1MC(1)                       GNU Midnight Commander                       MC(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems.
7

SYNOPSIS

9       mc [-abcCdfhPstuUVx] [-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [-e [file] ...] [-v file]
10

DESCRIPTION

12       GNU   Midnight  Commander  is  a  directory  browser/file  manager  for
13       Unix-like operating systems.
14

OPTIONS

16       -a, --stickchars
17              Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
18
19       -b, --nocolor
20              Force black and white display.
21
22       -c, --color
23              Force color mode, please check the section Colors for  more  in‐
24              formation.
25
26       -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
30       --configure-options
31              Display configure options.
32
33       -d, --nomouse
34              Disable mouse support.
35
36       -e [file], --edit[=file]
37              Start the internal editor.  If the file is specified, open it on
38              startup.  See also mcedit (1).
39
40       -f, --datadir
41              Display  the  compiled-in  search  paths  for Midnight Commander
42              files.
43
44       -F, --datadir-info
45              Display extended info about compiled-in paths for Midnight  Com‐
46              mander.
47
48       -g, --oldmouse
49              Force  a  "normal  tracking"  mouse  mode.  Used when running on
50              xterm-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
51
52       -k, --resetsoft
53              Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo  data‐
54              base.  Only  useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't
55              work.
56
57       -K file, --keymap=file
58              Specify a name of keymap file in the command line.
59
60       -l file, --ftplog=file
61              Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
62
63       --nokeymap
64              Don't load key bindings from any  file,  use  default  hardcoded
65              keys.
66
67       -P file, --printwd=file
68              Print  the  last  working directory to the specified file.  This
69              option is not meant to be used  directly.   Instead,  it's  used
70              from  a special shell script that automatically changes the cur‐
71              rent directory of the shell to the last directory Midnight  Com‐
72              mander  was  in. Source the file %pkglibexecdir%/mc.sh (bash and
73              zsh users) or /usr/libexec/mc.csh (tcsh users)  respectively  to
74              define mc as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
75
76       -s, --slow
77              Turn  on  the  slow terminal mode, in this mode the program will
78              not draw expensive line drawing characters and will toggle  ver‐
79              bose mode off.
80
81       -S arg, --skin=arg
82              Specify  a name of skin in the command line. Technology of skins
83              is documented in the Skins section.
84
85       -t, --termcap
86              Used only if the code was compiled with S-Lang and terminfo:  it
87              makes  Midnight  Commander use the value of the TERMCAP variable
88              for the terminal information instead of the information  on  the
89              system wide terminal database
90
91       -u, --nosubshell
92              Disable  use  of  the concurrent shell (only makes sense if Mid‐
93              night Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
94
95       -U, --subshell
96              Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense  if
97              the  Midnight  Commander was built with the subshell support set
98              as an optional feature).
99
100       -v file, --view=file
101              Start the internal viewer to view the specified file.  See  also
102              mcview (1).
103
104       -V, --version
105              Display the version of the program.
106
107       -x, --xterm
108              Force  xterm mode.  Used when running on xterm-capable terminals
109              (two screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
110
111       -X, --no-x11
112              Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl, Shift
113
114       If both paths are specified, the first path name is  the  directory  to
115       show  in  the active panel; the second path name is the directory to be
116       shown in the other panel.
117
118       If one path is specified, the path name is the directory to show in the
119       active  panel; value of "other_dir" from panels.ini is the directory to
120       be shown in the passive panel.
121
122       If no paths are specified, current directory is  shown  in  the  active
123       panel;  value  of  "other_dir"  from  panels.ini is the directory to be
124       shown in the passive panel.
125

Overview

127       The screen of Midnight Commander is divided into  four  parts.   Almost
128       all  of  the  screen space is taken up by two directory panels.  By de‐
129       fault, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the shell  com‐
130       mand line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels.  The top‐
131       most line is the menu bar line.  The menu bar line may not be  visible,
132       but  appears  if you click the topmost line with the mouse or press the
133       F9 key.
134
135       Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same time.
136       One  of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in the cur‐
137       rent panel). Almost all operations take place  on  the  current  panel.
138       Some  file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the directory
139       of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they always  ask
140       you  for confirmation first). For more information, see the sections on
141       the Directory Panels, the Left and Right Menus and the File Menu.
142
143       You can execute system commands from Midnight Commander by simply  typ‐
144       ing  them.  Everything  you type will appear on the shell command line,
145       and when you press Enter, Midnight Commander will execute  the  command
146       line  you  typed;  read the Shell Command Line and Input Line Keys sec‐
147       tions to learn more about the command line.
148

Mouse Support

150       Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is  activated  whenever
151       you  are  running  on an xterm(1) terminal (it even works if you take a
152       telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to another machine from the xterm)  or
153       if  you  are  running  on a Linux console and have the gpm mouse server
154       running.
155
156       When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is se‐
157       lected;  if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or un‐
158       marked, depending on the previous state).
159
160       Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it  is  an
161       executable  program;  and if the extension file has a program specified
162       for the file's extension, the specified program is executed.
163
164       Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to  the  function
165       key labels by clicking on them.
166
167       The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400 milliseconds.
168       This may be changed to other values  by  editing  the  ~/.config/mc/ini
169       file and changing the mouse_repeat_rate parameter.
170
171       If  you  are running Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you can
172       get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting  text)  by  holding
173       down the Shift key.
174
175

