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 Specify a name of skin in the command line. Technology of skins
31 is documented in the Skins. section.
32 -d, --nomouse
34 Disable mouse support.
35 -e [file], --edit[=file]
37 Start the internal editor. If the file is specified, open it on
38 startup. See also mcedit (1).
39 -f, --datadir
41 Display the compiled-in search paths for Midnight Commander
42 files.
43 -k, --resetsoft
45 Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo data‐
46 base. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't
47 work.
48 -K файл
50 Specify a name of keymap file in the command line.
51 -l file, --ftplog=file
53 Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
54 -P file, --printwd=file
56 Print the last working directory to the specified file. This
57 option is not meant to be used directly. Instead, it's used
58 from a special shell script that automatically changes the cur‐
59 rent directory of the shell to the last directory the Midnight
60 Commander was in. Source the file /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.sh (bash
61 and zsh users) or /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.csh (tcsh users) respec‐
62 tively to define mc as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
63 -s Set alternative mode drawing of frameworks. If the section
65 [Lines] is not filled, the symbol for the pseudographics frame
66 is a space, otherwise the frame characters are taken from fol‐
67 lowing parameters.
68 You can redefine the following variables:
70 lefttop
72 left-top corner
73 righttop
75 right-top corner
76 centertop
78 center-top cross
79 centerbottom
81 center-bottom cross
82 leftbottom
84 left-bottom corner
85 rightbottom
87 right-bottom corner
88 leftmiddle
90 left-middle cross
91 rightmiddle
93 right-middle cross
94 centermiddle
96 center cross
97 horiz default horizontal line
99 vert default vertical line
101 thinhoriz
103 thin horizontal line
104 thinvert
106 thin vertical line
107 -t, --termcap
109 Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it
110 makes the Midnight Commander use the value of the TERMCAP vari‐
111 able for the terminal information instead of the information on
112 the system wide terminal database
113 -u, --nosubshell
115 Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if the
116 Midnight Commander has been built with concurrent shell sup‐
117 port).
118 -U, --subshell
120 Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if
121 the Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set
122 as an optional feature).
123 -v file, --view=file
125 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
126 mcview (1).
127 -V, --version
129 Display the version of the program.
130 -x, --xterm
132 Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable terminals
133 (two screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
134 If specified, the first path name is the directory to show in the
136 selected panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in
137 the other panel.
138
140 The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
141 Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels. By
142 default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the shell
143 command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels. The
144 topmost line is the menu bar line. The menu bar line may not be visi‐
145 ble, but appears if you click the topmost line with the mouse or press
146 the F9 key.
147 The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same
149 time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in the
150 current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current panel.
151 Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the directory
152 of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they always ask
153 you for confirmation first). For more information, see the sections on
154 the Directory Panels, the Left and Right Menus and the File Menu.
155 You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply
157 typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line,
158 and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the com‐
159 mand line you typed; read the Shell Command Line and Input Line Keys
160 sections to learn more about the command line.
161
163 The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated when‐
164 ever you are running on an xterm(1) terminal (it even works if you take
165 a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to another machine from the xterm)
166 or if you are running on a Linux console and have the gpm mouse server
167 running.
168 When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is
170 selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
171 unmarked, depending on the previous state).
172 Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is an
174 executable program; and if the extension file has a program specified
175 for the file's extension, the specified program is executed.
176 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
178 key labels by clicking on them.
179 If a mouse button is clicked on the top frame line of the directory
181 panel, it is scrolled one page up. Likewise, a click on the bottom
182 frame line will cause scrolling one page down. This frame line method
183 works also in the Help Viewer and the Directory Tree.
184 The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400 milliseconds.
186 This may be changed to other values by editing the ~/.mc/ini file and
187 changing the mouse_repeat_rate parameter.
188 If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
190 can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by hold‐
191 ing down the Shift key.
192
195 Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the Control
196 (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the Meta (sometimes labeled ALT or
197 even Compose) keys. In this manual we will use the following abbrevia‐
198 tions:
199 C-<chr>
201 means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>.
202 Thus C-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
203 Alt-<chr>
205 means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>. If
206 there is no Meta or Alt key, type ESC, release it, then type the
207 character <chr>.
208 S-<chr>
210 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
211 All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approximation to the
213 GNU Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
214 You may redefine key bindings. See redefine hotkey bindings
216 for more info. All other key bindings (described in this manual) rela‐
218 tive to default behavior.
219 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
222 the most important.
223 The File Menu section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands
225 appearing in the File menu. This section includes the function keys.
226 Most of these commands perform some action, usually on the selected
227 file or the tagged files.
228 The Directory Panels section documents the keys which select a file or
230 tag files as a target for a later action (the action is usually one
231 from the file menu).
232 The Shell Command Line section list the keys which are used for enter‐
234 ing and editing command lines. Most of these copy file names and such
235 from the directory panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typ‐
236 ing) or access the command line history.
237 Input Line Keys are used for editing input lines. This means both the
239 command line and the input lines in the query dialogs.
240 Redefine hotkey bindings
243 Hotkey bindings may be readed from external file (keymap-file). A
244 keymap-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one
245 found):
246 1) command line option -K <keymap> or --keymap=<keymap>
248 2) Environment variable MC_KEYMAP
249 3) In config file parameter keymap in section [MidhightComman‐
250 der]
251 4) File ~/.mc/mc.keymap
252 5) File /etc/mc/mc.keymap
253 6) File /usr/share/mc/mc.keymap
254 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file
257 may contain the absolute path to the keymap-file (with the extension
258 .keymap or without it). Search of keymap-file will occur in (to the
259 first one found):
260 1) ~/.mc/
262 2) /etc/mc/
263 3) /usr/share/mc/
264 Miscellaneous Keys
267 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
268 Enter if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom
270 of the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no
271 text in the command line then if the selection bar is over a
272 directory the Midnight Commander does a chdir(2) to the selected
273 directory and reloads the information on the panel; if the
274 selection is an executable file then it is executed. Finally, if
275 the extension of the selected file name matches one of the
276 extensions in the extensions file then the corresponding command
277 is executed.
278 C-l repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
280 C-x c run the Chmod command on a file or on the tagged files.
282 C-x o run the Chown command on the current file or on the tagged
284 files.
285 C-x l run the link command.
287 C-x s run the symbolic link command.
289 C-x i set the other panel display mode to information.
291 C-x q set the other panel display mode to quick view.
293 C-x ! execute the External panelize command.
295 C-x h run the add directory to hotlist command.
297 Alt-! executes the Filtered view command, described in the view com‐
299 mand.
300 Alt-? executes the Find file command.
302 Alt-c pops up the quick cd dialog.
304 C-o when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or
306 under an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous com‐
307 mand. When ran on the Linux console, the Midnight Commander
308 uses an external program (cons.saver) to handle saving and
309 restoring of information on the screen.
310 When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any time
312 and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
313 return to your application just type C-o. If you have an application
314 suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other pro‐
315 grams from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
316 application.
317 Directory Panels
319 This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
320 you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a look
321 at the section on Left and Right Menus.
322 Tab, C-i
324 change the current panel. The old other panel becomes the new
325 current panel and the old current panel becomes the new other
326 panel. The selection bar moves from the old current panel to the
327 new current panel.
328 Insert, C-t
330 to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo
331 sequence). To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
332 M-e to change charset of panel you may use M-e (Alt-e). Recoding is
334 made from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the
335 recoding you may select "directory up" (..) in active panel. To
336 cancel the charsets in all directories, select "No translation "
337 in the dialog of encodings.
338 Alt-g, Alt-r, Alt-j
340 used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and the
341 bottom one, respectively.
342 C-s, Alt-s
344 start a filename search in the directory listing. When the
345 search is active, the user input will be added to the search
346 string instead of the command line. If the Show mini-status
347 option is enabled the search string is shown on the mini-status
348 line. When typing, the selection bar will move to the next file
349 starting with the typed letters. The backspace or DEL keys can
350 be used to correct typing mistakes. If C-s is pressed again, the
351 next match is searched for.
352 Alt-t toggle the current display listing to show the next display
354 listing mode. With this it is possible to quickly switch to
355 brief listing, long listing, user defined listing mode, and back
356 to the default.
357 C-\ (control-backslash)
359 show the directory hotlist and change to the selected directory.
360 + (plus)
362 this is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight
363 Commander will prompt for a selection options. When Files only
364 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If Files only is
365 off, as files as directories will be selected. When Shell Pat‐
366 terns checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the
367 filename globbing in the shell (* standing for zero or more
368 characters and ? standing for one character). If Shell Patterns
369 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
370 expressions (see ed (1)). When Case sensitive checkbox is on,
371 the selection will be case sensitive characters. If Case sensi‐
372 tive is off, the case will be ignored.
373 \ (backslash)
375 use the "\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the oppo‐
376 site of the Plus key.
377 up-key, C-p
379 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
380 down-key, C-n
382 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
383 home, a1, Alt-<
385 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
386 end, c1, Alt->
388 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
389 next-page, C-v
391 move the selection bar one page down.
392 prev-page, Alt-v
394 move the selection bar one page up.
