I've never used ido mode. Do I want to?

Question

What am I missing if I don't use ido mode?

Is my life incomplete until I take the ido plunge?

Answer 1

I started using it recently and I like it. It is especially useful in following situations:

• you have a list of file-with-long-name-a, file-with-long-name-b, ... So you can type "a", "b" and it will choose a correct one

• you are looking for a file someting-key-something, you type "key" and you are there

The same thing is for buffers.

And if you dont like a suggested auto-completion just press C-x C-f and you have a standard find-file

Answer 2

It depends on how much you use auto completions - it provides a lot more than plain emacs but if you type many file names it can get in the way as you have to do an extra ^x^F or ^X^W to read or save as a file with a new name in the direcroty - it might pick up one in another directory e.g. if you keep test bits of code in e.el files then it will find an existing one rather than create a new one in the current directory

Only you can tell try it for a few days

Answer 3

You do. Check out this page, which includes a function to use IDO completion on recently opened files. I couldn't live without it now.

Answer 4

To me, ido-mode makes a significant difference in the way I select from open buffers or select a file to open. I would say that you should definitely give it a try especially since it is fairly easy to set up.

Answer 5

I use it for file and buffer name completion, and really don't want to miss it anymore. It gave me a lot of trouble when I started using it though, because by default it completes file names in a way I didn't expect: dired buffers count as working directories and file name completion works on all of these directories. However you can easily turn that behavior off if you don't like it (last line in my config). Here's my very short configuration for ido, in case you're interested:

(require 'ido)
(ido-mode t)
(setq ido-cannot-complete-command 'ido-next-match
  ido-default-buffer-method 'selected-window
  ido-default-file-method 'selected-window
  ido-auto-merge-work-directories-length -1)

Answer 6

Ido mode is very very useful, and not just for file/buffer name completion. It can be used at any place where we have to choose an option from a "list" (for example: in the minibuffer, for tags-matching, multiple places in org-mode). Furthermore, it has an option called flex-matching which enables it to "fuzzy" match names i.e if I have files named abc-part1-check, abc-part2-okay etc, I don't have to type abc... I could simply type 2- and ido will match my input with the second file. You should check the excellent tips/tricks mentioned on the EmacsWiki for more information: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings

Answer 7

I'm starting to work Emacs into my work life after spending much time outside of work getting my productivity levels up to snuff because I would start using it at work.

But one great talk that opened my eyes about Emacs and ido was this talk:

What You Can Learn From ido.el

Rich, composable systems are the way to go--in programming languages, libraries, and interface metaphors. This short screencast looks at the latter, comparing TextMate and Emacs.

Give it a look and good luck with your efforts of using ido!