Keys

177       Some  commands  in  Midnight  Commander  involve the use of the Control
178       (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the Meta (sometimes labeled ALT  or
179       even  Compose) keys. In this manual we will use the following abbrevia‐
180       tions:
181
182       C-<chr>
183              means hold the Control key while  typing  the  character  <chr>.
184              Thus C-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
185
186       Alt-<chr>
187              means  hold  the  Meta  or  Alt key down while typing <chr>.  If
188              there is no Meta or Alt key, type Esc, release it, then type the
189              character <chr>.
190
191       S-<chr>
192              means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
193
194       All  input  lines in Midnight Commander use an approximation to the GNU
195       Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
196
197       You may redefine key bindings. See redefine hotkey bindings
198
199       for more info. All other key bindings (described in  this  manual)  are
200       relative to default behavior.
201
202
203       There  are  many  sections which tell about the keys. The following are
204       the most important.
205
206       The File Menu section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands
207       appearing  in  the  File menu. This section includes the function keys.
208       Most of these commands perform some action,  usually  on  the  selected
209       file or the tagged files.
210
211       The  Directory Panels section documents the keys which select a file or
212       tag files as a target for a later action (the  action  is  usually  one
213       from the file menu).
214
215       The  Shell Command Line section list the keys which are used for enter‐
216       ing and editing command lines. Most of these copy file names  and  such
217       from  the directory panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typ‐
218       ing) or access the command line history.
219
220       Input Line Keys are used for editing input lines. This means  both  the
221       command line and the input lines in the query dialogs.
222
223
224  Redefine hotkey bindings
225       Hotkey  bindings  may  be  read from external file (keymap-file).  Ini‐
226       tially, Midnight Commander creates key bindings using keymap defined in
227       the   source   code.   Then,   two   files  %pkgdatadir%/mc.keymap  and
228       /etc/mc/mc.keymap are loaded always, sequentially reassigned key  bind‐
229       ings defined earlier.  User-defined keymap-file is searched on the fol‐
230       lowing algorithm (to the first one found):
231
232              1) command line option -K <keymap> or --keymap=<keymap>
233              2) Environment variable MC_KEYMAP
234              3) Parameter keymap in section  [Midnight-Commander]  of  config
235              file.
236              4) File ~/.config/mc/mc.keymap
237
238       Command  line option, environment variable and parameter in config file
239       may contain the absolute path to the keymap-file  (with  the  extension
240       .keymap  or  without  it).  Search of keymap-file will occur in (to the
241       first one found):
242
243              1) ~/.config/mc
244              2) /etc/mc/
245              3) %pkgdatadir%/
246
247
248  Miscellaneous Keys
249       Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
250
251       Enter  if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom
252              of  the  panels),  then that command is executed. If there is no
253              text in the command line then if the selection bar is over a di‐
254              rectory  the  Midnight Commander does a chdir(2) to the selected
255              directory and reloads the information on the panel; if  the  se‐
256              lection  is  an executable file then it is executed. Finally, if
257              the extension of the selected file name matches one of  the  ex‐
258              tensions  in  the extensions file then the corresponding command
259              is executed.
260
261       C-l    repaint all the information in Midnight Commander.
262
263       C-x c  run the Chmod command on a file or on the tagged files.
264
265       C-x o  run the Chown command on the  current  file  or  on  the  tagged
266              files.
267
268       C-x l  run the hard link command.
269
270       C-x s  run the absolute symbolic link command.
271
272       C-x v  run  the  relative symbolic link command. See the File Menu sec‐
273              tion for more information about symbolic links.
274
275       C-x i  set the other panel display mode to information.
276
277       C-x q  set the other panel display mode to quick view.
278
279       C-x !  execute the External panelize command.
280
281       C-x h  run the add directory to hotlist command.
282
283       Alt-!  executes the Filtered view command, described in the  view  com‐
284              mand.
285
286       Alt-?  executes the Find file command.
287
288       Alt-c  pops up the quick cd dialog.
289
290       C-o    when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or
291              under an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous com‐
292              mand.  When ran on the Linux console, Midnight Commander uses an
293              external program (cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring  of
294              information on the screen.
295
296       When  the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any time
297       and you will be taken back to Midnight Commander's main screen, to  re‐
298       turn  to  your  application  just type C-o.  If you have an application
299       suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other  pro‐
300       grams  from Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended appli‐
301       cation.
302
303  Directory Panels
304       This section lists the keys which operate on the directory  panels.  If
305       you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a look
306       at the section on Left and Right Menus.
307
308       Tab, C-i
309              change the current panel. The old other panel  becomes  the  new
310              current  panel  and  the old current panel becomes the new other
311              panel. The selection bar moves from the old current panel to the
312              new current panel.
313
314       Insert, C-t
315              to  tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo se‐
316              quence).  To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
317
318       Alt-e  to change charset of panel you may use Alt-e (M-e).  Recoding is
319              made  from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the
320              recoding, select "No translation" in the dialog of encodings.
321
322       Alt-g, Alt-r, Alt-j
323              used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and  the
324              bottom one, respectively.
325
326       Alt-t  toggle  the  current  display  listing  to show the next display
327              listing format.  With this it is possible to quickly  switch  to
328              brief  listing,  long  listing, user defined listing format, and
329              back to the default.
330
331       C-\ (control-backslash)
332              show the directory hotlist and change to the selected directory.
333
334       +  (plus)
335              this is used to select (tag) a group of files. Midnight  Comman‐
336              der  will prompt for a selection options. When Files only check‐
337              box is on, only files will be selected.  If Files only  is  off,
338              as  files  as directories will be selected.  When Shell Patterns
339              checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename
340              globbing  in  the  shell (* standing for zero or more characters
341              and ? standing for one character). If  Shell  Patterns  is  off,
342              then  the  tagging  of files is done with normal regular expres‐
343              sions (see ed (1)). When Case sensitive checkbox is on, the  se‐
344              lection will be case sensitive characters.  If Case sensitive is
345              off, the case will be ignored.
346
347       \ (backslash)
348              use the "\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the  oppo‐
349              site of the Plus key.
350
351       up-key, C-p
352              move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
353
354       down-key, C-n
355              move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
356
357       home, a1, Alt-<
358              move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
359
360       end, c1, Alt->
361              move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
362
363       next-page, C-v
364              move the selection bar one page down.
365
366       prev-page, Alt-v
367              move the selection bar one page up.
368
369       Alt-o  If  the currently selected file is a directory, load that direc‐
370              tory on the other panel and moves  the  selection  to  the  next
371              file.  If  the  currently selected file is not a directory, load
372              the parent directory on the other panel and moves the  selection
373              to the next file.
374
375       Alt-i  make the current directory of the current panel also the current
376              directory of the other panel.  Put the other panel to the  list‐
377              ing  mode  if  needed.   If  the current panel is panelized, the
378              other panel doesn't become panelized.
379
380       C-PageUp, C-PageDown
381              only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and  to  the
382              currently selected directory respectively.
383
384       Alt-y  moves  to  the  previous directory in the history, equivalent to
385              clicking the < with the mouse.
386
387       Alt-u  moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to click‐
388              ing the > with the mouse.
389
390       Alt-S-h, Alt-H
391              displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v'
392              with the mouse.
393
394  Quick search
395       The Quick search mode allows you to perform fast file  search  in  file
396       panel.   Press C-s or Alt-s to start a filename search in the directory
397       listing.
398
399       When the search is active, the user input will be added to  the  search
400       string  instead  of the command line. If the Show mini-status option is
401       enabled the search string is shown on the mini-status line.  When  typ‐
402       ing,  the  selection  bar  will move to the next file starting with the
403       typed letters. The Backspace or DEL keys can be used to correct  typing
404       mistakes. If C-s is pressed again, the next match is searched for.
405
406       If  quick  search  is started with double pressing of C-s, the previous
407       quick search pattern will be used for current search.
408
409       Besides the filename characters, you can also use  wildcard  characters
410       '*' and '?'.
411
412  Shell Command Line
413       This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
414       entering shell commands.
415
416       Alt-Enter
417              copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
418
419       C-Enter
420              same a Alt-Enter.  May not work on remote systems and some  ter‐
421              minals.
422
423       C-S-Enter
424              copy  the  full  path name of the currently selected file to the
425              command line.  May not work on remote systems  and  some  termi‐
426              nals.
427
428       Alt-Tab
429              does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
430              pletion for you.
431
432       C-x t, C-x C-t
433              copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the  se‐
434              lected  file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of the other panel
435              (C-x C-t) to the command line.
436
437       C-x p, C-x C-p
438              the first key sequence copies the current path name to the  com‐
439              mand line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path
440              name to the command line.
441
442       C-q    the quote command can be used to insert characters that are oth‐
443              erwise interpreted by Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
444
445       Alt-p, Alt-n
446              use  these  keys  to  browse  through the command history. Alt-p
447              takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
448
449       Alt-h  displays the history for the current input line.
450
451  General Movement Keys
452       The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common code
453       to  handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same keys. Each of
454       them also accepts some keys of its own.
455
456       Other parts of Midnight Commander use some of the same  movement  keys,
457       so this section may be of use for those parts too.
458
459       Up, C-p
460              moves one line backward.
461
462       Down, C-n
463              moves one line forward.
464
465       Prev Page, Page Up, Alt-v
466              moves one page up.
467
468       Next Page, Page Down, C-v
469              moves one page down.
470
471       Home, A1
472              moves to the beginning.
473
474       End, C1
475              move to the end.
476
477       The  help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in addi‐
478       tion the to ones mentioned above:
479
480       b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
481              moves one page up.
482
483       Space bar
484              moves one page down.
485
486       u, d   moves one half of a page up or down.
487
488       g, G   moves to the beginning or to the end.
489
490  Input Line Keys
491       The input lines (they are used for the command line and for  the  query
492       dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
493
494       C-a    puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
495
496       C-e    puts the cursor at the end of the line.
497
498       C-b, move-left
499              move the cursor one position left.
500
501       C-f, move-right
502              move the cursor one position right.
503
504       Alt-f  moves one word forward.
505
506       Alt-b  moves one word backward.
507
508       C-h, Backspace
509              delete the previous character.
510
511       C-d, Delete
512              delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
513
514       C-@    sets the mark for cutting.
515
516       C-w    copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer
517              and removes the text from the input line.
518
519       Alt-w  copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a  kill  buf‐
520              fer.
521
522       C-y    yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
523
524       C-k    kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
525
526       Alt-p, Alt-n
527              Use  these  keys  to  browse  through the command history. Alt-p
528              takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
529
530       Alt-C-h, Alt-Backspace
531              delete one word backward.
532
533       Alt-Tab
534              does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
535              pletion for you.
536
537
539       The  menu  bar  pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
540       row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left",  "File",  "Com‐
541       mand", "Options" and "Right".
542
543       The Left and Right Menus allow you to modify the appearance of the left
544       and right directory panels.
545
546       The File Menu lists the actions you can perform on  the  currently  se‐
547       lected file or the tagged files.
548
549       The  Command  Menu lists the actions which are more general and bear no
550       relation to the currently selected file or the tagged files.
551
552       The Options Menu lists the actions which allow you  to  customize  Mid‐
553       night Commander.
554
555  Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus
556       The  outlook  of  the directory panels can be changed from the Left and
557       Right menus (they are named Above and Below when the  horizontal  panel
558       split is chosen from the Layout options dialog).
559
560    Listing Format...
561       The  listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
562       four different listing formats available: Full, Brief, Long  and  User.
563       The  full  directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
564       the modification time.
565
566       The brief view shows only the file name and it has from 1 up to 9  col‐
567       umns  (therefore  showing more files unlike other views). The long view
568       is similar to the output of ls -l command.  The  long  view  takes  the
569       whole screen width.
570
571       If  you  choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify the
572       display format.
573
574       The user display format must start with a panel size  specifier.   This
575       may  be  "half"  or  "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
576       full screen panel respectively.
577
578       After the panel size, you may specify how many listings to fit  in  the
579       panel,  side-by-side  (in  other  words:  how  many times to repeat the
580       fields horizontally). This defaults to 1. You may change this by adding
581       a number from 1 to 9 to the format string.
582
583       After  this you add the name of the fields with an optional size speci‐
584       fier.  This are the available fields you may display:
585
586       name   displays the file name.
587
588       size   displays the file size.
589
590       bsize  is an alternative form of the size format. It displays the  size
591              of  the  files  and  for  directories  it  just shows SUB-DIR or
592              UP--DIR.
593
594       type   displays a one character wide type  field.   This  character  is
595              similar to what is displayed by ls with the -F flag - * for exe‐
596              cutable files, / for directories, @ for links, = for sockets,  -
597              for  character  devices, + for block devices, | for pipes, ~ for
598              symbolic links to directories and !  for stale  symlinks  (links
599              that point nowhere).
600
601       mark   an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
602
603       mtime  file's last modification time.
604
605       atime  file's last access time.
606
607       ctime  file's status change time.
608
609       perm   a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
610
611       mode   an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
612
613       nlink  the number of links to the file.
614
615       ngid   the GID (numeric).
616
617       nuid   the UID (numeric).
618
619       owner  the owner of the file.
620
621       group  the group of the file.
622
623       inode  the inode of the file.
624
625       Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
626
627       space  a space in the display format.
628
629       |      add a vertical line to the display format.
630
631       To  force  one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add :
632       followed by the number of characters you want the field  to  have.   If
633       the  number  is  followed  by the symbol +, then the size specifies the
634       minimal field size - if the program finds out that there is more  space
635       on the screen, it will then expand that field.
636
637       For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:
638
639       half type name | size | mtime
640
641       And the Long display corresponds to this format:
642
643       full  perm  space  nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
644       space name
645
646       This is a nice user display format:
647
648       half name | size:7 | type mode:3
649
650       Panels may also be set to the following modes:
651
652       Info   The info view display information related to the  currently  se‐
653              lected  file  and if possible information about the current file
654              system.
655
656       Tree   The tree view is quite similar to the  directory  tree  feature.
657              See the section about it for more information.
658
659       Quick View
660              In  this  mode,  the  panel will switch to a reduced viewer that
661              displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you se‐
662              lect  the  panel  (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have
663              access to the usual viewer commands.
664
665    Sort Order...
666       The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification  time,
667       by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size, by
668       inode and unsorted.  In the Sort order dialog box you  can  choose  the
669       sort  order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse or‐
670       der by checking the reverse box.
671
672       By default directories are sorted before files but this can be  changed
673       from the Panel options menu (option Mix all files).
674
675    Filter...
676       The  filter  command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
677       *.tar.gz) which the files must match to be  shown.  Regardless  of  the
678       filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories are always
679       shown in the directory panel.
680
681    Reread
682       The reread command reload the list of files in  the  directory.  It  is
683       useful if other processes have created or removed files.
684
685  File Menu
686       Midnight  Commander  uses  the  F1 - F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts for
687       commands appearing in the file menu.   The  escape  sequences  for  the
688       function  keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10.  On terminals
689       without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
690       pressing  the  Esc key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
691       (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
692
693       The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in  paren‐
694       theses):
695
696       Help (F1)
697
698       Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the help viewer, you
699       can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to follow
700       that  link.  The  keys Space and Backspace are used to move forward and
701       backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the  full  list  of  ac‐
702       cepted keys.
703
704       Menu (F2)
705
706       Invoke  the  user  menu.  The user menu provides an easy way to provide
707       users with a menu and add extra features to Midnight Commander.
708
709       View (F3, F13)
710
711       View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the  Internal
712       File Viewer but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an
713       external file viewer specified by the VIEWER environment variable.   If
714       VIEWER is undefined, the PAGER environment variable is tried.  If PAGER
715       is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked.  If you use  F13  in‐
716       stead,  the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or pre‐
717       processing to the file.
718
719       See parameters for external viewer for explain how you may  specify  an
720       extended command line options for external viewers.
721
722       Filtered View (Alt-!)
723
724       This  command prompts for a command and its arguments (the argument de‐
725       faults to the currently selected file name), the output from such  com‐
726       mand is shown in the internal file viewer.
727
728       Edit (F4, F14)
729
730       Press  F4  to  edit  the  highlighted file.  Press F14 (usually F14) to
731       start the editor with a new, empty file.  Currently they invoke the  vi
732       editor,  or the editor specified in the EDITOR environment variable, or
733       the Internal File Editor if the use_internal_edit option is on.
734
735       See parameters for external editor for explain how you may  specify  an
736       extended command line options for external editors.
