1MC(1) GNU Midnight Commander MC(1)
2
6 mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems.
7
9 mc [-abcCdfhPstuUVx] [-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [-e [file] ...] [-v file]
10
12 GNU Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager for
13 Unix-like operating systems.
14
16 -a, --stickchars
17 Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
18 -b, --nocolor
20 Force black and white display.
21 -c, --color
23 Force color mode, please check the section Colors for more
24 information.
25 -C arg, --colors=arg
27 Specify a different color set in the command line. The format
28 of arg is documented in the Colors section.
29 -S arg, --skin=arg
31 Specify a name of skin in the command line. Technology of skins
32 is documented in the Skins section.
33 -d, --nomouse
35 Disable mouse support.
36 -e [file], --edit[=file]
38 Start the internal editor. If the file is specified, open it on
39 startup. See also mcedit (1).
40 -f, --datadir
42 Display the compiled-in search paths for Midnight Commander
43 files.
44 -F, --datadir-info
46 Display extended info about compiled-in paths for Midnight Com‐
47 mander.
48 --configure-options
50 Display configure options.
51 -k, --resetsoft
53 Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo data‐
54 base. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't
55 work.
56 -K file, --keymap=file
58 Specify a name of keymap file in the command line.
59 --nokeymap
61 Don't load key bindings from any file, use default hardcoded
62 keys.
63 -l file, --ftplog=file
65 Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
66 -D N, --debuglevel=N
68 Save the debug level for SMB VFS. N is in 0-10 range.
69 -P file, --printwd=file
71 Print the last working directory to the specified file. This
72 option is not meant to be used directly. Instead, it's used
73 from a special shell script that automatically changes the cur‐
74 rent directory of the shell to the last directory the Midnight
75 Commander was in. Source the file /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.sh (bash
76 and zsh users) or /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.csh (tcsh users) respec‐
77 tively to define mc as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
78 -s, --slow
80 Set alternative mode drawing of frameworks. If the section
81 [Lines] is not filled, the symbol for the pseudographics frame
82 is a space, otherwise the frame characters are taken from fol‐
83 lowing parameters.
84 You can redefine the following variables:
86 lefttop
88 left-top corner
89 righttop
91 right-top corner
92 centertop
94 center-top cross
95 centerbottom
97 center-bottom cross
98 leftbottom
100 left-bottom corner
101 rightbottom
103 right-bottom corner
104 leftmiddle
106 left-middle cross
107 rightmiddle
109 right-middle cross
110 centermiddle
112 center cross
113 horiz default horizontal line
115 vert default vertical line
117 thinhoriz
119 thin horizontal line
120 thinvert
122 thin vertical line
123 -t, --termcap
125 Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it
126 makes the Midnight Commander use the value of the TERMCAP vari‐
127 able for the terminal information instead of the information on
128 the system wide terminal database
129 -u, --nosubshell
131 Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if the
132 Midnight Commander has been built with concurrent shell sup‐
133 port).
134 -U, --subshell
136 Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if
137 the Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set
138 as an optional feature).
139 -v file, --view=file
141 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
142 mcview (1).
143 -V, --version
145 Display the version of the program.
146 -x, --xterm
148 Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable terminals
149 (two screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
150 -X, --no-x11
152 Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl, Shift
153 -g, --oldmouse
155 Force a "normal tracking" mouse mode. Used when running on
156 xterm-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
157 If specified, the first path name is the directory to show in the
159 selected panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in
160 the other panel.
161
163 The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
164 Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels. By
165 default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the shell
166 command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels. The
167 topmost line is the menu bar line. The menu bar line may not be visi‐
168 ble, but appears if you click the topmost line with the mouse or press
169 the F9 key.
170 The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same
172 time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in the
173 current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current panel.
174 Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the directory
175 of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they always ask
176 you for confirmation first). For more information, see the sections on
177 the Directory Panels, the Left and Right Menus and the File Menu.
178 You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply
180 typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line,
181 and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the com‐
182 mand line you typed; read the Shell Command Line and Input Line Keys
183 sections to learn more about the command line.
184
186 The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated when‐
187 ever you are running on an xterm(1) terminal (it even works if you take
188 a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to another machine from the xterm)
189 or if you are running on a Linux console and have the gpm mouse server
190 running.
191 When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is
193 selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
194 unmarked, depending on the previous state).
195 Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is an
197 executable program; and if the extension file has a program specified
198 for the file's extension, the specified program is executed.
199 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
201 key labels by clicking on them.
202 The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400 milliseconds.
204 This may be changed to other values by editing the ~/.config/mc/ini
205 file and changing the mouse_repeat_rate parameter.
206 If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
208 can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by hold‐
209 ing down the Shift key.
210
213 Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the Control
214 (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the Meta (sometimes labeled ALT or
215 even Compose) keys. In this manual we will use the following abbrevia‐
216 tions:
217 C-<chr>
219 means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>.
220 Thus C-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
221 Alt-<chr>
223 means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>. If
224 there is no Meta or Alt key, type ESC, release it, then type the
225 character <chr>.
226 S-<chr>
228 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
229 All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approximation to the
231 GNU Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
232 You may redefine key bindings. See redefine hotkey bindings
234 for more info. All other key bindings (described in this manual) rela‐
236 tive to default behavior.
237 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
240 the most important.
241 The File Menu section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands
243 appearing in the File menu. This section includes the function keys.
244 Most of these commands perform some action, usually on the selected
245 file or the tagged files.
246 The Directory Panels section documents the keys which select a file or
248 tag files as a target for a later action (the action is usually one
249 from the file menu).
250 The Shell Command Line section list the keys which are used for enter‐
252 ing and editing command lines. Most of these copy file names and such
253 from the directory panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typ‐
254 ing) or access the command line history.
255 Input Line Keys are used for editing input lines. This means both the
257 command line and the input lines in the query dialogs.
258 Redefine hotkey bindings
261 Hotkey bindings may be read from external file (keymap-file). Ini‐
262 tially, Mignight Commander creates key bindings using keymap defined in
263 the source code. Then, two files /usr/share/mc/mc.keymap and
264 /etc/mc/mc.keymap are loaded always, sequentially reassigned key bind‐
265 ings defined earlier. User-defined keymap-file is searched on the fol‐
266 lowing algorithm (to the first one found):
267 1) command line option -K <keymap> or --keymap=<keymap>
269 2) Environment variable MC_KEYMAP
270 3) Parameter keymap in section [Midnight-Commander] of config
271 file.
272 4) File ~/.config/mc/mc.keymap
273 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file
275 may contain the absolute path to the keymap-file (with the extension
276 .keymap or without it). Search of keymap-file will occur in (to the
277 first one found):
278 1) ~/.config/mc
280 2) /etc/mc/
281 3) /usr/share/mc/
282 Miscellaneous Keys
285 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
286 Enter if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom
288 of the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no
289 text in the command line then if the selection bar is over a
290 directory the Midnight Commander does a chdir(2) to the selected
291 directory and reloads the information on the panel; if the
292 selection is an executable file then it is executed. Finally, if
293 the extension of the selected file name matches one of the
294 extensions in the extensions file then the corresponding command
295 is executed.
296 C-l repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
298 C-x c run the Chmod command on a file or on the tagged files.
300 C-x o run the Chown command on the current file or on the tagged
302 files.
303 C-x l run the hard link command.
305 C-x s run the absolute symbolic link command.
307 C-x v run the relative symbolic link command. See the File Menu sec‐
309 tion for more information about symbolic links.
310 C-x i set the other panel display mode to information.
312 C-x q set the other panel display mode to quick view.
314 C-x ! execute the External panelize command.
316 C-x h run the add directory to hotlist command.
318 Alt-! executes the Filtered view command, described in the view com‐
320 mand.
321 Alt-? executes the Find file command.
323 Alt-c pops up the quick cd dialog.
325 C-o when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or
327 under an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous com‐
328 mand. When ran on the Linux console, the Midnight Commander
329 uses an external program (cons.saver) to handle saving and
330 restoring of information on the screen.
331 When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any time
333 and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
334 return to your application just type C-o. If you have an application
335 suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other pro‐
336 grams from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
337 application.
338 Directory Panels
340 This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
341 you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a look
342 at the section on Left and Right Menus.
343 Tab, C-i
345 change the current panel. The old other panel becomes the new
346 current panel and the old current panel becomes the new other
347 panel. The selection bar moves from the old current panel to the
348 new current panel.
349 Insert, C-t
351 to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo
352 sequence). To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
353 M-e to change charset of panel you may use M-e (Alt-e). Recoding is
355 made from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the
356 recoding you may select "directory up" (..) in active panel. To
357 cancel the charsets in all directories, select "No translation "
358 in the dialog of encodings.
359 Alt-g, Alt-r, Alt-j
361 used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and the
362 bottom one, respectively.
363 Alt-t toggle the current display listing to show the next display
365 listing mode. With this it is possible to quickly switch to
366 brief listing, long listing, user defined listing mode, and back
367 to the default.
368 C-\ (control-backslash)
370 show the directory hotlist and change to the selected directory.
371 + (plus)
373 this is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight
374 Commander will prompt for a selection options. When Files only
375 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If Files only is
376 off, as files as directories will be selected. When Shell Pat‐
377 terns checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the
378 filename globbing in the shell (* standing for zero or more
379 characters and ? standing for one character). If Shell Patterns
380 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
381 expressions (see ed (1)). When Case sensitive checkbox is on,
382 the selection will be case sensitive characters. If Case sensi‐
383 tive is off, the case will be ignored.
384 \ (backslash)
386 use the "\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the oppo‐
387 site of the Plus key.
388 up-key, C-p
390 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
391 down-key, C-n
393 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
394 home, a1, Alt-<
396 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
397 end, c1, Alt->
399 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
400 next-page, C-v
402 move the selection bar one page down.
403 prev-page, Alt-v
405 move the selection bar one page up.
406 Alt-o If the currently selected file is a directory, load that direc‐
408 tory on the other panel and moves the selection to the next
409 file. If the currently selected file is not a directory, load
410 the parent directory on the other panel and moves the selection
411 to the next file.
412 Alt-i make the current directory of the current panel also the current
414 directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the list‐
415 ing mode if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the
416 other panel doesn't become panelized.
417 C-PageUp, C-PageDown
419 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the
420 currently selected directory respectively.
