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### 30.2 Navigation in the Dired Buffer

All the usual Emacs cursor motion commands are available in Dired buffers. The keys `C-n` and `C-p` are redefined to put the cursor at the beginning of the file name on the line, rather than at the beginning of the line.

For extra convenience, `SPC` and `n` in Dired are equivalent to `C-n`. `p` is equivalent to `C-p`. (Moving by lines is so common in Dired that it deserves to be easy to type.) `DEL` (move up and unflag) is also often useful simply for moving up (see Dired Deletion).

`j` (`dired-goto-file`) prompts for a file name using the minibuffer, and moves point to the line in the Dired buffer describing that file.

`M-s f C-s` (`dired-isearch-filenames`) performs a forward incremental search in the Dired buffer, looking for matches only amongst the file names and ignoring the rest of the text in the buffer. `M-s f M-C-s` (`dired-isearch-filenames-regexp`) does the same, using a regular expression search. If you change the variable `dired-isearch-filenames` to `t`, then the usual search commands also limit themselves to the file names; for instance, `C-s` behaves like `M-s f C-s`. If the value is `dwim`, then search commands match the file names only when point was on a file name initially. See Search, for information about incremental search.

Some additional navigation commands are available when the Dired buffer includes several directories. See Subdirectory Motion.

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