Dired and find
You can select a set of files for display in a Dired buffer more
flexibly by using the find utility to choose the files.
To search for files with names matching a wildcard pattern use
M-x find-name-dired. It reads arguments directory and
pattern, and chooses all the files in directory or its
subdirectories whose individual names match pattern.
The files thus chosen are displayed in a Dired buffer in which the
ordinary Dired commands are available.
If you want to test the contents of files, rather than their names,
use M-x find-grep-dired. This command reads two minibuffer
arguments, directory and regexp; it chooses all the files in
directory or its subdirectories that contain a match for
regexp. It works by running the programs find and
grep. See also M-x grep-find, in Compilation.
Remember to write the regular expression for grep, not for Emacs.
(An alternative method of showing files whose contents match a given
regexp is the % g regexp command, see Marks vs Flags.)
The most general command in this series is M-x find-dired, which
lets you specify any condition that find can test. It takes two
minibuffer arguments, directory and find-args; it runs
find in directory, passing find-args to tell
find what condition to test. To use this command, you need to
know how to use find.
M-x locate provides a similar interface to the locate
program. M-x locate-with-filter is similar, but keeps only lines
matching a given regular expression.
The format of listing produced by these commands is controlled by the
variable find-ls-option, whose default value specifies using
options -ld for ls. If your listings are corrupted, you
may need to change the value of this variable.
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