737
738       Copy (F5, F15)
739
740       Press  F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file
741       (or the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the  di‐
742       rectory/filename  you  specify in the input dialog. The destination de‐
743       faults to the directory in the non-selected panel. Space  for  destina‐
744       tion  file  may be preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure
745       option.  During this process, you can press C-c or Esc to abort the op‐
746       eration.  For details about source mask (which will be usually either *
747       or ^\(.*\)$ depending on setting of Use shell  patterns)  and  possible
748       wildcards in the destination see Mask copy/rename.
749
750       F15  (usually F15) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the se‐
751       lected panel. It always operates on the selected  file,  regardless  of
752       any tagged files.
753
754       On  some  systems,  it  is possible to do the copy in the background by
755       clicking on the background button (or  pressing  Alt-b  in  the  dialog
756       box).  The Background Jobs is used to control the background process.
757
758       Link (C-x l)
759
760       Create a hard link to the current file.
761
762       Absolute symlink (C-x s)
763
764       Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
765
766       Relative symLink (C-x v)
767
768       Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
769
770       To  those  of  you  who don't know what links are: creating a link to a
771       file is a bit like copying the file, but both the source  filename  and
772       the destination filename represent the same file image. For example, if
773       you edit one of these files, all changes you make will appear  in  both
774       files. Some people call links aliases or shortcuts.
775
776       A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
777       telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you  delete
778       either  one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
779       to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links  when
780       you don't even want to know.
781
782       A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If the
783       original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite easy
784       to  notice  that the files represent the same image. Midnight Commander
785       shows an "@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a symbolic link to
786       somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).  The orig‐
787       inal file which the link points to is shown on mini-status line if  the
788       Show mini-status option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to
789       avoid the confusion that can be caused by hard links.
790
791       When you press "C-x s" Midnight Commander will  automatically  fill  in
792       the  complete path+filename of the original file and suggest a name for
793       the link.  You can change either one.
794
795       Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the original into
796       a relative path. An absolute path starts from the root directory:
797
798       /home/frodo/mc/mc -> /home/frodo/new/mc
799
800       A  relative  link  describes the original file's location starting from
801       the location of the link itself:
802
803       /home/frodo/mc/mc -> ../new/mc
804
805       You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing
806       "C-x v" instead of "C-x s".
807
808       Rename/Move (F6, F16)
809
810       Press  F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file
811       (or the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the  di‐
812       rectory/filename  you specify in the input dialog.  The destination de‐
813       faults to the directory in the non-selected  panel.  For  more  details
814       look  at  Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite simi‐
815       lar.
816
817       F16 (usually F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the  se‐
818       lected  panel.  It  always operates on the selected file, regardless of
819       any tagged files.
820
821       On some systems, it is possible to do the copy  in  the  background  by
822       clicking  on  the  background  button  (or pressing Alt-b in the dialog
823       box).  The Background Jobs is used to control the background process.
824
825       Mkdir (F7)
826
827       Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
828
829       Delete (F8)
830
831       Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the currently
832       selected  panel.  During the process, you can press C-c or Esc to abort
833       the operation.
834
835       Quick cd (Alt-c) Use the quick cd command if you have full command line
836       and want to cd somewhere.
837
838       Select group (+)
839
840       This  is used to select (tag) a group of files. Midnight Commander will
841       prompt for a selection options. When Files only checkbox  is  on,  only
842       files  will be selected.  If Files only is off, as files as directories
843       will be selected.  When Shell Patterns checkbox is on, the regular  ex‐
844       pression  is  much  like the filename globbing in the shell (* standing
845       for zero or more characters and ?   standing  for  one  character).  If
846       Shell  Patterns  is  off, then the tagging of files is done with normal
847       regular expressions (see ed (1)). When Case sensitive checkbox  is  on,
848       the  selection will be case sensitive characters.  If Case sensitive is
849       off, the case will be ignored.
850
851       Unselect group (\)
852
853       Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of  the  Select
854       group command.
855
856       Quit (F10, S-F10)
857
858       Terminate  Midnight  Commander. S-F10 is used when you want to quit and
859       you are using the shell wrapper.  S-F10 will not take you to  the  last
860       directory  you visited with Midnight Commander, instead it will stay at
861       the directory where you started Midnight Commander.
862
863    Quick cd
864       This command is useful if you have a full command line and want  to  cd
865       somewhere  without having to yank and paste the command line. This com‐
866       mand pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter
867       after  cd  on  the command line and then you press enter. This features
868       all the things that are already in the internal cd command.
869
870  Command Menu
871       The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.
872
873       The "Find file" command allows you to search for a specific file.
874
875       The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory  pan‐
876       els.
877
878       The  "Switch  panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell
879       command.  This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
880
881       The "Compare directories" command compares the  directory  panels  with
882       each  other.  You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make the panels
883       identical. There are three compare methods. The quick  method  compares
884       only  file  size  and  file  date.  The  thorough  method  makes a full
885       byte-by-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if  the  ma‐
886       chine  does not support the mmap(2) system call.  The size-only compare
887       method just compares the file sizes and does not check the contents  or
888       the date times, it just checks the file size.
889
890       The  "External panelize" allows you to execute an external program, and
891       make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
892
893       The "Command history" command shows a list of typed commands.  The  se‐
894       lected  command  is copied to the command line. The command history can
895       also be accessed by typing Alt-p or Alt-n.
896
897       The "Directory hotlist" command makes changing of the current directory
898       to often used directories faster.
899
900       The  "Screen  list" command shows a dialog window with the list of cur‐
901       rently running internal editors, viewers and other MC modules that sup‐
902       port this mode.
903
904       The "Edit extension file" command allows you to specify programs to ex‐
905       ecuted when you try to execute, view, edit and  do  a  bunch  of  other
906       thing on files with certain extensions (filename endings).
907
908       The  "Edit  Menu  File"  command  may be used for editing the user menu
909       (which appears by pressing F2).
910
911    Directory Tree
912       The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.  You
913       can  select  a  directory  from  the figure and Midnight Commander will
914       change to that directory.
915
916       There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree  command
917       is  available  from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
918       from the Left or Right menu.
919
920       To get rid of long delays, Midnight Commander creates the  tree  figure
921       by  scanning  only a small subset of all the directories. If the direc‐
922       tory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent directory and
923       press C-r (or F2).
924
925       You can use the following keys:
926
927       General movement keys
928              are accepted.
929
930       Enter. In  the  directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to
931              this directory in the current panel. In the tree  view,  changes
932              to this directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode
933              in the current panel.
934
935       C-r, F2 (Rescan).
936              Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure is  out  of
937              date:  it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirectories
938              which don't exist any more.
939
940       F3 (Forget).
941              Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this  to  remove
942              clutter  from  the figure. If you want the directory back to the
943              tree figure press F2 in its parent directory.
944
945       F4 (Static/Dynamic).
946              Toggle between the dynamic navigation  mode  (default)  and  the
947              static navigation mode.
948
949       In  the  static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to se‐
950       lect a directory. All known directories are shown.
951
952       In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to  se‐
953       lect a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent directory,
954       and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the  parent,  sib‐
955       ling  and children directories are shown, others are left out. The tree
956       figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
957
958       F5 (Copy).
959              Copy the directory.
960
961       F6 (RenMov).
962              Move the directory.
963
964       F7 (Mkdir).
965              Make a new directory below this directory.
966
967       F8 (Delete).
968              Delete this directory from the file system.
969
970       C-s, Alt-s.
971              Search the next directory matching the search string.  If  there
972              is no such directory these keys will move one line down.
973
974       C-h, Backspace.
975              Delete the last character of the search string.
976
977       Any other character.
978              Add  the character to the search string and move to the next di‐
979              rectory which starts with these characters. In the tree view you
980              must  first activate the search mode by pressing C-s. The search
981              string is shown in the mini status line.
982
983       The following actions are available only in the  directory  tree.  They
984       aren't supported in the tree view.
985
986       F1 (Help).
987              Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
988
989       Esc, F10.
990              Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
991
992       The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter. See also the
993       section on mouse support.
994
995    Find File
996       The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the search
997       and  the  filename  to be searched for. By pressing the Tree button you
998       can select the start directory from the directory tree figure.
999
1000       The "File name" input field contains a filename pattern to be  searched
1001       for.  It  is  interpreted as a shell pattern or as a regular expression
1002       depending on the state of the "Using shell patterns" checkbox. An empty
1003       value is valid and matches any file name.
1004
1005       The  "Content"  input  field contains a string to search for within the
1006       files. Leave this field empty to disable searching file contents.
1007
1008       Option "Whole words" allows select only those files containing  matches
1009       that form whole words. Like grep -w.
1010
1011       You  can start the search by pressing the OK button.  During the search
1012       you can stop from the Stop button and continue from the Start button.
1013
1014       You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The  Chdir
1015       button will change to the directory of the currently selected file. The
1016       Again button will ask for the parameters for a  new  search.  The  Quit
1017       button  quits  the search operation. The Panelize button will place the
1018       found files to the current directory panel so that  you  can  do  addi‐
1019       tional  operations on them (view, copy, move, delete and so on). To re‐
1020       turn to the normal file listing, change directory to "..".
1021
1022       The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it allow
1023       one  to  set  up the list of directories that should be skip during the
1024       search files (for example, you may want to avoid searches on  a  CD-ROM
1025       or  on a NFS directory that is mounted across a slow link). List compo‐
1026       nents must be separated with a colon, here is an example:
1027
1028       /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1029
1030       Relative paths are supported also. The following example shows  how  to
1031       skip special directories of version control systems:
1032       /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
1033
1034       Attention:  input  field  can contain a dot (.), this means the current
1035       absolute path.
1036
1037       You may consider using the External panelize command  for  some  opera‐
1038       tions. Find file command is for simple queries only, while using Exter‐
1039       nal panelize you can do as mysterious searches as you would like.
1040
1041    External panelize
1042       The External panelize allows you to execute an  external  program,  and
1043       make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1044
1045       For  example,  if  you  want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1046       symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external paneliza‐
1047       tion to run the following command:
1048
1049       find . -type l -print
1050
1051       Upon  command  completion,  the directory contents of the panel will no
1052       longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but  all  the
1053       files that are symbolic links.
1054
1055       If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded from
1056       your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file  name
1057       from the transfer log files:
1058
1059       awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1060
1061       You  may  want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive
1062       name, so that you can recall them quickly. You do this  by  typing  the
1063       command on the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a
1064       name under which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you  just
1065       choose that command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1066
1067    Hotlist
1068       The  Directory  hotlist  command shows the labels of the directories in
1069       the directory hotlist. Midnight Commander will change to the  directory
1070       corresponding  to the selected label.  From the hotlist dialog, you can
1071       remove already created label/directory pairs and add new ones.  To  add
1072       new  directories  quickly,  you can use the Add to hotlist command (C-x
1073       h), which adds the current directory into the directory hotlist, asking
1074       just for the label for the directory.
1075
1076       This  makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using
1077       the CDPATH variable as described in internal cd command description.
1078
1079    Edit Extension File
1080       This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.config/mc/mc.ext.  The for‐
1081       mat of this file following:
1082
1083       All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1084
1085       Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1086
1087       keyword/expr, i.e. everything after the slash until new line is expr.
1088
1089       keyword can be:
1090
1091       shell  - expr is an extension (no wildcards).  File matches it its name
1092              ends with expr.  Example: shell/.tar matches *.tar.
1093
1094       regex  - expr is a  regular  expression.   File  matches  if  its  name
1095              matches the regular expression.
1096
1097       directory
1098              -  expr is a regular expression.  File matches if it is a direc‐
1099              tory and its name matches the regular expression.
1100
1101       type   - expr is a regular expression.  File matches if the  output  of
1102              file %f without the initial "filename:" part matches regular ex‐
1103              pression expr.
1104
1105       default
1106              - matches any file.  expr is ignored.
1107
1108       include
1109              - denotes a common section.  expr is the name of the section.
1110
1111       Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the  for‐
1112       mat:  keyword=command  (with  no spaces around =), where keyword should
1113       be: Open (invoked on Enter or double click), View (F3),  Edit  (F4)  or
1114       Include  (to  add  rules  from  the  common  section).   command is any
1115       one-line shell command, with the simple macro substitution.
1116
1117       Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important.   If
1118       the  appropriate  action  is  missing, search continues as if this rule
1119       didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first  and  second  entry  and
1120       View  action  is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View
1121       action from the second entry will be used).  default should  match  all
1122       the actions.
1123
1124    Background Jobs
1125       This  lets  you  control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1126       process (only copy and move files operations can be done in  the  back‐
1127       ground).  You can stop, restart and kill a background job from here.
1128
1129    Edit Menu File
1130       The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by the
1131       user. When you access the user menu, the file .mc.menu from the current
1132       directory is used if it exists, but only if it is owned by user or root
1133       and is not world-writable.  If no such file found, ~/.config/mc/menu is
1134       tried  in  the  same way, and otherwise mc uses the default system-wide
1135       menu %pkgdatadir%/mc.menu.
1136
1137       The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with  any‐
1138       thing but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in order to
1139       be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should be a  let‐
1140       ter).  All  the lines that start with a space or a tab are the commands
1141       that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1142
1143       When an option is selected all the command  lines  of  the  option  are
1144       copied  to  a  temporary  file  in  the  temporary  directory  (usually
1145       /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user  to  put
1146       normal  shell  constructs  in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1147       takes place before executing the menu code. For more  information,  see
1148       macro substitution.
1149
1150       Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1151
1152       A    Dump the currently selected file
1153            od -c %f
1154
1155       B    Edit a bug report and send it to root
1156            I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
1157            vi $I
1158            mail -s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
1159            rm -f $I
1160
1161       M    Read mail
1162            emacs -f rmail
1163
1164       N    Read Usenet news
1165            emacs -f gnus
1166
1167       H    Call the info hypertext browser
1168            info
1169
1170       J    Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1171            tar cf - . | (cd %D && tar xvpf -)
1172
1173       K    Make a release of the current subdirectory
1174            echo -n "Name of distribution file: "
1175            read tar
1176            ln -s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1177            cd ..
1178            tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1179
1180       = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1181       X       Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1182            tar xzvf %f
1183
1184       Default Conditions
1185
1186       Each  menu  entry  may  be  preceded by a condition. The condition must
1187       start from the first column with a '=' character. If the  condition  is
1188       true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1189
1190       Condition syntax:   = <sub-cond>
1191         or:               = <sub-cond> | <sub-cond> ...
1192         or:               = <sub-cond> & <sub-cond> ...
1193
1194       Sub-condition is one of following:
1195
1196         y <pattern>       syntax of current file matching pattern?
1197                      (for edit menu only)
1198         f <pattern>       current file matching pattern?
1199         F <pattern>       other file matching pattern?
1200         d <pattern>       current directory matching pattern?
1201         D <pattern>       other directory matching pattern?
1202         t <type>          current file of type?
1203         T <type>          other file of type?
1204         x <filename>      is it executable filename?
1205         ! <sub-cond>      negate the result of sub-condition
1206
1207       Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according to
1208       the shell patterns option. You can override the  global  value  of  the
1209       shell  patterns  option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first line
1210       of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1211
1212       Type is one or more of the following characters:
1213
1214         n  not a directory
1215         r  regular file
1216         d  directory
1217         l  link
1218         c  character device
1219         b  block device
1220         f  FIFO (pipe)
1221         s  socket
1222         x  executable file
1223         t  tagged
1224
1225       For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't' type
1226       is  a  little special because it acts on the panel instead of the file.
1227       The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in  the  current
1228       panel and false if not.
1229
1230       If  the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1231       shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1232
1233       The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1234            = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1235       is calculated as
1236            ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1237
1238       Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1239
1240       = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1241       L    List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
1242            gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -
