AB.2 Navigation in the Dired Buffer

All the usual Emacs cursor motion commands are available in Dired buffers. Some special-purpose cursor motion commands are also provided. The keys C-n and C-p are redefined to put the cursor at the beginning of the file name on the line, rather than at the beginning of the line.

For extra convenience, SPC and n in Dired are equivalent to C-n. p is equivalent to C-p. (Moving by lines is so common in Dired that it deserves to be easy to type.) DEL (move up and unflag) is often useful simply for moving up.

Some additional navigation commands are available when the Dired buffer includes several directories. See section AB.12 Moving Over Subdirectories.