2 .TH MC 1 "January 2003" "MC Version 4.6.0" "GNU Midnight Commander"
5 mc \- Visual shell for Unix-like systems.
9 [\-abcCdfhPstuUVx] [\-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [-e [file]] [-v file]
12 GNU Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager for
13 Unix-like operating systems.
19 Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
22 Force black and white display.
25 Force color mode, please check the section
32 Specify a different color set in the command line. The format of arg is
40 Disable mouse support.
43 Start the internal editor. If the file is specified, open it on
48 Display the compiled-in search paths for Midnight Commander files.
51 Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo
52 database. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't work.
55 Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
58 Print the last working directory to the specified file. This option is
59 not meant to be used directly. Instead, it's used from a special shell
60 script that automatically changes the current directory of the shell to
61 the last directory the Midnight Commander was in. Source the file
62 .B @prefix@/share/mc/bin/mc.sh
63 (bash and zsh users) or
64 .B @prefix@/share/mc/bin/mc.csh
65 (tcsh users) respectively to define
67 as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
70 Turn on the slow terminal mode, in this mode the program will not
71 draw expensive line drawing characters and will toggle verbose mode
75 Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it makes
76 the Midnight Commander use the value of the
78 variable for the terminal information instead of the information on
79 the system wide terminal database
82 Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if the Midnight
83 Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
86 Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if the
87 Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set as an
91 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
95 Display the version of the program.
98 Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable terminals (two
99 screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
101 If specified, the first path name is the directory to show in the
102 selected panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in
106 The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
107 Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels.
108 By default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the
109 shell command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels.
110 The topmost line is the
114 The menu bar line may not be visible, but appears if you click the
115 topmost line with the mouse or press the F9 key.
117 The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same
118 time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in
119 the current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current
120 panel. Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the
121 directory of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they
122 always ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see the
130 .\"Left and Right Menus"
136 You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply
137 typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line,
138 and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the
139 command line you typed; read the
142 .\"Shell Command Line"
147 sections to learn more about the command line.
148 .\"NODE "Mouse Support"
150 The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated
151 whenever you are running on an
153 terminal (it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to
154 another machine from the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux
157 mouse server running.
159 When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is
160 selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
161 unmarked, depending on the previous state).
163 Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is
164 an executable program; and if the
167 .\"Extension File Edit"
168 has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified
171 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
172 key labels by clicking on them.
174 If a mouse button is clicked on the top frame line of the directory panel,
175 it is scrolled one page up. Likewise, a click on the bottom frame line
176 will cause scrolling one page down. This frame line method works also
186 The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
187 milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the
191 file and changing the
195 If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
196 can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by holding
201 Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the
203 (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the
205 (sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this manual we will
206 use the following abbreviations:
209 means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>.
210 Thus C-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
213 means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>.
214 If there is no Meta or Alt key, type
216 release it, then type the character <chr>.
219 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
221 All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approximation to
222 the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings.
224 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
231 section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands appearing in
232 the File menu. This section includes the function keys. Most of these
233 commands perform some action, usually on the selected file or the
240 section documents the keys which select a file or tag files as a
241 target for a later action (the action is usually one from the file
247 .\"Shell Command Line"
248 section list the keys which are used for entering and editing command
249 lines. Most of these copy file names and such from the directory
250 panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the
251 command line history.
256 are used for editing input lines. This means both the command line and
257 the input lines in the query dialogs.
258 .\"NODE " Miscellaneous Keys"
259 .SH " Miscellaneous Keys"
260 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
263 if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom of
264 the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no text in the
265 command line then if the selection bar is over a directory the
266 Midnight Commander does a
268 to the selected directory and reloads the information on the panel;
269 if the selection is an executable file then it is executed. Finally,
270 if the extension of the selected file name matches one of the
274 .\"Extension File Edit"
275 then the corresponding command is executed.
278 repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
285 command on a file or on the tagged files.
292 command on the current file or on the tagged files.
295 run the link command.
298 run the symbolic link command.
301 set the other panel display mode to information.
304 set the other panel display mode to quick view.
310 .\"External panelize"
316 add directory to hotlist
321 executes the Filtered view command, described in the
324 .\"Internal File Viewer"
341 when the program is being run in the Linux or SCO console or under an xterm,
342 it will show you the output of the previous command. When ran on the
343 Linux console, the Midnight Commander uses an external program
344 (cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of information on the
347 When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any time
348 and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
349 return to your application just type C-o. If you have an application
350 suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other
351 programs from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
353 .\"NODE " Directory Panels"
354 .SH " Directory Panels"
355 This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
356 you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a
357 look at the section on
359 Left and Right Menus\&.
360 .\"Left and Right Menus"
363 change the current panel. The old other panel becomes the new current
364 panel and the old current panel becomes the new other panel. The
365 selection bar moves from the old current panel to the new current
369 to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo sequence)
370 or the C-t (Control-t) sequence. To untag files, just retag a tagged
374 used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and the bottom one,
378 start a filename search in the directory listing. When the search is
379 active, the user input will be added to the search string instead of
380 the command line. If the
382 option is enabled the search string is shown on the mini-status
383 line. When typing, the selection bar will move to the next file
384 starting with the typed letters. The
388 keys can be used to correct typing mistakes. If C-s is pressed
389 again, the next match is searched for.
