1MC(1) GNU Midnight Commander MC(1)
2
6 mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems.
7
9 mc [-abcCdfhPstuUVx] [-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [-e [file] ...] [-v file]
10
12 GNU Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager for
13 Unix-like operating systems.
14
16 -a, --stickchars
17 Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
18 -b, --nocolor
20 Force black and white display.
21 -c, --color
23 Force color mode, please check the section Colors for more in‐
24 formation.
25 -C arg, --colors=arg
27 Specify a different color set in the command line. The format
28 of arg is documented in the Colors section.
29 --configure-options
31 Display configure options.
32 -d, --nomouse
34 Disable mouse support.
35 -e [file], --edit[=file]
37 Start the internal editor. If the file is specified, open it on
38 startup. See also mcedit (1).
39 -f, --datadir
41 Display the compiled-in search paths for Midnight Commander
42 files.
43 -F, --datadir-info
45 Display extended info about compiled-in paths for Midnight Com‐
46 mander.
47 -g, --oldmouse
49 Force a "normal tracking" mouse mode. Used when running on
50 xterm-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
51 -k, --resetsoft
53 Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo data‐
54 base. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't
55 work.
56 -K file, --keymap=file
58 Specify a name of keymap file in the command line.
59 -l file, --ftplog=file
61 Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
62 --nokeymap
64 Don't load key bindings from any file, use default hardcoded
65 keys.
66 -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 -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 -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 -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 -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 -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 -v file, --view=file
101 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
102 mcview (1).
103 -V, --version
105 Display the version of the program.
106 -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 -X, --no-x11
112 Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl, Shift
113 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 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 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
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 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 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
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 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 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 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
165 key labels by clicking on them.
166 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 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
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 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 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 S-<chr>
192 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
193 All input lines in Midnight Commander use an approximation to the GNU
195 Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
196 You may redefine key bindings. See redefine hotkey bindings
198 for more info. All other key bindings (described in this manual) are
200 relative to default behavior.
201 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
204 the most important.
205 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 1) ~/.config/mc
244 2) /etc/mc/
245 3) %pkgdatadir%/
246 Miscellaneous Keys
249 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
250 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 C-l repaint all the information in Midnight Commander.
262 C-x c run the Chmod command on a file or on the tagged files.
264 C-x o run the Chown command on the current file or on the tagged
266 files.
267 C-x l run the hard link command.
269 C-x s run the absolute symbolic link command.
271 C-x v run the relative symbolic link command. See the File Menu sec‐
273 tion for more information about symbolic links.
274 C-x i set the other panel display mode to information.
276 C-x q set the other panel display mode to quick view.
278 C-x ! execute the External panelize command.
280 C-x h run the add directory to hotlist command.
282 Alt-! executes the Filtered view command, described in the view com‐
284 mand.
285 Alt-? executes the Find file command.
287 Alt-c pops up the quick cd dialog.
289 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 C-\ (control-backslash)
332 show the directory hotlist and change to the selected directory.
333 + (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 \ (backslash)
348 use the "\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the oppo‐
349 site of the Plus key.
350 up-key, C-p
352 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
353 down-key, C-n
355 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
356 home, a1, Alt-<
358 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
359 end, c1, Alt->
361 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
362 next-page, C-v
364 move the selection bar one page down.
365 prev-page, Alt-v
367 move the selection bar one page up.
368 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 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 C-PageUp, C-PageDown
381 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the
382 currently selected directory respectively.
383 Alt-y moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to
385 clicking the < with the mouse.
386 Alt-u moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to click‐
388 ing the > with the mouse.
389 Alt-S-h, Alt-H
391 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v'
392 with the mouse.
393 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 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 If quick search is started with double pressing of C-s, the previous
407 quick search pattern will be used for current search.
408 Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard characters
410 '*' and '?'.
411 Shell Command Line
413 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
414 entering shell commands.
415 Alt-Enter
417 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
418 C-Enter
420 same a Alt-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some ter‐
421 minals.
422 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 Alt-Tab
429 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
430 pletion for you.
