dired can do most things for me especially now I have my DWIM image conversion scripts working and image-dired configured to my liking.
However sometimes I do just prefer using a GUI file manager; for example, drag and drop, image file preview e.t.c.
I am currently using the Dolphin file manager on KDE and one context menu service that I have enabled and use often is the Duplicate Here function. It is often that I like to back up a file / directory to a quick temporary directory especially when I am hacking around with the original and on windows it is often that I copy and then paste with Windows automatically applying a Copy to the original name. Dolphin does something similar but applies a (1) when it suggests a new name.
Enough rambling!, simply I would like to reproduce this functionality in dired but with the improvement of not adding in spaces to the new name and being able to define any unique naming convention I like.
So in dired to achieve this, simply:
- open dired
- cursor over the desired item to rename
w(dired-copy-filename-as-kill)C(dired-do-copy)- paste from the kill ring (yank)
- modify the filename as desired
- return
pretty simple and uses all standard dired functionality and of course can be converted to a macro for a certain reproducible naming conventions and then maybe an attachment to a keybinding.
Note that it might be worth adding the following to your emacs init file so no confirmation will be required when copying directories:
(setq dired-recursive-copies 'always)