How to go to a file quickly in Emacs Dired?

Question

If a directory contains many files and I want to go to files(or subdirectories) with name starting with a letter (or a string), is there any good way to do it? I know in Far File Manager people can press Alt and start typing the name and the cursor will move as you type, I am wondering if Emacs has something similar.

Answer 1

The fastest way to answer this question is copying a section from the emacs info files. To get to this text type C-h i d m emacs ret and then isearch for an appropriate substring ignoring the first Failing I-search or just go to info with C-h i and then directly go to the info node mentioned below with g and then typing the node name followed by ret.

The first from the info-node (emacs) Dired and Find works whether one is in a dired buffer or not:

   To search for files with names matching a wildcard pattern use `M-x
find-name-dired'.  It reads arguments DIRECTORY and PATTERN, and
chooses all the files in DIRECTORY or its subdirectories whose
individual names match PATTERN.

The second from the info-node (emacs) Dired Navigation works in dired buffers but only applies to the currently listed files. But, note that you can list subdirectories with i before.

   `M-s f C-s' (`dired-isearch-filenames') performs a forward
incremental search in the Dired buffer, looking for matches only
amongst the file names and ignoring the rest of the text in the buffer.
`M-s f M-C-s' (`dired-isearch-filenames-regexp') does the same, using a
regular expression search.  If you change the variable
`dired-isearch-filenames' to `t', then the usual search commands also
limit themselves to the file names; for instance, `C-s' behaves like
`M-s f C-s'.  If the value is `dwim', then search commands match the
file names only when point was on a file name initially.  *Note
Search::, for information about incremental search.

EDIT: To isearch a directory recursively you may first list it recursively.

You can list sub-directories recursively by calling dired with prefix-arg and adding R to the list of switches.

The following snippet for the emacs initialization file would even simplify this task:

(defun dired-noselect-maybe-recursive (dir-or-list &optional switches)
  "Like `dired-noselect' but lists sub-directories when last character is ?/."
  (if (and (null switches)
       (= (aref dir-or-list (1- (length dir-or-list))) ?/))
      (dired-noselect dir-or-list "-alR")
    (dired-noselect dir-or-list switches)
    ))

(setq find-directory-functions (subst 'dired-noselect-maybe-recursive 'dired-noselect find-directory-functions))

With this snippet you get a normal listing of directories if you call find-file (C-x C-f) for a directory without a slash at the end and you get a recursive listing if you call it with a slash at the end. But be careful. Recursive directory listing can take its time. If you get nervous you can always quit with C-g.

Answer 2

isearch will do that. control-s, then start typing.

Since it's emacs' general-purpose search function, it could start out matching other things in the buffer until you get enough of the name in.