421 Alt-y moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to
423 clicking the < with the mouse.
424 Alt-u moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to click‐
426 ing the > with the mouse.
427 Alt-Shift-h, Alt-H
429 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v'
430 with the mouse.
431 Quick search
433 The Quick search mode allows you to perform fast file search in file
434 panel. Press C-s or Alt-s to start a filename search in the directory
435 listing.
436 When the search is active, the user input will be added to the search
438 string instead of the command line. If the Show mini-status option is
439 enabled the search string is shown on the mini-status line. When typ‐
440 ing, the selection bar will move to the next file starting with the
441 typed letters. The Backspace or DEL keys can be used to correct typing
442 mistakes. If C-s is pressed again, the next match is searched for.
443 If quick search is started with double pressing of C-s, the previous
445 quick search pattern will be used for current search.
446 Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard characters
448 '*' and '?'.
449 Shell Command Line
451 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
452 entering shell commands.
453 Alt-Enter
455 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
456 C-Enter
458 same a Alt-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some ter‐
459 minals.
460 C-Shift-Enter
462 copy the full path name of the currently selected file to the
463 command line. May not work on remote systems and some termi‐
464 nals.
465 Alt-Tab
467 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
468 pletion for you.
469 C-x t, C-x C-t
471 copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the
472 selected file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of the other
473 panel (C-x C-t) to the command line.
474 C-x p, C-x C-p
476 the first key sequence copies the current path name to the com‐
477 mand line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path
478 name to the command line.
479 C-q the quote command can be used to insert characters that are oth‐
481 erwise interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' sym‐
482 bol)
483 Alt-p, Alt-n
485 use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt-p
486 takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
487 Alt-h displays the history for the current input line.
489 General Movement Keys
491 The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common code
492 to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same keys. Each of
493 them also accepts some keys of its own.
494 Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
496 keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
497 Up, C-p
499 moves one line backward.
500 Down, C-n
502 moves one line forward.
503 Prev Page, Page Up, Alt-v
505 moves one page up.
506 Next Page, Page Down, C-v
508 moves one page down.
509 Home, A1
511 moves to the beginning.
512 End, C1
514 move to the end.
515 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in addi‐
517 tion the to ones mentioned above:
518 b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
520 moves one page up.
521 Space bar
523 moves one page down.
524 u, d moves one half of a page up or down.
526 g, G moves to the beginning or to the end.
528 Input Line Keys
530 The input lines (they are used for the command line and for the query
531 dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
532 C-a puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
534 C-e puts the cursor at the end of the line.
536 C-b, move-left
538 move the cursor one position left.
539 C-f, move-right
541 move the cursor one position right.
542 Alt-f moves one word forward.
544 Alt-b moves one word backward.
546 C-h, Backspace
548 delete the previous character.
549 C-d, Delete
551 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
552 C-@ sets the mark for cutting.
554 C-w copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer
556 and removes the text from the input line.
557 Alt-w copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buf‐
559 fer.
560 C-y yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
562 C-k kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
564 Alt-p, Alt-n
566 Use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt-p
567 takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
568 Alt-C-h, Alt-Backspace
570 delete one word backward.
571 Alt-Tab
573 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
574 pletion for you.
575
578 The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
579 row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File", "Com‐
580 mand", "Options" and "Right".
581 The Left and Right Menus allow you to modify the appearance of the left
583 and right directory panels.
584 The File Menu lists the actions you can perform on the currently
586 selected file or the tagged files.
587 The Command Menu lists the actions which are more general and bear no
589 relation to the currently selected file or the tagged files.
590 The Options Menu lists the actions which allow you to customize the
592 Midnight Commander.
593 Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus
595 The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the Left and
596 Right menus (they are named Above and Below when the horizontal panel
597 split is chosen from the Layout options dialog).
598 Listing Mode...
600 The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
601 four different listing modes available: Full, Brief, Long and User.
602 The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
603 the modification time.
604 The brief view shows only the file name and it has two columns (there‐
606 fore showing twice as many files as other views). The long view is sim‐
607 ilar to the output of ls -l command. The long view takes the whole
608 screen width.
609 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify the
611 display format.
612 The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This
614 may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
615 full screen panel respectively.
616 After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the
618 panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format string.
619 After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size speci‐
621 fier. This are the available fields you may display:
622 name displays the file name.
624 size displays the file size.
626 bsize is an alternative form of the size format. It displays the size
628 of the files and for directories it just shows SUB-DIR or
629 UP--DIR.
630 type displays a one character wide type field. This character is
632 similar to what is displayed by ls with the -F flag - * for exe‐
633 cutable files, / for directories, @ for links, = for sockets, -
634 for character devices, + for block devices, | for pipes, ~ for
635 symbolic links to directories and ! for stale symlinks (links
636 that point nowhere).
637 mark an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
639 mtime file's last modification time.
641 atime file's last access time.
643 ctime file's status change time.
645 perm a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
647 mode an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
649 nlink the number of links to the file.
651 ngid the GID (numeric).
653 nuid the UID (numeric).
655 owner the owner of the file.
657 group the group of the file.
659 inode the inode of the file.
661 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
663 space a space in the display format.
665 | add a vertical line to the display format.
667 To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add :
669 followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If
670 the number is followed by the symbol +, then the size specifies the
671 minimal field size - if the program finds out that there is more space
672 on the screen, it will then expand that field.
673 For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:
675 half type name | size | mtime
677 And the Long display corresponds to this format:
679 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
681 space name
682 This is a nice user display format:
684 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
686 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
688 Info The info view display information related to the currently
690 selected file and if possible information about the current file
691 system.
692 Tree The tree view is quite similar to the directory tree feature.
694 See the section about it for more information.
695 Quick View
697 In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced viewer that
698 displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you
699 select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have
700 access to the usual viewer commands.
701 Sort Order...
703 The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
704 by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size, by
705 inode and unsorted. In the Sort order dialog box you can choose the
706 sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
707 order by checking the reverse box.
708 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
710 from the Panel options menu (option Mix all files).
711 Filter...
713 The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
714 *.tar.gz) which the files must match to be shown. Regardless of the
715 filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories are always
716 shown in the directory panel.
717 Reread
719 The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
720 useful if other processes have created or removed files.
721 File Menu
723 The Midnight Commander uses the F1 - F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts for
724 commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
725 function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals
726 without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
727 pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
728 (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
729 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in paren‐
731 theses):
732 Help (F1)
734 Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the help viewer, you
736 can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to follow
737 that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to move forward and
738 backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the full list of
739 accepted keys.
740 Menu (F2)
742 Invoke the user menu. The user menu provides an easy way to provide
744 users with a menu and add extra features to the Midnight Commander.
745 View (F3, F13)
747 View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the Internal
749 File Viewer but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an
750 external file viewer specified by the VIEWER environment variable. If
751 VIEWER is undefined, the PAGER environment variable is tried. If PAGER
752 is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use F13
753 instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
754 preprocessing to the file.
755 Filtered View (Alt-!)
757 This command prompts for a command and its arguments (the argument
759 defaults to the currently selected file name), the output from such
760 command is shown in the internal file viewer.
761 Edit (F4, F14)
763 Press F4 to edit the highlighted file. Press F14 (usually F14) to
765 start the editor with a new, empty file. Currently they invoke the vi
766 editor, or the editor specified in the EDITOR environment variable, or
767 the Internal File Editor if the use_internal_edit option is on.
768 Copy (F5, F15)
770 Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file
772 (or the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
773 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
774 defaults to the directory in the non-selected panel. Space for destina‐
775 tion file may be preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure
776 option. During this process, you can press C-c or ESC to abort the
777 operation. For details about source mask (which will be usually either
778 * or ^\(.*\)$ depending on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible
779 wildcards in the destination see Mask copy/rename.
780 F15 (usually F15) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
782 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
783 any tagged files.
784 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
786 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt-b in the dialog
787 box). The Background Jobs is used to control the background process.
788 Link (C-x l)
790 Create a hard link to the current file.
792 Absolute symlink (C-x s)
794 Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
796 Relative symLink (C-x v)
798 Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
800 To those of you who don't know what links are: creating a link to a
802 file is a bit like copying the file, but both the source filename and
803 the destination filename represent the same file image. For example, if
804 you edit one of these files, all changes you make will appear in both
805 files. Some people call links aliases or shortcuts.
806 A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
808 telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you delete
809 either one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
810 to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
811 you don't even want to know.
812 A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If the
814 original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite easy
815 to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight Comman‐
816 der shows an "@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a symbolic
817 link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
818 The original file which the link points to is shown on mini-status line
819 if the Show mini-status option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you
820 want to avoid the confusion that can be caused by hard links.
821 When you press "C-x s" Midnight Commander will automatically fill in
823 the complete path+filename of the original file and suggest a name for
824 the link. You can change either one.
825 Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the original into
827 a relative path. An absolute path starts from the root directory:
828 /home/frodo/mc/mc -> /home/frodo/new/mc
830 A relative link describes the original file's location starting from
832 the location of the link itself:
833 /home/frodo/mc/mc -> ../new/mc
835 You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing
837 "C-x v" instead of "C-x s".
838 Rename/Move (F6, F16)
840 Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file
842 (or the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
843 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
844 defaults to the directory in the non-selected panel. For more details
845 look at Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite simi‐
846 lar.
847 F16 (usually F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
849 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
850 any tagged files.
851 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
853 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt-b in the dialog
854 box). The Background Jobs is used to control the background process.
855 Mkdir (F7)
857 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
859 Delete (F8)
861 Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the currently
863 selected panel. During the process, you can press C-c or ESC to abort
864 the operation.
865 Quick cd (Alt-c) Use the quick cd command if you have full command line
867 and want to cd somewhere.
868 Select group (+)
870 This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
872 will prompt for a selection options. When Files only checkbox is on,
873 only files will be selected. If Files only is off, as files as direc‐
874 tories will be selected. When Shell Patterns checkbox is on, the regu‐
875 lar expression is much like the filename globbing in the shell (*
876 standing for zero or more characters and ? standing for one charac‐
877 ter). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging of files is done with
878 normal regular expressions (see ed (1)). When Case sensitive checkbox
879 is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters. If Case sensi‐
880 tive is off, the case will be ignored.