392 toggle the current display listing to show the next display listing
393 mode. With this it is possible to quickly switch from long listing
394 to regular listing and the user defined listing mode.
396 .B C-\\\\ (control-backslash)
401 and change to the selected directory.
404 this is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
405 will prompt for a regular expression describing the group. When
407 are enabled, the regular expression is much like the regular
408 expressions in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ?
409 standing for one character). If
411 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
412 expressions (see ed (1)).
414 If the expression starts or ends with a slash (/), then it will select
415 directories instead of files.
418 use the "\\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
422 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
425 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
428 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
431 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
434 move the selection bar one page down.
437 move the selection bar one page up.
440 make the current directory of the current panel also the current
441 directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the listing mode
442 if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the other panel doesn't
445 .B C-PageUp, C-PageDown
446 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the currently
447 selected directory respectively.
450 moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to clicking
456 moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to clicking the
461 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v' with
463 .\"NODE " Shell Command Line"
464 .SH " Shell Command Line"
465 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
466 entering shell commands.
469 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
472 same a M-Enter, this one only works on the Linux console.
475 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
482 copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the selected
483 file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of the other panel (C-x C-t) to
487 the first key sequence copies the current path name to the command
488 line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path name to
492 the quote command can be used to insert characters that are otherwise
493 interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
496 use these keys to browse through the command history. M-p takes you
497 to the last entry, M-n takes you to the next one.
500 displays the history for the current input line.
501 .\"NODE " General Movement Keys"
502 .SH " General Movement Keys"
503 The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common
504 code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same
505 keys. Each of them also accepts some keys of its own.
507 Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
508 keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
511 moves one line backward.
514 moves one line forward.
516 .B Prev Page, Page Up, M-v
519 .B Next Page, Page Down, C-v
523 moves to the beginning.
528 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in
529 addition the to ones mentioned above:
531 .B b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
538 moves one half of a page up or down.
541 moves to the beginning or to the end.
542 .\"NODE " Input Line Keys"
543 .SH " Input Line Keys"
544 The input lines (they are used for the
547 .\"Shell Command Line"
548 and for the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
551 puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
554 puts the cursor at the end of the line.
557 move the cursor one position left.
560 move the cursor one position right.
563 moves one word forward.
566 moves one word backward.
569 delete the previous character.
572 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
575 sets the mark for cutting.
578 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer and
579 removes the text from the input line.
582 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer.
585 yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
588 kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
591 Use these keys to browse through the command history. M-p takes you
592 to the last entry, M-n takes you to the next one.
594 .B M-C-h, M-Backspace
595 delete one word backward.
598 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
606 The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
607 row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File",
608 "Command", "Options" and "Right".
613 .\"Left and Right Menus"
614 allow you to modify the appearance of the left and right directory
621 lists the actions you can perform on the currently selected file or
628 lists the actions which are more general and bear no relation to the
629 currently selected file or the tagged files.
635 lists the actions which allow you to customize the Midnight Commander.
636 .\"NODE " Left and Right Menus"
637 .SH " Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus"
638 The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the
642 menus (they are named
646 when the horizontal panel split is chosen from the
651 .\"NODE " Listing Mode..."
652 .SH " Listing Mode..."
653 The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
654 four different listing modes available:
660 The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
661 the modification time.
663 The brief view shows only the file name and it has two columns
664 (therefore showing twice as many files as other views). The long view
665 is similar to the output of
667 command. The long view takes the whole screen width.
669 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify
672 The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This
673 may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
674 full screen panel respectively.
676 After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the
677 panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format
680 After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size
681 specifier. This are the available fields you may display:
684 displays the file name.
687 displays the file size.
690 is an alternative form of the
692 format. It displays the size of the files and for directories it just
693 shows SUB-DIR or UP--DIR.
696 displays a one character wide type field. This character is similar to
697 what is displayed by ls with the -F flag -
699 for executable files,
707 for character devices,
713 for symbolic links to directories and
715 for stale symlinks (links that point nowhere).
718 an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
721 file's last modification time.
724 file's last access time.
727 file's creation time.
730 a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
733 an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
736 the number of links to the file.
745 the owner of the file.
748 the group of the file.
751 the inode of the file.
753 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
756 a space in the display format.
759 add a vertical line to the display format.
761 To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add
763 followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If the
764 number is followed by the symbol
766 then the size specifies the minimal field size - if the program finds
767 out that there is more space on the screen, it will then expand that
772 display corresponds to this format:
774 half type name | size | mtime
778 display corresponds to this format:
780 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
783 This is a nice user display format:
785 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
787 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
790 The info view display information related to the currently
791 selected file and if possible information about the current file
795 The tree view is quite similar to the
799 feature. See the section about it for more information.
802 In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced
805 .\"Internal File Viewer"
806 that displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you
807 select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have access
808 to the usual viewer commands.
809 .\"NODE " Sort Order..."
