How do I stop emacs dired mode from opening so many buffers?

Dave_Webb_3171 0
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When I use dired mode to browse around and find a file I want to open in Emacs, dired opens a new buffer for each directory I visit when looking for the file each time I select a directory with Enter, which means I can end up with a lot of buffers I don't want:

. * newer                    0  Fundamental       c:/work/stackoverflow/batch/mydir/newer
 %  mydir                  302  Dired by name     c:/work/stackoverflow/batch/mydir/
 %  batch                  616  Dired by name     c:/work/stackoverflow/batch/
 %  stackoverflow         1017  Dired by name     c:/work/stackoverflow/
 %  work                  2545  Dired by name     c:/work/
  * *scratch*              190  Lisp Interaction
 %  *Completions*          162  Completion List
  * *Messages*            2163  Fundamental

Is there any way to make dired re-use a single buffer? I tried M-x customize-group for group dired but didn't see anything promising in there.

Alternatively, does anyone have a macro to close all open dired buffers?

dired file-management emacs
6 Answers

From Xah Lee, at http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_dired_tips.html

;; Make dired open in the same window when using RET or ^
(put 'dired-find-alternate-file 'disabled nil) ; disables warning
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "RET") 'dired-find-alternate-file) ; was dired-advertised-find-file
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "^") (lambda () (interactive) (find-alternate-file "..")))  ; was dired-up-directory
user_17087790

In Emacs 28, you can just (setf dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer t). This works for either dired-find-file (RET) or dired-up-directory (^).

user_166407400
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