How do I write this function which modifies find-file to search file recursively in current directory ?

So every time I find a file, I do C-x C-f and then /**/fileName. What it does is it recursively searches through the current directory to find the file I want. This allows me to not specify the exact subdirectory the file is in. I want to write a small wrapper over find-file function which automatically does this and then map a key to it. So for eg, when I type C-x C-r (my key map for this new function), it should prompt me with Find-file: current-directory/**/ I would also be content with any other way to recursively find a file in the sub directories of a folder. It is insane, this is so hard to do in emacs. It's a breeze in vim. I don't want to use projectile and all, my folders are just plain text notes, they are not code files or projects most of the time.

https://github.com/CsBigDataHub/counsel-fd would do what you want

Hej Hej, (defun fancy-shmancy-find-file () (interactive) (let ((default-directory (concat default-directory "**/"))) (call-interactively #'find-file))) > It is insane, this is so hard to do in emacs. Only insane thing is, I wrote that on my smartphone only having emacs available in termux to checkout the documentation. Now you just need to bind it to your preferred keybinding. Cheers!

I'm not sure if its my setup but using /**/FILE is not recursive for me, its only 1-deep. There's `globstar` in bash, but I'm not sure how emacs regex works in this case. I dug through `project.el`, which is a built-in, and this seem to work: (find-file (project--read-file-cpd-relative "Recursive Find: " (project--files-in-directory default-directory nil))) Its derived from `project-find-file-in`, I just nullified any actual project-based information. This is probably overkill.

It worked, thank you. (Thought a "/" is missing before **) I need to learn more elisp. The manual feels so dry. A more interesting resource would be good.

> I'm not sure if its my setup but using /**/FILE is not recursive for me, its only 1-deep Oh shit. This is super annoying, I too just noticed it's only one level deep. Why is this so bad?

> I would also be content with any other way to recursively find a file in the sub directories of a folder. I guess you haven't been reading docs: [directory-files-recursively](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Contents-of-Directories.html) is what you ask for. > It is insane, this is so hard to do in emacs. Is it? You can use directory-files-recursively directly via M-:, if you are "content with any other way" as you say, or you may wrap it in some interactive function for somewhat nicer user experience. Here is a version that resembles find-file which you can use with M-x: (defun find-file-recursively () (interactive) (let* ((files (directory-files-recursively "./" directory-files-no-dot-files-regexp t)) (file (completing-read "Open file: " files )) (value (find-file file))) (if (listp value) (mapcar 'pop-to-buffer-same-window (nreverse value)) (pop-to-buffer-same-window value)))) How hard was that? But honestly, what you ask for is generally, probably a dumb idea. I would not execute that on my home folder or on some other big directory with lots of subdirectories or files. I guess that is a reason why such function is not already included in Emacs. However, you can use the above in a directory where you know there are not thousands of files in arbitrary deep directory levels.

Oh, this works. Thank you. I will add a keyboard shortcut to it so I can use it often. Why would you not recommend this though? Because it will be slow if the folder is large? But then I could just navigate to a subfolder and then run this. Is there any other consideration? How do *you* personally find files? Also can you please comment on the code so I can understand what it's doing?

> How do you personally find files? helm-find-files

https://github.com/redguardtoo/find-file-in-project#find-file-in-current-directory