Who ever thought having Dired hide details by default was a good idea? I know some people like having fewer details but I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you want as much information about the files as possible? Maybe I’m an outlier but it made me quite cross when I brought up a Dired buffer and got a plain list of files.
At first I thought that Dired+ was not getting loaded (like with ace-window that I wrote about before) but uninstalling it and readding it didn’t help. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that Dired was doing this on purpose. Grrrrr.
If, like me, you want to stop the madness and you’re using Dired+ (which you definitely should be), here’s what to do:
(setq diredp-hide-details-initially-flag nil) (require 'dired+)
Note that you must set the flag before loading Dired+. Also notice the ‘p’ at the end of the first dired. I had several iterations of failure because I didn’t notice it.
If you’re OK with the hidden details but would occasionally like to see them, 【(】 will toggle the details.
UPDATE: Phil points out in the comments that this behavior is the default under Dired+ but not with Dired. You can still toggle the hide details feature on and off with 【(】 whether or not you’re using Dired+.