1243
1244       Addition Conditions
1245
1246       If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?')  it
1247       is  an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1248       be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry  will
1249       not be included in the menu.
1250
1251       You  can  combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1252       with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace).  If  you
1253       want  to  use  two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1254       defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines,  one
1255       starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1256
1257       Comments  are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1258       with '#', space or tab.
1259
1260  Options Menu
1261       Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and  off  in
1262       several  dialogs  which  are accessible from this menu. Options are en‐
1263       abled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1264
1265       The Configuration command pops up a dialog from which  you  can  change
1266       most of settings of Midnight Commander.
1267
1268       The  Layout  command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of
1269       options how mc looks like on the screen.
1270
1271       The Panel options command pops up a dialog from which you  specify  op‐
1272       tions of file manager panels.
1273
1274       The  Confirmation command pops up a dialog from which you specify which
1275       actions you want to confirm.
1276
1277       The Appearance command pops up a dialog  from  which  you  specify  the
1278       skin.
1279
1280       The  Display  bits  command  pops up a dialog from which you may select
1281       which characters is your terminal able to display.
1282
1283       The Learn keys command pops up a dialog from which you test  some  keys
1284       which are not working on some terminals and you may fix them.
1285
1286       The Virtual FS command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS
1287       related options.
1288
1289       The Save setup command saves the current settings of  the  Left,  Right
1290       and Options menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1291
1292    Configuration
1293       The options in this dialog are divided into several groups: "File oper‐
1294       ation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run" and "Other options".
1295
1296       File operation options
1297
1298       Verbose operation.  This toggles whether  the  file  Copy,  Rename  and
1299       Delete  operations are verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each op‐
1300       eration). If you have a slow terminal, you may wish to disable the ver‐
1301       bose  operation.  It  is  automatically turned off if the speed of your
1302       terminal is less than 9600 bps.
1303
1304       Compute totals.  If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander computes
1305       total  byte  sizes  and total number of files prior to any Copy, Rename
1306       and Delete operations. This will  provide  you  with  a  more  accurate
1307       progress  bar  at the expense of some speed. This option has no effect,
1308       if Verbose operation is disabled.
1309
1310       Classic progressbar.  If this option is  enabled,  the  progressbar  of
1311       Copy/Move/Delete operations is always grown form left to right. If dis‐
1312       abled, the growing direction of progressbar  follows  to  direction  of
1313       Copy/Move/Delete  operation:  from  left  panel  to  right one and vice
1314       versa. Enabled by default.
1315
1316       Mkdir autoname.  When you press F7 to create a new directory, the input
1317       line  in  popup dialog will be filled by name of current file or direc‐
1318       tory in active panel.  Disabled by default.
1319
1320       Preallocate space.  Preallocate space for whole target file, if  possi‐
1321       ble, before copy operation.  Disabled by default.
1322
1323       Esc key mode.
1324
1325       By  default,  Midnight  Commander  treats  the Esc key as a key prefix.
1326       Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to exit a dialog. But  there
1327       is a possibility to use a single press of Esc key for that action.
1328
1329       Single press.  By default this option is disabled. If you'll enable it,
1330       the Esc key will act as a prefix key for  set  up  time  interval  (see
1331       Timeout  option below), and if no extra keys have arrived, then the Esc
1332       key is interpreted as a cancel key (Esc Esc).
1333
1334       Timeout.  This options is used to setup the time interval (in microsec‐
1335       onds)  for  single  press  of Esc key. By default, this interval is one
1336       second (1000000 microseconds). Also the timeout can  be  set  via  KEY‐
1337       BOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US environment variable (also in microseconds), which
1338       has higher priority than Timeout option value.
1339
1340       Pause after run
1341
1342       After executing your commands, Midnight Commander can  pause,  so  that
1343       you  can  examine  the output of the command.  There are three possible
1344       settings for this variable:
1345
1346       Never.  Means that you do not want to see the output of  your  command.
1347       If  you are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will be
1348       able to see the output of the command by typing C-o.
1349
1350       On dumb terminals.  You will get the pause message  on  terminals  that
1351       are not capable of showing the output of the last command executed (any
1352       terminal that is not an xterm or the Linux console).
1353
1354       Always.  The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1355
1356       Other options
1357
1358       Use internal editor.  If this option is enabled, the built-in file edi‐
1359       tor is used to edit files. If the option is disabled, the editor speci‐
1360       fied in the EDITOR environment variable is used.  If no editor is spec‐
1361       ified, vi is used.  See the section on the internal file editor.
1362
1363       Use  internal  viewer.   If  this  option is enabled, the built-in file
1364       viewer is used to view files. If the  option  is  disabled,  the  pager
1365       specified  in  the  PAGER environment variable is used.  If no pager is
1366       specified, the view command is used.  See the section on  the  internal
1367       file viewer.
1368
1369       Ask  new  file name.  If this option is enabled, file name is asked be‐
1370       fore open new file in editor.
1371
1372       Auto menus.  If this option is enabled, the user menu will  be  invoked
1373       at startup.  Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
1374
1375       Drop down menus.  When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will
1376       be activated as soon as you press the F9 key. Otherwise, you will  only
1377       get  the menu title, and you will have to activate the menu either with
1378       the arrow keys or with the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are  using
1379       hotkeys.
1380
1381       Shell  Patterns.   By  default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands
1382       will use shell-like regular expressions. The following conversions  are
1383       performed  to  achieve  this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more
1384       characters); the '?'  is replaced by '.' (exactly  one  character)  and
1385       '.' by the literal dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular ex‐
1386       pressions are the ones described in ed(1).
1387
1388       Complete: show all.  By default, Midnight Commander pops up all  possi‐
1389       ble  completions  if  the  completion  is ambiguous only when you press
1390       Alt-Tab for the second time.  For the first time, it just completes  as
1391       much  as  possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity.  Enable this op‐
1392       tion if you want to see all possible completions  even  after  pressing
1393       Alt-Tab the first time.
1394
1395       Rotating dash.  If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander shows
1396       a rotating dash in the upper right corner as a work in progress indica‐
1397       tor.
1398
1399       Cd  follows  links.   This option, if set, causes Midnight Commander to
1400       follow the logical chain of directories when changing current directory
1401       either  in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default be‐
1402       havior of bash. When unset, Midnight Commander follows the real  direc‐
1403       tory  structure,  so  cd  .. if you've entered that directory through a
1404       link will move you to the current directory's real parent  and  not  to
1405       the directory where the link was present.
1406
1407       Safe  delete.   If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory
1408       hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more  difficult.   The  default
1409       selection  in the confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from Yes to
1410       No.  This option is disabled by default.
1411
1412       Safe overwrite.  If this option is enabled, overwriting files  uninten‐
1413       tionally  becomes  more  difficult.  The default selection in the over‐
1414       write confirmation dialog changes from Yes to No.  This option is  dis‐
1415       abled by default.
1416
1417       Auto  save  setup.   If  this option is enabled, when you exit Midnight
1418       Commander, the configurable options of Midnight Commander are saved  in
1419       the ~/.config/mc/ini file.
1420
1421    Layout
1422       The  layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1423       of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into several  groups:
1424       "Panel split", "Console output" and "Other options".
1425
1426       Panel split
1427
1428       The  rest  of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1429       can specify whether the area is split to the panels in Vertical or Hor‐
1430       izontal  direction. Panel layout can be changed using Alt-, (Alt-comma)
1431       shortcut.
1432
1433       Equal split.  By default, panels have equal sizes.  Using  this  option
1434       you can specify an unequal split.
1435
1436       Console output
1437
1438       On  the  Linux  or  FreeBSD  console you can specify how many lines are
1439       shown in the output window. This option is available if  Midnight  Com‐
1440       mander runs on native console only.
1441
1442       Other options
1443
1444       Menu  bar  visible.  If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is al‐
1445       ways visible on the top row of screen above panels. Enabled by default.
1446
1447       Command prompt.  If enabled, command line is available. Enabled by  de‐
1448       fault.
1449
1450       Keybar  visible.  If enabled, 10 labels associated with F1-F10 keys are
1451       located at the bottom row of screen. Enabled by default.
1452
1453       Hintbar visible.  If enabled, the one-line hints are visible below pan‐
1454       els. Enabled by default.
1455
1456       XTerm  window title.  When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight
1457       Commander sets the terminal window title to the current working  direc‐
1458       tory  and updates it when necessary.  If your terminal emulator is bro‐
1459       ken and you see some incorrect output on startup and directory  change,
1460       turn off this option.  Enabled by default.
1461
1462       Show  free  space.   If  enabled, free space and total space of current
1463       file system is shown at the bottom frame of panel. Enabled by default.
1464
1465    Panel options
1466       Main panel options
1467
1468       Show mini-status.  If enabled, one line of status information about the
1469       currently  selected  item is shown at the bottom of the panels. Enabled
1470       by default.
1471
1472       Use SI size units.  If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander  will
1473       use  SI  prefixes (base 10) when displaying any byte sizes. If disabled
1474       (default), Midnight Commander will use IEC prefixes (base 2).
1475
1476       Mix all files.  If this option is enabled, all  files  and  directories
1477       are  shown mixed together.  If the option is disabled (default), direc‐
1478       tories (and links to directories) are shown at  the  beginning  of  the
1479       listing, and other files below.
1480
1481       Show backup files.  If enabled, Midnight Commander will show files end‐
1482       ing with a tilde.  Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls option
1483       -B). Enabled by default.
1484
1485       Show  hidden files.  If enabled, Midnight Commander will show all files
1486       that start with a dot (like ls -a). Disabled by default.
1487
1488       Fast directory reload.  If this option is enabled,  Midnight  Commander
1489       will  use  a trick to determine if the directory contents have changed.
1490       The trick is to reload the directory only if the i-node of  the  direc‐
1491       tory  has  changed;  this means that reloads only happen when files are
1492       created or deleted.  If what changes is the i-node for a  file  in  the
1493       directory  (file  size changes, mode or owner changes, etc) the display
1494       is not updated.  In these cases, if you have the option on, you have to
1495       rescan the directory manually (with C-r). Disabled by default.
1496
1497       Mark moves down.  If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you
1498       mark a file (with Insert key). Enabled by default.
1499
1500       Reverse files only.  Allow revert selection of files only.  Enabled  by
1501       default.   If  enabled, the reverse selection is applied to files only,
1502       not to directories.  The selection of directories is untouched. If off,
1503       the  reverse  selection is applied to files as well to directories: all
1504       unselected items become selected, and vice versa.
1505
1506       Simple swap.  If both panels contain file listing,  simple  swap  means
1507       that panels exchange its screen positions: left panel become right one,
1508       and vice versa. If this option is unchecked, file  listing  panels  ex‐
1509       change  its  content keeping listing format and sort options. Unchecked
1510       by default.
1511
1512       Auto save panels setup.  If this option is enabled, when you exit  Mid‐
1513       night  Commander,  the  current  settings  of  panels  are saved in the
1514       ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file.  Disabled by default.
1515
1516       Navigation
1517
1518       Lynx-like motion.  If this option is enabled, you may  use  the  arrows
1519       keys  to automatically chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory
1520       and the shell command line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
1521
1522       Page scrolling.  If set (the default), panel will scroll  by  half  the
1523       display  when the cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel,
1524       otherwise it will just scroll a file at a time.
1525
1526       Center scrolling.  If set, panel will scroll when  the  cursor  reaches
1527       the  middle  of the panel column, only hitting the top or bottom of the
1528       panel when actually on the first or last file.  This  behavior  applies
1529       when  scrolling  one  file  at  a  time, and does not apply to the page
1530       up/down keys.
1531
1532       Mouse page scrolling.  Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel
1533       is done by pages or line by line on the panels.
1534
1535       File highlight
1536
1537       You  can  specify  whether  permissions  and file types should be high‐
1538       lighted with distinctive Colors.  If the permission highlighting is en‐
1539       abled, the parts of the perm and mode display fields which apply to the
1540       user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with the color  defined
1541       by  the  selected  keyword.   If the file type highlighting is enabled,
1542       file names are colored according to rules  described  in  /etc/mc/file‐
1543       highlight.ini file. See Filenames Highlight for more info.
1544
1545       Quick search
1546
1547       You  can  specify  how the Quick search mode should work: case insensi‐
1548       tively, case sensitively or be matched to the panel  sort  order:  case
1549       sensitive or not.
1550
1551    Confirmation
1552       In  this  dialog  you configure the confirmation options for file dele‐
1553       tion, overwriting files, execution by pressing enter, quitting the pro‐
1554       gram, directory hotlist entries deletion and history cleanup.
1555
1556    Appearance
1557       In this dialog you can select the skin to be used and enable shadow for
1558       dialogs and drop down menus.
1559
1560       See the Skins section for technical details about the  skin  definition
1561       files.
1562
1563       Shadows.   If  this  option is enabled, all dialogs and drop down menus
1564       will have a shadow.
1565
1566    Display bits
1567       This is used to configure  the  range  of  visible  characters  on  the
1568       screen.   This  setting  may be 7-bits if your terminal/curses supports
1569       only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 displays all the characters  in  the
1570       ISO-8859-1  map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
1571       full 8 bit characters.
1572
1573    Learn keys
1574       This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor ar‐
1575       rows  and  some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
1576       They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or  bro‐
1577       ken.
1578
1579       You  can  move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
1580       left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right).  Once you press any cursor move‐
1581       ment key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
1582
1583       You  can test keys just by pressing each of them.  When you press a key
1584       and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next  to  the  name  of
1585       that  key.   Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually, e.g.
1586       F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1  key  works,  but
1587       after that it will show help.  The same applies to the arrow keys.  The
1588       Tab key should be working always.
1589
1590       If some keys do not work properly then you won't see  OK  appear  after
1591       pressing  one  of  these.   Then you may want to redefine it.  Do it by
1592       pressing the button with the name of that key (either by the  mouse  or
1593       by Enter or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows).  Then
1594       a message box will appear asking you to press that key.  Do it and wait
1595       until the message box disappears.  If you want to abort, just press Es‐
1596       cape once and wait.
1597
1598       When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them.  The  definitions
1599       for  the  keys  you  have  redefined  will  be written into the [termi‐
1600       nal:TERM] section of your ~/.config/mc/ini file (where TERM is the name
1601       of  your  current terminal).  The definitions of the keys that were al‐
1602       ready working properly are not saved.
1603
1604    Virtual FS
1605       This option gives you control over the settings  of  the  Virtual  File
1606       System.
1607
1608       Midnight  Commander  keeps in memory the information related to some of
1609       the virtual file systems to speed up the access to  the  files  in  the
1610       file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
1611
1612       Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
1613       compressed tar files), Midnight Commander needs to create temporary un‐
1614       compressed files on your disk.
1615
1616       Since  both  the  information in memory and the temporary files on disk
1617       take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters  of  the  cached
1618       information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
1619       access to frequently used file systems.
1620
1621       Because of the format of the tar archives, the Tar filesystem needs  to
1622       read  the  whole  file  just  to load the file entries.  Since most tar
1623       files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species  in  ex‐
1624       tinction),  the  tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
1625       in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a reg‐
1626       ular tar file.
1627
1628       Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
1629       it's common that you will leave a tar file and then re-enter it  later.
1630       Since decompression is slow, Midnight Commander will cache the informa‐
1631       tion in memory for a limited time.  When the timeout expires,  all  the
1632       resources  associated  with  the file system are released.  The default
1633       timeout is set to one minute.
1634
1635       The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on  remote
1636       FTP servers.  It has several options.
1637
1638       ftp  anonymous  password is the password used when you login as "anony‐
1639       mous".  Some sites require a valid e-mail address.  On the other  hand,
1640       you  probably  don't want to give your real e-mail address to untrusted
1641       sites, especially if you are not using spam filtering.
1642
1643       ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a  FTP  server  in  a
1644       cache.   The cache expire time is configurable with the ftpfs directory
1645       cache timeout option.  A low value for this option may slow down  every
1646       operation  on the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a
1647       request to the FTP server.
1648
1649       You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP.  Note that most  modern
1650       firewalls  are  fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below),
1651       so FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
1652
1653       If Always use ftp proxy is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to
1654       enable proxy for certain hosts.  See FTP File System for examples.
1655
1656       If  this  option  is  set,  the program will do two things: consult the
1657       /etc/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that are local
1658       (if  the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a domain) and
1659       to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names  are  directly
1660       accessible.  All other hosts will be accessed through the specified FTP
1661       proxy.
1662
1663       You can enable using ~/.netrc file, which keeps login names  and  pass‐
1664       words for ftp servers.  See netrc (5) for the description of the .netrc
1665       format.
1666
1667       Use passive mode enables using FTP passive mode,  when  the  connection
1668       for  data transfer is initiated by the client, not by the server.  This
1669       option is recommended and enabled by default.  If this option is turned
1670       off, the data connection is initiated by the server.  This may not work
1671       with some firewalls.
1672
1673    Save Setup
1674       At startup, Midnight Commander tries to load initialization information
1675       from  the  ~/.config/mc/ini file.  If this file doesn't exist, the sys‐
1676       tem-wide file /etc/mc/mc.ini is used. If this file doesn't  exist,  the
1677       system-wide  file %pkgdatadir%/mc.ini is used. If this file doesn't ex‐
1678       ist, MC uses the default settings.
1679
1680       The Save Setup command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by saving  the
1681       current settings of the Left, Right and Options menus.
1682
1683       If  you  activate  the  auto save setup option, MC will always save the
1684       current settings when exiting.
1685
1686       There also exist settings which can't be changed  from  the  menus.  To
1687       change  these  settings  you  have to edit the setup file with your fa‐
1688       vorite editor. See the section on Special Settings  for  more  informa‐
1689       tion.
1690
1691

