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Most Emacs Lisp file-manipulation functions get errors when used on
files that are directories. For example, you cannot delete a directory
with delete-file
. These special functions exist to create and
delete directories.
This command creates a directory named dirname. If
parents is non-nil
, as is always the case in an
interactive call, that means to create the parent directories first,
if they don’t already exist.
mkdir
is an alias for this.
This command copies the directory named dirname to newname. If newname names an existing directory, dirname will be copied to a subdirectory there.
It always sets the file modes of the copied files to match the corresponding original file.
The third argument keep-time non-nil
means to preserve the
modification time of the copied files. A prefix arg makes
keep-time non-nil
.
The fourth argument parents says whether to create parent directories if they don’t exist. Interactively, this happens by default.
The fifth argument copy-contents, if non-nil
, means to
copy the contents of dirname directly into newname if the
latter is an existing directory, instead of copying dirname into
it as a subdirectory.
This command deletes the directory named dirname. The function
delete-file
does not work for files that are directories; you
must use delete-directory
for them. If recursive is
nil
, and the directory contains any files,
delete-directory
signals an error.
delete-directory
only follows symbolic links at the level of
parent directories.
If the optional argument trash is non-nil
and the
variable delete-by-moving-to-trash
is non-nil
, this
command moves the file into the system Trash instead of deleting it.
See Miscellaneous File Operations in The GNU
Emacs Manual. When called interactively, trash is t
if
no prefix argument is given, and nil
otherwise.
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