Re: dired should clear marks after most operations [SUGGESTION]

[John H. Palmieri]

I don't know if anyone cares about this thread any more, but:

Isn't one of Emacs' virtues its customizability?  So why not have a
customizable variable which determines whether marks are cleared in
dired after most operations.  I don't know how easy it would be to do,
but it would be great if the variable could take the values 'always,
'never, or (list of functions); in the last case, it would clear marks
after running any function in the list.  (Or maybe, rather than having
an actual list of lisp functions, it could be a list of
operations--search, shell-command, etc.--for each of which one could
set the mark-clearing option.)

squash@math.ufl.edu (Jonathan LF King) writes:

> Dear Emacs Cognoscenti
> 
> As a non-cognoscento, I am going to add my voice in agreement with Michael
> Downes.  Many in times in dired-mode, I marked a LOT a files for "A"
> [dired-do-search], which then found the file I wanted.  At this point I
> wanted to decompress it to work on it a bit, hitting "Z", only to discover
> a massive (de)compression taking place.
> 
> At least from this faux pas I can recover.  From   !rm -rf<RET>
> I cannot.  Perhaps Eli is right, perhaps Michael is right, about what is
> theoretically "right" in terms of the semiotics of the situation; but I, as
> a longtime (but naive) user, have blundered into this time and time again.

  [snip]

> -- 
> Prof. Jonathan LF King          Mathematics dept, Univ. of Florida
> <squash@math.ufl.edu>,          <http://www.math.ufl.edu/~squash/>

-- 
J. H. Palmieri                      
Dept of Mathematics, Box 354350    mailto:palmieri@math.washington.edu
University of Washington           http://www.math.washington.edu/~palmieri/
Seattle, WA 98195-4350