Executing operating system commands

1693       You  may  execute  commands by typing them directly in Midnight Comman‐
1694       der's input line, or by selecting the program you want to execute  with
1695       the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
1696
1697       If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, Midnight Comman‐
1698       der checks the extension of the selected file against the extensions in
1699       the Extensions File.  If a match is found then the code associated with
1700       that extension is executed. A very simple macro expansion  takes  place
1701       before executing the command.
1702
1703  The cd internal command
1704       The  cd  command is interpreted by Midnight Commander, it is not passed
1705       to the command shell for execution.  Thus it may not handle all of  the
1706       nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does, although it
1707       does some of them:
1708
1709       Tilde substitution.  The (~) will be substituted with your home  direc‐
1710       tory, if you append a username after the tilde, then it will be substi‐
1711       tuted with the login directory of the specified user.
1712
1713       For example, ~guest is the home directory for  the  user  guest,  while
1714       ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
1715
1716       Previous  directory.  You can jump to the directory you were previously
1717       by using the special directory name '-' like this: cd -
1718
1719       CDPATH directories.  If the directory specified to the  cd  command  is
1720       not in the current directory, then Midnight Commander uses the value in
1721       the environment variable CDPATH to search for the directory in  any  of
1722       the named directories.
1723
1724       For  example  you could set your CDPATH variable to ~/src:/usr/src, al‐
1725       lowing you to change your directory to any of  the  directories  inside
1726       the  ~/src  and /usr/src directories, from any place in the file system
1727       by using its relative name (for example cd  linux  could  take  you  to
1728       /usr/src/linux).
1729
1730  Macro Substitution
1731       When  accessing  a  user menu, or executing an extension dependent com‐
1732       mand, or running a command from the command line input, a simple  macro
1733       substitution takes place.
1734
1735       The macros are:
1736
1737       %i     The  indent  of  blank  space, equal the cursor column position.
1738              For edit menu only.
1739
1740       %y     The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
1741
1742       %k     The block file name.
1743
1744       %e     The error file name.
1745
1746       %m     The current menu name.
1747
1748       %f and %p
1749              In file manager user menu: the current  file  name  in  selected
1750              panel.  In mcedit user menu: the name of opened file.
1751
1752       %x     The extension of current file name.
1753
1754       %b     The current file name without extension.
1755
1756       %d     The current directory name.
1757
1758       %F     The current file in the unselected panel.
1759
1760       %D     The directory name of the unselected panel.
1761
1762       %t     The currently tagged files.
1763
1764       %T     The tagged files in the unselected panel.
1765
1766       %u and %U
1767              Similar  to  the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are
1768              untagged.  You can use this macro only once per menu file  entry
1769              or  extension  file  entry,  because  next time there will be no
1770              tagged files.
1771
1772       %s and %S
1773              The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise
1774              the current file.
1775
1776       %cd    This  is  a special macro that is used to change the current di‐
1777              rectory to the directory specified in front of it.  This is used
1778              primarily as an interface to the Virtual File System.
1779
1780       %view  This  macro  is  used to invoke the internal viewer.  This macro
1781              can be used alone, or with arguments.  If you pass any arguments
1782              to this macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
1783
1784              The  arguments  are:  ascii to force the viewer into ascii mode;
1785              hex to force the viewer into hex mode; nroff to tell the  viewer
1786              that  it  should  interpret  the bold and underline sequences of
1787              nroff; unformatted to tell the viewer  to  not  interpret  nroff
1788              commands for making the text bold or underlined.
1789
1790       %%     The % character
1791
1792       %{some text}
1793              Prompt  for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text
1794              inside the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is  substituted
1795              by  the text typed by the user. The user can press Esc or F10 to
1796              cancel. This macro doesn't work on the command line yet.
1797
1798       %var{ENV:default}
1799              If environment variable ENV is unset,  the  default  is  substi‐
1800              tuted.  Otherwise, the value of ENV is substituted.
1801
1802  The subshell support
1803       The  subshell  support  is  a  compile time option, that works with the
1804       shells: bash, ash (BusyBox and Debian), tcsh, zsh and fish.
1805
1806       When the subshell support is active, Midnight Commander  will  spawn  a
1807       concurrent  copy  of  your shell (the one defined in the SHELL variable
1808       and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd file) and run
1809       it  in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell each time you
1810       execute a command, the command will be passed to the subshell as if you
1811       had  typed  it.   This  also allows you to change the environment vari‐
1812       ables, use shell functions and define aliases that are valid until  you
1813       quit Midnight Commander.
1814
1815       bash  users  may  specify  startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc
1816       (fallback ~/.bashrc) and special keyboard maps in ~/.local/share/mc/in‐
1817       putrc (fallback ~/.inputrc).
1818
1819       ash/dash  users  (BusyBox  or  Debian)  may specify startup commands in
1820       ~/.local/share/mc/ashrc (fallback ~/.profile).
1821
1822       zsh users may  specify  startup  commands  in  ~/.local/share/mc/.zshrc
1823       (fallback ~/.zshrc).
1824
1825       tcsh,  fish  users  cannot  specify  mc-specific  startup  commands  at
1826       present. They have to rely on shell-specific startup files.
1827
1828       The following paragraphs are relevant only when the subshell support is
1829       active:
1830
1831       You can suspend applications at any time with the sequence C-o and jump
1832       back to Midnight Commander, if you interrupt an application,  you  will
1833       not  be able to run other external commands until you quit the applica‐
1834       tion you interrupted.
1835
1836       The basic prompt  displayed  by  Midnight  Commander  is  of  the  form
1837       "user@host:current_path$  ". When using a capable shell, like Bash, the
1838       prompt displayed by Midnight Commander will be the same prompt that you
1839       are currently using in your shell.
1840
1841       (There's  a known problem when using fish: the prompt is displayed only
1842       in full screen mode (Ctrl-o), not when the panels are visible.)
1843
1844       The OPTIONS section has more information on how you  can  control  sub‐
1845       shell usage (-U/-u).  Furthermore, to set a specific subshell different
1846       from your current SHELL variable or login shell defined in /etc/passwd,
1847       you may call MC like this: SHELL=/bin/myshell mc
1848

Chmod

1850       The  Chmod  window  is  used to change the attribute bits in a group of
1851       files and directories.  It can be invoked with the C-x c  key  combina‐
1852       tion.
1853
1854       The Chmod window has two parts - Permissions and File.
1855
1856       In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory and
1857       its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
1858
1859       In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which corre‐
1860       spond  to  the  file attribute bits.  As you change the attribute bits,
1861       you can see the octal value change in the File section.
1862
1863       To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use  the  arrow
1864       keys  or  the  Tab key.  To change the state of the check buttons or to
1865       select a button use Space.  You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons
1866       to  quickly activate them.  Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on
1867       the buttons.
1868
1869       To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
1870
1871       When working with a group of files or directories, you  just  click  on
1872       the bits you want to set or clear.  Once you have selected the bits you
1873       want to change, you select one of the action  buttons  (Set  marked  or
1874       Clear marked).
1875
1876       Finally,  to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
1877       the [Set all] button, which will act on all the tagged files.
1878
1879       [Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files
1880
1881       [Set marked] set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1882
1883       [Clean marked] clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1884
1885       [Set] set the attributes of one file
1886
1887       [Cancel] cancel the Chmod command
1888

Chown

1890       The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The  hot
1891       key for this command is C-x o.
1892

Advanced Chown

1894       The Advanced Chown command is the Chmod and Chown command combined into
1895       one window. You can change the permissions and owner/group of files  at
1896       once.
1897

Chattr

1899       The  Chattr window is used to change the attributes of a group of files
1900       and directories on a Linux file system. It can be invoked with the  C-x
1901       e key combination.
1902
1903       Not  all attributes are supported or utilized by all filesystems.  List
1904       of available attribute flags is represented as a set of  check  buttons
1905       which correspond to the attribute flags (see chattr(1) for details). As
1906       you change the attribute flags, you can see the symbolic  value  change
1907       below file name.
1908
1909       To  move  between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the arrow
1910       keys or the Tab key. To change the state of the check buttons or to se‐
1911       lect a button use Space.
1912
1913       To set the attributes, use the Enter key.
1914
1915       When  working  with  a group of files or directories, you just click on
1916       the flags you want to set or clear. Once you have  selected  the  flags
1917       you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked or
1918       Clear marked).
1919
1920       Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can  use
1921       the [Set all] button, which will act on all the tagged files.
1922
1923       [Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files.
1924
1925       [Set marked] set marked flags in attributes of all selected files.
1926
1927       [Clean marked] clear marked flags in attributes of all selected files.
1928
1929       [Set] set the attributes of one file.
1930
1931       [Cancel] cancel the Chattr command.
1932

File Operations

1934       When  you copy, move or delete files, Midnight Commander shows the file
1935       operations dialog.  It shows the files currently  being  processed  and
1936       uses  up to three progress bars.  The file bar indicates the percentage
1937       of the current file that has been processed  so  far.   The  count  bar
1938       shows  how  many  of the tagged files have been handled.  The bytes bar
1939       indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files that has
1940       been  handled.   If  the verbose option is off, the file and bytes bars
1941       are not shown.
1942
1943       There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog.  Pressing  the  Skip
1944       button  will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort but‐
1945       ton will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are skipped.
1946
1947       There are three other dialogs which you can run into  during  the  file
1948       operations.
1949
1950       The  error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
1951       Normally you select either the Skip button to  skip  the  file  or  the
1952       Abort  button  to  abort the operation altogether.  You can also select
1953       the Retry button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
1954
1955       The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file  on
1956       the  top  of an existing file.  The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
1957       the both files.  Press the Yes button to overwrite  the  file,  the  No
1958       button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
1959       None button to never overwrite and the Update button  to  overwrite  if
1960       the source file is newer than the target file.  You can abort the whole
1961       operation by pressing the Abort button.
1962
1963       The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
1964       which  is  not empty.  Press the Yes button to delete the directory re‐
1965       cursively, the No button to skip  the  directory,  the  All  button  to
1966       delete  all  the  directories  and  the  None  button  to  skip all the
1967       non-empty directories.  You can abort the whole operation  by  pressing
1968       the  Abort  button.   If you selected the Yes or All button you will be
1969       asked for a confirmation.  Type "yes" only if you are really  sure  you
1970       want to do the recursive delete.
1971
1972       If  you  have  tagged  files  and perform an operation on them only the
1973       files on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped
1974       files are left tagged.
1975

Mask Copy/Rename

1977       The  copy/move  operations  let  you translate the names of files in an
1978       easy way.  To do it, you have to specify the correct  source  mask  and
1979       usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
1980       All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according  to
1981       the  target  mask.   If  there  are tagged files, only the tagged files
1982       matching the source mask are renamed.
1983
1984       There are other options which you can set:
1985
1986       Follow links
1987
1988       determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source direc‐
1989       tory  (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target directory
1990       or whether would you like to copy their content.
1991
1992       Dive into subdirs
1993
1994       determines the behavior when  the  source  directory  is  about  to  be
1995       copied, but the target directory already exists.  The default action is
1996       to copy the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
1997       Enabling  this  option  causes copying the source directory itself into
1998       the target directory.
1999
2000       For example, you want to copy directory /foo  containing  file  bar  to
2001       /bla/foo,  which is an already existing directory.  Normally (when Dive
2002       into subdirs is not set), mc would copy file  /foo/bar  into  the  file
2003       /bla/foo/bar.   By enabling this option the /bla/foo/foo directory will
2004       be created, and /foo/bar will be copied into /bla/foo/foo/bar.
2005
2006       Preserve attributes
2007
2008       determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if  you
2009       are  root)  the ownership of the original files.  If this option is not
2010       set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
2011
2012       Use shell patterns
2013
2014       When this option is on you can use the '*' and  '?'  wildcards  in  the
2015       source  mask.  They  work like they do in the shell. In the target mask
2016       only the '*' and '\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The first '*'  wild‐
2017       card  in the target mask corresponds to the first wildcard group in the
2018       source mask, the second '*' corresponds to the second group and so  on.
2019       The '\1' wildcard corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source
2020       mask, the '\2' wildcard corresponds to the second group and so  on  all
2021       the  way  up  to  '\9'.  The '\0' wildcard is the whole filename of the
2022       source file.
2023
2024       Two examples:
2025
2026       If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is  "/bla/*.tgz"  and
2027       the  file  to  be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in
2028       "/bla".
2029
2030       Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"  would
2031       become  "c.file"  and so on.  The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
2032       destination is "\2.\1".
2033
2034       Use shell patterns off
2035
2036       When the shell patterns option is  off  the  MC  doesn't  do  automatic
2037       grouping anymore. You must use '\(...\)' expressions in the source mask
2038       to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This  is  more
2039       flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks are sim‐
2040       ilar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
2041
2042       Two examples:
2043
2044       If  the  source  mask  is  "^\(.*\)\.tar\.gz$",  the   destination   is
2045       "/bla/*.tgz"  and  the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will
2046       be "/bla/foo.tgz".
2047
2048       Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that  "file.c"
2049       will   become  "c.file"  and  so  on.  The  source  mask  for  this  is
2050       "^\(.*\)\.\(.*\)$" and the destination is "\2.\1".
2051
2052       Case Conversions
2053
2054       You can also change the case of the filenames.  If you use '\u' or '\l'
2055       in  the  target mask, the next character will be converted to uppercase
2056       or lowercase correspondingly.
2057
2058       If you use '\U' or '\L' in the target mask, the next characters will be
2059       converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the next '\E'
2060       or next '\U', '\L' or the end of the file name.
2061
2062       The '\u' and '\l' are stronger than '\U' and '\L'.
2063
2064       For example, if the source mask is '*' (  Use  shell  patterns  on)  or
2065       '^\(.*\)$' ( Use shell patterns off) and the target mask is '\L\u*' the
2066       file names will be converted to have initial upper case  and  otherwise
2067       lower case.
2068
2069       You can also use '\' as a quote character. For example, '\\' is a back‐
2070       slash and '\*' is an asterisk.
2071
2072       Stable symlinks
2073
2074       commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks in the tar‐
2075       get,  so that they'll point to the same location as it did before. With
2076       absolute symbolic links this does nothing, but if you have  a  relative
2077       one, it will recompute its value, adding necessary ../ and other direc‐
2078       tory parts and making the value  as  short  as  possible  (most  modern
2079       filesystems keep short symlinks inside inodes and thus don't waste much
2080       disk space).
2081
2082

