Info Catalog emacs: Basic Minibuffer emacs: Minibuffer emacs: Minibuffer Edit

emacs: Minibuffer File

 
 8.2 Minibuffers for File Names
 ==============================
 
 Commands such as ‘C-x C-f’ (‘find-file’) use the minibuffer to read a
 file name argument (Basic Files).  When the minibuffer is used
 to read a file name, it typically starts out with some initial text
 ending in a slash.  This is the “default directory”.  For example, it
 may start out like this:
 
      Find file: /u2/emacs/src/
 
 Here, ‘Find file: ’ is the prompt and ‘/u2/emacs/src/’ is the default
 directory.  If you now type ‘buffer.c’ as input, that specifies the file
 ‘/u2/emacs/src/buffer.c’.  File Names, for information about the
 default directory.
 
    You can specify the parent directory with ‘..’: ‘/a/b/../foo.el’ is
 equivalent to ‘/a/foo.el’.  Alternatively, you can use ‘M-<DEL>’ to kill
 directory names backwards (Words).
 
    To specify a file in a completely different directory, you can kill
 the entire default with ‘C-a C-k’ (Minibuffer Edit).
 Alternatively, you can ignore the default, and enter an absolute file
 name starting with a slash or a tilde after the default directory.  For
 example, you can specify ‘/etc/termcap’ as follows:
 
      Find file: /u2/emacs/src//etc/termcap
 
 A double slash causes Emacs to ignore everything before the second slash
 in the pair.  In the example above, ‘/u2/emacs/src/’ is ignored, so the
 argument you supplied is ‘/etc/termcap’.  The ignored part of the file
 name is dimmed if the terminal allows it.  (To disable this dimming,
 turn off File Name Shadow mode with the command ‘M-x
 file-name-shadow-mode’.)
 
    Emacs interprets ‘~/’ as your home directory.  Thus, ‘~/foo/bar.txt’
 specifies a file named ‘bar.txt’, inside a directory named ‘foo’, which
 is in turn located in your home directory.  In addition, ‘~USER-ID/’
 means the home directory of a user whose login name is USER-ID.  Any
 leading directory name in front of the ‘~’ is ignored: thus,
 ‘/u2/emacs/~/foo/bar.txt’ is equivalent to ‘~/foo/bar.txt’.
 
    On MS-Windows and MS-DOS systems, where a user doesn’t always have a
 home directory, Emacs uses several alternatives.  For MS-Windows, see
 Windows HOME; for MS-DOS, see MS-DOS File Names.  On
 these systems, the ‘~USER-ID/’ construct is supported only for the
 current user, i.e., only if USER-ID is the current user’s login name.
 
    To prevent Emacs from inserting the default directory when reading
 file names, change the variable ‘insert-default-directory’ to ‘nil’.  In
 that case, the minibuffer starts out empty.  Nonetheless, relative file
 name arguments are still interpreted based on the same default
 directory.
 
    You can also enter remote file names in the minibuffer.  Remote
 Files.
 

Info Catalog emacs: Basic Minibuffer emacs: Minibuffer emacs: Minibuffer Edit