395 Alt-o If the currently selected file is a directory, load that direc‐
397 tory on the other panel and moves the selection to the next
398 file. If the currently selected file is not a directory, load
399 the parent directory on the other panel and moves the selection
400 to the next file.
401 Alt-i make the current directory of the current panel also the current
403 directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the list‐
404 ing mode if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the
405 other panel doesn't become panelized.
406 C-PageUp, C-PageDown
408 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the
409 currently selected directory respectively.
410 Alt-y moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to
412 clicking the < with the mouse.
413 Alt-u moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to click‐
415 ing the > with the mouse.
416 Alt-Shift-h, Alt-H
418 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v'
419 with the mouse.
420 Shell Command Line
422 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
423 entering shell commands.
424 Alt-Enter
426 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
427 C-Enter
429 same a Alt-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some ter‐
430 minals.
431 C-Shift-Enter
433 copy the full path name of the currently selected file to the
434 command line. May not work on remote systems and some termi‐
435 nals.
436 Alt-Tab
438 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
439 pletion for you.
440 C-x t, C-x C-t
442 copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the
443 selected file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of the other
444 panel (C-x C-t) to the command line.
445 C-x p, C-x C-p
447 the first key sequence copies the current path name to the com‐
448 mand line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path
449 name to the command line.
450 C-q the quote command can be used to insert characters that are oth‐
452 erwise interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' sym‐
453 bol)
454 Alt-p, Alt-n
456 use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt-p
457 takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
458 Alt-h displays the history for the current input line.
460 General Movement Keys
462 The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common code
463 to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same keys. Each of
464 them also accepts some keys of its own.
465 Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
467 keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
468 Up, C-p
470 moves one line backward.
471 Down, C-n
473 moves one line forward.
474 Prev Page, Page Up, Alt-v
476 moves one page up.
477 Next Page, Page Down, C-v
479 moves one page down.
480 Home, A1
482 moves to the beginning.
483 End, C1
485 move to the end.
486 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in addi‐
488 tion the to ones mentioned above:
489 b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
491 moves one page up.
492 Space bar
494 moves one page down.
495 u, d moves one half of a page up or down.
497 g, G moves to the beginning or to the end.
499 Input Line Keys
501 The input lines (they are used for the command line and for the query
502 dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
503 C-a puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
505 C-e puts the cursor at the end of the line.
507 C-b, move-left
509 move the cursor one position left.
510 C-f, move-right
512 move the cursor one position right.
513 Alt-f moves one word forward.
515 Alt-b moves one word backward.
517 C-h, backspace
519 delete the previous character.
520 C-d, Delete
522 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
523 C-@ sets the mark for cutting.
525 C-w copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer
527 and removes the text from the input line.
528 Alt-w copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buf‐
530 fer.
531 C-y yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
533 C-k kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
535 Alt-p, Alt-n
537 Use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt-p
538 takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
539 Alt-C-h, Alt-Backspace
541 delete one word backward.
542 Alt-Tab
544 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
545 pletion for you.
546
549 The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
550 row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File", "Com‐
551 mand", "Options" and "Right".
552 The Left and Right Menus allow you to modify the appearance of the left
554 and right directory panels.
555 The File Menu lists the actions you can perform on the currently
557 selected file or the tagged files.
558 The Command Menu lists the actions which are more general and bear no
560 relation to the currently selected file or the tagged files.
561 The Options Menu lists the actions which allow you to customize the
563 Midnight Commander.
564 Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus
566 The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the Left and
567 Right menus (they are named Above and Below when the horizontal panel
568 split is chosen from the Layout options dialog).
569 Listing Mode...
571 The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
572 four different listing modes available: Full, Brief, Long and User.
573 The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
574 the modification time.
575 The brief view shows only the file name and it has two columns (there‐
577 fore showing twice as many files as other views). The long view is sim‐
578 ilar to the output of ls -l command. The long view takes the whole
579 screen width.
580 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify the
582 display format.
583 The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This
585 may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
586 full screen panel respectively.
587 After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the
589 panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format string.
590 After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size speci‐
592 fier. This are the available fields you may display:
593 name displays the file name.
595 size displays the file size.
597 bsize is an alternative form of the size format. It displays the size
599 of the files and for directories it just shows SUB-DIR or
600 UP--DIR.
601 type displays a one character wide type field. This character is
603 similar to what is displayed by ls with the -F flag - * for exe‐
604 cutable files, / for directories, @ for links, = for sockets, -
605 for character devices, + for block devices, | for pipes, ~ for
606 symbolic links to directories and ! for stale symlinks (links
607 that point nowhere).
608 mark an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
610 mtime file's last modification time.
612 atime file's last access time.
614 ctime file's status change time.
616 perm a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
618 mode an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
620 nlink the number of links to the file.
622 ngid the GID (numeric).
624 nuid the UID (numeric).
626 owner the owner of the file.
628 group the group of the file.
630 inode the inode of the file.
632 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
634 space a space in the display format.
636 | add a vertical line to the display format.
638 To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add :
640 followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If
641 the number is followed by the symbol +, then the size specifies the
642 minimal field size - if the program finds out that there is more space
643 on the screen, it will then expand that field.
644 For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:
646 half type name | size | mtime
648 And the Long display corresponds to this format:
650 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
652 space name
653 This is a nice user display format:
655 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
657 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
659 Info The info view display information related to the currently
661 selected file and if possible information about the current file
662 system.
663 Tree The tree view is quite similar to the directory tree feature.
665 See the section about it for more information.
666 Quick View
668 In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced viewer that
669 displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you
670 select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have
671 access to the usual viewer commands.
672 Sort Order...
674 The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
675 by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size, by
676 inode and unsorted. In the Sort order dialog box you can choose the
677 sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
678 order by checking the reverse box.
679 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
681 from the Options menu (option Mix all files).
682 Filter...
684 The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
685 *.tar.gz) which the files must match to be shown. Regardless of the
686 filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories are always
687 shown in the directory panel.
688 Reread
690 The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
691 useful if other processes have created or removed files. If you have
692 panelized file names in a panel this will reload the directory contents
693 and remove the panelized information (See the section External panelize
694 for more information).
695 File Menu
697 The Midnight Commander uses the F1 - F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts for
698 commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
699 function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals
700 without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
701 pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
702 (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
703 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in paren‐
705 theses):
706 Help (F1)
708 Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the help viewer, you
710 can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to follow
711 that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to move forward and
712 backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the full list of
713 accepted keys.
714 Menu (F2)
716 Invoke the user menu. The user menu provides an easy way to provide
718 users with a menu and add extra features to the Midnight Commander.
719 View (F3, Shift-F3)
721 View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the Internal
723 File Viewer but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an
724 external file viewer specified by the VIEWER environment variable. If
725 VIEWER is undefined, the PAGER environment variable is tried. If PAGER
726 is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use Shift-F3
727 instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
728 preprocessing to the file.
729 Filtered View (Alt-!)
731 This command prompts for a command and its arguments (the argument
733 defaults to the currently selected file name), the output from such
734 command is shown in the internal file viewer.
735 Edit (F4, F14)
737 Press F4 to edit the highlighted file. Press F14 (usually Shift-F4) to
739 start the editor with a new, empty file. Currently they invoke the vi
740 editor, or the editor specified in the EDITOR environment variable, or
741 the Internal File Editor if the use_internal_edit option is on.
742 Copy (F5, F15)
744 Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file
746 (or the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
747 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
748 defaults to the directory in the non-selected panel. During this
749 process, you can press C-c or ESC to abort the operation. For details
750 about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\(.*\)$ depending
751 on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the desti‐
752 nation see Mask copy/rename.
753 F15 (usually Shift-F5) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
755 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
756 any tagged files.
757 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
759 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt-b in the dialog
760 box). The Background Jobs is used to control the background process.
761 Link (C-x l)
763 Create a hard link to the current file.
765 SymLink (C-x s)
767 Create a symbolic link to the current file. To those of you who don't
769 know what links are: creating a link to a file is a bit like copying
770 the file, but both the source filename and the destination filename
771 represent the same file image. For example, if you edit one of these
772 files, all changes you make will appear in both files. Some people call
773 links aliases or shortcuts.
774 A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
776 telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you delete
777 either one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
778 to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
779 you don't even want to know.
780 A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If the
782 original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite easy
783 to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight Comman‐
784 der shows an "@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a symbolic
785 link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
786 The original file which the link points to is shown on mini-status line
787 if the Show mini-status option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you
788 want to avoid the confusion that can be caused by hard links.
789 Rename/Move (F6, F16)
791 Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file
793 (or the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
794 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
795 defaults to the directory in the non-selected panel. For more details
796 look at Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite simi‐
797 lar.
798 F16 (usually Shift-F6) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
800 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
801 any tagged files.
802 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
804 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt-b in the dialog
805 box). The Background Jobs is used to control the background process.
806 Mkdir (F7)
808 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
810 Delete (F8)
812 Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the currently
814 selected panel. During the process, you can press C-c or ESC to abort
815 the operation.
816 Quick cd (Alt-c) Use the quick cd command if you have full command line
818 and want to cd somewhere.
