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An Emacs buffer can have but one working directory, stored in the
buffer-local variable default-directory. A Dired buffer may have
several subdirectories inserted, but it still has only one working
directory: that of the top-level Dired directory in that buffer. For
some commands it is appropriate that they use the current Dired
directory instead of default-directory, e.g., find-file and
compile.
A general mechanism is provided for special handling of the working directory in special major modes:
default-directory-alist((dired-mode . (dired-current-directory)))
Alist of major modes and their notion of default-directory, as a
Lisp expression to evaluate. A resulting value of nil is ignored
in favor of default-directory.
dired-default-directorydefault-directory, except that dired-default-directory
also consults the variable default-directory-alist.