Select/Unselect Files

2084       The dialog of group of files and directories selection  or  uselection.
2085       The  input  line  allow  enter the regular expression of filenames that
2086       will be selected/unselected.
2087
2088       When Files only checkbox is on, only files will be selected.  If  Files
2089       only is off, as files as directories will be selected.  When Shell Pat‐
2090       terns checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the  filename
2091       globbing  in  the  shell  (* standing for zero or more characters and ?
2092       standing for one character). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging
2093       of  files  is  done  with normal regular expressions (see ed (1)). When
2094       Case sensitive checkbox is on, the selection  will  be  case  sensitive
2095       characters.  If Case sensitive is off, the case will be ignored.
2096

Internal Diff Viewer

2098       The  mcdiff  is  a visual diff tool. You can compare two files and edit
2099       them in-place (diffs are updated dynamically). You can browse and  view
2100       a  working  copy from popular version control systems (GIT, Subversion,
2101       etc).
2102
2103       Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer  of  Midnight
2104       Commander.
2105
2106       F1     Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
2107
2108       F2     Save modified files.
2109
2110       F4     Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
2111
2112       F14    Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
2113
2114       F5     Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be merged.
2115
2116       F7     Start search.
2117
2118       F17    Continue search.
2119
2120       F10, Esc, q
2121              Exit from diff viewer.
2122
2123       Alt-s, s
2124              Toggle show of hunk status.
2125
2126       Alt-n, l
2127              Toggle show of line numbers.
2128
2129       f      Maximize left panel.
2130
2131       =      Make panels equal in width.
2132
2133       >      Reduce the size of the right panel.
2134
2135       <      Reduce the size of the left panel.
2136
2137       c      Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2138
2139       2, 3, 4, 8
2140              Set tabulation size
2141
2142       C-u    Swap contents of diff panels.
2143
2144       C-r    Refresh the screen.
2145
2146       C-o    Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2147
2148       Enter, Space, n
2149              Find next diff hunk.
2150
2151       Backspace, p
2152              Find previous diff hunk.
2153
2154       g      Go to line.
2155
2156       Down   Scroll one line forward.
2157
2158       Up     Scroll one line backward.
2159
2160       PageUp Move one page up.
2161
2162       PageDown
2163              Mves one page down.
2164
2165       Home, A1
2166              Moves to the line beginning.
2167
2168       End    Moves to the line end.
2169
2170       C-Home Move to the file beginning.
2171
2172       C-End, C1
2173              Move to the file end.
2174

Internal File Viewer

2176       The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex.  To
2177       toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
2178
2179       The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your  system  or
2180       the  file  type  to display the information.  Some character sequences,
2181       which appear most often in preformatted  manual  pages,  are  displayed
2182       bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display of your files.
2183
2184       When  in  hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and con‐
2185       stant numbers.  Text in quotes is matched exactly  after  removing  the
2186       quotes.   Each  number  matches one byte.  You can mix quoted text with
2187       constants like this:
2188
2189       "String" 34 0xBB 012 "more text"
2190
2191       Numbers are always interpreted in hex. In the example  above,  "34"  is
2192       interpreted as 0x34. The prefix "0x" isn't really needed: we could type
2193       "BB" instead of "0xBB". And "012" is interpreted as 0x12, not as an oc‐
2194       tal number.
2195
2196       Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the Mid‐
2197       night Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2198
2199       F1     Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
2200
2201       F2     Toggle the wrap mode.
2202
2203       F4     Toggle the hex mode.
2204
2205       F5     Goto. You can specify a line number,  offset  or  percentage  of
2206              file size of position that you want to view.
2207
2208       F7, /, ?
2209              Start  search. These keys call the dialog window that allows you
2210              to set up the search options. If key is ? the "Backwards" option
2211              is on.
2212
2213       C-s    Continue forward search.
2214
2215       C-r    Continue reverse search.
2216
2217       F17, n Continue search in the chosen direction.
2218
2219       N      Temporary  change  the  search  direction:  backwards if forward
2220              search is chosen, and vice versa.
2221
2222       F8     Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk
2223              or if a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file,
2224              then the output from the filter.  Current  mode  is  always  the
2225              other  than  written on the button label, since on the button is
2226              the mode which you enter by that key.
2227
2228       F9     Toggle the format/unformat mode: when  format  mode  is  on  the
2229              viewer will interpret some string sequences to show bold and un‐
2230              derline with different colors. Also,  on  button  label  is  the
2231              other mode than current.
2232
2233       F10, Esc.
2234              Exit the internal file viewer.
2235
2236       PageDown, space, C-v.
2237              Scroll one page forward.
2238
2239       PageUp, Alt-v, C-b, Backspace.
2240              Scroll one page backward.
2241
2242       Down   Scroll one line forward.
2243
2244       Up     Scroll one line backward.
2245
2246       C-l    Refresh the screen.
2247
2248       C-o    Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2249
2250       [n] m  Set the mark n.
2251
2252       [n] r  Jump to the mark n.
2253
2254       C-f    Jump to the next file.
2255
2256       C-b    Jump to the previous file.
2257
2258       Alt-r  Toggle the ruler.
2259
2260       Alt-e  to change charset of displayed text may use Alt-e (M-e).  Recod‐
2261              ing is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To can‐
2262              cel  the  recoding  you may select "<No translation>" in charset
2263              selection dialog.
2264
2265       It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a  file,  look
2266       at the Edit Extension File section
2267
2268

Internal File Editor

2270       The internal file editor is a full-featured full screen editor.  It can
2271       edit files up to 64 megabytes.  It is possible to  edit  binary  files.
2272       The  internal  file editor is invoked using F4 if the use_internal_edit
2273       option is set in the initialization file.
2274
2275       The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete,  cut,
2276       paste;  key  for  key undo; pull-down menus; file insertion; macro com‐
2277       mands; regular expression search and replace; S-arrow text highlighting
2278       (if supported by the terminal); insert-overwrite toggle; word wrap; au‐
2279       toindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file types;
2280       and  an  option  to pipe text blocks through shell commands like indent
2281       and ispell.
2282
2283       Sections:
2284
2285              Options of editor in ini-file
2286
2287       The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring.  To  see  what
2288       keys  do  what, just consult the appropriate pull-down menu. Other keys
2289       are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting.   C-Ins  copies  to  the
2290       file  mcedit.clip  and  S-Ins  pastes  from mcedit.clip.  S-Del cuts to
2291       mcedit.clip, and C-Del deletes  highlighted  text.  Mouse  highlighting
2292       also works, and you can override the mouse as usual by holding down the
2293       shift key while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal  mouse  high‐
2294       lighting work.
2295
2296       To define a macro, press C-R and then type out the key strokes you want
2297       to be executed. Press C-R again when finished. You can then assign  the
2298       macro  to  any key you like by pressing that key. The macro is executed
2299       when you press C-A and then the assigned key. The macro  is  also  exe‐
2300       cuted  if  you  press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, provided
2301       that the key is not used for any  other  function.  Once  defined,  the
2302       macro  commands go into the file ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.macros
2303       You can delete a macro by deleting the appropriate line in this file.
2304
2305       To change charset of displayed text may use Alt-e (M-e).   Recoding  is
2306       made  from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the recod‐
2307       ing you may select "<No translation>" in charset selection dialog.
2308
2309       F19 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or C or C++
2310       code  or another). This is controlled by the file %pkgdatadir%/edit.in‐
2311       dent.rc which is copied to  ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/edit.indent.rc  in
2312       your home directory the first time you use it.
2313
2314       The  editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When editing binary
2315       files, you should set display bits to 7 bits in  the  options  menu  to
2316       keep the spacing clean.
2317
2318

Options of editor in ini-file

2320       Some editor options of ini-file are described in this section.  Options
2321       are placed in [Midnight-Commander] section
2322
2323       editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
2324              Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file  or  just  from
2325              begin of file to cursor position (0)
2326
2327

Screen selector

2329       Midnight Commander supports running many internal modules (such as edi‐
2330       tor, viewer and diff viewer) simultaneously and switching between  them
2331       without closing open files. Using several file managers at a time, how‐
2332       ever, is not currently supported.
2333
2334       Let's call each of these modules a screen.  There  are  three  ways  to
2335       switch between screens, using one of these global shortcuts:
2336
2337       Alt-}  switch to the next screen;
2338
2339       Alt-{  switch to the previous screen;
2340
2341       Alt-`  open a dialog window with the list of currently open screens (or
2342              use the "Screen list" menu item).
2343

Completion

2345       Let Midnight Commander type for you.
2346
2347       Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position.   MC
2348       attempts  completion  treating the text as variable (if the text begins
2349       with $), username (if the text begins with ~), hostname  (if  the  text
2350       begins  with @) or command (if you are on the command line in the posi‐
2351       tion where you might type a command, possible completions then  include
2352       shell  reserved words and shell built-in commands as well) in turn.  If
2353       none of these matches, filename completion is attempted.
2354
2355       Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
2356       lines,  command completion is command line specific.  If the completion
2357       is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
2358       following  action  depends on the setting of the Complete: show all op‐
2359       tion in the Configuration dialog.  If it is enabled, a list of all pos‐
2360       sibilities pops up next to the current position and you can select with
2361       the arrow keys and Enter the correct entry.   You  can  also  type  the
2362       first  letters in which the possibilities differ to move to a subset of
2363       all possibilities and complete as  much  as  possible.   If  you  press
2364       Alt-Tab  again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise
2365       the first item which matches all the previous characters will be  high‐
2366       lighted.   As soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you
2367       can hide it by canceling keys Esc, F10 and left and right  arrow  keys.
2368       If Complete: show all is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
2369       Alt-Tab for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
2370
2371       Apply escaping of ?, *, and & symbols (as \?, \*, and \&) in  filenames
2372       to disallow use them as metasymbols in regular expressions when substi‐
2373       tution is performed in the input line.
2374
2375