881 Unselect group (\)
883 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the Select
885 group command.
886 Quit (F10, Shift-F10)
888 Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift-F10 is used when you want to
890 quit and you are using the shell wrapper. Shift-F10 will not take you
891 to the last directory you visited with the Midnight Commander, instead
892 it will stay at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
893 Quick cd
895 This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to cd
896 somewhere without having to yank and paste the command line. This com‐
897 mand pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter
898 after cd on the command line and then you press enter. This features
899 all the things that are already in the internal cd command.
900 Command Menu
902 The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.
903 The "Find file" command allows you to search for a specific file.
905 The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory pan‐
907 els.
908 The "Switch panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell
910 command. This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
911 The "Compare directories" command compares the directory panels with
913 each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make the panels
914 identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method compares
915 only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a full
916 byte-by-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
917 machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size-only com‐
918 pare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the con‐
919 tents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
920 The "External panelize" allows you to execute an external program, and
922 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
923 The "Command history" command shows a list of typed commands. The
925 selected command is copied to the command line. The command history can
926 also be accessed by typing Alt-p or Alt-n.
927 The "Directory hotlist" command makes changing of the current directory
929 to often used directories faster.
930 The "Screen list" command shows a dialog window with the list of cur‐
932 rently running internal editors, viewers and other MC modules that sup‐
933 port this mode.
934 The "Edit extension file" command allows you to specify programs to
936 executed when you try to execute, view, edit and do a bunch of other
937 thing on files with certain extensions (filename endings).
938 The "Edit menu file" command may be used for editing the user menu
940 (which appears by pressing F2).
941 Directory Tree
943 The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
944 can select a directory from the figure and the Midnight Commander will
945 change to that directory.
946 There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree command
948 is available from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
949 from the Left or Right menu.
950 To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the tree fig‐
952 ure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
953 directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent direc‐
954 tory and press C-r (or F2).
955 You can use the following keys:
957 General movement keys are accepted.
959 Enter. In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to
961 this directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to this
962 directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the current
963 panel.
964 C-r, F2 (Rescan). Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure
966 is out of date: it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirecto‐
967 ries which don't exist any more.
968 F3 (Forget). Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to
970 remove clutter from the figure. If you want the directory back to the
971 tree figure press F2 in its parent directory.
972 F4 (Static/Dynamic). Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode
974 (default) and the static navigation mode.
975 In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
977 select a directory. All known directories are shown.
978 In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
980 select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent direc‐
981 tory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the parent,
982 sibling and children directories are shown, others are left out. The
983 tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
984 F5 (Copy). Copy the directory.
986 F6 (RenMov). Move the directory.
988 F7 (Mkdir). Make a new directory below this directory.
990 F8 (Delete). Delete this directory from the file system.
992 C-s, Alt-s. Search the next directory matching the search string. If
994 there is no such directory these keys will move one line down.
995 C-h, Backspace. Delete the last character of the search string.
997 Any other character. Add the character to the search string and move
999 to the next directory which starts with these characters. In the tree
1000 view you must first activate the search mode by pressing C-s. The
1001 search string is shown in the mini status line.
1002 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
1004 aren't supported in the tree view.
1005 F1 (Help). Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
1007 Esc, F10. Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
1009 The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter. See also the
1011 section on mouse support.
1012 Find File
1014 The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the search
1015 and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree button you
1016 can select the start directory from the directory tree figure.
1017 Option form whole words. Like grep -w.
1019 You can start the search by pressing the OK button. During the search
1021 you can stop from the Stop button and continue from the Start button.
1022 You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
1024 button will change to the directory of the currently selected file. The
1025 Again button will ask for the parameters for a new search. The Quit
1026 button quits the search operation. The Panelize button will place the
1027 found files to the current directory panel so that you can do addi‐
1028 tional operations on them (view, copy, move, delete and so on). After
1029 panelizing you can press C-r to return to the normal file listing.
1030 The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it allow
1032 to set up the list of directories that should be skip during the search
1033 files (for example, you may want to avoid searches on a CD-ROM or on a
1034 NFS directory that is mounted across a slow link). List components must
1035 be separated with a colon, here is an example:
1036 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1038 Relative paths are supported also. The following example shows how to
1040 skip special directories of version control systems:
1041 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
1042 Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the current
1044 absolute path.
1045 You may consider using the External panelize command for some opera‐
1047 tions. Find file command is for simple queries only, while using Exter‐
1048 nal panelize you can do as mysterious searches as you would like.
1049 External panelize
1051 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
1052 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1053 For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1055 symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external paneliza‐
1056 tion to run the following command:
1057 find . -type l -print
1059 Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel will no
1061 longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
1062 files that are symbolic links.
1063 If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded from
1065 your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file name
1066 from the transfer log files:
1067 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1069 You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive
1071 name, so that you can recall them quickly. You do this by typing the
1072 command on the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a
1073 name under which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just
1074 choose that command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1075 Hotlist
1077 The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories in
1078 the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the
1079 directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dia‐
1080 log, you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new
1081 ones. To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist
1082 command (C-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory
1083 hotlist, asking just for the label for the directory.
1084 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using
1086 the CDPATH variable as described in internal cd command description.
1087 Extension File Edit
1089 This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.config/mc/mc.ext. The for‐
1090 mat of this file following:
1091 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1093 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1095 keyword/expr, i.e. everything after the slash until new line is expr.
1097 keyword can be:
1099 shell - expr is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name
1101 ends with expr. Example: shell/.tar matches *.tar.
1102 regex - expr is a regular expression. File matches if its name
1104 matches the regular expression.
1105 directory
1107 - expr is a regular expression. File matches if it is a direc‐
1108 tory and its name matches the regular expression.
1109 type - expr is a regular expression. File matches if the output of
1111 file %f without the initial "filename:" part matches regular
1112 expression expr.
1113 default
1115 - matches any file. expr is ignored.
1116 include
1118 - denotes a common section. expr is the name of the section.
1119 Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the for‐
1121 mat: keyword=command (with no spaces around =), where keyword should
1122 be: Open (invoked on Enter or double click), View (F3), Edit (F4) or
1123 Include (to add rules from the common section). command is any
1124 one-line shell command, with the simple macro substitution.
1125 Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important. If
1127 the appropriate action is missing, search continues as if this rule
1128 didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first and second entry and
1129 View action is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View
1130 action from the second entry will be used). default should match all
1131 the actions.
1132 Background Jobs
1134 This lets you control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1135 process (only copy and move files operations can be done in the back‐
1136 ground). You can stop, restart and kill a background job from here.
1137 Menu File Edit
1139 The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by the
1140 user. When you access the user menu, the file .mc.menu from the current
1141 directory is used if it exists, but only if it is owned by user or root
1142 and is not world-writable. If no such file found, ~/.config/mc/menu is
1143 tried in the same way, and otherwise mc uses the default system-wide
1144 menu /usr/share/mc/mc.menu.
1145 The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with any‐
1147 thing but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in order to
1148 be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should be a let‐
1149 ter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the commands
1150 that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1151 When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
1153 copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
1154 /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
1155 normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1156 takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
1157 macro substitution.
1158 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1160 A Dump the currently selected file
1162 od -c %f
1163 B Edit a bug report and send it to root
1165 I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
1166 vi $I
1167 mail -s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
1168 rm -f $I
1169 M Read mail
1171 emacs -f rmail
1172 N Read Usenet news
1174 emacs -f gnus
1175 H Call the info hypertext browser
1177 info
1178 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1180 tar cf - . | (cd %D && tar xvpf -)
1181 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1183 echo -n "Name of distribution file: "
1184 read tar
1185 ln -s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1186 cd ..
1187 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1188 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1190 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1191 tar xzvf %f
1192 Default Conditions
1194 Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
1196 start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
1197 true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1198 Condition syntax: = <sub-cond>
1200 or: = <sub-cond> | <sub-cond> ...
1201 or: = <sub-cond> & <sub-cond> ...
1202 Sub-condition is one of following:
1204 y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
1206 (for edit menu only)
1207 f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
1208 F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
1209 d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
1210 D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
1211 t <type> current file of type?
1212 T <type> other file of type?
1213 x <filename> is it executable filename?
1214 ! <sub-cond> negate the result of sub-condition
1215 Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according to
1217 the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of the
1218 shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first line
1219 of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1220 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1222 n not a directory
1224 r regular file
1225 d directory
1226 l link
1227 c character device
1228 b block device
1229 f FIFO (pipe)
1230 s socket
1231 x executable file
1232 t tagged
1233 For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't' type
1235 is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the file.
1236 The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the current
1237 panel and false if not.
1238 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1240 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1241 The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1243 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1244 is calculated as
1245 ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1246 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1248 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1250 L List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
1251 gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -
1252 Addition Conditions
1254 If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
1256 is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1257 be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
1258 not be included in the menu.
1259 You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1261 with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
1262 want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1263 defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
1264 starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1265 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1267 with '#', space or tab.
1268 Options Menu
1270 The Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and off
1271 in several dialogs which are accessible from this menu. Options are
1272 enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1273 The Configuration command pops up a dialog from which you can change
1275 most of settings of the Midnight Commander.
1276 The Layout command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of
1278 options how mc looks like on the screen.
1279 The Panel options command pops up a dialog from which you specify
1281 options of file manager panels.
1282 The Confirmation command pops up a dialog from which you specify which
1284 actions you want to confirm.
1285 The Display bits command pops up a dialog from which you may select
1287 which characters is your terminal able to display.
1288 The Learn keys command pops up a dialog from which you test some keys
1290 which are not working on some terminals and you may fix them.
1291 The Virtual FS command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS
1293 related options.
1294 The Save setup command saves the current settings of the Left, Right
1296 and Options menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1297 Configuration
1299 The options in this dialog are divided into several groups: "File oper‐
1300 ation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run" and "Other options".
1301 File operation options
1303 Verbose operation. This toggles whether the file Copy, Rename and
1305 Delete operations are verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each
1306 operation). If you have a slow terminal, you may wish to disable the
1307 verbose operation. It is automatically turned off if the speed of your
1308 terminal is less than 9600 bps.
1309 Compute totals. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander com‐
1311 putes total byte sizes and total number of files prior to any Copy,
1312 Rename and Delete operations. This will provide you with a more accu‐
1313 rate progress bar at the expense of some speed. This option has no
1314 effect, if Verbose operation is disabled.