819 Select group (+)
821 This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
823 will prompt for a selection options. When Files only checkbox is on,
824 only files will be selected. If Files only is off, as files as direc‐
825 tories will be selected. When Shell Patterns checkbox is on, the regu‐
826 lar expression is much like the filename globbing in the shell (*
827 standing for zero or more characters and ? standing for one charac‐
828 ter). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging of files is done with
829 normal regular expressions (see ed (1)). When Case sensitive checkbox
830 is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters. If Case sensi‐
831 tive is off, the case will be ignored.
832 Unselect group (\)
834 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the Select
836 group command.
837 Quit (F10, Shift-F10)
839 Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift-F10 is used when you want to
841 quit and you are using the shell wrapper. Shift-F10 will not take you
842 to the last directory you visited with the Midnight Commander, instead
843 it will stay at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
844 Quick cd
846 This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to cd
847 somewhere without having to yank and paste the command line. This com‐
848 mand pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter
849 after cd on the command line and then you press enter. This features
850 all the things that are already in the internal cd command.
851 Command Menu
853 The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.
854 The Find file command allows you to search for a specific file.
856 The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory pan‐
858 els.
859 The "Panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell command.
861 This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
862 The Compare directories (C-x d) command compares the directory panels
864 with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make the
865 panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method
866 compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a full
867 byte-by-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
868 machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size-only com‐
869 pare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the con‐
870 tents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
871 The Command history command shows a list of typed commands. The
873 selected command is copied to the command line. The command history can
874 also be accessed by typing Alt-p or Alt-n.
875 The Directory hotlist (C-\) command makes changing of the current
877 directory to often used directories faster.
878 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
880 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
881 Extension file edit command allows you to specify programs to executed
883 when you try to execute, view, edit and do a bunch of other thing on
884 files with certain extensions (filename endings). The Menu file edit
885 command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by press‐
886 ing F2).
887 Directory Tree
889 The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
890 can select a directory from the figure and the Midnight Commander will
891 change to that directory.
892 There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree command
894 is available from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
895 from the Left or Right menu.
896 To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the tree fig‐
898 ure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
899 directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent direc‐
900 tory and press C-r (or F2).
901 You can use the following keys:
903 General movement keys are accepted.
905 Enter. In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to
907 this directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to this
908 directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the current
909 panel.
910 C-r, F2 (Rescan). Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure
912 is out of date: it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirecto‐
913 ries which don't exist any more.
914 F3 (Forget). Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to
916 remove clutter from the figure. If you want the directory back to the
917 tree figure press F2 in its parent directory.
918 F4 (Static/Dynamic). Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode
920 (default) and the static navigation mode.
921 In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
923 select a directory. All known directories are shown.
924 In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
926 select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent direc‐
927 tory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the parent,
928 sibling and children directories are shown, others are left out. The
929 tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
930 F5 (Copy). Copy the directory.
932 F6 (RenMov). Move the directory.
934 F7 (Mkdir). Make a new directory below this directory.
936 F8 (Delete). Delete this directory from the file system.
938 C-s, Alt-s. Search the next directory matching the search string. If
940 there is no such directory these keys will move one line down.
941 C-h, Backspace. Delete the last character of the search string.
943 Any other character. Add the character to the search string and move
945 to the next directory which starts with these characters. In the tree
946 view you must first activate the search mode by pressing C-s. The
947 search string is shown in the mini status line.
948 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
950 aren't supported in the tree view.
951 F1 (Help). Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
953 Esc, F10. Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
955 The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter. See also the
957 section on mouse support.
958 Find File
960 The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the search
961 and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree button you
962 can select the start directory from the directory tree figure.
963 The contents field accepts regular expressions similar to egrep(1).
965 That means you have to escape characters with a special meaning to
966 egrep with "\", e.g. if you search for "strcmp (" you will have to
967 input "strcmp \(" (without the double quotes).
968 Option form whole words. Like grep -w
970 You can start the search by pressing the OK button. During the search
972 you can stop from the Stop button and continue from the Start button.
973 You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
975 button will change to the directory of the currently selected file. The
976 Again button will ask for the parameters for a new search. The Quit
977 button quits the search operation. The Panelize button will place the
978 found files to the current directory panel so that you can do addi‐
979 tional operations on them (view, copy, move, delete and so on). After
980 panelizing you can press C-r to return to the normal file listing.
981 It is possible to have a list of directories that the Find File command
983 should skip during the search (for example, you may want to avoid
984 searches on a CD-ROM or on a NFS directory that is mounted across a
985 slow link).
986 Directories to be skipped should be set on the variable
988 find_ignore_dirs in the Misc section of your ~/.mc/ini file.
989 Directory components should be separated with a colon, here is an exam‐
991 ple:
992 [Misc]
994 find_ignore_dirs=/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
995 You may consider using the External panelize command for some opera‐
997 tions. Find file command is for simple queries only, while using Exter‐
998 nal panelize you can do as mysterious searches as you would like.
999 External panelize
1001 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
1002 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1003 For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1005 symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external paneliza‐
1006 tion to run the following command:
1007 find . -type l -print
1009 Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel will no
1011 longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
1012 files that are symbolic links.
1013 If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded from
1015 your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file name
1016 from the transfer log files:
1017 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1019 You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive
1021 name, so that you can recall them quickly. You do this by typing the
1022 command on the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a
1023 name under which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just
1024 choose that command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1025 Hotlist
1027 The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories in
1028 the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the
1029 directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dia‐
1030 log, you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new
1031 ones. To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist
1032 command (C-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory
1033 hotlist, asking just for the label for the directory.
1034 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using
1036 the CDPATH variable as described in internal cd command description.
1037 Extension File Edit
1039 This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.mc/bindings. The format of
1040 this file following:
1041 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1043 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1045 keyword/expr, i.e. everything after the slash until new line is expr.
1047 keyword can be:
1049 shell - expr is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name
1051 ends with expr. Example: shell/.tar matches *.tar.
1052 regex - expr is a regular expression. File matches if its name
1054 matches the regular expression.
1055 directory
1057 - expr is a regular expression. File matches if it is a direc‐
1058 tory and its name matches the regular expression.
1059 type - expr is a regular expression. File matches if the output of
1061 file %f without the initial "filename:" part matches regular
1062 expression expr.
1063 default
1065 - matches any file. expr is ignored.
1066 include
1068 - denotes a common section. expr is the name of the section.
1069 Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the for‐
1071 mat: keyword=command (with no spaces around =), where keyword should
1072 be: Open (invoked on Enter or double click), View (F3), Edit (F4) or
1073 Include (to add rules from the common section). command is any
1074 one-line shell command, with the simple macro substitution.
1075 Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important. If
1077 the appropriate action is missing, search continues as if this rule
1078 didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first and second entry and
1079 View action is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View
1080 action from the second entry will be used). default should match all
1081 the actions.
1082 Background Jobs
1084 This lets you control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1085 process (only copy and move files operations can be done in the back‐
1086 ground). You can stop, restart and kill a background job from here.
1087 Menu File Edit
1089 The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by the
1090 user. When you access the user menu, the file .mc.menu from the current
1091 directory is used if it exists, but only if it is owned by user or root
1092 and is not world-writable. If no such file found, ~/.mc/menu is tried
1093 in the same way, and otherwise mc uses the default system-wide menu
1094 /usr/share/mc/mc.menu.
1095 The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with any‐
1097 thing but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in order to
1098 be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should be a let‐
1099 ter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the commands
1100 that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1101 When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
1103 copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
1104 /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
1105 normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1106 takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
1107 macro substitution.
1108 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1110 A Dump the currently selected file
1112 od -c %f
1113 B Edit a bug report and send it to root
1115 I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
1116 vi $I
1117 mail -s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
1118 rm -f $I
1119 M Read mail
1121 emacs -f rmail
1122 N Read Usenet news
1124 emacs -f gnus
1125 H Call the info hypertext browser
1127 info
1128 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1130 tar cf - . | (cd %D && tar xvpf -)
1131 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1133 echo -n "Name of distribution file: "
1134 read tar
1135 ln -s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1136 cd ..
1137 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1138 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1140 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1141 tar xzvf %f
1142 Default Conditions
1144 Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
1146 start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
1147 true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1148 Condition syntax: = <sub-cond>
1150 or: = <sub-cond> | <sub-cond> ...
1151 or: = <sub-cond> & <sub-cond> ...
1152 Sub-condition is one of following:
1154 y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
1156 (for edit menu only)
1157 f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
1158 F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
1159 d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
1160 D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
1161 t <type> current file of type?
1162 T <type> other file of type?
1163 x <filename> is it executable filename?
1164 ! <sub-cond> negate the result of sub-condition
1165 Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according to
1167 the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of the
1168 shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first line
1169 of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1170 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1172 n not a directory
1174 r regular file
1175 d directory
1176 l link
1177 c character device
1178 b block device
1179 f FIFO (pipe)
1180 s socket
1181 x executable file
1182 t tagged
1183 For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't' type
1185 is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the file.
1186 The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the current
1187 panel and false if not.
1188 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1190 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1191 The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1193 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1194 is calculated as
1195 ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1196 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1198 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1200 L List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
1201 gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -
1202 Addition Conditions
1204 If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
1206 is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1207 be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
1208 not be included in the menu.