811 The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
812 by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size,
813 by inode and unsorted. In the Sort order dialog box you can choose
814 the sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
815 order by checking the reverse box.
817 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
823 .BR "Mix all files" ).
826 The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
828 which the files must match to be shown. Regardless
829 of the filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories
830 are always shown in the directory panel.
833 The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
834 useful if other processes have created or removed files. If you
835 have panelized file names in a panel this will reload the directory
836 contents and remove the panelized information (See the section
839 .\"External panelize"
840 for more information).
843 The Midnight Commander uses the F1 - F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts
844 for commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
845 function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals
846 without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
847 pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
848 (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
850 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in parentheses):
854 Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the
858 you can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to
859 follow that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to move
860 forward and backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the full
861 list of accepted keys.
869 The user menu provides an easy way to provide users with a menu and
870 add extra features to the Midnight Commander.
872 .B View (F3, Shift-F3)
874 View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the
877 .\"Internal File Viewer"
878 but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an external
879 file viewer specified by the
881 environment variable. If
883 is undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use Shift-F3
884 instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
885 preprocessing to the file.
887 .B Filtered View (M-!)
889 This command prompts for a command
890 and its arguments (the argument defaults to the currently selected
891 file name), the output from such command is shown in the internal file
896 Currently it invokes the
898 editor, or the editor specified in the
900 environment variable, or the
903 .\"Internal File Editor"
904 if the use_internal_edit option is on.
908 Pop up an input dialog with destination that defaults to the directory
909 in the non-selected panel and copies the currently selected file (or
910 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
911 directory specified by the user in the input dialog. During this
912 process, you can press C-c or ESC to abort the operation. For details
913 about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\\(.*\\)$ depending
914 on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the destination
920 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
921 clicking on the background button (or pressing M-b in the dialog
926 is used to control the background process.
930 Create a hard link to the current file.
934 Create a symbolic link to the current file. To those of you who don't
935 know what links are: creating a link to a file is a bit like copying
936 the file, but both the source filename and the destination filename
937 represent the same file image. For example, if you edit one of these
938 files, all changes you make will appear in both files. Some people call
939 links aliases or shortcuts.
941 A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
942 telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you delete
943 either one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
944 to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
945 you don't even want to know.
947 A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If
948 the original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite
949 easy to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight
950 Commander shows an "@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a
951 symbolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
952 The original file which the link points to is shown on mini-status line if the
953 .I "Show mini-status"
954 option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the
955 confusion that can be caused by hard links.
959 Pop up an input dialog that defaults to the directory in the
960 non-selected panel and moves the currently selected file (or the
961 tagged files if there is at least one tagged file) to the directory
962 specified by the user in the input dialog. During the process, you
963 can press C-c or ESC to abort the operation. For more details look at Copy
964 operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
966 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
967 clicking on the background button (or pressing M-b in the dialog
972 is used to control the background process.
976 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
980 Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the
981 currently selected panel. During the process, you can press C-c or
982 ESC to abort the operation.
989 command if you have full command line and want to cd somewhere.
993 This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
994 will prompt for a regular expression describing the group. When
996 are enabled, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
997 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
998 for one character). If
1000 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
1001 expressions (see ed (1)).
1003 To mark directories instead of files, the expression must start or end
1006 .B Unselect group (\\\\)
1008 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the
1012 .B Quit (F10, Shift-F10)
1014 Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift-F10 is used when you want to
1015 quit and you are using the shell wrapper. Shift-F10 will not take you
1016 to the last directory you visited with the Midnight Commander, instead
1017 it will stay at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
1020 This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to
1023 .\"The cd internal command"
1024 somewhere without having to yank and paste the command line. This command
1025 pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter after
1027 on the command line and then you press enter. This features all the things
1028 that are already in the
1030 internal cd command\&.
1031 .\"The cd internal command"
1032 .\"NODE " Command Menu"
1038 command shows a tree figure of the directories.
1044 command allows you to search for a specific file. The "Swap panels"
1045 command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.
1047 The "Panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell
1048 command. This works only on xterm and on Linux and SCO console.
1050 The Compare directories (C-x d) command compares the directory
1051 panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make
1052 the panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method
1053 compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a
1054 full byte-by-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
1055 machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size-only
1056 compare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the
1057 contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
1059 The Command history command shows a list of typed commands. The
1060 selected command is copied to the command line. The command history
1061 can also be accessed by typing M-p or M-n.
1065 Directory hotlist (C-\\)
1067 command makes changing of the current directory to often used directories
1073 .\"External panelize"
1074 allows you to execute an external program, and make the output of that
1075 program the contents of the current panel.
1079 .\"Extension File Edit"
1080 command allows you to specify programs to executed when you try to
1081 execute, view, edit and do a bunch of other thing on files
1082 with certain extensions (filename endings). The
1086 command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by
1088 .\"NODE " Directory Tree"
1089 .SH " Directory Tree"
1090 The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
1091 can select a directory from the figure and the Midnight Commander will
1092 change to that directory.
1094 There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree command
1095 is available from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
1096 from the Left or Right menu.