1315 Classic progressbar. If this option is enabled, the progressbar of
1317 Copy/Move/Delete operations is always grown form left to right. If dis‐
1318 abled, the growing direction of progressbar follows to direction of
1319 Copy/Move/Delete operation: from left panel to right one and vice
1320 versa. Enabled by default.
1321 Mkdir autoname When you press F7 to create a new directory, the input
1323 line in popup dialog will be filled by name of current file or direc‐
1324 tory in active panel. Disabled by default.
1325 Preallocate space Preallocate space for whole target file, if possible,
1327 before copy operation. Disabled by default.
1328 Esc key mode.
1330 By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key prefix.
1332 Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to exit a dialog. But there
1333 is a possibility to use a single press of ESC key for that action.
1334 Single press. By default this option is disabled. If you'll enable it,
1336 the ESC key will act as a prefix key for set up time interval (see
1337 Timeout option below), and if no extra keys have arrived, then the ESC
1338 key is interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).
1339 Timeout. This options is used to setup the time interval (in microsec‐
1341 onds) for single press of ESC key. By default, this inrerval is one
1342 second (1000000 microseconds). Also the timeout can be set via KEY‐
1343 BOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US environment variable (also in microseconds), which
1344 has higher priority than Timeout option value.
1345 Pause after run
1347 After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can pause, so
1349 that you can examine the output of the command. There are three possi‐
1350 ble settings for this variable:
1351 Never. Means that you do not want to see the output of your command.
1353 If you are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will be
1354 able to see the output of the command by typing C-o.
1355 Ondumbterminals. You will get the pause message on terminals that are
1357 not capable of showing the output of the last command executed (any
1358 terminal that is not an xterm or the Linux console).
1359 Always. The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1361 Other options
1363 Use internal editor. If this option is enabled, the built-in file edi‐
1365 tor is used to edit files. If the option is disabled, the editor speci‐
1366 fied in the EDITOR environment variable is used. If no editor is spec‐
1367 ified, vi is used. See the section on the internal file editor.
1368 Use internal viewer. If this option is enabled, the built-in file
1370 viewer is used to view files. If the option is disabled, the pager
1371 specified in the PAGER environment variable is used. If no pager is
1372 specified, the view command is used. See the section on the internal
1373 file viewer.
1374 Auto menus. If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked
1376 at startup. Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
1377 Drop down menus. When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will
1379 be activated as soon as you press the F9 key. Otherwise, you will only
1380 get the menu title, and you will have to activate the menu either with
1381 the arrow keys or with the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using
1382 hotkeys.
1383 Shell Patterns. By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands
1385 will use shell-like regular expressions. The following conversions are
1386 performed to achieve this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more
1387 characters); the '?' is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and
1388 '.' by the literal dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular
1389 expressions are the ones described in ed(1).
1390 Complete: show all. By default the Midnight Commander pops up all pos‐
1392 sible completions if the completion is ambiguous only when you press
1393 Alt-Tab for the second time. For the first time, it just completes as
1394 much as possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity. Enable this
1395 option if you want to see all possible completions even after pressing
1396 Alt-Tab the first time.
1397 Rotating dash. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander shows
1399 a rotating dash in the upper right corner as a work in progress indica‐
1400 tor.
1401 Cd follows links. This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander
1403 to follow the logical chain of directories when changing current direc‐
1404 tory either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
1405 behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows the real
1406 directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory through
1407 a link will move you to the current directory's real parent and not to
1408 the directory where the link was present.
1409 Safe delete. If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory
1411 hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default
1412 selection in the confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes"
1413 to "No". This option is disabled by default.
1414 Auto save setup. If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight
1416 Commander the configurable options of the Midnight Commander are saved
1417 in the ~/.config/mc/ini file.
1418 Layout
1420 The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1421 of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into several groups:
1422 "Panel split", "Console output" and "Other options".
1423 Panel split
1425 The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1427 can specify whether the area is split to the panels in Vertical
1428 or Horizontal direction. Panel layout can be changed using Alt-,
1429 (Alt-comma) shortcut.
1430 Equal split. By default, panels have equal sizes. Using this option
1432 you can specify an unequal split.
1433 Console output
1435 On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are
1437 shown in the output window. This option is available if Midnight Com‐
1438 mander runs on native console only.
1439 Other options
1441 Menu bar visible. If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is
1443 always visible on the top row of screen above panels. Enabled by
1444 default.
1445 Command prompt. If enabled, command line is avalable. Enabled by
1447 default.
1448 Keybar visible. If enabled, 10 lables associated with F1-F10 keys are
1450 located at the bottom row of screen. Enabled by default.
1451 Hintbar visible. If enabled, the one-line hints are visible below pan‐
1453 els. Enabled by default.
1454 XTerm window title. When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight
1456 Commander sets the terminal window title to the current working direc‐
1457 tory and updates it when necessary. If your terminal emulator is bro‐
1458 ken and you see some incorrect output on startup and directory change,
1459 turn off this option. Enabled by default.
1460 Show free space. If enabled, free space and total space of current
1462 file system is shown at the bottom frame of panel. Enabled by default.
1463 Panel options
1465 Main panel options
1466 Show mini-status. If enabled, one line of status information about the
1468 currently selected item is shown at the bottom of the panels. Enabled
1469 by default.
1470 Use SI size units. If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander will
1472 use SI units (powers of 1000) when displaying any byte sizes. The suf‐
1473 fixes (k, m ...) are shown in lowercase. If disabled (default), Mid‐
1474 night Commander will use binary units (powers of 1024) and the suffixes
1475 are shown in upper case (K, M ...)
1476 Mix all files. If this option is enabled, all files and directories
1478 are shown mixed together. If the option is desabled (default), direc‐
1479 tories (and links to directories) are shown at the beginning of the
1480 listing, and other files below.
1481 Show backup files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show files
1483 ending with a tilde. Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls
1484 option -B). Enabled by default.
1485 Show hidden files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show all
1487 files that start with a dot (like ls -a). Disabled by default.
1488 Fast directory reload. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Comman‐
1490 der will use a trick to determine if the directory contents have
1491 changed. The trick is to reload the directory only if the i-node of
1492 the directory has changed; this means that reloads only happen when
1493 files are created or deleted. If what changes is the i-node for a file
1494 in the directory (file size changes, mode or owner changes, etc) the
1495 display is not updated. In these cases, if you have the option on, you
1496 have to rescan the directory manually (with C-r). Disabled by default.
1497 Mark moves down. If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you
1499 mark a file (with Insert key). Enabled by default.
1500 Reverse files only. Allow revert selection of files only. Enabled by
1502 default. If enabled, the reverse selection is applied to files only,
1503 not to directories. The selection of directories is untouched. If off,
1504 the reverse selection is applied to files as well to directories: all
1505 unselected items become selected, and vice versa.
1506 Simple swap. If both panels contain file listing, simple swap means
1508 that panels exchange its screen positions: left panel become right one,
1509 and vice versa. If this option is unchecked, file listing panels
1510 exchange its content keeping listing format and sort options. Unchecked
1511 by default.
1512 Auto save panels setup. If this option is enabled, when you exit the
1514 Midnight Commander the current settings of panels are saved in the
1515 ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file. Disabled by default.
1516 Navigation
1518 Lynx-like motion. If this option is enabled, you may use the arrows
1520 keys to automatically chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory
1521 and the shell command line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
1522 Page scrolling. If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the
1524 display when the cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel,
1525 otherwise it will just scroll a file at a time.
1526 Mouse page scrolling. Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel
1528 is done by pages or line by line on the panels.
1529 File highlight
1531 You can specify whether permissions and file types should be high‐
1533 lighted with distinctive Colors. If the permission highlighting is
1534 enabled, the parts of the perm and mode display fields which apply to
1535 the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with the color
1536 defined by the selected keyword. If the file type highlighting is
1537 enabled, file names are colored according to rules described in
1538 /etc/mc/filehighlight.ini file. See Filenames Highlight for more info.
1539 Quick search
1541 You can specify how the Quick search mode should work: case insensi‐
1543 tively, case sensitively or be matched to the panel sort order: case
1544 sensitive or not.
1545 Confirmation
1547 In this dialog you configure the confirmation options for file dele‐
1548 tion, overwriting files, execution by pressing enter, quitting the pro‐
1549 gram, directory hotlist entries deletion and history cleanup.
1550 and.
1551 Display bits
1553 This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
1554 screen. This setting may be 7-bits if your terminal/curses supports
1555 only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 displays all the characters in the
1556 ISO-8859-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
1557 full 8 bit characters.
1558 Learn keys
1560 This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor
1561 arrows and some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
1562 They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or bro‐
1563 ken.
1564 You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
1566 left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor move‐
1567 ment key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
1568 You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a key
1570 and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name of
1571 that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually, e.g.
1572 F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works, but
1573 after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys. The
1574 Tab key should be working always.
1575 If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after
1577 pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by
1578 pressing the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or
1579 by Enter or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then
1580 a message box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait
1581 until the message box disappears. If you want to abort, just press
1582 Escape once and wait.
1583 When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions
1585 for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [termi‐
1586 nal:TERM] section of your ~/.config/mc/ini file (where TERM is the name
1587 of your current terminal). The definitions of the keys that were
1588 already working properly are not saved.
1589 Virtual FS
1591 This option gives you control over the settings of the Virtual File
1592 System.
1593 The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information related to some
1595 of the virtual file systems to speed up the access to the files in the
1596 file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
1597 Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
1599 compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander needs to create temporary
1600 uncompressed files on your disk.
1601 Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk
1603 take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
1604 information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
1605 access to frequently used file systems.
1606 Because of the format of the tar archives, the Tar filesystem needs to
1608 read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most tar
1609 files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in
1610 extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
1611 in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a reg‐
1612 ular tar file.
1613 Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
1615 it's common that you will leave a tar file and then re-enter it later.
1616 Since decompression is slow, the Midnight Commander will cache the
1617 information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires,
1618 all the resources associated with the file system are released. The
1619 default timeout is set to one minute.