Virtual File System

2377       Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer  to  access  the  file
2378       system;  this  code  layer  is known as the virtual file system switch.
2379       The virtual file system switch allows Midnight Commander to  manipulate
2380       files not located on the Unix file system.
2381
2382       Currently,  Midnight  Commander is packaged with some Virtual File Sys‐
2383       tems (VFS): the local file system, used for accessing the regular  Unix
2384       file system; the ftpfs, used to manipulate files on remote systems with
2385       the FTP protocol; the tarfs, used to manipulate tar and compressed  tar
2386       files;  the undelfs, used to recover deleted files on ext2 file systems
2387       (the default file system for Linux  systems),  fish  (for  manipulating
2388       files  over  shell  connections  such as rsh and ssh).  If the code was
2389       compiled with sftpfs (for manipulating files over SFTP connections).
2390
2391       A generic extfs (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order  to
2392       easily expand VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
2393
2394       The  VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
2395       forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each  one
2396       of the file systems is described later in their own section.
2397
2398  FTP File System
2399       The  FTP  File  System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
2400       machines.  To actually use it, you can use the FTP  link  item  in  the
2401       menu  or directly change your current directory using the cd command to
2402       a path name that looks like this:
2403
2404       ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
2405
2406       The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional.   If  you  specify
2407       the  user  element, Midnight Commander will login to the remote machine
2408       as that user, otherwise it will use anonymous login or the  login  name
2409       from the ~/.netrc file.  The optional pass element is the password used
2410       for the connection.  Using the password in the VFS  directory  name  is
2411       not  recommended, because it can appear on the screen in clear text and
2412       can be saved to the directory history.
2413
2414       To enable using FTP proxy, prepend !   (an  exclamation  sign)  to  the
2415       hostname.
2416
2417       Examples:
2418
2419           ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
2420           ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
2421           ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
2422           ftp://guest@remote-host.com:40/pub
2423           ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
2424
2425       Please check the Virtual File System dialog box for ftpfs options.
2426
2427  Tar File System
2428       The  tar  file  system  provides  you with read-only access to your tar
2429       files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command.   To  change
2430       your  directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
2431       tar file by using the following syntax:
2432
2433       /filename.tar/utar://[dir-inside-tar]
2434
2435       The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files,  this  means
2436       that  usually  you  just  point to a tar file and press return to enter
2437       into the tar file, see the Edit Extension File section for  details  on
2438       how this is done.
2439
2440       Examples:
2441
2442           mc-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc-3.0/vfs
2443           /ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar/utar://
2444
2445       The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
2446
2447  FIle transfer over SHell filesystem
2448       The  fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
2449       manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To  use
2450       this,  the  other  side  has  to either run fish server, or has to have
2451       bash-compatible shell.
2452
2453       To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into  a  special
2454       directory which name is in the following format:
2455
2456       sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
2457
2458       The user, options and remote-dir elements are optional.  If you specify
2459       the user element, Midnight Commander will try to login  on  the  remote
2460       machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
2461
2462       The available options are:
2463         'C' - use compression;
2464         'r' - use rsh instead of ssh;
2465         port - specify the port used by remote server.
2466       If the remote-dir element is present, your current directory on the re‐
2467       mote machine will be set to this one.
2468
2469       Examples:
2470
2471           sh://onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
2472           sh://joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
2473           sh://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
2474           sh://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
2475
2476  SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem
2477       The SFTP file system is a network based file system that allows you  to
2478       manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local.
2479
2480       To  connect  to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2481       directory which name is in the following format:
2482
2483       sftp://[user@]machine:[port]/[remote-dir]
2484
2485       The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional.   If  you  specify
2486       the  user  element,  Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
2487       machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login  name.   port  -
2488       specify  the  port  used  by remote server (22 by default).  If the re‐
2489       mote-dir element is present, your current directory on the  remote  ma‐
2490       chine will be set to this one.
2491
2492       Examples:
2493
2494           sftp://onlyrsh.mx/linux/local
2495           sftp://joe:password@want.compression.edu/private
2496           sftp://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
2497           sftp://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
2498
2499       When  establishing  the  connection, server key fingerprint is verified
2500       using the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file. If the host/key pair is not found or
2501       the host is found, but the key doesn't match, an appropriate message is
2502       shown.  There are three buttons in the message dialog:
2503
2504       [Yes] add new host/key pair to the  ~/.ssh/known_hosts  file  and  con‐
2505       tinue.
2506
2507       [Ignore]  do  not add new host/key pair to the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file,
2508       but continue nevertheless (at you own risk).
2509
2510       [No] abort connection.
2511
2512  Undelete File System
2513       On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete fa‐
2514       cilities,  you  will have the undelete file system available.  Recovery
2515       of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems.  The  undelete
2516       file  system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to retrieve all
2517       of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and to extract the
2518       selected files into a regular partition.
2519
2520       To  use  this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
2521       formed by the "undel://" prefix and the file name where the actual file
2522       system resides.
2523
2524       For  example,  to  recover deleted files on the second partition of the
2525       first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
2526
2527           undel://sda2
2528
2529       It may take a while for the undelfs to load  the  required  information
2530       before you start browsing files there.
2531
2532  EXTernal File System
2533       extfs allows you to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU
2534       Midnight Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
2535
2536       Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
2537
2538       1. Stand-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any  existing
2539       file.   They  represent  certain  system-wide data as a directory tree.
2540       You can invoke them by typing cd fsname:// where  fsname  is  an  extfs
2541       short  name  (see  below).   Examples of such filesystems include audio
2542       (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of all  Debian  packages  in
2543       the system).
2544
2545       For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive, type
2546
2547         cd audio://
2548
2549       2.  'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
2550       contents of a file as a directory tree.  It can consist of 'real' files
2551       compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages in
2552       a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of  a  patch  (patchfs).   To  access  such
2553       filesystems  fsname://  should  be  appended to the archive name.  Note
2554       that the archive itself can be on another vfs.
2555
2556       For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
2557
2558         cd documents.zip/uzip://
2559
2560       In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other  directory.   For
2561       instance,  you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
2562       history.  An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell  com‐
2563       mands inside extfs, just like any other non-local VFS.
2564
2565       Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
2566
2567       a      access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette (cd a://).
2568
2569       apt    front end to Debian's APT package management system (cd apt://).
2570
2571       audio  audio  CD  ripping  and  playing  (cd  audio:// or cd device/au‐
2572              dio://).
2573
2574       bpp    package   of   Bad   Penguin    GNU/Linux    distribution    (cd
2575              file.bpp/bpp://).
2576
2577       deb    package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution (cd file.deb/deb://).
2578
2579       dpkg   Debian GNU/Linux installed packages (cd deb://).
2580
2581       hp48   view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator (cd hp48://).
2582
2583       lslR   browsing  of  lslR  listings  as  found  on  many FTPs (cd file‐
2584              name/lslR://).
2585
2586       mailfs mbox-style mailbox files support (cd mailbox/mailfs://).
2587
2588       patchfs
2589              extfs  to  handle  unified   and   context   diffs   (cd   file‐
2590              name/patchfs://).
2591
2592       rpm    RPM package (cd filename/rpm://).
2593
2594       rpms   RPM database management (cd rpms://).
2595
2596       ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
2597              archivers  (cd archive/xxxx:// where xxxx is one of: ulha, urar,
2598              uzip, uzoo, uar, uha).
2599
2600       You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as  described  in
2601       the  Edit  Extension File section.  Here is an example entry for Debian
2602       packages:
2603
2604         regex/.deb$
2605                 Open=%cd %p/deb://
2606

Colors

2608       Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal  supports  color
2609       using  the terminal database and your terminal name.  Sometimes it gets
2610       confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode  using  the
2611       -c and -b flag respectively.
2612
2613       If  the  program  is compiled with the S-Lang screen manager instead of
2614       ncurses, it will also check the variable COLORTERM, if it  is  set,  it
2615       has the same effect as the -c flag.
2616
2617       You  may  specify  terminals that always force color mode by adding the
2618       color_terminals variable to the Colors section  of  the  initialization
2619       file.   This  will  prevent Midnight Commander from trying to detect if
2620       your terminal supports color.  Example:
2621
2622       [Colors]
2623       color_terminals=linux,xterm
2624       color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
2625
2626       The program can be compiled with both ncurses and S-Lang, ncurses  does
2627       not  provide  a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the informa‐
2628       tion in the terminal database.
2629
2630       Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default  colors.   Cur‐
2631       rently  the  colors  are  configured  using  the  environment  variable
2632       MC_COLOR_TABLE or the Colors section in the initialization file.
2633
2634       In the Colors section,  the  default  color  map  is  loaded  from  the
2635       base_color variable.  You can specify an alternate color map for a ter‐
2636       minal by using the terminal name as the key in this section.  Example:
2637
2638       [Colors]
2639       base_color=
2640       xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
2641
2642       The format for the color definition is:
2643
2644         <keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
2645
2646       The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal,  selected,  dis‐
2647       abled,  marked,  markselect,  errors, input, inputmark, inputunchanged,
2648       commandlinemark, reverse, gauge, header, inputhistory,  commandhistory.
2649       Button  bar  colors are: bbarhotkey, bbarbutton. Status bar color: sta‐
2650       tusbar. Menu colors are: menunormal, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, men‐
2651       uinactive.  Dialog  colors are: dnormal, dfocus, dhotnormal, dhotfocus,
2652       dtitle. Error dialog colors are: errdfocus,  errdhotnormal,  errdhotfo‐
2653       cus,  errdtitle.   Help  colors  are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold,
2654       helplink, helpslink, helptitle.  Viewer colors are:  viewnormal,  view‐
2655       bold, viewunderline, viewselected. Editor colors are: editnormal, edit‐
2656       bold, editmarked, editwhitespace, editlinestate. Popup menu colors are:
2657       pmenunormal, pmenusel, pmenutitle.
2658
2659       header  determines  the  color  of panel header, the line that contains
2660       column titles and sort mode indicator.
2661
2662       input determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
2663
2664       gauge determines the color of the  filled  part  of  the  progress  bar
2665       (gauge),  which  is  used  to show the user the progress of file opera‐
2666       tions, such as copying.
2667
2668       disabled determines the color of the widget that cannot be selected.
2669
2670       The dialog boxes use the following colors: dnormal is used for the nor‐
2671       mal  text,  dfocus  is the color used for the currently selected compo‐
2672       nent, dhotnormal is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in
2673       normal  components,  whereas  the dhotfocus color is used for the high‐
2674       lighted color in the currently selected component.
2675
2676       Menus use the same scheme but uses the  menunormal,  menusel,  menuhot,
2677       menuhotsel and menuinactive tags instead.
2678
2679       Help  uses  the  following  colors: helpnormal is used for normal text,
2680       helpitalic is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual
2681       page, helpbold is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the man‐
2682       ual page, helplink is used for not selected hyperlinks and helpslink is
2683       used for selected hyperlink.
2684
2685       Popup  menu uses following colors: pmenunormal is used for non-selected
2686       menu items and as a main color of popup menu window, pmenusel  is  used
2687       for selected menu item, pmenutitle is used for popup menu title.
2688
2689       The  possible  colors  are: black, gray, red, brightred, green, bright‐
2690       green, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta,  brightmagenta,  cyan,
2691       brightcyan,  lightgray  and  white.  And there is a special keyword for
2692       transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be used
2693       for  background  color.  Another special keyword "base" means mc's main
2694       colors.  When 256 colors are available, they can be specified either as
2695       color16  to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and gray0 to gray23. Exam‐
2696       ple:
2697
2698       [Colors]
2699       base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
2700
2701       Attributes can be any of bold, italic, underline,  reverse  and  blink,
2702       appended by a plus sign if more than one are desired.  The special word
2703       "none"  means  no  attributes,  without  attempting  to  fall  back  to
2704       base_color.  Example:
2705
2706       menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
2707
2708

Skins

2710       You  can  change the appearance of Midnight Commander.  To do this, you
2711       must specify a file that contain descriptions of colors  and  lines  to
2712       draw  boxes.  Redefining  of the colors is entirely compatible with the
2713       assignment of colors, as described in Section Colors.
2714
2715       If your skin contains any true-color definitions, you should define the
2716       'truecolors'  key set to TRUE value in [skin] section. If true-color is
2717       not used but 256-color is, you should define '256colors' instead.
2718
2719       A skin-file is searched on the following algorithm (to  the  first  one
2720       found):
2721
2722              1) command line option -S <skin> or --skin=<skin>
2723              2) Environment variable MC_SKIN
2724              3)  Parameter  skin  in  section  [Midnight-Commander] in config
2725              file.
2726              4) File /etc/mc/skins/default.ini
2727              5) File %pkgdatadir%/skins/default.ini
2728
2729
2730       Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config  file
2731       may contain the absolute path to the skin-file (with the extension .ini
2732       or without it). Search of skin-file will occur in  (to  the  first  one
2733       found):
2734
2735              1) ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
2736              2) /etc/mc/skins/
2737              3) %pkgdatadir%/skins/
2738
2739
2740       For getting extended info, refer to:
2741
2742              Description of section and parameters
2743              Color pair definitions
2744              Color and attribute aliases
2745              Draw lines
2746              Compatibility
2747
2748
2749  Description of section and parameters
2750       Section  [skin]  contain  metainfo for skin-file. Parameter description
2751       contain short text about skin.
2752
2753
2754       Section [filehighlight] contain descriptions of color pairs  for  file‐
2755       names  highlighting.  Name of parameters must be equal to names of sec‐
2756       tions into filehighlight.ini file.  See Filenames Highlight for getting
2757       more info.
2758
2759
2760       Section [core] describes the elements that are used everywhere.
2761
2762       _default_
2763              Default  color pair. Used in all other sections if they not con‐
2764              tain color definitions
2765
2766       selected
2767              cursor
2768
2769       marked selected data
2770
2771       markselect
2772              cursor on selected data
2773
2774       gauge  color of the filled part of the progress bar
2775
2776       input  color of input lines used in query dialogs
2777
2778       inputmark
2779              color of input selected text
2780
2781       inputunchanged
2782              color of input text before first modification or cursor movement
2783
2784       commandlinemark
2785              color of selected text in command line
2786
2787       reverse
2788              reverse color
2789
2790       Section [dialog] describes the elements that are placed on dialog  win‐
2791       dows (except error dialogs).
2792
2793       _default_
2794              Default  color  for  this  section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2795              specified
2796
2797       dfocus Color of active element (in focus)
2798
2799       dhotnormal
2800              Color of hotkeys
2801
2802       dhotfocus
2803              Color of hotkeys in focused element
2804
2805
2806       Section [error] describes the elements that are placed on error  dialog
2807       windows
2808
2809       _default_
2810              Default  color  for  this  section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2811              specified
2812
2813       errdhotnormal
2814              Color of hotkeys
2815
2816       errdhotfocus
2817              Color of hotkeys in focused element
2818
2819
2820       Section [menu] describes the elements that are  placed  in  menu.  This
2821       section  describes  system  menu  (called by F9) and user-defined menus
2822       (called by F2 in panels and by F11 in editor).
2823
2824       _default_
2825              Default color for this section.  Used  [core]._default_  if  not
2826              specified
2827
2828       entry  Color of menu items
2829
2830       menuhot
2831              Color of menu hotkeys
2832
2833       menusel
2834              Color of active menu item (in focus)
2835
2836       menuhotsel
2837              Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
2838
2839       menuinactive
2840              Color of inactive menu
2841
2842
2843       Section [help] describes the elements that are placed on help window.
2844
2845       _default_
2846              Default  color  for  this  section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2847              specified
2848
2849       helpitalic
2850              Color pair for element with italic attribute
2851
2852       helpbold
2853              Color pair for element with bold attribute
2854
2855       helplink
2856              Color of links
2857
2858       helpslink
2859              Color of active link (on focus)
2860
2861
2862       Section [editor] describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
2863
2864       _default_
2865              Default color for this section.  Used  [core]._default_  if  not
2866              specified
2867
2868       editbold
2869              Color pair for element with bold attribute
2870
2871       editmarked
2872              Color of selected text
2873
2874       editwhitespace
2875              Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
2876
2877       editlinestate
2878              Color for line state area
2879
2880
2881       Section [viewer] describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
2882
2883       viewunderline
2884              Color pair for element with underline attribute
2885
2886
2887  Color pair definitions
2888       Any parameter in skin-file contain definition of color pair.
2889
2890       Color  pairs  described as two colors and the optional attributes sepa‐
2891       rated by ';'. First field sets the foreground color, second field  sets
2892       background  color,  third field sets the attributes.  Any of the fields
2893       may be omitted, in this case value will be  taken  from  default  color
2894       pair (global color pair or from default color pair of this section).
2895
2896       Example:
2897       [core]
2898           # green on black
2899           _default_=green;black
2900           # green (default) on blue
2901           selected=;blue
2902           # yellow on black (default)
2903           # underlined yellow on black (default)
2904           marked=yellow;;underline
2905
2906
2907       Possible  colors  (names) and attributes are described in Colors.  sec‐
2908       tion.
2909
2910
2911  Color and attribute aliases
2912       This optional section might define aliases for single colors (not color
2913       pairs)  as well as combination of attributes; in other words, for semi‐
2914       colon-separated fragments of parameters. Aliases  can  refer  to  other
2915       aliases as long as they don't form a loop.
2916
2917       Example:
2918       [aliases]
2919           myfavfg=green
2920           myfavbg=black
2921           myfavattr=bold+italic
2922       [core]
2923           _default_=myfavfg;myfavbg;myfavattr
2924
2925
2926  Draw lines
2927       Lines  sets  in section [Lines] into skin-file. By default single lines
2928       are used, but you may redefine to usage of any utf-8 symbols  (like  to
2929       lines, for example).
2930
2931       WARNING!!!   When  you build Midnight Commander with the ncurses screen
2932       library usage of drawing lines is limited!   Possible  only  drawing  a
2933       single lines.  For all questions and comments please contact the devel‐
2934       opers of ncurses.
2935
2936
2937       Descriptions of parameters [Lines]:
2938
2939       lefttop
2940              left-top line fragment.
2941
2942       righttop
2943              right-top line fragment.
2944
2945       centertop
2946              down branch of horizontal line
2947
2948       centerbottom
2949              up branch of horizontal line
2950
2951       leftbottom
2952              left-bottom line fragment
2953
2954       rightbottom
2955              right-bottom line fragment
2956
2957       leftmiddle
2958              right branch of vertical line
2959
2960       rightmiddle
2961              left branch of vertical line
2962
2963       centermiddle
2964              cross of lines
2965
2966       horiz  horizontal line
2967
2968       vert   vertical line
2969
2970       thinhoriz
2971              thin horizontal line
2972
2973       thinvert
2974              thin vertical line
2975
2976
2977
2978  Compatibility
2979       Appointment of color  by skin-files fully compatible with the  appoint‐
2980       ment of the colors described in Colors.  section.
2981
2982       In  this  case,  reassignment of colors has priority over the skin file
2983       and is complementary.
2984
2985

