If you’re one of those people who obsess about making every Emacs operation as fast as possible, James Dyer has quick tip for you. Dyer uses Dired a lot and one of his common operations is to search for a file in a Dired buffer using isearch-forward and then open it. Of course, he wants to make this operation as efficient as possible so he objects to the fact that he has to type Return twice: once to terminate the search and then again to open the file at point.
Dyer’s tip is a way of completing the search/open operation with a single return. He does this with a bit of advice to the isearch-exit function. Check out his post for the details.
Dyer admits that this is a small thing and even makes a back of the envelope calculation of how long it will take him to recoup the time he spent implementing the solution. Of course, sometimes it’s the journey and what we learn along the way that’s important and this is probably one of those times.
Regardless, if you find yourself often searching for and opening a file in Dired, you may find Dyer’s tip useful. At least you will if you care about saving a keystroke with each operation.