1620 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote
1622 FTP servers. It has several options.
1623 ftp anonymous password is the password used when you login as "anony‐
1625 mous". Some sites require a valid e-mail address. On the other hand,
1626 you probably don't want to give your real e-mail address to untrusted
1627 sites, especially if you are not using spam filtering.
1628 ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a
1630 cache. The cache expire time is configurable with the ftpfs directory
1631 cache timeout option. A low value for this option may slow down every
1632 operation on the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a
1633 request to the FTP server.
1634 You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern
1636 firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below),
1637 so FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
1638 If Always use ftp proxy is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to
1640 enable proxy for certain hosts. See FTP File System for examples.
1641 If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the
1643 /usr/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that are
1644 local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a
1645 domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names
1646 are directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the
1647 specified FTP proxy.
1648 You can enable using ~/.netrc file, which keeps login names and pass‐
1650 words for ftp servers. See netrc (5) for the description of the .netrc
1651 format.
1652 Use passive mode enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection
1654 for data transfer is initiated by the client, not by the server. This
1655 option is recommended and enabled by default. If this option is turned
1656 off, the data connection is initiated by the server. This may not work
1657 with some firewalls.
1658 Save Setup
1660 At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
1661 information from the ~/.config/mc/ini file. If this file doesn't exist,
1662 it will load the information from the system-wide configuration file,
1663 located in /usr/share/mc/mc.ini. If the system-wide configuration file
1664 doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
1665 The Save Setup command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by saving the
1667 current settings of the Left, Right and Options menus.
1668 If you activate the auto save setup option, MC will always save the
1670 current settings when exiting.
1671 There also exist settings which can't be changed from the menus. To
1673 change these settings you have to edit the setup file with your
1674 favorite editor. See the section on Special Settings for more informa‐
1675 tion.
1676
1679 You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight Com‐
1680 mander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to execute
1681 with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
1682 If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the Midnight
1684 Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the exten‐
1685 sions in the Extensions File. If a match is found then the code asso‐
1686 ciated with that extension is executed. A very simple macro expansion
1687 takes place before executing the command.
1688 The cd internal command
1690 The cd command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander, it is not
1691 passed to the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle all
1692 of the nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does,
1693 although it does some of them:
1694 Tilde substitution. The (~) will be substituted with your home direc‐
1696 tory, if you append a username after the tilde, then it will be substi‐
1697 tuted with the login directory of the specified user.
1698 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
1700 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
1701 Previous directory. You can jump to the directory you were previously
1703 by using the special directory name '-' like this: cd -
1704 CDPATH directories. If the directory specified to the cd command is
1706 not in the current directory, then The Midnight Commander uses the
1707 value in the environment variable CDPATH to search for the directory in
1708 any of the named directories.
1709 For example you could set your CDPATH variable to ~/src:/usr/src,
1711 allowing you to change your directory to any of the directories inside
1712 the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from any place in the file system
1713 by using its relative name (for example cd linux could take you to
1714 /usr/src/linux).
1715 Macro Substitution
1717 When accessing a user menu, or executing an extension dependent com‐
1718 mand, or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
1719 substitution takes place.
1720 The macros are:
1722 %i The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position.
1724 For edit menu only.
1725 %y The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
1727 %k The block file name.
1729 %e The error file name.
1731 %m The current menu name.
1733 %f and %p
1735 The current file name.
1736 %x The extension of current file name.
1738 %b The current file name without extension.
1740 %d The current directory name.
1742 %F The current file in the unselected panel.
1744 %D The directory name of the unselected panel.
1746 %t The currently tagged files.
1748 %T The tagged files in the unselected panel.
1750 %u and %U
1752 Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are
1753 untagged. You can use this macro only once per menu file entry
1754 or extension file entry, because next time there will be no
1755 tagged files.
1756 %s and %S
1758 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise
1759 the current file.
1760 %cd This is a special macro that is used to change the current
1762 directory to the directory specified in front of it. This is
1763 used primarily as an interface to the Virtual File System.
1764 %view This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This macro
1766 can be used alone, or with arguments. If you pass any arguments
1767 to this macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
1768 The arguments are: ascii to force the viewer into ascii mode;
1770 hex to force the viewer into hex mode; nroff to tell the viewer
1771 that it should interpret the bold and underline sequences of
1772 nroff; unformatted to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff
1773 commands for making the text bold or underlined.
1774 %% The % character
1776 %{some text}
1778 Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text
1779 inside the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is substituted
1780 by the text typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10 to
1781 cancel. This macro doesn't work on the command line yet.
1782 %var{ENV:default}
1784 If environment variable ENV is unset, the default is substi‐
1785 tuted. Otherwise, the value of ENV is substituted.
1786 The subshell support
1788 The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
1789 shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.
1790 When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander will spawn a
1792 concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the SHELL variable
1793 and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd file) and run
1794 it in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell each time you
1795 execute a command, the command will be passed to the subshell as if you
1796 had typed it. This also allows you to change the environment vari‐
1797 ables, use shell functions and define aliases that are valid until you
1798 quit the Midnight Commander.
1799 If you are using bash you can specify startup commands for the subshell
1801 in your ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc file and special keyboard maps in the
1802 ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc file. tcsh users may specify startup com‐
1803 mands in the ~/.local/share/mc/tcshrc file.
1804 When the subshell code is used, you can suspend applications at any
1806 time with the sequence C-o and jump back to the Midnight Commander, if
1807 you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other exter‐
1808 nal commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
1809 An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the prompt dis‐
1811 played by the Midnight Commander is the same prompt that you are cur‐
1812 rently using in your shell.
1813 The OPTIONS section has more information on how you can control the
1815 subshell code.
1816
1818 The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
1819 files and directories. It can be invoked with the C-x c key combina‐
1820 tion.
1821 The Chmod window has two parts - Permissions and File.
1823 In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory and
1825 its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
1826 In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which corre‐
1828 spond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute bits,
1829 you can see the octal value change in the File section.
1830 To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the arrow
1832 keys or the Tab key. To change the state of the check buttons or to
1833 select a button use Space. You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons
1834 to quickly activate them. Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on
1835 the buttons.
1836 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
1838 When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on
1840 the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits you
1841 want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked or
1842 Clear marked).
1843 Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
1845 the [Set all] button, which will act on all the tagged files.
1846 [Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files
1848 [Set marked] set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1850 [Clean marked] clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1852 [Set] set the attributes of one file
1854 [Cancel] cancel the Chmod command
1856
1858 The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
1859 key for this command is C-x o.
1860
1862 The Advanced Chown command is the Chmod and Chown command combined into
1863 one window. You can change the permissions and owner/group of files at
1864 once.
1865
1867 When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander shows the
1868 file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being processed
1869 and uses up to three progress bars. The file bar indicates the per‐
1870 centage of the current file that has been processed so far. The count
1871 bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The bytes
1872 bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files that
1873 has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes
1874 bars are not shown.
1875 There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
1877 button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort but‐
1878 ton will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are skipped.
1879 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
1881 operations.
1882 The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
1884 Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file or the
1885 Abort button to abort the operation altogether. You can also select
1886 the Retry button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
1887 The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
1889 the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
1890 the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
1891 button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
1892 None button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if
1893 the source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
1894 operation by pressing the Abort button.
1895 The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
1897 which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory
1898 recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the All button to
1899 delete all the directories and the None button to skip all the
1900 non-empty directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing
1901 the Abort button. If you selected the Yes or All button you will be
1902 asked for a confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you
1903 want to do the recursive delete.
1904 If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them only the
1906 files on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped
1907 files are left tagged.
1908
1910 The copy/move operations let you translate the names of files in an
1911 easy way. To do it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
1912 usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
1913 All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
1914 the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
1915 matching the source mask are renamed.
1916 There are other options which you can set:
1918 Follow links
1920 determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source direc‐
1922 tory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target directory
1923 or whether would you like to copy their content.
1924 Dive into subdirs
1926 determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be
1928 copied, but the target directory already exists. The default action is
1929 to copy the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
1930 Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into
1931 the target directory.
1932 For example, you want to copy directory /foo containing file bar to
1934 /bla/foo, which is an already existing directory. Normally (when Dive
1935 into subdirs is not set), mc would copy file /foo/bar into the file
1936 /bla/foo/bar. By enabling this option the /bla/foo/foo directory will
1937 be created, and /foo/bar will be copied into /bla/foo/foo/bar.
1938 Preserve attributes
1940 determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you
1942 are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is not
1943 set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
1944 Use shell patterns
1946 When this option is on you can use the '*' and '?' wildcards in the
1948 source mask. They work like they do in the shell. In the target mask
1949 only the '*' and '\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The first '*' wild‐
1950 card in the target mask corresponds to the first wildcard group in the
1951 source mask, the second '*' corresponds to the second group and so on.
1952 The '\1' wildcard corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source
1953 mask, the '\2' wildcard corresponds to the second group and so on all
1954 the way up to '\9'. The '\0' wildcard is the whole filename of the
1955 source file.
1956 Two examples:
1958 If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is "/bla/*.tgz" and
1960 the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in
1961 "/bla".
1962 Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c" would
1964 become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
1965 destination is "\2.\1".
1966 Use shell patterns off
1968 When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
1970 grouping anymore. You must use '\(...\)' expressions in the source mask
1971 to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is more
1972 flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks are sim‐
1973 ilar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
1974 Two examples:
1976 If the source mask is "^\(.*\)\.tar\.gz$", the destination is
1978 "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will
1979 be "/bla/foo.tgz".
1980 Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
1982 will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
1983 "^\(.*\)\.\(.*\)$" and the destination is "\2.\1".
1984 Case Conversions
1986 You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\u' or '\l'
1988 in the target mask, the next character will be converted to uppercase
1989 or lowercase correspondingly.
1990 If you use '\U' or '\L' in the target mask, the next characters will be
1992 converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the next '\E'
1993 or next '\U', '\L' or the end of the file name.
1994 The '\u' and '\l' are stronger than '\U' and '\L'.
1996 For example, if the source mask is '*' ( Use shell patterns on) or
1998 '^\(.*\)$' ( Use shell patterns off) and the target mask is '\L\u*' the
1999 file names will be converted to have initial upper case and otherwise
2000 lower case.
2001 You can also use '\' as a quote character. For example, '\\' is a back‐
2003 slash and '\*' is an asterisk.
