8.1 Find File At Point

dired-x provides a method of visiting or editing a file mentioned in the buffer you are viewing (e.g., a mail buffer, a news article, a README file, etc.) or to test if that file exists. You can then modify this in the minibuffer after snatching the file name.

When installed dired-x will substitute dired-x-find-file for find-file (normally bound to C-x C-f) and dired-x-find-file-other-window for find-file-other-window (normally bound to C-x 4 C-f).

In order to use this feature, you will need to set dired-x-hands-off-my-keys to nil inside dired-load-hook (see Optional Installation File At Point).

dired-x-find-file

dired-x-find-file behaves exactly like find-file (normally bound to C-x C-f) unless a prefix argument is passed to the function in which case it will use the file name at point as a guess for the file to visit.

For example, if the buffer you were reading contained the words

          Available via anonymous ftp in

             /roebling.poly.edu:/pub/lisp/crypt++.el.gz

then you could move your cursor to the line containing the ftp address and type C-u C-x C-f (the C-u is a universal argument). The minibuffer would read

          Find file: /roebling.poly.edu:/pub/lisp/crypt++.el.gz

with the point after the last /. If you hit <RET>, emacs will visit the file at that address. This also works with files on your own computer.

dired-x-find-file-other-window

dired-x-find-file-other-window behaves exactly like find-file-other-window (normally bound to C-x 4 C-f) unless a prefix argument is used. See dired-x-find-file for more information.

dired-x-hands-off-my-keys

If set to t, then it means that dired-x should not bind dired-x-find-file over find-file on keyboard. Similarly, it should not bind dired-x-find-file-other-window over find-file-other-window. If you change this variable after dired-x.el is loaded then do M-x dired-x-bind-find-file. The default value of this variable is t; by default, the binding is not done. See See Optional Installation File At Point.

dired-x-bind-find-file

A function, which can be called interactively or in your ~/.emacs file, that uses the value of dired-x-hands-off-my-keys to determine if dired-x-find-file should be bound over find-file and dired-x-find-file-other-window bound over find-file-other-window. See See Optional Installation File At Point.