Re: Short explanation for & in key ! of dired

[Juri Linkov]

>> Pity & is already taken for dired-flag-garbage-files.  It would be an
>> obvious candidate for starting commands in the background.
>
> Yup.
>
> Does anybody use dired-flag-garbage-files?
>
> It seems dangerously vague...

Unlike its counterpart commands `#' (flag auto-save files) and
`~' (flag backup files), the key `&' to flag "garbage" files
is not mnemonic.  The proposed command to execute a dired command
asynchronously has much better mnemonics for `&'.  Then I see
that the key `M-&' is free for the global key binding, so maybe
use it to execute a command asynchronously in any buffer like `M-!'.

Another usual problem for newbies to how to execute multiple
commands asynchronously.  The trick is to rename the existing
buffer *Async Shell Command*, but this is unobvious.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/