1098 To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the tree
1099 figure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
1100 directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent
1101 directory and press C-r (or F2).
1103 You can use the following keys:
1106 General movement keys
1107 .\"General Movement Keys"
1111 In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to this
1112 directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to this
1113 directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the
1116 .B C-r, F2 (Rescan).
1117 Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure is out of date:
1118 it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirectories which don't
1122 Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to remove clutter
1123 from the figure. If you want the directory back to the tree figure
1124 press F2 in its parent directory.
1126 .B F4 (Static/Dynamic).
1127 Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode (default) and the static
1130 In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1131 select a directory. All known directories are shown.
1133 In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1134 select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent
1135 directory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the
1136 parent, sibling and children directories are shown, others are left
1137 out. The tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
1146 Make a new directory below this directory.
1149 Delete this directory from the file system.
1152 Search the next directory matching the search string. If there is
1153 no such directory these keys will move one line down.
1156 Delete the last character of the search string.
1158 .B Any other character.
1159 Add the character to the search string and move to the next directory
1160 which starts with these characters. In the tree view you must first
1161 activate the search mode by pressing C-s. The search string is shown
1162 in the mini status line.
1164 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
1165 aren't supported in the tree view.
1168 Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
1171 Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
1173 The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter. See
1178 .\"NODE " Find File"
1180 The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the
1181 search and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree
1182 button you can select the start directory from the
1188 The contents field accepts regular expressions similar to egrep(1). That
1189 means you have to escape characters with a special meaning to egrep with "\\",
1190 e.g. if you search for "strcmp (" you will have to input "strcmp \\("
1191 (without the double quotes).
1193 You can start the search by pressing the OK button.
1194 During the search you can stop from the Stop button and continue from
1197 You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
1198 button will change to the directory of the currently selected
1199 file. The Again button will ask for the parameters for a new
1200 search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panelize
1201 button will place the found files to the current directory panel so
1202 that you can do additional operations on them (view, copy, move,
1203 delete and so on). After panelizing you can press C-r to return to the
1204 normal file listing.
1206 It is possible to have a list of directories that the Find File command
1207 should skip during the search (for example, you may want to avoid
1208 searches on a CD-ROM or on a NFS directory that is mounted across a slow
1211 Directories to be skipped should be set on the variable
1215 section of your ~/.mc/ini file.
1217 Directory components should be separated with a colon, here is an
1222 find_ignore_dirs=/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1225 You may consider using the
1228 .\"External panelize"
1229 command for some operations. Find file command is for simple queries
1230 only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious searches
1232 .\"NODE " External panelize"
1233 .SH " External panelize"
1234 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
1235 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1237 For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1238 symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external
1239 panelization to run the following command:
1242 find . -type l -print
1245 Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel will no
1246 longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
1247 files that are symbolic links.
1249 If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded
1250 from your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file
1251 name from the transfer log files:
1254 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /usr/adm/xferlog
1257 You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive name,
1258 so that you can recall them quickly. You do this by typing the command on
1259 the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a name under
1260 which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just choose that
1261 command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1264 The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories
1265 in the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the
1266 directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dialog,
1267 you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new ones.
1268 To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist command
1269 (C-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory hotlist,
1270 asking just for the label for the directory.
1272 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using the
1273 CDPATH variable as described in
1276 .\"The cd internal command"
1278 .\"NODE " Extension File Edit"
1279 .SH " Extension File Edit"
1280 This will invoke your editor on the file
1281 .IR ~/.mc/bindings .
1282 The format of this file following:
1284 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1286 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1289 i.e. everything after the slash until new line is
1298 is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name ends
1309 is a regular expression. File matches if its name matches the regular
1315 is a regular expression. File matches if the output of
1317 without the initial "filename:" part matches regular expression
1321 \- matches any file.
1326 \- denotes a common section.
1328 is the name of the section.
1330 Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the format:
1332 (with no spaces around =), where
1336 (invoked on Enter or double click),
1342 (to add rules from the common section).
1344 is any one-line shell command, with the simple
1346 macro substitution\&.
1347 .\"Macro Substitution"
1349 Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important. If
1350 the appropriate action is missing, search continues as if this rule
1351 didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first and second entry and View
1352 action is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View action
1353 from the second entry will be used).
1355 should match all the actions.
1356 .\"NODE " Background jobs"
1357 .SH " Background Jobs"
1358 This lets you control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1359 process (only copy and move files operations can be done in the
1360 background). You can stop, restart and kill a background job from
1362 .\"NODE " Menu File Edit"
1363 .SH " Menu File Edit"
1364 The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by
1365 the user. When you access the user menu, the
1366 file .mc.menu from the current directory is used if it exists,
1367 but only if it is owned by user or root and is not world-writable.
1368 If no such file found, ~/.mc/menu is tried in the same way,
1369 and otherwise mc uses the default system-wide menu
1370 @prefix@/share/mc/mc.menu.
1372 The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with
1373 anything but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in
1374 order to be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should
1375 be a letter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the
1376 commands that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1378 When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
1379 copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
1380 /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
1381 normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1382 takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
1384 macro substitution\&.
