Dired Duplicate Here Revisited

It is not uncommon for me to want the ability to quickly duplicate a file, especially if I am hacking around and just want a quick snapshot of a working file.

Previously I was using dired in a slightly convoluted manner, namely:

• 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

But I never actually used this functionality so I think its time for a different approach.

Since I have recently been delving into elisp I thought I would write an interactive function:

(defun my/dired-duplicate-file (arg)
  "Duplicate the current file in Dired."
  (interactive "p")
  (let ((filename (dired-get-filename)))
    (setq target (concat (file-name-sans-extension filename)
                   "-old"
                   (if (> arg 1) (number-to-string arg))
                   (file-name-extension filename t)))
    (if (file-directory-p filename)
      (copy-directory filename target)
      (copy-file filename target))
    )
  )

(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "C-c d") 'my/dired-duplicate-file)

The function first gets the name of the current file in the Dired buffer using `dired-get-filename`. It then creates a new filename for the duplicated file by appending “-old” to the base filename (i.e., without the extension), followed by the number specified by the `arg` prefix argument, and the original file extension.

For example, if the `arg` argument is 3, and the original filename is “example.txt”, the duplicated filename would become “example-old3.txt”.

The function then checks if the file is a directory using `file-directory-p`. If the file is a directory, it copies the entire directory to the new target directory. If the file is a regular file, it copies the file to the new target file.

The function is interactive, meaning it can be invoked with a key press or command invocation. The function does not return a value.

Could you tell I used ChatGPT to describe this function?, well it was accurate, very precise, but very clinical, possibly useful for the quick documenting of written functions though.

I prefer the following more human approach:

By default a quick flick of the fingers would duplicate rename a file or directory via emacs dired adding the keyword old and potentially a numeric value by means of the universal argument.

Most of the time I just want a quick single backup but for more duplicates there is the option of a quick C-u (adds a 4) and a C-u C-u (a 16) e.t.c

That should do me for now, lets see how I get on!