431 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 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 C-q the quote command can be used to insert characters that are oth‐
443 erwise interpreted by Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
444 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 Alt-h displays the history for the current input line.
450 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 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 Up, C-p
460 moves one line backward.
461 Down, C-n
463 moves one line forward.
464 Prev Page, Page Up, Alt-v
466 moves one page up.
467 Next Page, Page Down, C-v
469 moves one page down.
470 Home, A1
472 moves to the beginning.
473 End, C1
475 move to the end.
476 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in addi‐
478 tion the to ones mentioned above:
479 b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
481 moves one page up.
482 Space bar
484 moves one page down.
485 u, d moves one half of a page up or down.
487 g, G moves to the beginning or to the end.
489 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 C-a puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
495 C-e puts the cursor at the end of the line.
497 C-b, move-left
499 move the cursor one position left.
500 C-f, move-right
502 move the cursor one position right.
503 Alt-f moves one word forward.
505 Alt-b moves one word backward.
507 C-h, Backspace
509 delete the previous character.
510 C-d, Delete
512 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
513 C-@ sets the mark for cutting.
515 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 Alt-w copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buf‐
520 fer.
521 C-y yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
523 C-k kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
525 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 Alt-C-h, Alt-Backspace
531 delete one word backward.
532 Alt-Tab
534 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
535 pletion for you.
536
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 The Left and Right Menus allow you to modify the appearance of the left
544 and right directory panels.
545 The File Menu lists the actions you can perform on the currently se‐
547 lected file or the tagged files.
548 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 The Options Menu lists the actions which allow you to customize Mid‐
553 night Commander.
554 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 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 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 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify the
572 display format.
573 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 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 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 name displays the file name.
587 size displays the file size.
589 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 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 mark an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
602 mtime file's last modification time.
604 atime file's last access time.
606 ctime file's status change time.
608 perm a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
610 mode an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
612 nlink the number of links to the file.
614 ngid the GID (numeric).
616 nuid the UID (numeric).
618 owner the owner of the file.
620 group the group of the file.
622 inode the inode of the file.
624 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
626 space a space in the display format.
628 | add a vertical line to the display format.
630 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 For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:
638 half type name | size | mtime
640 And the Long display corresponds to this format:
642 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
644 space name
645 This is a nice user display format:
647 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
649 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
651 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 Tree The tree view is quite similar to the directory tree feature.
657 See the section about it for more information.
658 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 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 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
673 from the Panel options menu (option Mix all files).
674 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 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 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 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in paren‐
694 theses):
695 Help (F1)
697 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 Menu (F2)
705 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 View (F3, F13)
710 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 See parameters for external viewer for explain how you may specify an
720 extended command line options for external viewers.
721 Filtered View (Alt-!)
723 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 Edit (F4, F14)
729 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 See parameters for external editor for explain how you may specify an
736 extended command line options for external editors.
737 Copy (F5, F15)
739 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 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 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 Link (C-x l)
759 Create a hard link to the current file.
761 Absolute symlink (C-x s)
763 Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
765 Relative symLink (C-x v)
767 Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
769 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 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 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 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 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 /home/frodo/mc/mc -> /home/frodo/new/mc
799 A relative link describes the original file's location starting from
801 the location of the link itself:
802 /home/frodo/mc/mc -> ../new/mc
804 You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing
806 "C-x v" instead of "C-x s".
807 Rename/Move (F6, F16)
809 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 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 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 Mkdir (F7)
826 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
828 Delete (F8)
830 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 Quick cd (Alt-c) Use the quick cd command if you have full command line
836 and want to cd somewhere.
837 Select group (+)
839 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 Unselect group (\)
852 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the Select
854 group command.
855 Quit (F10, S-F10)
857 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 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 Command Menu
871 The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.
872 The "Find file" command allows you to search for a specific file.
874 The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory pan‐
876 els.
877 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 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 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 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 The "Directory hotlist" command makes changing of the current directory
898 to often used directories faster.
899 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 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 The "Edit Menu File" command may be used for editing the user menu
909 (which appears by pressing F2).