1385 .\"Macro Substitution"
1387 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1390 A Dump the currently selected file
1393 B Edit a bug report and send it to root
1395 mail -s "Midnight Commander bug" root < /tmp/mail.$$
1403 H Call the info hypertext browser
1406 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1407 tar cf - . | (cd %D && tar xvpf -)
1409 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1410 echo -n "Name of distribution file: "
1412 ln -s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1414 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1416 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1417 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1421 .B Default Conditions
1423 Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
1424 start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
1425 true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1428 Condition syntax: = <sub-cond>
1429 or: = <sub-cond> | <sub-cond> ...
1430 or: = <sub-cond> & <sub-cond> ...
1432 Sub-condition is one of following:
1434 y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
1435 (for edit menu only)
1436 f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
1437 F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
1438 d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
1439 D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
1440 t <type> current file of type?
1441 T <type> other file of type?
1442 x <filename> is it executable filename?
1443 ! <sub-cond> negate the result of sub-condition
1446 Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according
1447 to the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of
1448 the shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first
1449 line of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1451 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1466 For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't'
1467 type is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the
1468 file. The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the
1469 current panel and false if not.
1471 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1472 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1474 The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1476 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1480 ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1483 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1486 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1487 L List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
1488 gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -
1491 .B Addition Conditions
1493 If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
1494 is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1495 be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
1496 not be included in the menu.
1498 You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1499 with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
1500 want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1501 defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
1502 starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1504 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1505 with '#', space or tab.
1506 .\"NODE " Options Menu"
1508 The Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and
1509 off in several dialogs which are accessible from this menu. Options
1510 are enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1516 command pops up a dialog from which you can change most of settings of
1517 the Midnight Commander.
1523 command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of options how mc
1524 looks like on the screen.
1530 command pops up a dialog from which you specify which actions you want to
1537 command pops up a dialog from which you may select which characters is your
1538 terminal able to display.
1544 command pops up a dialog from which you test some keys which are not working
1545 on some terminals and you may fix them.
1551 command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS related options.
1557 command saves the current settings of the Left, Right and Options
1558 menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1559 .\"NODE " Configuration"
1560 .SH " Configuration"
1561 The options in this dialog are divided into three groups:
1562 Panel Options, Pause after run and Other Options.
1566 .I Show Backup Files.
1567 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show files ending with a tilde.
1568 Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls option -B).
1570 .I Show Hidden Files.
1571 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show all files that start with
1575 If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you mark a file (with
1576 either C-t or the Insert key).
1579 When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will be activated as
1580 soon as you press the
1582 key. Otherwise, you will only get the menu title, and you will have
1583 to activate the menu either with the arrow keys or with the hotkeys.
1584 It is recommended if you are using hotkeys.
1587 If this option is enabled, all files and directories are shown mixed
1588 together. If the option is off, directories (and links to directories)
1589 are shown at the beginning of the listing, and other files below.
1591 .I Fast directory reload.
1592 If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander will use a trick to
1593 determine if the directory contents have changed. The trick is to reload
1594 the directory only if the i-node of the directory has changed; this means
1595 that reloads only happen when files are created or deleted. If what
1596 changes is the i-node for a file in the directory (file size changes,
1597 mode or owner changes, etc) the display is not updated. In these cases,
1598 if you have the option on, you have to rescan the directory manually
1603 After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can pause, so
1604 that you can examine the output of the command. There are three
1605 possible settings for this variable:
1608 Means that you do not want to see the output of your command. If you
1609 are using the Linux or SCO console or an xterm, you will be able to see the
1610 output of the command by typing C-o.
1612 .I On dumb terminals.
1613 You will get the pause message on terminals that are not capable of
1614 showing the output of the last command executed (any terminal that is
1615 not an xterm or the Linux console).
1618 The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1622 .I Verbose operation.
1623 This toggles whether the file Copy, Rename and Delete operations are
1624 verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each operation). If you have a
1625 slow terminal, you may wish to disable the verbose operation. It is
1626 automatically turned off if the speed of your terminal is less than
1630 If this option is enabled, the Midnight
1631 Commander computes total byte sizes and total number of files
1632 prior to any Copy, Rename and Delete operations. This will
1633 provide you with a more accurate progress bar at the expense
1634 of some speed. This option has no effect, if
1635 .I Verbose operation
1639 By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands will use shell-like
1640 regular expressions. The following conversions are performed to achieve
1641 this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?'
1642 is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and '.' by the literal
1643 dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular expressions are the
1644 ones described in ed(1).
1647 If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
1648 configurable options of the Midnight Commander are saved in the
1652 If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup.
1653 Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
1655 .I Use internal editor.
1656 If this option is enabled, the built-in file editor is used to edit
1657 files. If the option is disabled, the editor specified in the
1659 environment variable is used.
1660 If no editor is specified,
1662 is used. See the section on the
1664 internal file editor\&.
1665 .\"Internal File Editor"
1667 .I Use internal viewer.
1668 If this option is enabled, the built-in file viewer is used to view
1669 files. If the option is disabled, the pager specified in the
1671 environment variable is used.