2004 Stable symlinks
2006 commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks in the tar‐
2008 get, so that they'll point to the same location as it did before. With
2009 absolute symbolic links this does nothing, but if you have a relative
2010 one, it will recompute its value, adding necessary ../ and other direc‐
2011 tory parts and making the value as short as possible (most modern
2012 filesystems keep short symlinks inside inodes and thus don't waste much
2013 disk space).
2014
2017 The dialog of group of files and directories selection or uselection.
2018 The input line allow enter the regular expression of filenames that
2019 will be selected/unselected.
2020 When Files only checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If Files
2022 only is off, as files as directories will be selected. When Shell Pat‐
2023 terns checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename
2024 globbing in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ?
2025 standing for one character). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging
2026 of files is done with normal regular expressions (see ed (1)). When
2027 Case sensitive checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive
2028 characters. If Case sensitive is off, the case will be ignored.
2029
2031 The mcdiff is a visual diff tool. You can compare two files and edit
2032 them in-place (diffs are updated dynamically). You can browse and view
2033 a working copy from popular version control systems (GIT, Subversion,
2034 etc).
2035 Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of Midnight
2037 Commander.
2038 F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
2040 F2 Save modified files.
2042 F4 Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
2044 F14 Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
2046 F5 Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be merged.
2048 F7 Start search.
2050 F17 Continue search.
2052 F10, Esc, q Exit from diff viewer.
2054 Alt-s, s Toggle show of hunk status.
2056 Alt-n, l Toggle show of line numbers.
2058 f Maximize left panel.
2060 = Make panels equal in width.
2062 > Reduce the size of the right panel.
2064 < Reduce the size of the left panel.
2066 c Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2068 2, 3, 4, 8 Set tabulation size
2070 C-u Swap contents of diff panels.
2072 C-r Refresh the screen.
2074 C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2076 Enter, Space, n Find next diff hunk.
2078 Backspace, p Find previous diff hunk.
2080 g Go to line.
2082 Down Scroll one line forward.
2084 Up Scroll one line backward.
2086 PageUp Move one page up.
2088 PageDown Mves one page down.
2090 Home, A1 Moves to the line beginning.
2092 End Moves to the line end.
2094 C-Home Move to the file beginning.
2096 C-End, C1 Move to the file end.
2098
2100 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex. To
2101 toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
2102 The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or
2104 the file type to display the information. Some character sequences,
2105 which appear most often in preformatted manual pages, are displayed
2106 bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display of your files.
2107 When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and con‐
2109 stant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing the
2110 quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text with
2111 constants like this:
2112 "String" -1 0xBB 012 "more text"
2114 Note that 012 is an octal number. -1 is converted to 0xFF.
2116 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the Mid‐
2118 night Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2119 F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
2121 F2 Toggle the wrap mode.
2123 F4 Toggle the hex mode.
2125 F5 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display
2127 that line.
2128 F6, /. Regular expression search.
2130 ?, Reverse regular expression search.
2132 F7 Normal search / hex mode search.
2134 C-s, F17, n. Start normal search if there was no previous search
2136 expression else find next match.
2137 C-r. Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression
2139 else find next match.
2140 F8 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or
2142 if a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the
2143 output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
2144 on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter by
2145 that key.
2146 F9 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
2148 will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with
2149 different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
2150 F10, Esc. Exit the internal file viewer.
2152 next-page, space, C-v. Scroll one page forward.
2154 prev-page, Alt-v, C-b, Backspace. Scroll one page backward.
2156 down-key Scroll one line forward.
2158 up-key Scroll one line backward.
2160 C-l Refresh the screen.
2162 C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2164 [n] m Set the mark n.
2166 [n] r Jump to the mark n.
2168 C-f Jump to the next file.
2170 C-b Jump to the previous file.
2172 Alt-r Toggle the ruler.
2174 Alt-e to change charset of displayed text may use M-e (Alt-e). Recod‐
2176 ing is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the
2177 recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset selection dialog.
2178 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
2180 at the Extension File Edit section
2181
2184 The internal file editor is a full-featured full screen editor. It can
2185 edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible to edit binary files.
2186 The internal file editor is invoked using F4 if the use_internal_edit
2187 option is set in the initialization file.
2188 The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
2190 paste; key for key undo; pull-down menus; file insertion; macro com‐
2191 mands; regular expression search and replace; shift-arrow text high‐
2192 lighting (if supported by the terminal); insert-overwrite toggle; word
2193 wrap; autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various
2194 file types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands
2195 like indent and ispell.
2196 Sections:
2198 Options of editor in ini-file
2200 The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To see what
2202 keys do what, just consult the appropriate pull-down menu. Other keys
2203 are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting. Ctrl-Ins copies to the
2204 file mcedit.clip and Shift-Ins pastes from mcedit.clip. Shift-Del cuts
2205 to mcedit.clip, and Ctrl-Del deletes highlighted text. Mouse highlight‐
2206 ing also works, and you can override the mouse as usual by holding down
2207 the shift key while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal mouse
2208 highlighting work.
2209 To define a macro, press Ctrl-R and then type out the key strokes you
2211 want to be executed. Press Ctrl-R again when finished. You can then
2212 assign the macro to any key you like by pressing that key. The macro is
2213 executed when you press Ctrl-A and then the assigned key. The macro is
2214 also executed if you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key,
2215 provided that the key is not used for any other function. Once defined,
2216 the macro commands go into the file
2217 ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.macros You can delete a macro by delet‐
2218 ing the appropriate line in this file.
2219 To change charset of displayed text may use M-e (Alt-e). Recoding is
2221 made from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the recod‐
2222 ing you may select "<No translation>" in charset selection dialog.
2223 F19 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or C or C++
2225 code or another). This is controlled by the file
2226 /usr/share/mc/edit.indent.rc which is copied to
2227 ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/edit.indent.rc in your home directory the
2228 first time you use it.
2229 The editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When editing binary
2231 files, you should set display bits to 7 bits in the options menu to
2232 keep the spacing clean.
2233
2236 Some editor options of ini-file are described in this section. Options
2237 are placed in [Midnight-Commander] section
2238 editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
2240 Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or just from
2241 begin of file to cursor position (0)
2242
2245 Midnight Commander supports running many internal modules (such as edi‐
2246 tor, viewer and diff viewer) simultaneously and switching between them
2247 without closing open files. Using several file managers at a time, how‐
2248 ever, is not currently supported.
2249 Let's call each of these modules a screen. There are three ways to
2251 switch between screens, using one of these global shortcuts:
2252 Alt-} switch to the next screen;
2254 Alt-{ switch to the previous screen;
2256 Alt-` open a dialog window with the list of currently open screens (or
2258 use the "Screen list" menu item).
2259
2261 Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
2262 Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
2264 attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins
2265 with $), username (if the text begins with ~), hostname (if the text
2266 begins with @) or command (if you are on the command line in the posi‐
2267 tion where you might type a command, possible completions then include
2268 shell reserved words and shell built-in commands as well) in turn. If
2269 none of these matches, filename completion is attempted.
2270 Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
2272 lines, command completion is command line specific. If the completion
2273 is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
2274 following action depends on the setting of the Complete: show all
2275 option in the Configuration dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all
2276 possibilities pops up next to the current position and you can select
2277 with the arrow keys and Enter the correct entry. You can also type the
2278 first letters in which the possibilities differ to move to a subset of
2279 all possibilities and complete as much as possible. If you press
2280 Alt-Tab again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise
2281 the first item which matches all the previous characters will be high‐
2282 lighted. As soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you
2283 can hide it by canceling keys Esc, F10 and left and right arrow keys.
2284 If Complete: show all is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
2285 Alt-Tab for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
2286
2288 The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the file
2289 system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system switch.
2290 The virtual file system switch allows the Midnight Commander to manipu‐
2291 late files not located on the Unix file system.
2292 Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
2294 Systems (VFS): the local file system, used for accessing the regular
2295 Unix file system; the ftpfs, used to manipulate files on remote systems
2296 with the FTP protocol; the tarfs, used to manipulate tar and compressed
2297 tar files; the undelfs, used to recover deleted files on ext2 file sys‐
2298 tems (the default file system for Linux systems), fish (for manipulat‐
2299 ing files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh). If the code was
2300 compiled with sftpfs (for manipulating files over SFTP connections).
2301 If the code was compiled with smbfs support, you can manipulate files
2302 on remote systems with the SMB (CIFS) protocol.
2303 A generic extfs (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to
2305 easily expand VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
2306 The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
2308 forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each one
2309 of the file systems is described later in their own section.
2310 FTP File System
2312 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
2313 machines. To actually use it, you can use the FTP link item in the
2314 menu or directly change your current directory using the cd command to
2315 a path name that looks like this:
2316 ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
2318 The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If you specify
2320 the user element, the Midnight Commander will login to the remote
2321 machine as that user, otherwise it will use anonymous login or the
2322 login name from the ~/.netrc file. The optional pass element is the
2323 password used for the connection. Using the password in the VFS direc‐
2324 tory name is not recommended, because it can appear on the screen in
2325 clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
2326 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend ! (an exclamation sign) to the
2328 hostname.
2329 Examples:
2331 ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
2333 ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
2334 ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
2335 ftp://guest@remote-host.com:40/pub
2336 ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
2337 Please check the Virtual File System dialog box for ftpfs options.
2339 Tar File System
2341 The tar file system provides you with read-only access to your tar
2342 files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command. To change
2343 your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
2344 tar file by using the following syntax:
2345 /filename.tar/utar://[dir-inside-tar]
2347 The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
2349 that usually you just point to a tar file and press return to enter
2350 into the tar file, see the Extension File Edit section for details on
2351 how this is done.
2352 Examples:
2354 mc-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc-3.0/vfs
2356 /ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar/utar://
2357 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
2359 FIle transfer over SHell filesystem
2361 The fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
2362 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To use
2363 this, the other side has to either run fish server, or has to have
2364 bash-compatible shell.
2365 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2367 directory which name is in the following format:
2368 sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
2370 The user, options and remote-dir elements are optional. If you specify
2372 the user element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the
2373 remote machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
2374 The available options are:
2376 'C' - use compression;
2377 'r' - use rsh instead of ssh;
2378 port - specify the port used by remote server.
2379 If the remote-dir element is present, your current directory on the
2380 remote machine will be set to this one.