Filenames Highlight

2987       Section [filehighlight] in current  skin-file  contains  key  names  as
2988       highlight  groups  and values as color pairs. Color pairs is documented
2989       in Skins section.
2990
2991       Rules of  filenames  highlight  are  placed  in  %pkgdatadir%/filehigh‐
2992       light.ini  file  (~/.config/mc/filehighlight.ini).   Name of section in
2993       this file must be equal to parameters names in [filehighlight]  section
2994       (in current skin-file).
2995
2996       Keys in these groups are:
2997
2998       type   file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
2999
3000       regexp regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is ignored.
3001
3002       extensions
3003              list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
3004
3005       extensions_case
3006              (make  sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
3007              rule case sensitive (true) or not (false).
3008
3009       `type' key may have values:
3010       - FILE (all files)
3011         - FILE_EXE
3012       - DIR (all directories)
3013         - LINK_DIR
3014       - LINK (all links except stale link)
3015         - HARDLINK
3016         - SYMLINK
3017       - STALE_LINK
3018       - DEVICE (all device files)
3019         - DEVICE_BLOCK
3020         - DEVICE_CHAR
3021       - SPECIAL (all special files)
3022         - SPECIAL_SOCKET
3023         - SPECIAL_FIFO
3024         - SPECIAL_DOOR
3025

Special Settings

3027       Most of Midnight Commander settings can be changed from the menus. How‐
3028       ever, there are a small number of settings which can only be changed by
3029       editing the setup file.
3030
3031       These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
3032
3033       clear_before_exec
3034              By default, Midnight Commander clears the screen before  execut‐
3035              ing  a  command.   If  you would prefer to see the output of the
3036              command at the bottom of the screen, edit your  ~/.config/mc/ini
3037              file and change the value of the field clear_before_exec to 0.
3038
3039       confirm_view_dir
3040              If  you  press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that direc‐
3041              tory.  If this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for  confirma‐
3042              tion before changing the directory if you have files tagged.
3043
3044       ftpfs_retry_seconds
3045              This value is the number of seconds Midnight Commander will wait
3046              before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has  denied
3047              the login.  If the value is zero, the login will no be retried.
3048
3049       max_dirt_limit
3050              Specifies  how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the
3051              internal file viewer.  Normally this value is  not  significant,
3052              because  the code automatically adjusts the number of updates to
3053              skip according to the rate of incoming keystrokes.  However,  on
3054              very  slow  machines  or terminals with a fast keyboard auto re‐
3055              peat, a big value can make screen updates too jumpy.
3056
3057              It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the  best  be‐
3058              havior, and that is the default value.
3059
3060       mouse_move_pages_viewer
3061              Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by
3062              line on the internal file viewer.
3063
3064       only_leading_plus_minus
3065              Allow special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in  the  command  line
3066              (select,  unselect,  reverse selection) only if the command line
3067              is empty.  You don't need to quote those characters in the  mid‐
3068              dle of the command line.  On the other hand, you cannot use them
3069              to change selection when the command line is not empty.
3070
3071       alternate_plus_minus
3072              If true, use '+', '-', '\' and '*' keys normally. For select/un‐
3073              select, use 'Alt-+', 'Alt--' and 'Alt-*'.
3074
3075       show_output_starts_shell
3076              This  variable only works if you are not using the subshell sup‐
3077              port.  When you use the C-o keystroke to go  back  to  the  user
3078              screen,  if this one is set, you will get a fresh shell.  Other‐
3079              wise, pressing any key will bring you back to  Midnight  Comman‐
3080              der.
3081
3082       timeformat_recent
3083              Change  the time format used to display dates less than 6 months
3084              from now.  See strftime or date man page for the format specifi‐
3085              cation. If this option is absent, default timeformat is used.
3086
3087       timeformat_old
3088              Change  the  time  format  used  to  display  dates older than 6
3089              months from now or for dates in the  future.   See  strftime  or
3090              date  man  page  for the format specification. If this option is
3091              absent, default timeformat is used.
3092
3093       torben_fj_mode
3094              If this flag is set, then  the  home  and  end  keys  will  work
3095              slightly  different  on the panels, instead of moving the selec‐
3096              tion to the first and last files in the panels, they will act as
3097              follows:
3098
3099              The  home  key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else
3100              go to the top line unless it is already on the top line, in this
3101              case it will go to the first file in the panel.
3102
3103              The  end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line,
3104              if over it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at
3105              the  bottom line, in such case it will move the selection to the
3106              last file name in the panel.
3107
3108       use_file_to_guess_type
3109              If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file com‐
3110              mand to match the file types listed on the mc.ext file.
3111
3112       xtree_mode
3113              If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file
3114              system on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload  the  other
3115              panel with the contents of the selected directory.
3116
3117       fish_directory_timeout
3118              This  variable  holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in
3119              seconds. The default value is 900 seconds.
3120
3121       clipboard_store
3122              This variable contains path (with options) to the external clip‐
3123              board  utility  like  'xclip' to read text into X selection from
3124              file.  For example:
3125
3126       clipboard_store=xclip -i
3127
3128       clipboard_paste
3129              This variable contains path (with options) to the external clip‐
3130              board  utility  like  'xclip' to print the selection to standard
3131              out.  For example:
3132
3133       clipboard_paste=xclip -o
3134
3135       autodetect_codeset
3136              This option allows use the `enca' command to autodetect  codeset
3137              of  text files in internal viewer and editor. List of valid val‐
3138              ues can be obtain by the `enca --list languages | cut -d :  -f1'
3139              command. Option must be located in the [Misc] section.
3140
3141       For example:
3142
3143       autodetect_codeset=russian
3144

Parameters for external editor or viewer

3146       Midnight  Commander  provides a way for specify an options for external
3147       editors and viewers. Midnight Commander tries to search the  "[External
3148       editor or viewer parameters]" section in the system initialization file
3149       (the mc.lib file located in Midnight Commander's library directory) and
3150       then  in  the ~/.config/mc/ini file. The option name should be equal to
3151       the name (full pathname) of external editor or viewer. The option value
3152       can contain following variables:
3153
3154       %filename
3155              The filename to edit/view.
3156
3157       %lineno
3158              The start line in the opening file.
3159
3160       For example:
3161
3162       [External editor or viewer parameters]
3163           vi=%filename +%lineno
3164           joe=%filename +%lineno
3165           more=%filename +%lineno
3166
3167       Start line is passed to the external editor/viewer only if it is called
3168       from the Find file results window.
3169
3170       If external editor/viewer is launched via F4/F3  keys,  MC  hopes  that
3171       program  (at  least  "joe", but probably others too) has an own feature
3172       that by default opens the file where it was last open. MC doesn't  pre‐
3173       vent  external  editor/viewer  to  save  and restore position in opened
3174       files.
3175

Terminal databases

3177       Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal  database
3178       without  requiring  root privileges. Midnight Commander searches in the
3179       system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in Midnight Comman‐
3180       der's  library directory) and in the ~/.config/mc/ini file for the sec‐
3181       tion "terminal:your-terminal-name" and then  for  the  section  "termi‐
3182       nal:general",  each  line of the section contains a key symbol that you
3183       want to define, followed by an equal sign and the  definition  for  the
3184       key.  You can use the special \e form to represent the escape character
3185       and the ^x to represent the control-x character.
3186
3187       The possible key symbols are:
3188
3189       f0 to f20     Function keys f0-f20
3190       bs            backspace
3191       home          home key
3192       end           end key
3193       up            up arrow key
3194       down          down arrow key
3195       left          left arrow key
3196       right         right arrow key
3197       pgdn          page down key
3198       pgup          page up key
3199       insert        the insert character
3200       delete        the delete character
3201       complete      to do completion
3202
3203       For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
3204       set this in the ini file:
3205
3206       insert=\e[Op
3207
3208
3209       Also now you can use extended learn keys.  For example:
3210
3211           ctrl-alt-right=\e[[1;6C
3212           ctrl-alt-left=\e[[1;6D
3213
3214
3215       This  means  that  ctrl+alt+left  sends  a \e[[1;6D escape sequence and
3216       therefore Midnight Commander interprets "\e[[1;6D" as C-Alt-Left.
3217
3218
3219       The complete key symbol represents the escape sequences used to  invoke
3220       the  completion  process, this is invoked with Alt-tab, but you can de‐
3221       fine other keys to do the same work (on those  keyboard  with  tons  of
3222       nice and unused keys everywhere).
3223
3224

FILES

3226       Full  paths  below  may  vary between installations.  They are also af‐
3227       fected by the MC_DATADIR environment variable. If it's set,  its  value
3228       is used instead of %pkgdatadir% in the paths below.
3229
3230       %pkgdatadir%/help/mc.hlp
3231
3232              The help file for the program.
3233
3234       %pkgdatadir%/mc.ext
3235
3236              The default system-wide extensions file.
3237
3238       ~/.config/mc/mc.ext
3239
3240              User's  own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
3241              file.  They override the contents of the system  wide  files  if
3242              present.
3243
3244       /etc/mc/mc.ini
3245       %pkgdatadir%/mc.ini
3246
3247              System-wide setup files for Midnight Commander, used only if the
3248              user  doesn't   have   his   own   ~/.config/mc/ini   file.   If
3249              /etc/mc/mc.ini exists, %pkgdatadir%/mc.ini isn't used.
3250
3251       %pkgdatadir%/mc.lib
3252
3253              Global  settings  for  Midnight Commander. Settings in this file
3254              affect all users, whether they  have  ~/.config/mc/ini  or  not.
3255              Currently, only terminal settings are loaded from mc.lib.
3256
3257       ~/.config/mc/ini
3258
3259              User's  own  setup.  If  this  file is present then the setup is
3260              loaded from here instead of the system-wide startup file.
3261
3262       %pkgdatadir%/hints/mc.hint
3263
3264              This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
3265
3266       %pkgdatadir%/mc.menu
3267
3268              This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.
3269
3270       ~/.config/mc/menu
3271
3272              User's own application menu. If this file is present it is  used
3273              instead of the system-wide applications menu.
3274
3275       ~/.cache/mc/Tree
3276
3277              The  directory  list  for  the directory tree and tree view fea‐
3278              tures.
3279
3280       ~/.local/share/mc.menu
3281
3282              Local user-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used in‐
3283              stead of the home or system-wide applications menu.
3284
3285       To change default root directory of MC, you can use MC_PROFILE_ROOT en‐
3286       vironment variable. The value of MC_PROFILE_ROOT must  be  an  absolute
3287       path.   If MC_PROFILE_ROOT is unset or empty, HOME variable is used. If
3288       HOME is unset or empty, MC directories are get from GLib library.
3289

LICENSE

3291       This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU  General  Public
3292       License  as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built-in
3293       help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
3294

AVAILABILITY

3296       The latest version of this program  can  be  found  at  http://ftp.mid
3297       night-commander.org/.
3298

SEE ALSO

3300       ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1), tcsh(1), zsh(1).
3301
3302       Midnight Commander's page on the World Wide Web:
3303            http://www.midnight-commander.org/
3304

AUTHORS

3306       Authors  and  contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
3307       distribution.
3308

BUGS

3310       See the file TODO in the distribution for information on  what  remains
3311       to be done.
3312
3313       If  you want to report a problem with the program, please create bugre‐
3314       port at http://www.midnight-commander.org/.
3315
3316       Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of  the  program
3317       you are running (mc -V displays this information), the operating system
3318       you are running the program on.  If the program crashes, we  would  ap‐
3319       preciate a stack trace.
3320
3321
3322
3323MC Version 4.8.28                 March 2022                             MC(1)
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