910 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 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 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 You can use the following keys:
926 General movement keys
928 are accepted.
929 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 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 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 F4 (Static/Dynamic).
946 Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode (default) and the
947 static navigation mode.
948 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 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 F5 (Copy).
959 Copy the directory.
960 F6 (RenMov).
962 Move the directory.
963 F7 (Mkdir).
965 Make a new directory below this directory.
966 F8 (Delete).
968 Delete this directory from the file system.
969 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 C-h, Backspace.
975 Delete the last character of the search string.
976 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 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
984 aren't supported in the tree view.
985 F1 (Help).
987 Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
988 Esc, F10.
990 Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
991 The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter. See also the
993 section on mouse support.
994 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 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 The "Content" input field contains a string to search for within the
1006 files. Leave this field empty to disable searching file contents.
1007 Option "Whole words" allows select only those files containing matches
1009 that form whole words. Like grep -w.
1010 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 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 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 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1029 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 Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the current
1035 absolute path.
1036 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 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 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 find . -type l -print
1050 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 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 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1060 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 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 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using
1077 the CDPATH variable as described in internal cd command description.
1078 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 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1084 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1086 keyword/expr, i.e. everything after the slash until new line is expr.
1088 keyword can be:
1090 shell - expr is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name
1092 ends with expr. Example: shell/.tar matches *.tar.
1093 regex - expr is a regular expression. File matches if its name
1095 matches the regular expression.
1096 directory
1098 - expr is a regular expression. File matches if it is a direc‐
1099 tory and its name matches the regular expression.
1100 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 default
1106 - matches any file. expr is ignored.
1107 include
1109 - denotes a common section. expr is the name of the section.
1110 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 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 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 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 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 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 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1151 A Dump the currently selected file
1153 od -c %f
1154 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 $I
1160 M Read mail
1162 emacs -f rmail
1163 N Read Usenet news
1165 emacs -f gnus
1166 H Call the info hypertext browser
1168 info
1169 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1171 tar cf - . | (cd %D && tar xvpf -)
1172 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1174 echo -n "Name of distribution file: "
1175 read tar
1176 ln -s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1177 cd ..
1178 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1179 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1181 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1182 tar xzvf %f
1183 Default Conditions
1185 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 Condition syntax: = <sub-cond>
1191 or: = <sub-cond> | <sub-cond> ...
1192 or: = <sub-cond> & <sub-cond> ...
1193 Sub-condition is one of following:
1195 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 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 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1213 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 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 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1231 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1232 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 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1239 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1241 L List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
1242 gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -
1243 Addition Conditions
1245 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 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 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1258 with '#', space or tab.
1259 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 The Configuration command pops up a dialog from which you can change
1266 most of settings of Midnight Commander.
1267 The Layout command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of
1269 options how mc looks like on the screen.
1270 The Panel options command pops up a dialog from which you specify op‐
1272 tions of file manager panels.
1273 The Confirmation command pops up a dialog from which you specify which
1275 actions you want to confirm.
1276 The Appearance command pops up a dialog from which you specify the
1278 skin.
1279 The Display bits command pops up a dialog from which you may select
1281 which characters is your terminal able to display.
1282 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 The Virtual FS command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS
1287 related options.
1288 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 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 File operation options
1297 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 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 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 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 Preallocate space. Preallocate space for whole target file, if possi‐
1321 ble, before copy operation. Disabled by default.
1322 Esc key mode.
1324 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 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 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 Pause after run
1341 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 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 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 Always. The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1355 Other options
1357 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 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 Ask new file name. If this option is enabled, file name is asked be‐
1370 fore open new file in editor.
1371 Auto menus. If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked
1373 at startup. Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
1374 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Panel split
1427 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 Equal split. By default, panels have equal sizes. Using this option
1434 you can specify an unequal split.
1435 Console output
1437 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 Other options
1443 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 Command prompt. If enabled, command line is available. Enabled by de‐
1448 fault.
1449 Keybar visible. If enabled, 10 labels associated with F1-F10 keys are
1451 located at the bottom row of screen. Enabled by default.