1672 If no pager is specified, the
1674 command is used. See the section on the
1676 internal file viewer\&.
1677 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1679 .I Complete: show all.
1680 By default the Midnight Commander pops up all possible
1684 if the completion is ambiguous only when you press
1686 for the second time. For the first time, it just completes as much as
1687 possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity. Enable this option if you
1688 want to see all possible completions even after pressing
1693 If this option is enabled, the
1694 Midnight Commander shows a rotating dash in the upper right corner
1695 as a work in progress indicator.
1697 .I Lynx-like motion.
1698 If this option is enabled,
1699 you may use the arrows keys to automatically chdir if the
1700 current selection is a subdirectory and the shell command
1701 line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
1703 .I Cd follows links.
1704 This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander to follow the
1705 logical chain of directories when changing current directory
1706 either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
1707 behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows the
1708 real directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory
1709 through a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
1710 and not to the directory where the link was present.
1713 If this option is enabled, deleting files unintentionally becomes more
1714 difficult. The default selection in the confirmation dialogs for
1715 deletion changes from "Yes" to "No". This option is disabled by
1719 The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1720 of screen. You can specify whether the menubar, the command prompt,
1721 the hintbar and the function keybar are visible. On the Linux or SCO console
1722 you can specify how many lines are shown in the output window.
1724 The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1725 can specify whether the area is split to the panels in vertical or
1726 horizontal direction. The split can be equal or you can specify an
1729 You can specify whether
1733 should be highlighted with distinctive
1737 If the permission highlighting is enabled, the parts of the
1744 which apply to the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with
1745 the color defined by the
1747 keyword. If the file type highlighting is enabled, files are colored
1748 according to their file type (e.g. directory, core file, executable,
1753 option is enabled, one line of status information about the currently
1754 selected item is shown at the bottom of the panels.
1756 When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight Commander sets the
1757 terminal window title to the current working directory and updates it
1758 when necessary. If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some
1759 incorrect output on startup and directory change, turn off the
1760 .I Xterm Window Title
1762 .\"NODE " Confirmation"
1764 In this menu you configure the confirmation options for file deletion,
1765 overwriting, execution by pressing enter and quitting the program.
1766 .\"NODE " Display bits"
1768 This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
1769 screen. This setting may be 7-bits if your terminal/curses supports
1770 only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 displays all the characters in the
1771 ISO-8859-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
1772 full 8 bit characters.
1773 .\"NODE " Learn keys"
1775 This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor
1776 arrows and some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
1777 They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or broken.
1779 You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
1780 left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor movement
1781 key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
1783 You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a
1784 key and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name
1785 of that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually,
1786 e.g. F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works,
1787 but after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys.
1788 The Tab key should be working always.
1790 If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after
1791 pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by pressing
1792 the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or by Enter
1793 or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then a message
1794 box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait until the
1795 message box disappears. If you want to abort, just press Escape once
1798 When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions
1799 for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [terminal:TERM]
1800 section of your ~/.mc/ini file (where TERM is the name of your current
1801 terminal). The definitions of the keys that were already working properly
1803 .\"NODE " Virtual FS"
1805 This option gives you control over the settings of the
1807 Virtual File System\&.
1808 .\"Virtual File System"
1810 The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information related to some
1811 of the virtual file systems to speed up the access to the files in the
1812 file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
1814 Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
1815 compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander needs to create temporary
1816 uncompressed files on your disk.
1818 Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk
1819 take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
1820 information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
1821 access to frequently used file systems.
1823 Because of the format of the tar archives, the
1825 needs to read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most
1826 tar files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in
1827 extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
1828 in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a
1831 Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
1832 it's common that you will leave a tar file and the re-enter it later.
1833 Since decompression is slow, the Midnight Commander will cache the
1834 information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires, all
1835 the resources associated with the file system are released. The default
1836 timeout is set to one minute.
1842 (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote FTP servers. It has
1845 .I ftp anonymous password
1846 is the password used when you login as "anonymous". Some sites require
1847 a valid e-mail address. On the other hand, you probably don't want to
1848 give your real e-mail address to untrusted sites, especially if you are
1849 not using spam filtering.
1851 ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a cache.
1852 The cache expire time is configurable with the
1853 .I ftpfs directory cache timeout
1854 option. A low value for this option may slow down every operation on
1855 the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a request to the
1858 You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern
1859 firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below), so
1860 FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
1863 .I Always use ftp proxy
1864 is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to enable proxy for certain
1871 If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the
1872 @prefix@/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that
1873 are local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a
1874 domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names are
1875 directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the
1876 specified FTP proxy.
1878 You can enable using
1880 file, which keeps login names and passwords for ftp servers. See netrc
1881 (5) for the description of the .netrc format.
1884 enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection for data transfer is
1885 initiated by the client, not by the server. This option is recommended
1886 and enabled by default. If this option is turned off, the data
1887 connection is initiated by the server. This may not work with some
1889 .\"NODE " Save Setup"
1891 At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
1892 information from the ~/.mc/ini file. If this file doesn't exist, it will
1893 load the information from the system-wide configuration file, located in
1894 @prefix@/share/mc/mc.ini. If the system-wide configuration file doesn't
1895 exist, MC uses the default settings.
