NonGNU-devel ELPA - wfnames

Allows editing lists of absolute files, this allows editing the directory parts as well.

Modified lines are highlighted, maybe in a different color when about to overwrite an existing file.

File completion is provided.

Not tighted to a directory, allows editing files from various directories.

Do not provide edition of permissions and will not.

Wdired must be patched to allow editing a list of absolute filenames in Emacs versions before Emacs-29. Also Wdired depends on a default directory which is not relevant and prone to errors when editing absolute filenames that come from various directories. Using this package in Helm allows getting rid of Wdired advices (that have been merged in Emacs-29+).

This package have no user interface, but you can easily use it with Helm package by customizing helm-ff-edit-marked-files-fn variable. If you are not using Helm you will have to define yourself a function that call wfnames-setup-buffer with a list of files as argument.

Once in the Wfnames buffer, edit your filenames and hit C-c C-c to save your changes. You have completion on filenames and directories with TAB but if you are using Iedit package and it is in action use M-TAB.