To help with supplying absolute file name arguments to remote
commands, you can add the eshell-elecslash module to
eshell-modules-list. Then, typing / as the first
character of a command line argument will automatically insert the
Tramp prefix /method:host:. If this is not what you want
(e.g. because you want to refer to a local file), you can type
another / to undo the automatic insertion. Typing ~/ also
inserts the Tramp prefix. The automatic insertion applies only when
default-directory is remote and the command is a Lisp function.
In particular, typing arguments to external commands doesn’t insert
the prefix.
The result is that in most cases of supplying absolute file name arguments to commands you should see the Tramp prefix inserted automatically only when that’s what you’d reasonably expect. This frees you from having to keep track of whether commands are Lisp functions or external when typing command line arguments. For example, suppose you execute
cd /ssh:root@example.com: find /etc -name "*gnu*"
and in reviewing the output of the command, you identify a file /etc/gnugnu that should be moved somewhere else. So you type
mv /etc/gnugnu /tmp
But since mv refers to the local Lisp function
eshell/mv, not a remote shell command, to say this is to
request that the local file /etc/gnugnu be moved into the local
/tmp directory. After you add eshell-elecslash to
eshell-modules-list, then when you type the above mv
invocation you will get the following input, which is what you
intended:
mv /ssh:root@example.com:/etc/gnugnu /ssh:root@example.com:/tmp
The code that determines whether or not the Tramp prefix should be
inserted uses simple heuristics. A limitation of the current
implementation is that it inspects whether only the command at the
very beginning of input is a Lisp function or external program. Thus
when chaining commands with the operators &&, ||,
| and ;, the electric forward slash is active only
within the first command.