2381 Examples:
2383 sh://onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
2385 sh://joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
2386 sh://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
2387 sh://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
2388 SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem
2390 The SFTP file system is a network based file system that allows you to
2391 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local.
2392 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2394 directory which name is in the following format:
2395 sftp://[user@]machine:[port]/[remote-dir]
2397 The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If you specify
2399 the user element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the
2400 remote machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
2401 port - specify the port used by remote server (22 by default). If the
2402 remote-dir element is present, your current directory on the remote
2403 machine will be set to this one.
2404 Examples:
2406 sftp://onlyrsh.mx/linux/local
2408 sftp://joe:password@want.compression.edu/private
2409 sftp://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
2410 sftp://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
2411 Undelete File System
2413 On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete
2414 facilities, you will have the undelete file system available. Recovery
2415 of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems. The undelete
2416 file system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to retrieve all
2417 of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and to extract the
2418 selected files into a regular partition.
2419 To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
2421 formed by the "undel://" prefix and the file name where the actual file
2422 system resides.
2423 For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
2425 first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
2426 undel://sda2
2428 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
2430 before you start browsing files there.
2431 SMB File System
2433 The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB
2434 (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups, Windows
2435 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba. To actually use it, you
2436 may try to use the panel command "SMB link..." (accessible from the
2437 menubar) or you may directly change your current directory to it using
2438 the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
2439 smb://[user@]machine[/service][/remote-dir]
2441 The user, service and remote-dir elements are optional. The user,
2443 domain and password can be specified in an input dialog.
2444 Examples:
2446 smb://machine/Share
2448 smb://other_machine
2449 smb://guest@machine/Public/Irlex
2450 EXTernal File System
2452 extfs allows you to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU
2453 Midnight Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
2454 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
2456 1. Stand-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
2458 file. They represent certain system-wide data as a directory tree.
2459 You can invoke them by typing 'cd fsname://' where fsname is an extfs
2460 short name (see below). Examples of such filesystems include audio
2461 (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of all Debian packages in
2462 the system).
2463 For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive, type
2465 cd audio://
2467 2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
2469 contents of a file as a directory tree. It can consist of 'real' files
2470 compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages in
2471 a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
2472 filesystems 'fsname://' should be appended to the archive name. Note
2473 that the archive itself can be on another vfs.
2474 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
2476 cd documents.zip/uzip://
2478 In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory. For
2480 instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
2481 history. An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell com‐
2482 mands inside extfs, just like any other non-local VFS.
2483 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
2485 a access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette (cd a://).
2487 apt front end to Debian's APT package management system (cd apt://).
2489 audio audio CD ripping and playing (cd audio:// or cd
2491 device/audio://).
2492 bpp package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution (cd
2494 file.bpp/bpp://).
2495 deb package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution (cd file.deb/deb://).
2497 dpkg Debian GNU/Linux installed packages (cd deb://).
2499 hp48 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator (cd hp48://).
2501 lslR browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs (cd file‐
2503 name/lslR://).
2504 mailfs mbox-style mailbox files support (cd mailbox/mailfs://).
2506 patchfs
2508 extfs to handle unified and context diffs (cd file‐
2509 name/patchfs://).
2510 rpm RPM package (cd filename/rpm://).
2512 rpms RPM database management (cd rpms://).
2514 ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
2516 archivers (cd archive/xxxx:// where xxxx is one of: ulha, urar,
2517 uzip, uzoo, uar, uha).
2518 You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as described in
2520 the Extension File Edit section. Here is an example entry for Debian
2521 packages:
2522 regex/.deb$
2524 Open=%cd %p/deb://
2525
2527 The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
2528 color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Sometimes it
2529 gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode using
2530 the -c and -b flag respectively.
2531 If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
2533 ncurses, it will also check the variable COLORTERM, if it is set, it
2534 has the same effect as the -c flag.
2535 You may specify terminals that always force color mode by adding the
2537 color_terminals variable to the Colors section of the initialization
2538 file. This will prevent the Midnight Commander from trying to detect
2539 if your terminal supports color. Example:
2540 [Colors]
2542 color_terminals=linux,xterm
2543 color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
2544 The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang, ncurses does
2546 not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the informa‐
2547 tion in the terminal database.
2548 The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
2550 Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
2551 MC_COLOR_TABLE or the Colors section in the initialization file.
2552 In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the
2554 base_color variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a ter‐
2555 minal by using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:
2556 [Colors]
2558 base_color=
2559 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
2560 The format for the color definition is:
2562 <keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
2564 The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected, dis‐
2566 abled, marked, markselect, errors, input, inputmark, inputunchanged,
2567 commandlinemark, reverse, gauge, header, inputhistory, commandhistory.
2568 Button bar colors are: bbarhotkey, bbarbutton. Status bar color: sta‐
2569 tusbar. Menu colors are: menunormal, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, men‐
2570 uinactive. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus, dhotnormal, dhotfocus,
2571 dtitle. Error dialog colors are: errdfocus, errdhotnormal, errdhotfo‐
2572 cus, errdtitle. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold,
2573 helplink, helpslink, helptitle. Viewer color are: viewbold, viewunder‐
2574 line, viewselected. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, edit‐
2575 marked, editwhitespace, editlinestate. Popup menu colors are: pme‐
2576 nunormal, pmenusel, pmenutitle.
2577 header determines the color of panel header, the line that contains
2579 column titles and sort mode indicator.
2580 input determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
2582 gauge determines the color of the filled part of the progress bar
2584 (gauge), which is used to show the user the progress of file opera‐
2585 tions, such as copying.
2586 disabled determines the color of the widget that cannot be selected.
2588 The dialog boxes use the following colors: dnormal is used for the nor‐
2590 mal text, dfocus is the color used for the currently selected compo‐
2591 nent, dhotnormal is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in
2592 normal components, whereas the dhotfocus color is used for the high‐
2593 lighted color in the currently selected component.
2594 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menunormal, menusel, menuhot,
2596 menuhotsel and menuinactive tags instead.
2597 Help uses the following colors: helpnormal is used for normal text,
2599 helpitalic is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual
2600 page, helpbold is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the man‐
2601 ual page, helplink is used for not selected hyperlinks and helpslink is
2602 used for selected hyperlink.
2603 Popup menu uses following colors: pmenunormal is used for non-selected
2605 menu items and as a main color of popup menu window, pmenusel is used
2606 for selected menu item, pmenutitle is used for popup menu title.
2607 The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green, bright‐
2609 green, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta, cyan,
2610 brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword for
2611 transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be used
2612 for background color. Another special keyword "base" means mc's main
2613 colors. When 256 colors are available, they can be specified either as
2614 color16 to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and gray0 to gray23. Exam‐
2615 ple:
2616 [Colors]
2618 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
2619 Attributes can be any of bold, underline, reverse and blink, appended
2621 by a plus sign if more than one are desired. The special word "none"
2622 means no attributes, without attempting to fall back to base_color.
2623 Example:
2624 menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
2626
2629 You can change the appearance of Midnight Commander. To do this, you
2630 must specify a file that contain descriptions of colors and lines to
2631 draw boxes. Redefining of the colors is entirely compatible with the
2632 assignment of colors, as described in Section Colors.
2633 If your skin contains any of 256-color definitions, you should define
2635 the '256colors' key set to TRUE value in [skin] section.
2636 A skin-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one
2639 found):
2640 1) command line option -S <skin> or --skin=<skin>
2642 2) Environment variable MC_SKIN
2643 3) Parameter skin in section [Midnight-Commander] in config
2644 file.
2645 4) File /etc/mc/skins/default.ini
2646 5) File /usr/share/mc/skins/default.ini
2647 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file
2650 may contain the absolute path to the skin-file (with the extension .ini
2651 or without it). Search of skin-file will occur in (to the first one
2652 found):
2653 1) ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
2655 2) @sysconfdir@/mc/skins/
2656 3) /usr/share/mc/skins/
2657 For getting extended info, refer to:
2660 Description of section and parameters
2662 Color pair definitions
2663 Draw lines
2664 Compatibility
2665 Description of section and parameters
2668 Section [skin] contain metainfo for skin-file. Parameter description
2669 contain short text about skin.
2670 Section [filehighlight] contain descriptions of color pairs for file‐
2673 names highlighting. Name of parameters must be equal to names of sec‐
2674 tions into filehighlight.ini file. See Filenames Highlight for getting
2675 more info.
2676 Section [core] describes the elements that are used everywhere.
2679 _default_
2681 Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they not con‐
2682 tain color definitions
2683 selected
2685 cursor
2686 marked selected data
2688 markselect
2690 cursor on selected data
2691 gauge color of the filled part of the progress bar
2693 input color of input lines used in query dialogs
2695 inputmark
2697 color of input selected text
2698 inputunhanged
2700 color of input text before first modification or cursor movement
2701 commandlinemark
2703 color of selected text in command line
2704 reverse
2706 reverse color
2707 Section [dialog] describes the elements that are placed on dialog win‐
2709 dows (except error dialogs).
2710 _default_
2712 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2713 specified
2714 dfocus Color of active element (in focus)
2716 dhotnormal
2718 Color of hotkeys
2719 dhotfocus
2721 Color of hotkeys in focused element
2722 Section [error] describes the elements that are placed on error dialog
2725 windows
2726 _default_
2728 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2729 specified
2730 errdhotnormal
2732 Color of hotkeys
2733 errdhotfocus
2735 Color of hotkeys in focused element
2736 Section [menu] describes the elements that are placed in menu. This
2739 section describes system menu (called by F9) and user-defined menus
2740 (called by F2 in panels and by F11 in editor).
