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(emacs)Shell Commands in Dired

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Shell Commands in Dired
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   The Dired command `!' (`dired-do-shell-command') reads a shell
command string in the minibuffer and runs that shell command on all the
specified files.  `X' is a synonym for `!'.  You can specify the files
to operate on in the usual ways for Dired commands (Note: Operating on
Files).  There are two ways of applying a shell command to multiple
files:

   * If you use `*' in the shell command, then it runs just once, with
     the list of file names substituted for the `*'.  The order of file
     names is the order of appearance in the Dired buffer.

     Thus, `! tar cf foo.tar * <RET>' runs `tar' on the entire list of
     file names, putting them into one tar file `foo.tar'.

   * If the command string doesn't contain `*', then it runs once _for
     each file_, with the file name added at the end.

     For example, `! uudecode <RET>' runs `uudecode' on each file.

   What if you want to run the shell command once for each file, with
the file name inserted in the middle?  You can use `?' in the command
instead of `*'.  The current file name is substituted for `?'.  You can
use `?' more than once.  For instance, here is how to uuencode each
file, making the output file name by appending `.uu' to the input file
name:

     uuencode ? ? > ?.uu

   To use the file names in a more complicated fashion, you can use a
shell loop.  For example, this shell command is another way to uuencode
each file:

     for file in *; do uuencode "$file" "$file" >"$file".uu; done

   The working directory for the shell command is the top-level
directory of the Dired buffer.

   The `!' command does not attempt to update the Dired buffer to show
new or modified files, because it doesn't really understand shell
commands, and does not know what files the shell command changed.  Use
the `g' command to update the Dired buffer (Note: Dired Updating).