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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.
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.
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.
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. See
Miscellaneous File Operations in The GNU Emacs
Manual. When called interactively, trash is
t if no prefix argument is given, and
nil otherwise.
Next: Magic File Names, Previous: Contents of Directories, Up: Files [Contents][Index]