1452 Hintbar visible. If enabled, the one-line hints are visible below pan‐
1454 els. Enabled by default.
1455 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 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 Panel options
1466 Main panel options
1467 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 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 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 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 Show hidden files. If enabled, Midnight Commander will show all files
1486 that start with a dot (like ls -a). Disabled by default.
1487 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 Mark moves down. If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you
1498 mark a file (with Insert key). Enabled by default.
1499 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 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 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 Navigation
1517 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 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 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 Mouse page scrolling. Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel
1533 is done by pages or line by line on the panels.
1534 File highlight
1536 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 Quick search
1546 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 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 Appearance
1557 In this dialog you can select the skin to be used and enable shadow for
1558 dialogs and drop down menus.
1559 See the Skins section for technical details about the skin definition
1561 files.
1562 Shadows. If this option is enabled, all dialogs and drop down menus
1564 will have a shadow.
1565 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 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 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 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 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 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 Virtual FS
1605 This option gives you control over the settings of the Virtual File
1606 System.
1607 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 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 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 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 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 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote
1636 FTP servers. It has several options.
1637 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 The Save Setup command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by saving the
1681 current settings of the Left, Right and Options menus.
1682 If you activate the auto save setup option, MC will always save the
1684 current settings when exiting.
1685 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
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 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 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 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 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
1714 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
1715 Previous directory. You can jump to the directory you were previously
1717 by using the special directory name '-' like this: cd -
1718 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 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 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 The macros are:
1736 %i The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position.
1738 For edit menu only.
1739 %y The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
1741 %k The block file name.
1743 %e The error file name.
1745 %m The current menu name.
1747 %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 %x The extension of current file name.
1753 %b The current file name without extension.
1755 %d The current directory name.
1757 %F The current file in the unselected panel.
1759 %D The directory name of the unselected panel.
1761 %t The currently tagged files.
1763 %T The tagged files in the unselected panel.
1765 %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 %s and %S
1773 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise
1774 the current file.
1775 %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 %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 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 %% The % character
1791 %{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 %var{ENV:default}
1799 If environment variable ENV is unset, the default is substi‐
1800 tuted. Otherwise, the value of ENV is substituted.
1801 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 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 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 ash/dash users (BusyBox or Debian) may specify startup commands in
1820 ~/.local/share/mc/ashrc (fallback ~/.profile).
1821 zsh users may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/.zshrc
1823 (fallback ~/.zshrc).
1824 tcsh, fish users cannot specify mc-specific startup commands at
1826 present. They have to rely on shell-specific startup files.
1827 The following paragraphs are relevant only when the subshell support is
1829 active:
1830 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 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 (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 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
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 The Chmod window has two parts - Permissions and File.
1855 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 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 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 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
1870 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 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 [Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files
1880 [Set marked] set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1882 [Clean marked] clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
1884 [Set] set the attributes of one file
1886 [Cancel] cancel the Chmod command
1888
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
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
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 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 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 To set the attributes, use the Enter key.
1914 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 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 [Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files.
1924 [Set marked] set marked flags in attributes of all selected files.
1926 [Clean marked] clear marked flags in attributes of all selected files.
1928 [Set] set the attributes of one file.
1930 [Cancel] cancel the Chattr command.
1932
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 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 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
1948 operations.
1949 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 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 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 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
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 There are other options which you can set:
1985 Follow links
1987 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 Dive into subdirs
1993 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 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 Preserve attributes
2007 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 Use shell patterns
2013 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 Two examples:
2025 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 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 Use shell patterns off
2035 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 Two examples:
2043 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 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 Case Conversions
2053 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 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 The '\u' and '\l' are stronger than '\U' and '\L'.
2063 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 You can also use '\' as a quote character. For example, '\\' is a back‐
2070 slash and '\*' is an asterisk.