1899 command creates the ~/.mc/ini file by saving the current settings
1903 .\"Left and Right Menus"
1912 option, MC will always save the current settings when exiting.
1914 There also exist settings which can't be changed from the menus. To
1915 change these settings you have to edit the setup file with your
1916 favorite editor. See the section on
1919 .\"Special Settings"
1920 for more information.
1922 .\"NODE "Executing operating system commands"
1923 .SH "Executing operating system commands"
1924 You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight
1925 Commander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to
1926 execute with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
1928 If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the Midnight
1929 Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the
1933 .\"Extension File Edit"
1934 If a match is found then the code associated with that extension is
1935 executed. A very simple
1938 .\"Macro Substitution"
1939 takes place before executing the command.
1940 .\"NODE " The cd internal command"
1941 .SH " The cd internal command"
1944 command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander, it is not passed to
1945 the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle all of the
1946 nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does, although it
1949 .I Tilde substitution.
1950 The (~) will be substituted with your home directory, if you append a
1951 username after the tilde, then it will be substituted with the login
1952 directory of the specified user.
1954 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
1955 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
1957 .I Previous directory.
1958 You can jump to the directory you were previously by using the special
1959 directory name '-' like this:
1962 .I CDPATH directories.
1963 If the directory specified to the
1965 command is not in the current directory, then The Midnight Commander
1966 uses the value in the environment variable
1968 to search for the directory in any of the named directories.
1970 For example you could set your
1972 variable to ~/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to
1973 any of the directories inside the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from
1974 any place in the file system by using its relative name (for example
1975 cd linux could take you to /usr/src/linux).
1976 .\"NODE " Macro Substitution"
1977 .SH " Macro Substitution"
1984 extension dependent command\&,
1985 .\"Extension File Edit"
1986 or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
1987 substitution takes place.
1992 The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position. For edit
1996 The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
1999 The block file name.
2002 The error file name.
2005 The current menu name.
2008 The current file name.
2011 The extension of current file name.
2014 The current file name without extension.
2017 The current directory name.
2020 The current file in the unselected panel.
2023 The directory name of the unselected panel.
2026 The currently tagged files.
2029 The tagged files in the unselected panel.
2032 Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are untagged.
2033 You can use this macro only once per menu file entry or extension file
2034 entry, because next time there will be no tagged files.
2037 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise the
2041 This is a special macro that is used to change the current directory
2042 to the directory specified in front of it. This is used primarily as
2045 Virtual File System\&.
2046 .\"Virtual File System"
2049 This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This macro can be
2050 used alone, or with arguments. If you pass any arguments to this
2051 macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
2055 to force the viewer into ascii mode;
2057 to force the viewer into hex mode;
2059 to tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold and underline
2062 to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the text
2069 Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text inside
2070 the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is substituted by the text
2071 typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10 to cancel. This macro
2072 doesn't work on the command line yet.
2074 .I %var{ENV:default}
2075 If environment variable
2079 is substituted. Otherwise, the value of
2082 .\"NODE " The subshell support"
2083 .SH " The subshell support"
2084 The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
2085 shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.
2087 When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander will
2088 spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the
2090 variable and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd
2091 file) and run it in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell
2092 each time you execute a command, the command will be passed to the
2093 subshell as if you had typed it. This also allows you to change the
2094 environment variables, use shell functions and define aliases that are
2095 valid until you quit the Midnight Commander.
2099 you can specify startup
2100 commands for the subshell in your ~/.mc/bashrc file and
2101 special keyboard maps in the ~/.mc/inputrc file.
2103 users may specify startup commands in the ~/.mc/tcshrc file.
2105 When the subshell code is used, you can suspend applications at any
2106 time with the sequence C-o and jump back to the Midnight Commander, if
2107 you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other
2108 external commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
2110 An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the prompt
2111 displayed by the Midnight Commander is the same prompt that you are
2112 currently using in your shell.
2118 section has more information on how you can control the subshell code.
2121 The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
2122 files and directories. It can be invoked with the C-x c key combination.
2124 The Chmod window has two parts -
2129 In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory
2130 and its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
2132 In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which
2133 correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute
2134 bits, you can see the octal value change in the File section.
2136 To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the
2140 key. To change the state of the check buttons or to select a button
2143 You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate them.
2144 Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on the buttons.
2146 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
2148 When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on
2149 the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits
2150 you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked
2153 Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
2156 button, which will act on all the tagged files.
2159 set only marked attributes to all selected files
2162 set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2165 clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2168 set the attributes of one file
2171 cancel the Chmod command
2174 The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
2175 key for this command is C-x o.
2176 .\"NODE "Advanced Chown"
2177 .SH "Advanced Chown"
2178 The Advanced Chown command is the
2186 command combined into one window. You can change the permissions and
2187 owner/group of files at once.
