Re: Isearch in dired

[Lennart Borgman]

On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 11:59 AM, Juri Linkov <address@hidden> wrote:
>> It would be useful for isearch in a dired buffer to match only file
>> names by default.  I think this would be a good feature -- if we can
>> come up with a natural way to request ordinary search of the entire
>> buffer.
>>
>> Can anyone think of one?
>
> I think the most convenient default behavior would be context-dependent,
> i.e. match only file names when point is on the file name column - where
> point stays most of the time: after opening a dired buffer and through
> dired operations including navigation.  So it would be natural to do the
> same for isearch - never let point leave the file name column.
>
> To search of the entire buffer, the user can move point outside the
> file name column.  Since this need is very rare, there's no hassle.

It is a nice idea if you know what is going on, but how do you tell
the user what is going on? Changing the prompt is one possibility, but
it is maybe not enough?

(This reminds me again of that the search part of the menus in Emacs
should include all search commands that comes with Emacs. And there
should be an easy way to add other search commands there too.)