RE: What is the most useful potential feature which Emacs lacks?

[Drew Adams]

> >A directory *is* a file.
> 
> Not in a sense that's meaningful to most non-programmers.  Even many
> programmers don't naturally conceptualize directories as files --
> especially those who have learned programming in the WWW era, since
> they haven't had to do much programming in which file<->directory unity
> matters.

Yes.

A directory is often _implemented_ using a file,
and files and dirs can be manipulated in many of
the same ways.

But it helps to let a user know when some operation
works for either one, as opposed to just one or the
other.  Creating a new directory isn't the same
thing as creating a new file.

And Emacs reflects this in its prompts and doc
strings.  Dired is just one example ("visit this
file or directory in another window").

And for users who are used to thinking in terms of
files and "folders" there's no conception at all
of a folder being a file, regardless of the
underlying implementation.