1209 You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1211 with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
1212 want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1213 defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
1214 starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1215 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1217 with '#', space or tab.
1218 Options Menu
1220 The Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and off
1221 in several dialogs which are accessible from this menu. Options are
1222 enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1223 The Configuration command pops up a dialog from which you can change
1225 most of settings of the Midnight Commander.
1226 The Layout command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of
1228 options how mc looks like on the screen.
1229 The Confirmation command pops up a dialog from which you specify which
1231 actions you want to confirm.
1232 The Display bits command pops up a dialog from which you may select
1234 which characters is your terminal able to display.
1235 The Learn keys command pops up a dialog from which you test some keys
1237 which are not working on some terminals and you may fix them.
1238 The Virtual FS command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS
1240 related options.
1241 The Save setup command saves the current settings of the Left, Right
1243 and Options menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1244 Configuration
1246 The options in this dialog are divided into three groups: Panel
1247 Options, Pause after run and Other Options.
1248 Panel Options
1250 Use SI size units. If this option is set, Midnight Commander will use
1252 SI units (powers of 1000) when displaying any byte sizes. The suffixes
1253 (k, m ...) are shown in lowercase. If unset (default), Midnight Com‐
1254 mander will use binary units (powers of 1024) and the suffixes are
1255 shown in upper case (K, M ...)
1256 Show Backup Files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show files
1258 ending with a tilde. Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls
1259 option -B).
1260 Show Hidden Files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show all
1262 files that start with a dot (like ls -a).
1263 Mark moves down. If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you
1265 mark a file (with Insert key).
1266 Drop down menus. When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will
1268 be activated as soon as you press the F9 key. Otherwise, you will only
1269 get the menu title, and you will have to activate the menu either with
1270 the arrow keys or with the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using
1271 hotkeys.
1272 Mix all files. If this option is enabled, all files and directories
1274 are shown mixed together. If the option is off, directories (and links
1275 to directories) are shown at the beginning of the listing, and other
1276 files below.
1277 Fast directory reload. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Comman‐
1279 der will use a trick to determine if the directory contents have
1280 changed. The trick is to reload the directory only if the i-node of
1281 the directory has changed; this means that reloads only happen when
1282 files are created or deleted. If what changes is the i-node for a file
1283 in the directory (file size changes, mode or owner changes, etc) the
1284 display is not updated. In these cases, if you have the option on, you
1285 have to rescan the directory manually (with C-r).
1286 Pause after run
1288 After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can pause, so
1290 that you can examine the output of the command. There are three possi‐
1291 ble settings for this variable:
1292 Never. Means that you do not want to see the output of your command.
1294 If you are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will be
1295 able to see the output of the command by typing C-o.
1296 On dumb terminals. You will get the pause message on terminals that
1298 are not capable of showing the output of the last command executed (any
1299 terminal that is not an xterm or the Linux console).
1300 Always. The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1302 Other Options
1304 Verbose operation. This toggles whether the file Copy, Rename and
1306 Delete operations are verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each
1307 operation). If you have a slow terminal, you may wish to disable the
1308 verbose operation. It is automatically turned off if the speed of your
1309 terminal is less than 9600 bps.
1310 Compute totals. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander com‐
1312 putes total byte sizes and total number of files prior to any Copy,
1313 Rename and Delete operations. This will provide you with a more accu‐
1314 rate progress bar at the expense of some speed. This option has no
1315 effect, if Verbose operation is disabled.
1316 Shell Patterns. By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands
1318 will use shell-like regular expressions. The following conversions are
1319 performed to achieve this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more
1320 characters); the '?' is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and
1321 '.' by the literal dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular
1322 expressions are the ones described in ed(1).
1323 Auto Save Setup. If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight
1325 Commander the configurable options of the Midnight Commander are saved
1326 in the ~/.mc/ini file.
1327 Auto menus. If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked
1329 at startup. Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
1330 Use internal editor. If this option is enabled, the built-in file edi‐
1332 tor is used to edit files. If the option is disabled, the editor speci‐
1333 fied in the EDITOR environment variable is used. If no editor is spec‐
1334 ified, vi is used. See the section on the internal file editor.
1335 Use internal viewer. If this option is enabled, the built-in file
1337 viewer is used to view files. If the option is disabled, the pager
1338 specified in the PAGER environment variable is used. If no pager is
1339 specified, the view command is used. See the section on the internal
1340 file viewer.
1341 Complete: show all. By default the Midnight Commander pops up all pos‐
1343 sible completions if the completion is ambiguous only when you press
1344 Alt-Tab for the second time. For the first time, it just completes as
1345 much as possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity. Enable this
1346 option if you want to see all possible completions even after pressing
1347 Alt-Tab the first time.
1348 Rotating dash. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander shows
1350 a rotating dash in the upper right corner as a work in progress indica‐
1351 tor.
1352 Lynx-like motion. If this option is enabled, you may use the arrows
1354 keys to automatically chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory
1355 and the shell command line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
1356 Cd follows links. This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander
1358 to follow the logical chain of directories when changing current direc‐
1359 tory either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
1360 behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows the real
1361 directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory through
1362 a link will move you to the current directory's real parent and not to
1363 the directory where the link was present.
1364 Safe delete. If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory
1366 hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default
1367 selection in the confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes"
1368 to "No". This option is disabled by default.
1369 Layout
1371 The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1372 of screen. You can specify whether the menubar, the command prompt, the
1373 hintbar and the function keybar are visible. On the Linux or FreeBSD
1374 console you can specify how many lines are shown in the output window.
1375 The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1377 can specify whether the area is split to the panels in vertical or hor‐
1378 izontal direction. The split can be equal or you can specify an unequal
1379 split.
1380 You can specify whether permissions and file types should be high‐
1382 lighted with distinctive Colors. If the permission highlighting is
1383 enabled, the parts of the perm and mode display fields which apply to
1384 the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with the color
1385 defined by the selected keyword. If the file type highlighting is
1386 enabled, file names are colored according to rules described in
1387 /etc/mc/filehighlight.ini file. See Filenames Highlight for more info.
1388 If the Show Mini-Status option is enabled, one line of status informa‐
1390 tion about the currently selected item is shown at the bottom of the
1391 panels.
1392 When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight Commander sets the
1394 terminal window title to the current working directory and updates it
1395 when necessary. If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some
1396 incorrect output on startup and directory change, turn off the Xterm
1397 Window Title option.
1398 Confirmation
1400 In this menu you configure the confirmation options for file deletion,
1401 directory hotlist entries deletion, overwriting, execution by pressing
1402 enter and quitting the program.
1403 Display bits
1405 This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
1406 screen. This setting may be 7-bits if your terminal/curses supports
1407 only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 displays all the characters in the
1408 ISO-8859-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
1409 full 8 bit characters.
1410 Learn keys
1412 This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor
1413 arrows and some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
1414 They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or bro‐
1415 ken.
1416 You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
1418 left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor move‐
1419 ment key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
1420 You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a key
1422 and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name of
1423 that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually, e.g.
1424 F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works, but
1425 after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys. The
1426 Tab key should be working always.
1427 If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after
1429 pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by
1430 pressing the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or
1431 by Enter or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then
1432 a message box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait
1433 until the message box disappears. If you want to abort, just press
1434 Escape once and wait.
1435 When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions
1437 for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [termi‐
1438 nal:TERM] section of your ~/.mc/ini file (where TERM is the name of
1439 your current terminal). The definitions of the keys that were already
1440 working properly are not saved.
1441 Virtual FS
1443 This option gives you control over the settings of the Virtual File
1444 System.
1445 The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information related to some
1447 of the virtual file systems to speed up the access to the files in the
1448 file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
1449 Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
1451 compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander needs to create temporary
1452 uncompressed files on your disk.
1453 Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk
1455 take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
1456 information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
1457 access to frequently used file systems.
1458 Because of the format of the tar archives, the Tar filesystem needs to
1460 read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most tar
1461 files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in
1462 extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
1463 in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a reg‐
1464 ular tar file.
1465 Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
1467 it's common that you will leave a tar file and the re-enter it later.
1468 Since decompression is slow, the Midnight Commander will cache the
1469 information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires,
1470 all the resources associated with the file system are released. The
1471 default timeout is set to one minute.
1472 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote
1474 FTP servers. It has several options.
1475 ftp anonymous password is the password used when you login as "anony‐
1477 mous". Some sites require a valid e-mail address. On the other hand,
1478 you probably don't want to give your real e-mail address to untrusted
1479 sites, especially if you are not using spam filtering.
1480 ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a
1482 cache. The cache expire time is configurable with the ftpfs directory
1483 cache timeout option. A low value for this option may slow down every
1484 operation on the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a
1485 request to the FTP server.
1486 You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern
1488 firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below),
1489 so FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
1490 If Always use ftp proxy is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to
1492 enable proxy for certain hosts. See FTP File System for examples.
1493 If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the
1495 /usr/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that are
1496 local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a
1497 domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names
1498 are directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the
1499 specified FTP proxy.
1500 You can enable using ~/.netrc file, which keeps login names and pass‐
1502 words for ftp servers. See netrc (5) for the description of the .netrc
1503 format.
