bug#48883: dired marking bugs

[Arthur Miller]

Filipp Gunbin <fgunbin@fastmail.fm> writes:

> On 07/06/2021 20:53 +0200, Arthur Miller wrote:
>
>> Boruch Baum <boruch_baum@gmx.com> writes:
>>
>>> In testing my diredc package, I'm coming across the following bugs
>>> reproducable in \emacs -Q -nw:
>>>
>>> 1) Improper marking of directory heading line
>>>
>>>    1.1) The correct and expected behavior of dired is that when one
>>>         navigates to a directory heading line (eg. the first line of a
>>>         simple dired buffer) and presses 'm', all "real" files of that
>>>         directory are marked, [IMPORTANT] the lines for the "not-real"
>>>         files '.' and '..' are not marked, and [IMPORTANT] the directory
>>>         line itself is not marked.
>> I have no idea if that is "correct and expected behaviour", I don't see
>> it said in manual, or I missed it, but anyway, the headline in Dired is
>> a waste of space since you can see dir name in modeline or frame title,
>> [...]
>
> The headlines are very much needed if you have -R in ls switches…

Aha, so it would insert a headline for each recursive listing. Ok, that
make sense.

Thanks for pointing it out. I have never used -R in listing
switches. Is it useful in real-world? I can just imagine how long time
would take for emacs to list entire /home/user dir. I tried it now just
for the test, but I had to press C-g after few seconds.

Actually when thinking of it, I don't use 'i' to insert a
directory either but I am aware of it, and I guess it also needs a
headline as a visual delimiter. Anyway I never really find it pretty or
useful to insert a subdir below entire content. Instead I use a
package dired-hacks which has a utility dired-subtree which lets me
toggle subdir similar to a conventional file manager. It works similar
to headlines in outline/org mode which I think is a bit more natural to use.