XEmacs Reference Manual - Dired Deletion Go to the previous , next section. The primary use of Dired is to flag files for deletion and then delete them. DEL Remove deletion-flag on previous line, moving point to that line. Delete the files that are flagged for deletion. You can flag a file for deletion by moving to the line describing the file and typing d or C-d .
Point is moved to the beginning of the next line, so that repeated d commands flag successive files.
The files are flagged for deletion rather than deleted immediately to avoid the danger of deleting a file accidentally. Until you direct Dired to delete the flagged files, you can remove deletion flags using the commands u and DEL . To delete the flagged files, type x . This command first displays a list of all the file names flagged for deletion, and requests confirmation with yes . Once you confirm, all the flagged files are deleted, and their lines are deleted from the text of the Dired buffer.