1504 Use passive mode enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection
1506 for data transfer is initiated by the client, not by the server. This
1507 option is recommended and enabled by default. If this option is turned
1508 off, the data connection is initiated by the server. This may not work
1509 with some firewalls.
1510 Save Setup
1512 At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
1513 information from the ~/.mc/ini file. If this file doesn't exist, it
1514 will load the information from the system-wide configuration file,
1515 located in /usr/share/mc/mc.ini. If the system-wide configuration file
1516 doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
1517 The Save Setup command creates the ~/.mc/ini file by saving the current
1519 settings of the Left, Right and Options menus.
1520 If you activate the auto save setup option, MC will always save the
1522 current settings when exiting.
1523 There also exist settings which can't be changed from the menus. To
1525 change these settings you have to edit the setup file with your
1526 favorite editor. See the section on Special Settings for more informa‐
1527 tion.
1528
1531 You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight Com‐
1532 mander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to execute
1533 with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
1534 If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the Midnight
1536 Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the exten‐
1537 sions in the Extensions File. If a match is found then the code asso‐
1538 ciated with that extension is executed. A very simple macro expansion
1539 takes place before executing the command.
1540 The cd internal command
1542 The cd command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander, it is not
1543 passed to the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle all
1544 of the nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does,
1545 although it does some of them:
1546 Tilde substitution. The (~) will be substituted with your home direc‐
1548 tory, if you append a username after the tilde, then it will be substi‐
1549 tuted with the login directory of the specified user.
1550 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
1552 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
1553 Previous directory. You can jump to the directory you were previously
1555 by using the special directory name '-' like this: cd -
1556 CDPATH directories. If the directory specified to the cd command is
1558 not in the current directory, then The Midnight Commander uses the
1559 value in the environment variable CDPATH to search for the directory in
1560 any of the named directories.
1561 For example you could set your CDPATH variable to ~/src:/usr/src,
1563 allowing you to change your directory to any of the directories inside
1564 the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from any place in the file system
1565 by using its relative name (for example cd linux could take you to
1566 /usr/src/linux).
1567 Macro Substitution
1569 When accessing a user menu, or executing an extension dependent com‐
1570 mand, or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
1571 substitution takes place.
1572 The macros are:
1574 %i The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position.
1576 For edit menu only.
1577 %y The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
1579 %k The block file name.
1581 %e The error file name.
1583 %m The current menu name.
1585 %f and %p
1587 The current file name.
1588 %x The extension of current file name.
1590 %b The current file name without extension.
1592 %d The current directory name.
1594 %F The current file in the unselected panel.
1596 %D The directory name of the unselected panel.
1598 %t The currently tagged files.
1600 %T The tagged files in the unselected panel.
1602 %u and %U
1604 Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are
1605 untagged. You can use this macro only once per menu file entry
1606 or extension file entry, because next time there will be no
1607 tagged files.
1608 %s and %S
1610 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise
1611 the current file.
1612 %cd This is a special macro that is used to change the current
1614 directory to the directory specified in front of it. This is
1615 used primarily as an interface to the Virtual File System.
1616 %view This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This macro
1618 can be used alone, or with arguments. If you pass any arguments
1619 to this macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
1620 The arguments are: ascii to force the viewer into ascii mode;
1622 hex to force the viewer into hex mode; nroff to tell the viewer
1623 that it should interpret the bold and underline sequences of
1624 nroff; unformatted to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff
1625 commands for making the text bold or underlined.
1626 %% The % character
1628 %{some text}
1630 Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text
1631 inside the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is substituted
1632 by the text typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10 to
1633 cancel. This macro doesn't work on the command line yet.
1634 %var{ENV:default}
1636 If environment variable ENV is unset, the default is substi‐
1637 tuted. Otherwise, the value of ENV is substituted.
1638 The subshell support
1640 The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
1641 shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.
1642 When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander will spawn a
1644 concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the SHELL variable
1645 and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd file) and run
1646 it in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell each time you
1647 execute a command, the command will be passed to the subshell as if you
1648 had typed it. This also allows you to change the environment vari‐
1649 ables, use shell functions and define aliases that are valid until you
1650 quit the Midnight Commander.
1651 If you are using bash you can specify startup commands for the subshell
1653 in your ~/.mc/bashrc file and special keyboard maps in the ~/.mc/inpu‐
1654 trc file. tcsh users may specify startup commands in the ~/.mc/tcshrc
1655 file.
1656 When the subshell code is used, you can suspend applications at any
1658 time with the sequence C-o and jump back to the Midnight Commander, if
1659 you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other exter‐
1660 nal commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
1661 An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the prompt dis‐
1663 played by the Midnight Commander is the same prompt that you are cur‐
1664 rently using in your shell.
1665 The OPTIONS section has more information on how you can control the
1667 subshell code.
1668
1670 The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
1671 files and directories. It can be invoked with the C-x c key combina‐
1672 tion.
1673 The Chmod window has two parts - Permissions and File.
1675 In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory and
1677 its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
1678 In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which corre‐
1680 spond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute bits,
1681 you can see the octal value change in the File section.
1682 To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the arrow
1684 keys or the Tab key. To change the state of the check buttons or to
1685 select a button use Space. You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons
1686 to quickly activate them. Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on
1687 the buttons.
1688 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
1690 When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on
1692 the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits you
1693 want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked or
1694 Clear marked).
1695 Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
1697 the [Set all] button, which will act on all the tagged files.
1698 [Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files
1700 [Set marked] set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1702 [Clean marked] clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1704 [Set] set the attributes of one file
1706 [Cancel] cancel the Chmod command
1708
1710 The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
1711 key for this command is C-x o.
1712
1714 The Advanced Chown command is the Chmod and Chown command combined into
1715 one window. You can change the permissions and owner/group of files at
1716 once.
1717
1719 When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander shows the
1720 file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being processed
1721 and uses up to three progress bars. The file bar indicates the per‐
1722 centage of the current file that has been processed so far. The count
1723 bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The bytes
1724 bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files that
1725 has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes
1726 bars are not shown.
1727 There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
1729 button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort but‐
1730 ton will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are skipped.
1731 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
1733 operations.
1734 The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
1736 Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file or the
1737 Abort button to abort the operation altogether. You can also select
1738 the Retry button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
1739 The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
1741 the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
1742 the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
1743 button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
1744 None button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if
1745 the source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
1746 operation by pressing the Abort button.
1747 The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
1749 which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory
1750 recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the All button to
1751 delete all the directories and the None button to skip all the
1752 non-empty directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing
1753 the Abort button. If you selected the Yes or All button you will be
1754 asked for a confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you
1755 want to do the recursive delete.
1756 If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them only the
1758 files on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped
1759 files are left tagged.
1760
1762 The copy/move operations let you translate the names of files in an
1763 easy way. To do it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
1764 usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
1765 All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
1766 the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
1767 matching the source mask are renamed.
1768 There are other options which you can set:
1770 Follow links
1772 determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source direc‐
1774 tory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target directory
1775 or whether would you like to copy their content.
1776 Dive into subdirs
1778 determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be
1780 copied, but the target directory already exists. The default action is
1781 to copy the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
1782 Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into
1783 the target directory.
1784 For example, you want to copy directory /foo containing file bar to
1786 /bla/foo, which is an already existing directory. Normally (when Dive
1787 into subdirs is not set), mc would copy file /foo/bar into the file
1788 /bla/foo/bar. By enabling this option the /bla/foo/foo directory will
1789 be created, and /foo/bar will be copied into /bla/foo/foo/bar.
1790 Preserve attributes
1792 determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you
1794 are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is not
1795 set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
1796 Use shell patterns on
1798 When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*' and '?' wild‐
1800 cards in the source mask. They work like they do in the shell. In the
1801 target mask only the '*' and '\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The
1802 first '*' wildcard in the target mask corresponds to the first wildcard
1803 group in the source mask, the second '*' corresponds to the second
1804 group and so on. The '\1' wildcard corresponds to the first wildcard
1805 group in the source mask, the '\2' wildcard corresponds to the second
1806 group and so on all the way up to '\9'. The '\0' wildcard is the whole
1807 filename of the source file.
1808 Two examples:
1810 If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is "/bla/*.tgz" and
1812 the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in
1813 "/bla".
1814 Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c" would
1816 become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
1817 destination is "\2.\1".
1818 Use shell patterns off
1820 When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
1822 grouping anymore. You must use '\(...\)' expressions in the source mask
1823 to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is more
1824 flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks are sim‐
1825 ilar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
1826 Two examples:
1828 If the source mask is "^\(.*\)\.tar\.gz$", the destination is
1830 "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will
1831 be "/bla/foo.tgz".
1832 Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
1834 will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
1835 "^\(.*\)\.\(.*\)$" and the destination is "\2.\1".
1836 Case Conversions
1838 You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\u' or '\l'
1840 in the target mask, the next character will be converted to uppercase
1841 or lowercase correspondingly.
1842 If you use '\U' or '\L' in the target mask, the next characters will be
1844 converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the next '\E'
1845 or next '\U', '\L' or the end of the file name.
