Next: Find File At Point, Previous: Advanced Mark Commands, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
An Emacs buffer can have but one working directory, stored in
the buffer-local variable default-directory. A Dired
buffer may have several subdirectories inserted, but it still has
only one working directory: that of the top-level Dired directory
in that buffer. For some commands it is appropriate that they use
the current Dired directory instead of
default-directory, e.g., find-file and
compile.
The command dired-smart-shell-command, bound to
M-! in Dired buffers, is like
shell-command, but it runs with
default-directory bound to the current Dired
directory.