2071 Stable symlinks
2073 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
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 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
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 Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of Midnight
2104 Commander.
2105 F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
2107 F2 Save modified files.
2109 F4 Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
2111 F14 Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
2113 F5 Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be merged.
2115 F7 Start search.
2117 F17 Continue search.
2119 F10, Esc, q
2121 Exit from diff viewer.
2122 Alt-s, s
2124 Toggle show of hunk status.
2125 Alt-n, l
2127 Toggle show of line numbers.
2128 f Maximize left panel.
2130 = Make panels equal in width.
2132 > Reduce the size of the right panel.
2134 < Reduce the size of the left panel.
2136 c Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2138 2, 3, 4, 8
2140 Set tabulation size
2141 C-u Swap contents of diff panels.
2143 C-r Refresh the screen.
2145 C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2147 Enter, Space, n
2149 Find next diff hunk.
2150 Backspace, p
2152 Find previous diff hunk.
2153 g Go to line.
2155 Down Scroll one line forward.
2157 Up Scroll one line backward.
2159 PageUp Move one page up.
2161 PageDown
2163 Mves one page down.
2164 Home, A1
2166 Moves to the line beginning.
2167 End Moves to the line end.
2169 C-Home Move to the file beginning.
2171 C-End, C1
2173 Move to the file end.
2174
2176 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex. To
2177 toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
2178 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 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 "String" 34 0xBB 012 "more text"
2190 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 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the Mid‐
2197 night Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2198 F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
2200 F2 Toggle the wrap mode.
2202 F4 Toggle the hex mode.
2204 F5 Goto. You can specify a line number, offset or percentage of
2206 file size of position that you want to view.
2207 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 C-s Continue forward search.
2214 C-r Continue reverse search.
2216 F17, n Continue search in the chosen direction.
2218 N Temporary change the search direction: backwards if forward
2220 search is chosen, and vice versa.
2221 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 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 F10, Esc.
2234 Exit the internal file viewer.
2235 PageDown, space, C-v.
2237 Scroll one page forward.
2238 PageUp, Alt-v, C-b, Backspace.
2240 Scroll one page backward.
2241 Down Scroll one line forward.
2243 Up Scroll one line backward.
2245 C-l Refresh the screen.
2247 C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2249 [n] m Set the mark n.
2251 [n] r Jump to the mark n.
2253 C-f Jump to the next file.
2255 C-b Jump to the previous file.
2257 Alt-r Toggle the ruler.
2259 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 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
2266 at the Edit Extension File section
2267
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 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 Sections:
2284 Options of editor in ini-file
2286 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 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 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 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 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
2320 Some editor options of ini-file are described in this section. Options
2321 are placed in [Midnight-Commander] section
2322 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
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 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 Alt-} switch to the next screen;
2338 Alt-{ switch to the previous screen;
2340 Alt-` open a dialog window with the list of currently open screens (or
2342 use the "Screen list" menu item).
2343
2345 Let Midnight Commander type for you.
2346 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 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 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
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 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 A generic extfs (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to
2392 easily expand VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
2393 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 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 ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
2405 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 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend ! (an exclamation sign) to the
2415 hostname.
2416 Examples:
2418 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 Please check the Virtual File System dialog box for ftpfs options.
2426 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 /filename.tar/utar://[dir-inside-tar]
2434 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 Examples:
2441 mc-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc-3.0/vfs
2443 /ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar/utar://
2444 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
2446 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 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2454 directory which name is in the following format:
2455 sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
2457 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 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 Examples:
2470 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 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 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2481 directory which name is in the following format:
2482 sftp://[user@]machine:[port]/[remote-dir]
2484 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 Examples:
2493 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 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 [Yes] add new host/key pair to the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file and con‐
2505 tinue.
2506 [Ignore] do not add new host/key pair to the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file,
2508 but continue nevertheless (at you own risk).
2509 [No] abort connection.
2511 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 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 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 undel://sda2
2528 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
2530 before you start browsing files there.
2531 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 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
2537 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 For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive, type
2546 cd audio://
2548 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 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
2557 cd documents.zip/uzip://
2559 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 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
2566 a access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette (cd a://).
2568 apt front end to Debian's APT package management system (cd apt://).
2570 audio audio CD ripping and playing (cd audio:// or cd device/au‐
2572 dio://).
