Re: Short explanation for & in key ! of dired

[joakim]

Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:

>>> 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-!'.

Sounds great!

> 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.

Many times I thought to myself I'd prepare a patch to let the async
buffer be renamed when prefixing c-u, like shell buffers, but I've never
gotten around to it.

-- 
Joakim Verona