2741 _default_
2743 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2744 specified
2745 entry Color of menu items
2747 menuhot
2749 Color of menu hotkeys
2750 menusel
2752 Color of active menu item (in focus)
2753 menuhotsel
2755 Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
2756 menuinactive
2758 Color of inactive menu
2759 Section [help] describes the elements that are placed on help window.
2762 _default_
2764 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2765 specified
2766 helpitalic
2768 Color pair for element with italic attribute
2769 helpbold
2771 Color pair for element with bold attribute
2772 helplink
2774 Color of links
2775 helpslink
2777 Color of active link (on focus)
2778 Section [editor] describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
2781 _default_
2783 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2784 specified
2785 editbold
2787 Color pair for element with bold attribute
2788 editmarked
2790 Color of selected text
2791 editwhitespace
2793 Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
2794 editlinestate
2796 Color for line state area
2797 Section [viewer] describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
2800 viewunderline
2802 Color pair for element with underline attribute
2803 Color pair definitions
2806 Any parameter in skin-file contain definition of color pair.
2807 Color pairs described as two colors and the optional attributes sepa‐
2809 rated by ';'. First field sets the foreground color, second field sets
2810 background color, third field sets the attributes. Any of the fields
2811 may be omitted, in this case value will be taken from default color
2812 pair (global color pair or from default color pair of this section).
2813 Example:
2815 [core]
2816 # green on black
2817 _default_=green;black
2818 # green (default) on blue
2819 selected=;blue
2820 # yellow on black (default)
2821 # underlined yellow on black (default)
2822 marked=yellow;;underline
2823 Possible colors (names) and attributes are described in Colors. sec‐
2826 tion.
2827 Draw lines
2830 Lines sets in section [Lines] into skin-file. By default single lines
2831 are used, but you may redefine to usage of any utf-8 symbols (like to
2832 lines, for example).
2833 WARNING!!! When you build Midnight Commander with the Ncurses screen
2835 library usage of drawing lines is limited! Possible only drawing a
2836 single lines. For all questions and comments please contact the devel‐
2837 opers of Ncurses.
2838 Descriptions of parameters [Lines]:
2841 lefttop
2843 left-top line fragment.
2844 righttop
2846 right-top line fragment.
2847 centertop
2849 down branch of horizontal line
2850 centerbottom
2852 up branch of horizontal line
2853 leftbottom
2855 left-bottom line fragment
2856 rightbottom
2858 right-bottom line fragment
2859 leftmiddle
2861 right branch of vertical line
2862 rightmiddle
2864 left branch of vertical line
2865 centermiddle
2867 cross of lines
2868 horiz horizontal line
2870 vert vertical line
2872 thinhoriz
2874 thin horizontal line
2875 thinvert
2877 thin vertical line
2878 Compatibility
2882 Appointment of color by skin-files fully compatible with the appoint‐
2883 ment of the colors described in Colors. section.
2884 In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the skin file
2886 and is complementary.
2887
2890 Section [filehighlight] in current skin-file contains key names as
2891 highlight groups and values as color pairs. Color pairs is documented
2892 in Skins section.
2893 Rules of filenames highlight are placed in /usr/share/mc/filehigh‐
2895 light.ini file (~/.config/mc/filehighlight.ini). Name of section in
2896 this file must be equal to parameters names in [filehighlight] section
2897 (in current skin-file).
2898 Keys in these groups are:
2900 type file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
2902 regexp regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is ignored.
2904 extensions
2906 list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
2907 extensions_case
2909 (make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
2910 rule case sensitive (true) or not (false).
2911 `type' key may have values:
2913 - FILE (all files)
2914 - FILE_EXE
2915 - DIR (all directories)
2916 - LINK_DIR
2917 - LINK (all links except stale link)
2918 - HARDLINK
2919 - SYMLINK
2920 - STALE_LINK
2921 - DEVICE (all device files)
2922 - DEVICE_BLOCK
2923 - DEVICE_CHAR
2924 - SPECIAL (all special files)
2925 - SPECIAL_SOCKET
2926 - SPECIAL_FIFO
2927 - SPECIAL_DOOR
2928
2930 Most of the Midnight Commander settings can be changed from the menus.
2931 However, there are a small number of settings which can only be changed
2932 by editing the setup file.
2933 These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
2935 clear_before_exec
2937 By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before exe‐
2938 cuting a command. If you would prefer to see the output of the
2939 command at the bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.config/mc/ini
2940 file and change the value of the field clear_before_exec to 0.
2941 confirm_view_dir
2943 If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that direc‐
2944 tory. If this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirma‐
2945 tion before changing the directory if you have files tagged.
2946 ftpfs_retry_seconds
2948 This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Commander will
2949 wait before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has
2950 denied the login. If the value is zero, the login will no be
2951 retried.
2952 max_dirt_limit
2954 Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the
2955 internal file viewer. Normally this value is not significant,
2956 because the code automatically adjusts the number of updates to
2957 skip according to the rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on
2958 very slow machines or terminals with a fast keyboard auto
2959 repeat, a big value can make screen updates too jumpy.
2960 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best
2962 behavior, and that is the default value.
2963 mouse_move_pages_viewer
2965 Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by
2966 line on the internal file viewer.
2967 only_leading_plus_minus
2969 Allow special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in the command line
2970 (select, unselect, reverse selection) only if the command line
2971 is empty. You don't need to quote those characters in the mid‐
2972 dle of the command line. On the other hand, you cannot use them
2973 to change selection when the command line is not empty.
2974 show_output_starts_shell
2976 This variable only works if you are not using the subshell sup‐
2977 port. When you use the C-o keystroke to go back to the user
2978 screen, if this one is set, you will get a fresh shell. Other‐
2979 wise, pressing any key will bring you back to the Midnight Com‐
2980 mander.
2981 timeformat_recent
2983 Change the time format used to display dates less than 6 months
2984 from now. See strftime or date man page for the format specifi‐
2985 cation. If this option is absent, default timeformat is used.
2986 timeformat_old
2988 Change the time format used to display dates older than 6
2989 months from now or for dates in the future. See strftime or
2990 date man page for the format specification. If this option is
2991 absent, default timeformat is used.
2992 torben_fj_mode
2994 If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work
2995 slightly different on the panels, instead of moving the selec‐
2996 tion to the first and last files in the panels, they will act as
2997 follows:
2998 The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else
3000 go to the top line unless it is already on the top line, in this
3001 case it will go to the first file in the panel.
3002 The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line,
3004 if over it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at
3005 the bottom line, in such case it will move the selection to the
3006 last file name in the panel.
3007 use_file_to_guess_type
3009 If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file com‐
3010 mand to match the file types listed on the mc.ext file.
3011 xtree_mode
3013 If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file
3014 system on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload the other
3015 panel with the contents of the selected directory.
3016 fish_directory_timeout
3018 This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in
3019 seconds. The default value is 900 seconds.
3020 clipboard_store
3022 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clip‐
3023 board utility like 'xclip' to read text into X selection from
3024 file. For example:
3025 clipboard_store=xclip -i
3027 clipboard_paste
3029 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clip‐
3030 board utility like 'xclip' to print the selection to standard
3031 out. For example:
3032 clipboard_pastee=xclip -o
3034 autodetect_codeset
3036 This option allows use the `enca' command to autodetect codeset
3037 of text files in internal viewer and editor. List of valid val‐
3038 ues can be obtain by the `enca --list languages | cut -d : -f1'
3039 command. Option must be located in the [Misc] section.
3040 For example:
3042 autodetect_codeset=russian
3044
3046 The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal data‐
3047 base without requiring root privileges. The Midnight Commander
3048 searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
3049 the Midnight Commander library directory) and in the ~/.config/mc/ini
3050 file for the section "terminal:your-terminal-name" and then for the
3051 section "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key
3052 symbol that you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the defi‐
3053 nition for the key. You can use the special \e form to represent the
3054 escape character and the ^x to represent the control-x character.
3055 The possible key symbols are:
3057 f0 to f20 Function keys f0-f20
3059 bs backspace
3060 home home key
3061 end end key
3062 up up arrow key
3063 down down arrow key
3064 left left arrow key
3065 right right arrow key
3066 pgdn page down key
3067 pgup page up key
3068 insert the insert character
3069 delete the delete character
3070 complete to do completion
3071 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
3073 set this in the ini file:
3074 insert=\e[Op
3076 Also now you can use extended learn keys. For example:
3079 ctrl-alt-right=\e[[1;6C
3081 ctrl-alt-left=\e[[1;6D
3082 This means that ctrl+alt+left sends a \e[[1;6D escape sequence and
3085 therefore Midnight Commander interprets "\e[[1;6D" as Ctrl-Alt-Left.
3086 The complete key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke
3089 the completion process, this is invoked with Alt-tab, but you can
3090 define other keys to do the same work (on those keyboard with tons of
3091 nice and unused keys everywhere).
3092
3095 Full paths below may vary between installations. They are also
3096 affected by the MC_DATADIR environment variable. If it's set, its value
3097 is used instead of /usr/share/mc in the paths below.
3098 /usr/share/mc/mc.hlp
3100 The help file for the program.
3102 /usr/share/mc/mc.ext
3104 The default system-wide extensions file.
3106 ~/.config/mc/mc.ext
3108 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
3110 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if
3111 present.
3112 /usr/share/mc/mc.ini
3114 The default system-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used
3116 only if the user doesn't have his own ~/.config/mc/ini file.
3117 /usr/share/mc/mc.lib
3119 Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this
3121 file affect all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini or
3122 not. Currently, only terminal settings are loaded from mc.lib.
3123 ~/.config/mc/ini
3125 User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is
3127 loaded from here instead of the system-wide startup file.
3128 /usr/share/mc/mc.hint
3130 This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
3132 /usr/share/mc/mc.menu
3134 This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.
3136 ~/.config/mc/menu
3138 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used
3140 instead of the system-wide applications menu.
3141 ~/.cache/mc/Tree
3143 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view fea‐
3145 tures.
3146 ~/.local/share/mc.menu
3148 Local user-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used
3150 instead of the home or system-wide applications menu.
3151 To change default root directory of MC, you can use MC_HOME environment
3153 variable. The value of MC_HOME must be an absolute path. If MC_HOME is
3154 unset or empty, HOME variable is used. If HOME is unset or empty, MC
3155 directories are get from GLib library.
3156
3158 This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
3159 License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built-in
3160 help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
3161
3163 The latest version of this program can be found at
3164 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mc/.
3165
3167 ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1), tcsh(1), zsh(1).
3168 The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
3170 http://www.midnight-commander.org/
3171
3173 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
3174 distribution.
3175
3177 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains
3178 to be done.
3179 If you want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
3181 this address: mc-devel@gnome.org.
3182 Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program
3184 you are running (mc -V displays this information), the operating system
3185 you are running the program on. If the program crashes, we would
3186 appreciate a stack trace.
3187MC Version 4.8.7 November 2016 MC(1)