Customising the buffer name of a dired buffer

Question

I'd like to have one single dired buffer alive at any time, and I want to be able to bring it to the front with a particular hot key. However, in order to do that, I would need the dired buffer to always have the same name. But the buffer name changes every time a new directory is loaded. Is there a way to tell dired to not change the name? I tried tweaking the reading and loading hooks but it didn't work.

Alternatively, is there a command to bring forward an existing dired buffer?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You probably don't want to do that. Some Dired features depend on the buffer name being associated with the directory.

A better approach might be to have a command that switches to the only Dired buffer, since you will be having only one at a time.

(defun switch-to-dired-buffer ()
  "..."
  (interactive)
  (let ((dbufs  (cl-remove-if-not
                 (lambda (bf)
                   (with-current-buffer bf
                     (derived-mode-p 'dired-mode)))
                 (buffer-list))))
    (switch-to-buffer (car dbufs))))

You can also get fancier and prompt for which Dired buffer if there is more than one etc.