2573 bpp package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution (cd
2575 file.bpp/bpp://).
2576 deb package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution (cd file.deb/deb://).
2578 dpkg Debian GNU/Linux installed packages (cd deb://).
2580 hp48 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator (cd hp48://).
2582 lslR browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs (cd file‐
2584 name/lslR://).
2585 mailfs mbox-style mailbox files support (cd mailbox/mailfs://).
2587 patchfs
2589 extfs to handle unified and context diffs (cd file‐
2590 name/patchfs://).
2591 rpm RPM package (cd filename/rpm://).
2593 rpms RPM database management (cd rpms://).
2595 ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
2597 archivers (cd archive/xxxx:// where xxxx is one of: ulha, urar,
2598 uzip, uzoo, uar, uha).
2599 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 regex/.deb$
2605 Open=%cd %p/deb://
2606
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 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 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 [Colors]
2623 color_terminals=linux,xterm
2624 color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
2625 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 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 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 [Colors]
2639 base_color=
2640 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
2641 The format for the color definition is:
2643 <keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
2645 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 header determines the color of panel header, the line that contains
2660 column titles and sort mode indicator.
2661 input determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
2663 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 disabled determines the color of the widget that cannot be selected.
2669 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 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menunormal, menusel, menuhot,
2677 menuhotsel and menuinactive tags instead.
2678 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 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 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 [Colors]
2699 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
2700 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 menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
2707
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 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 A skin-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one
2720 found):
2721 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 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 1) ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
2736 2) /etc/mc/skins/
2737 3) %pkgdatadir%/skins/
2738 For getting extended info, refer to:
2741 Description of section and parameters
2743 Color pair definitions
2744 Color and attribute aliases
2745 Draw lines
2746 Compatibility
2747 Description of section and parameters
2750 Section [skin] contain metainfo for skin-file. Parameter description
2751 contain short text about skin.
2752 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 Section [core] describes the elements that are used everywhere.
2761 _default_
2763 Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they not con‐
2764 tain color definitions
2765 selected
2767 cursor
2768 marked selected data
2770 markselect
2772 cursor on selected data
2773 gauge color of the filled part of the progress bar
2775 input color of input lines used in query dialogs
2777 inputmark
2779 color of input selected text
2780 inputunchanged
2782 color of input text before first modification or cursor movement
2783 commandlinemark
2785 color of selected text in command line
2786 reverse
2788 reverse color
2789 Section [dialog] describes the elements that are placed on dialog win‐
2791 dows (except error dialogs).
2792 _default_
2794 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2795 specified
2796 dfocus Color of active element (in focus)
2798 dhotnormal
2800 Color of hotkeys
2801 dhotfocus
2803 Color of hotkeys in focused element
2804 Section [error] describes the elements that are placed on error dialog
2807 windows
2808 _default_
2810 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2811 specified
2812 errdhotnormal
2814 Color of hotkeys
2815 errdhotfocus
2817 Color of hotkeys in focused element
2818 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 _default_
2825 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2826 specified
2827 entry Color of menu items
2829 menuhot
2831 Color of menu hotkeys
2832 menusel
2834 Color of active menu item (in focus)
2835 menuhotsel
2837 Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
2838 menuinactive
2840 Color of inactive menu
2841 Section [help] describes the elements that are placed on help window.
2844 _default_
2846 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2847 specified
2848 helpitalic
2850 Color pair for element with italic attribute
2851 helpbold
2853 Color pair for element with bold attribute
2854 helplink
2856 Color of links
2857 helpslink
2859 Color of active link (on focus)
2860 Section [editor] describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
2863 _default_
2865 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not
2866 specified
2867 editbold
2869 Color pair for element with bold attribute
2870 editmarked
2872 Color of selected text
2873 editwhitespace
2875 Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
2876 editlinestate
2878 Color for line state area
2879 Section [viewer] describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
2882 viewunderline
2884 Color pair for element with underline attribute
2885 Color pair definitions
2888 Any parameter in skin-file contain definition of color pair.
2889 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 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 Possible colors (names) and attributes are described in Colors. sec‐
2908 tion.
