I am following this wiki suggestion to set up Emacs so that, i can move forward and backwards in dired mode without creating new buffers.
Using the a key together with the (put 'dired-find-alternate-file 'disabled nil) setting allows me to move into directories without new buffers.
But the hook for the ^ key mentioned in the wiki is not working for me. Going to previous directory with ^ still opens new buffers.
Here are the settings I am using in my .emacs.d/init.el
; dired settings
(require 'dired-x)
(setq dired-omit-files "^\\.?#\\|^\\.$\\|^\\.\\.$\\|^\\.")
(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook (lambda ()
(dired-omit-mode 1)))
(setq dired-listing-switches "-aBhl --group-directories-first")
(put 'dired-find-alternate-file 'disabled nil)
(add-hook 'dired-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "^")
(lambda () (interactive) (find-alternate-file "..")))))