1846 The '\u' and '\l' are stronger than '\U' and '\L'.
1848 For example, if the source mask is '*' (shell patterns on) or
1850 '^\(.*\)$' (shell patterns off) and the target mask is '\L\u*' the file
1851 names will be converted to have initial upper case and otherwise lower
1852 case.
1853 You can also use '\' as a quote character. For example, '\\' is a back‐
1855 slash and '\*' is an asterisk.
1856 Stable symlinks
1858 commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks in the tar‐
1860 get, so that they'll point to the same location as it did before. With
1861 absolute symbolic links this does nothing, but if you have a relative
1862 one, it will recompute its value, adding necessary ../ and other direc‐
1863 tory parts and making the value as short as possible (most modern
1864 filesystems keep short symlinks inside inodes and thus don't waste much
1865 disk space).
1866
1869 The dialog of group of files and directories selection or uselection.
1870 The input line allow enter the regular expression of filenames that
1871 will be selected/unselected.
1872 When Files only checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If Files
1874 only is off, as files as directories will be selected. When Shell Pat‐
1875 terns checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename
1876 globbing in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ?
1877 standing for one character). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging
1878 of files is done with normal regular expressions (see ed (1)). When
1879 Case sensitive checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive
1880 characters. If Case sensitive is off, the case will be ignored.
1881
1883 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex. To
1884 toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
1885 The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or
1887 the file type to display the information. Some character sequences,
1888 which appear most often in preformatted manual pages, are displayed
1889 bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display of your files.
1890 When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and con‐
1892 stant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing the
1893 quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text with
1894 constants like this:
1895 "String" -1 0xBB 012 "more text"
1897 Note that 012 is an octal number. -1 is converted to 0xFF.
1899 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the Mid‐
1901 night Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
1902 F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
1904 F2 Toggle the wrap mode.
1906 F4 Toggle the hex mode.
1908 F5 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display
1910 that line.
1911 F6, /. Regular expression search.
1913 ?, Reverse regular expression search.
1915 F7 Normal search / hex mode search.
1917 C-s, F17, n. Start normal search if there was no previous search
1919 expression else find next match.
1920 C-r. Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression
1922 else find next match.
1923 F8 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or
1925 if a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the
1926 output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
1927 on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter by
1928 that key.
1929 F9 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
1931 will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with
1932 different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
1933 F10, Esc. Exit the internal file viewer.
1935 next-page, space, C-v. Scroll one page forward.
1937 prev-page, Alt-v, C-b, backspace. Scroll one page backward.
1939 down-key Scroll one line forward.
1941 up-key Scroll one line backward.
1943 C-l Refresh the screen.
1945 C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
1947 ! Like C-o, but run a new shell if the subshell is not running.
1949 [n] m Set the mark n.
1951 [n] r Jump to the mark n.
1953 C-f Jump to the next file.
1955 C-b Jump to the previous file.
1957 Alt-r Toggle the ruler.
1959 Alt-e to change charset of displayed text may use M-e (Alt-e). Recod‐
1961 ing is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the
1962 recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset selection dialog.
1963 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
1965 at the Extension File Edit section
1966
1969 The internal file editor is a full-featured full screen editor. It can
1970 edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible to edit binary files.
1971 The internal file editor is invoked using F4 if the use_internal_edit
1972 option is set in the initialization file.
1973 The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
1975 paste; key for key undo; pull-down menus; file insertion; macro com‐
1976 mands; regular expression search and replace; shift-arrow text high‐
1977 lighting (if supported by the terminal); insert-overwrite toggle; word
1978 wrap; autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various
1979 file types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands
1980 like indent and ispell.
1981 Sections:
1983 Options of editor in ini-file
1985 The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To see what
1988 keys do what, just consult the appropriate pull-down menu. Other keys
1989 are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting. Ctrl-Ins copies to the
1990 file cooledit.clip and Shift-Ins pastes from cooledit.clip. Shift-Del
1991 cuts to cooledit.clip, and Ctrl-Del deletes highlighted text. Mouse
1992 highlighting also works, and you can override the mouse as usual by
1993 holding down the shift key while dragging the mouse to let normal ter‐
1994 minal mouse highlighting work.
1995 To define a macro, press Ctrl-R and then type out the key strokes you
1997 want to be executed. Press Ctrl-R again when finished. You can then
1998 assign the macro to any key you like by pressing that key. The macro is
1999 executed when you press Ctrl-A and then the assigned key. The macro is
2000 also executed if you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key,
2001 provided that the key is not used for any other function. Once defined,
2002 the macro commands go into the file .mc/cedit/cooledit.macros in your
2003 home directory. You can delete a macro by deleting the appropriate line
2004 in this file.
2005 To change charset of displayed text may use M-e (Alt-e). Recoding is
2008 made from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the recod‐
2009 ing you may select "<No translation>" in charset selection dialog.
2010 F19 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or C or C++
2013 code or another). This is controlled by the file
2014 /usr/share/mc/edit.indent.rc which is copied to
2015 .mc/cedit/edit.indent.rc in your home directory the first time you use
2016 it.
2017 The editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When editing binary
2019 files, you should set display bits to 7 bits in the options menu to
2020 keep the spacing clean.
2021
2024 In this section described some options in ini-file. Options placed in
2025 '[Midnight Commander]' section
2026 editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
2029 Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or just from
2030 begin of file to cursor position (0)
2031
2035 Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
2036 Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
2038 attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins
2039 with $), username (if the text begins with ~), hostname (if the text
2040 begins with @) or command (if you are on the command line in the posi‐
2041 tion where you might type a command, possible completions then include
2042 shell reserved words and shell built-in commands as well) in turn. If
2043 none of these matches, filename completion is attempted.
2044 Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
2046 lines, command completion is command line specific. If the completion
2047 is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
2048 following action depends on the setting of the Complete: show all
2049 option in the Configuration dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all
2050 possibilities pops up next to the current position and you can select
2051 with the arrow keys and Enter the correct entry. You can also type the
2052 first letters in which the possibilities differ to move to a subset of
2053 all possibilities and complete as much as possible. If you press
2054 Alt-Tab again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise
2055 the first item which matches all the previous characters will be high‐
2056 lighted. As soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you
2057 can hide it by canceling keys Esc, F10 and left and right arrow keys.
2058 If Complete: show all is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
2059 Alt-Tab for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
2060
2062 The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the file
2063 system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system switch.
2064 The virtual file system switch allows the Midnight Commander to manipu‐
2065 late files not located on the Unix file system.
2066 Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
2068 Systems (VFS): the local file system, used for accessing the regular
2069 Unix file system; the ftpfs, used to manipulate files on remote systems
2070 with the FTP protocol; the tarfs, used to manipulate tar and compressed
2071 tar files; the undelfs, used to recover deleted files on ext2 file sys‐
2072 tems (the default file system for Linux systems), fish (for manipulat‐
2073 ing files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh) and finally the
2074 mcfs (Midnight Commander file system), a network based file system. If
2075 the code was compiled with smbfs support, you can manipulate files on
2076 remote systems with the SMB (CIFS) protocol.
2077 A generic extfs (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to
2079 easily expand VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
2080 The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
2082 forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each one
2083 of the file systems is described later in their own section.
2084 FTP File System
2086 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
2087 machines. To actually use it, you can use the FTP link item in the
2088 menu or directly change your current directory using the cd command to
2089 a path name that looks like this:
2090 /#ftp:[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
2092 The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If you specify
2094 the user element, the Midnight Commander will login to the remote
2095 machine as that user, otherwise it will use anonymous login or the
2096 login name from the ~/.netrc file. The optional pass element is the
2097 password used for the connection. Using the password in the VFS direc‐
2098 tory name is not recommended, because it can appear on the screen in
2099 clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
2100 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend ! (an exclamation sign) to the
2102 hostname.
2103 Examples:
2105 /#ftp:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
2107 /#ftp:tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
2108 /#ftp:!behind.firewall.edu/pub
2109 /#ftp:guest@remote-host.com:40/pub
2110 /#ftp:miguel:xxx@server/pub
2111 Please check the Virtual File System dialog box for ftpfs options.
2113 Tar File System
2115 The tar file system provides you with read-only access to your tar
2116 files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command. To change
2117 your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
2118 tar file by using the following syntax:
2119 /filename.tar#utar/[dir-inside-tar]
2121 The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
2123 that usually you just point to a tar file and press return to enter
2124 into the tar file, see the Extension File Edit section for details on
2125 how this is done.
2126 Examples:
2128 mc-3.0.tar.gz#utar/mc-3.0/vfs
2130 /ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar#utar
2131 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
2133 FIle transfer over SHell filesystem
2135 The fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
2136 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To use
2137 this, the other side has to either run fish server, or has to have
2138 bash-compatible shell.
2139 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2141 directory which name is in the following format:
2142 /#sh:[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
2144 The user, options and remote-dir elements are optional. If you specify
2146 the user element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the
2147 remote machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
2148 The options are 'C' - use compression and 'rsh' use rsh instead of ssh.
2150 If the remote-dir element is present, your current directory on the
2151 remote machine will be set to this one.