2909 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 Example:
2918 [aliases]
2919 myfavfg=green
2920 myfavbg=black
2921 myfavattr=bold+italic
2922 [core]
2923 _default_=myfavfg;myfavbg;myfavattr
2924 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 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 Descriptions of parameters [Lines]:
2938 lefttop
2940 left-top line fragment.
2941 righttop
2943 right-top line fragment.
2944 centertop
2946 down branch of horizontal line
2947 centerbottom
2949 up branch of horizontal line
2950 leftbottom
2952 left-bottom line fragment
2953 rightbottom
2955 right-bottom line fragment
2956 leftmiddle
2958 right branch of vertical line
2959 rightmiddle
2961 left branch of vertical line
2962 centermiddle
2964 cross of lines
2965 horiz horizontal line
2967 vert vertical line
2969 thinhoriz
2971 thin horizontal line
2972 thinvert
2974 thin vertical line
2975 Compatibility
2979 Appointment of color by skin-files fully compatible with the appoint‐
2980 ment of the colors described in Colors. section.
2981 In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the skin file
2983 and is complementary.
2984
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 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 Keys in these groups are:
2997 type file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
2999 regexp regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is ignored.
3001 extensions
3003 list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
3004 extensions_case
3006 (make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
3007 rule case sensitive (true) or not (false).
3008 `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
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 These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
3032 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 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 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 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 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best be‐
3058 havior, and that is the default value.
3059 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 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 alternate_plus_minus
3072 If true, use '+', '-', '\' and '*' keys normally. For select/un‐
3073 select, use 'Alt-+', 'Alt--' and 'Alt-*'.
3074 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 fish_directory_timeout
3118 This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in
3119 seconds. The default value is 900 seconds.
3120 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 clipboard_store=xclip -i
3127 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 clipboard_paste=xclip -o
3134 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 For example:
3142 autodetect_codeset=russian
3144
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 %filename
3155 The filename to edit/view.
3156 %lineno
3158 The start line in the opening file.
3159 For example:
3161 [External editor or viewer parameters]
3163 vi=%filename +%lineno
3164 joe=%filename +%lineno
3165 more=%filename +%lineno
3166 Start line is passed to the external editor/viewer only if it is called
3168 from the Find file results window.
3169 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
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 The possible key symbols are:
3188 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 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
3204 set this in the ini file:
3205 insert=\e[Op
3207 Also now you can use extended learn keys. For example:
3210 ctrl-alt-right=\e[[1;6C
3212 ctrl-alt-left=\e[[1;6D
3213 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 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
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 %pkgdatadir%/help/mc.hlp
3231 The help file for the program.
3233 %pkgdatadir%/mc.ext
3235 The default system-wide extensions file.
3237 ~/.config/mc/mc.ext
3239 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
3241 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if
3242 present.
3243 /etc/mc/mc.ini
3245 %pkgdatadir%/mc.ini
3246 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 %pkgdatadir%/mc.lib
3252 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 ~/.config/mc/ini
3258 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 %pkgdatadir%/hints/mc.hint
3263 This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
3265 %pkgdatadir%/mc.menu
3267 This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.
3269 ~/.config/mc/menu
3271 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used
3273 instead of the system-wide applications menu.
3274 ~/.cache/mc/Tree
3276 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view fea‐
3278 tures.
3279 ~/.local/share/mc.menu
3281 Local user-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used in‐
3283 stead of the home or system-wide applications menu.
3284 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
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
3296 The latest version of this program can be found at http://ftp.mid‐
3297 night-commander.org/.
3298
3300 ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1), tcsh(1), zsh(1).
3301 Midnight Commander's page on the World Wide Web:
3303 http://www.midnight-commander.org/
3304
3306 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
3307 distribution.
3308
3310 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains
3311 to be done.
3312 If you want to report a problem with the program, please create bugre‐
3314 port at http://www.midnight-commander.org/.
3315 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.
3320MC Version 4.8.28 March 2022 MC(1)