nil’ and the variable
      ‘delete-by-moving-to-trash’ is non-‘nil’, this command moves the
      file into the system Trash instead of deleting it.  
      Miscellaneous File Operations (emacs)Misc File Ops.  When called
      interactively, TRASH is ‘t’ if no prefix argument is given, and
      ‘nil’ otherwise.
 

Info Catalog elisp: Contents of Directories elisp: Files elisp: Magic File Names