2152 Examples:
2154 /#sh:onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
2156 /#sh:joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
2157 /#sh:joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
2158 Network File System
2160 The Midnight Commander file system is a network base file system that
2161 allows you to manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were
2162 local. To use this, the remote machine must be running the mcserv(8)
2163 server program.
2164 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2166 directory which name is in the following format:
2167 /#mc:[user@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
2169 The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If you specify
2171 the user element then the Midnight Commander will try to logon on the
2172 remote machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
2173 The port element is used when the remote server is running on a special
2175 port (see the mcserv(8) manual page for more information about ports);
2176 finally, if the remote-dir element is present, your current directory
2177 on the remote machine will be set to this one.
2178 Examples:
2180 /#mc:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
2182 /#mc:joe@foo.edu:11321/private
2183 Undelete File System
2185 On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete
2186 facilities, you will have the undelete file system available. Recovery
2187 of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems. The undelete
2188 file system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to retrieve all
2189 of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and to extract the
2190 selected files into a regular partition.
2191 To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
2193 formed by the "/#undel" prefix and the file name where the actual file
2194 system resides.
2195 For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
2197 first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
2198 /#undel:sda2
2200 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
2202 before you start browsing files there.
2203 SMB File System
2205 The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB
2206 (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups, Windows
2207 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba. To actually use it, you
2208 may try to use the panel command "SMB link..." (accessible from the
2209 menubar) or you may directly change your current directory to it using
2210 the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
2211 /#smb:[user@]machine[/service][/remote-dir]
2213 The user, service and remote-dir elements are optional. The user,
2215 domain and password can be specified in an input dialog.
2216 Examples:
2218 /#smb:machine/Share
2220 /#smb:other_machine
2221 /#smb:guest@machine/Public/Irlex
2222 EXTernal File System
2224 extfs allows to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU
2225 Midnight Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
2226 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
2228 1. Stand-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
2230 file. They represent certain system-wide data as a directory tree.
2231 You can invoke them by typing 'cd #fsname' where fsname is an extfs
2232 short name (see below). Examples of such filesystems include audio
2233 (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of all Debian packages in
2234 the system).
2235 For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive, type
2237 cd #audio
2239 2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
2241 contents of a file as a directory tree. It can consist of 'real' files
2242 compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages in
2243 a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
2244 filesystems '#fsname' should be appended to the archive name. Note
2245 that the archive itself can be on another vfs.
2246 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
2248 cd documents.zip#uzip
2250 In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory. For
2252 instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
2253 history. An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell com‐
2254 mands inside extfs, just like any other non-local VFS.
2255 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
2257 a access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette (cd #a).
2259 apt front end to Debian's APT package management system (cd #apt).
2261 audio audio CD ripping and playing (cd #audio or cd device#audio).
2263 bpp package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution (cd file.bpp#bpp).
2265 deb package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution (cd file.deb#deb).
2267 dpkg Debian GNU/Linux installed packages (cd #deb).
2269 hp48 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator (cd #hp48).
2271 lslR browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs (cd file‐
2273 name#lslR).
2274 mailfs mbox-style mailbox files support (cd mailbox#mailfs).
2276 patchfs
2278 extfs to handle unified and context diffs (cd filename#patchfs).
2279 rpm RPM package (cd filename#rpm).
2281 rpms RPM database management (cd #rpms).
2283 ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
2285 archivers (cd archive#xxxx where xxxx is one of: ulha, urar,
2286 uzip, uzoo, uar, uha).
2287 You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as described in
2289 the Extension File Edit section. Here is an example entry for Debian
2290 packages:
2291 regex/.deb$
2293 Open=%cd %p#deb
2294
2296 The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
2297 color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Sometimes it
2298 gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode using
2299 the -c and -b flag respectively.
2300 If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
2302 ncurses, it will also check the variable COLORTERM, if it is set, it
2303 has the same effect as the -c flag.
2304 You may specify terminals that always force color mode by adding the
2306 color_terminals variable to the Colors section of the initialization
2307 file. This will prevent the Midnight Commander from trying to detect
2308 if your terminal supports color. Example:
2309 [Colors]
2311 color_terminals=linux,xterm
2312 color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
2313 The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang, ncurses does
2315 not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the informa‐
2316 tion in the terminal database.
2317 The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
2319 Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
2320 MC_COLOR_TABLE or the Colors section in the initialization file.
2321 In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the
2323 base_color variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a ter‐
2324 minal by using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:
2325 [Colors]
2327 base_color=
2328 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
2329 The format for the color definition is:
2331 <keyword>=<foregroundcolor>,<backgroundcolor>:<keyword>= ...
2333 The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected,
2335 marked, markselect, errors, input, reverse, gauge. Menu colors are:
2336 menu, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfo‐
2337 cus, dhotnormal, dhotfocus. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic,
2338 helpbold, helplink, helpslink. Viewer color is: viewunderline. Editor
2339 colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked.
2340 input determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
2342 gauge determines the color of the filled part of the progress bar
2344 (gauge), which is used to show the user the progress of file opera‐
2345 tions, such as copying.
2346 The dialog boxes use the following colors: dnormal is used for the nor‐
2348 mal text, dfocus is the color used for the currently selected compo‐
2349 nent, dhotnormal is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in
2350 normal components, whereas the dhotfocus color is used for the high‐
2351 lighted color in the currently selected component.
2352 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menu, menusel, menuhot and
2354 menuhotsel tags instead.
2355 Help uses the following colors: helpnormal is used for normal text,
2357 helpitalic is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual
2358 page, helpbold is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the man‐
2359 ual page, helplink is used for not selected hyperlinks and helpslink is
2360 used for selected hyperlink.
2361 The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green, bright‐
2363 green, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta, cyan,
2364 brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword for
2365 transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be used
2366 for background color. Example:
2367 [Colors]
2369 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
2370
2373 You can change the appearance of Midhight Commander. To do this, you
2374 must specify a file that contain descriptions of colors and lines to
2375 draw boxes. Redefining of the colors is entirely compatible with the
2376 assignment of colors, as described in Section Colors.
2377 A skin-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one
2379 found):
2380 1) command line option -S <skin> or --skin=<skin>
2382 2) Environment variable MC_SKIN
2383 3) In config file parameter skin in section [Midnight Commander]
2384 4) File /etc/mc/skins/default.ini
2385 5) File /usr/share/mc/skins/default.ini
2386 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file
2389 may contain the absolute path to the skin-file (with the extension .ini
2390 or without it). Search of skin-file will occur in (to the first one
2391 found):
2392 1) ~/.mc/skins/
2394 2) /etc/mc/skins/
2395 3) /usr/share/mc/skins/
2396 For getting extended info, refer to:
2399 Description of section and parameters
2401 Color pair definitions
2402 Draw lines
2403 Compatibility
2404 Description of section and parameters
2407 Section [skin] contain metainfo for skin-file. Parameter description
2408 contain short text about skin.
2409 Section [filehighlight] contain descriptions of color pairs for file‐
2412 names highlighting. Name of parameters must be equal to names of sec‐
2413 tions into filehighlight.ini file. See Filenames Highlight for getting
2414 more info.
2415 Section [core] describes the elements that are used everywhere.
2418 _default_
2420 Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they not con‐
2421 tain color definitions
2422 selected
2424 cursor
2425 marked selected data
2427 markselect
2429 cursor on selected data
2430 gauge color of the filled part of the progress bar
2432 input color of input lines used in query dialogs.
2434 reverse
2436 reverse color
2437 Section [dialog] describes the elements that are placed on dialog win‐
2440 dows (except error dialogs).
2441 _default_
2443 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2444 specified
2445 dfocus Color of active element (in focus)
2447 dhotnormal
2449 Color of hotkeys
2450 dhotfocus
2452 Color of hotkeys in focused element
2453 Section [error] describes the elements that are placed on error dialog
2456 windows
2457 _default_
2459 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2460 specified
2461 errdhotnormal
2463 Color of hotkeys
2464 errdhotfocus
2466 Color of hotkeys in focused element
2467 Section [menu] describes the elements that are placed on menu. This
2470 section describes system menu (called by F9) and user-defined menus
2471 (called by F2 in panels and by F11 in editor).
2472 _default_
2474 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2475 specified
2476 entry Color of menu items
2478 menuhot
2480 Color of menu hotkeys
2481 menusel
2483 Color of active menu item (in focus)
2484 menuhotsel
2486 Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
2487 Section [help] describes the elements that are placed on help window.
2490 _default_
2492 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2493 specified
2494 helpitalic
2496 Color pair for element with italic attribute
2497 helpbold
2499 Color pair for element with bold attribute
2500 helplink
2502 Color of links
2503 helpslink
2505 Color of active link (on focus)
2506 Section [editor] describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
2509 _default_
2511 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2512 specified
2513 editbold
2515 Color pair for element with bold attribute
2516 editmarked
2518 Color of selected text
2519 editwhitespace
2521 Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
2522 linestate
2524 Color for line state area
2525 Section [viewer] describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
2528 viewunderline
2530 Color pair for element with underline attribute
2531 Color pair definitions
2534 Any parameter in skin-file contain definition of color pair.
2535 Color pairs described as two colors separated by ';'. First color sets
2537 the foreground color, second color sets background color. One of the
2538 colors may be omitted, in this case color will be taken from default
2539 color pair (global color pair or from default color pair of this sec‐
2540 tion).
2541 Example:
2543 [core]
2544 # green on black
2545 _default_=green;black
2546 # green (default) on blue
2547 selected=;blue
2548 # yellow on black (default)
2549 marked=yellow;
2550 Possible colors (names) described in Colors. section.
2553 Draw lines
2556 Lines sets in section [Lines] into skin-file. By default single lines
2557 are used, but you may redefine to usage of any utf-8 symbols (like to
2558 lines, for example).
2559 WARNING!!! When you build Midnight Commander with the Ncurses screen
2561 library usage of drawing lines is limited! Possible only drawing a
2562 single lines. For all questions and comments please contact the devel‐
2563 opers of Ncurses.
2564 Descriptions of parameters [Lines]:
2567 lefttop
2569 left-top line fragment.
2570 righttop
2572 right-top line fragment.
2573 centertop
2575 down branch of horizontal line
2576 centerbottom
2578 up branch of horizontal line
2579 leftbottom
2581 left-bottom line fragment
2582 rightbottom
2584 right-bottom line fragment
2585 leftmiddle
2587 right branch of vertical line
2588 rightmiddle
2590 left branch of vertical line
2591 centermiddle
2593 cross of lines
2594 horiz horizontal line
2596 vert vertical line
2598 thinhoriz
2600 thin horizontal line
2601 thinvert
2603 thin vertical line
2604 Compability
2608 Appointment of color by skin-files fully compatible with the appoint‐
2609 ment of the colors described in Colors. section.
2610 In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the skin files
2612 and is complementary.
2613
2616 Section [filehighlight] from current skin-file contain key names as
2617 highlight groups and values as color pairs. Color pairs is documented
2618 into Skins section.
2619 Rules of filenames highlight placed in /usr/share/mc/filehighlight.ini
2621 file (~/.mc/filehighlight.ini). Name of section in this file must be
2622 equal to parameters names into [filehighlight] section (in current
2623 skin-file)
2624 Keys in these groups:
2626 type file type. if present, all other option ignored
2628 regexp regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option ignored
2630 extensions
2632 list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
2633 extensions_case
2635 (make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
2636 rule case sensitive (true) or not (false).
2637 `type' key may have values:
2639 - FILE (all files)
2640 - FILE_EXE
2641 - DIR (all directories)
2642 - LINK_DIR
2643 - LINK (all links except stale link)
2644 - HARDLINK
2645 - SYMLINK
2646 - STALE_LINK
2647 - DEVICE (all device files)
2648 - DEVICE_BLOCK
2649 - DEVICE_CHAR
2650 - SPECIAL (all special files)
2651 - SPECIAL_SOCKET
2652 - SPECIAL_FIFO
2653 - SPECIAL_DOOR
2654
2656 Most of the settings of the Midnight Commander can be changed from the
2657 menus. However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
2658 changed by editing the setup file.
2659 These variables may be set in your ~/.mc/ini file:
2661 clear_before_exec
2663 By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before exe‐
2664 cuting a command. If you would prefer to see the output of the
2665 command at the bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.mc/ini file
2666 and change the value of the field clear_before_exec to 0.
2667 confirm_view_dir
2669 If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that direc‐
2670 tory. If this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirma‐
2671 tion before changing the directory if you have files tagged.
2672 ftpfs_retry_seconds
2674 This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Commander will
2675 wait before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has
2676 denied the login. If the value is zero, the login will no be
2677 retried.
2678 max_dirt_limit
2680 Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the
2681 internal file viewer. Normally this value is not significant,
2682 because the code automatically adjusts the number of updates to
2683 skip according to the rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on
2684 very slow machines or terminals with a fast keyboard auto
2685 repeat, a big value can make screen updates too jumpy.
2686 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best
2688 behavior, and that is the default value.
2689 mouse_move_pages
2691 Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or
2692 line by line on the panels.
2693 mouse_move_pages_viewer
2695 Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by
2696 line on the internal file viewer.
2697 old_esc_mode
2699 By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key
2700 prefix (old_esc_mode=0). If this option is set
2701 (old_esc_mode=1), the ESC key will act as a prefix key for one
2702 second, and if no extra keys have arrived, then the ESC key is
2703 interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).
2704 only_leading_plus_minus
2706 Allow special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in the command line
2707 (select, unselect, reverse selection) only if the command line
2708 is empty. You don't need to quote those characters in the mid‐
2709 dle of the command line. On the other hand, you cannot use them
2710 to change selection when the command line is not empty.
2711 reverse_files_only
2713 Allow revert selection of files only. This variable is on by
2714 default. If on, the reverse selection is applied to files only,
2715 not to directories. The selection of directories is untouched.
2716 If off, the reverse selection is applied to files as well to
2717 directories: all unselected items become selected, and vice
2718 versa.
2719 panel_scroll_pages
2721 If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when
2722 the cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, other‐
2723 wise it will just scroll a file at a time.
2724 show_output_starts_shell
2726 This variable only works if you are not using the subshell sup‐
2727 port. When you use the C-o keystroke to go back to the user
2728 screen, if this one is set, you will get a fresh shell. Other‐
2729 wise, pressing any key will bring you back to the Midnight Com‐
2730 mander.
2731 torben_fj_mode
2733 If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work
2734 slightly different on the panels, instead of moving the selec‐
2735 tion to the first and last files in the panels, they will act as
2736 follows:
2737 The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else
2739 go to the top line unless it is already on the top line, in this
2740 case it will go to the first file in the panel.
2741 The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line,
2743 if over it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at
2744 the bottom line, in such case it will move the selection to the
2745 last file name in the panel.
2746 use_file_to_guess_type
2748 If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file com‐
2749 mand to match the file types listed on the mc.ext file.
2750 xterm_mode
2752 If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file
2753 system on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload the other
2754 panel with the contents of the selected directory.
2755 fish_directory_timeout
2757 This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in
2758 seconds. The default value is 900 seconds.
2759
2761 The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal data‐
2762 base without requiring root privileges. The Midnight Commander
2763 searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
2764 the Midnight Commander library directory) and in the ~/.mc/ini file for
2765 the section "terminal:your-terminal-name" and then for the section
2766 "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol that
2767 you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the definition for
2768 the key. You can use the special \e form to represent the escape char‐
2769 acter and the ^x to represent the control-x character.
2770 The possible key symbols are:
2772 f0 to f20 Function keys f0-f20
2774 bs backspace
2775 home home key
2776 end end key
2777 up up arrow key
2778 down down arrow key
2779 left left arrow key
2780 right right arrow key
2781 pgdn page down key
2782 pgup page up key
2783 insert the insert character
2784 delete the delete character
2785 complete to do completion
2786 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
2788 set this in the ini file:
2789 insert=\e[Op
2791 Also now you can use extended learn keys. For example:
2794 ctrl-alt-right=\e[[1;6C
2796 ctrl-alt-left=\e[[1;6D
2797 This means that ctrl+alt+left sends a \e[[1;6D escape sequence and
2800 therefore Midnight Commander interprets "\e[[1;6D" as Ctrl-Alt-Left.
2801 The complete key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke
2804 the completion process, this is invoked with Alt-tab, but you can
2805 define other keys to do the same work (on those keyboard with tons of
2806 nice and unused keys everywhere).
2807
2810 Full paths below may vary between installations. They are also
2811 affected by the MC_DATADIR environment variable. If it's set, its
2812 value is used instead of /usr/share/mc in the paths below.
2813 /usr/share/mc/mc.hlp
2815 The help file for the program.
2817 /usr/share/mc/mc.ext
2819 The default system-wide extensions file.
2821 ~/.mc/bindings
2823 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
2825 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if
2826 present.
2827 /usr/share/mc/mc.ini
2829 The default system-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used
2831 only if the user doesn't have his own ~/.mc/ini file.
2832 /usr/share/mc/mc.lib
2834 Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this
2836 file affect all users, whether they have ~/.mc/ini or not. Cur‐
2837 rently, only terminal settings are loaded from mc.lib.
2838 ~/.mc/ini
2840 User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is
2842 loaded from here instead of the system-wide startup file.
2843 /usr/share/mc/mc.hint
2845 This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
2847 /usr/share/mc/mc.menu
2849 This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.
2851 ~/.mc/menu
2853 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used
2855 instead of the system-wide applications menu.
2856 ~/.mc/Tree
2858 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view fea‐
2860 tures.
2861 ./.mc.menu
2863 Local user-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used
2865 instead of the home or system-wide applications menu.
2866
2868 This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
2869 License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built-in
2870 help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
2871
2873 The latest version of this program can be found at
2874 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mc/.
2875
2877 ed(1), gpm(1), mcserv(8), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
2878 tcsh(1), zsh(1).
2879 The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
2881 http://www.midnight-commander.org/
2882
2884 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
2885 distribution.
2886
2888 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains
2889 to be done.
2890 If you want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
2892 this address: mc-devel@gnome.org.
2893 Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program
2895 you are running (mc -V displays this information), the operating system
2896 you are running the program on. If the program crashes, we would
2897 appreciate a stack trace.
2898MC Version 4.7.0-pre1 August 2009 MC(1)