2188 .\"NODE "File Operations"
2189 .SH "File Operations"
2190 When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander shows the
2191 file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being processed
2192 and uses up to three progress bars. The file bar indicates the
2193 percentage of the current file that has been processed so far. The
2194 count bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The
2195 bytes bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files
2196 that has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes
2199 There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
2200 button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort
2201 button will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are
2204 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
2207 The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
2208 Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file or the Abort
2209 button to abort the operation altogether. You can also select the Retry
2210 button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
2212 The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
2213 the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
2214 the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
2215 button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
2216 None button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if the
2217 source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
2218 operation by pressing the Abort button.
2220 The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
2221 which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory
2222 recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the All button to
2223 delete all the directories and the None button to skip all the non-empty
2224 directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing the Abort
2225 button. If you selected the Yes or All button you will be asked for a
2226 confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you want to do the
2229 If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them only the files
2230 on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped files
2232 .\"NODE "Mask Copy/Rename"
2233 .SH "Mask Copy/Rename"
2234 The copy/move operations let you translate the names of files in an
2235 easy way. To do it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
2236 usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
2237 All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
2238 the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
2239 matching the source mask are renamed.
2241 There are other options which you can set:
2245 determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source
2246 directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target
2247 directory or whether would you like to copy their content.
2249 .B Dive into subdirs
2251 determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be copied,
2252 but the target directory already exists. The default action is to copy
2253 the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
2254 Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into the
2257 For example, you want to copy directory
2263 which is an already existing directory. Normally (when
2264 .B Dive into subdirs
2265 is not set), mc would copy file
2269 By enabling this option the
2271 directory will be created, and
2274 .IR /bla/foo/foo/bar .
2276 .B Preserve attributes
2278 determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you
2279 are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is not
2280 set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
2282 .B Use shell patterns on
2284 When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*' and '?'
2285 wildcards in the source mask. They work like they do in the shell. In
2286 the target mask only the '*' and '\\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The
2287 first '*' wildcard in the target mask corresponds to the first wildcard
2288 group in the source mask, the second '*' corresponds to the second group
2289 and so on. The '\\1' wildcard corresponds to the first wildcard group
2290 in the source mask, the '\\2' wildcard corresponds to the second group
2291 and so on all the way up to '\\9'. The '\\0' wildcard is the whole
2292 filename of the source file.
2296 If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is "/bla/*.tgz" and the
2297 file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in "/bla".
2299 Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c" would
2300 become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
2301 destination is "\\2.\\1".
2303 .B Use shell patterns off
2305 When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
2306 grouping anymore. You must use '\\(...\\)' expressions in the source
2307 mask to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is
2308 more flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks
2309 are similar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
2313 If the source mask is "^\\(.*\\)\\.tar\\.gz$", the destination is
2314 "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy
2315 will be "/bla/foo.tgz".
2317 Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
2318 will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
2319 "^\\(.*\\)\\.\\(.*\\)$" and the destination is "\\2.\\1".
2323 You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\\u'
2324 or '\\l' in the target mask, the next character will be converted to
2325 uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.
2327 If you use '\\U' or '\\L' in the target mask, the next characters will
2328 be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the
2329 next '\\E' or next '\\U', '\\L' or the end of the file name.
2331 The '\\u' and '\\l' are stronger than '\\U' and '\\L'.
2333 For example, if the source mask is '*' (shell patterns on) or '^\\(.*\\)$'
2334 (shell patterns off) and the target mask is '\\L\\u*' the file names
2335 will be converted to have initial upper case and otherwise lower case.
2337 You can also use '\\' as a quote character. For example, '\\\\' is
2338 a backslash and '\\*' is an asterisk.
2339 .\"NODE "Internal File Viewer"
2340 .SH "Internal File Viewer"
2341 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex.
2342 To toggle between modes, use the F4 key. If you have the GNU gzip
2343 program installed, it will be used to automatically decompress the
2346 The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or
2347 the file type to display the information. The internal file viewer
2348 will interpret some string sequences to set the bold and underline
2349 attributes, thus making a pretty display of your files.
2351 When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and
2352 constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing
2353 the quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text
2354 with constants like this:
2357 "String" -1 0xBB 012 "more text"
2360 Note that 012 is an octal number. -1 is converted to 0xFF.
2362 Some internal details about the viewer: On systems that provide the
2363 mmap(2) system call, the program maps the file instead of loading it;
2364 if the system does not provide the mmap(2) system call or the file
2365 matches an action that requires a filter, then the viewer will use
2366 its growing buffers, thus loading only those parts of the file that
2367 you actually access (this includes compressed files).
2369 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the
2370 Midnight Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2373 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
2376 Toggle the wrap mode.
2379 Toggle the hex mode.
2382 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display
2386 Regular expression search.
2389 Reverse regular expression search.
2392 Normal search / hex mode search.
2395 Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else
2399 Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else
2403 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or if
2404 a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the
2405 output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
2406 on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter
2410 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
2411 will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with
2412 different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
2415 Exit the internal file viewer.
2417 .B next-page, space, C-v.
2418 Scroll one page forward.
2420 .B prev-page, M-v, C-b, backspace.
2421 Scroll one page backward.
2424 Scroll one line forward.
2427 Scroll one line backward.
2433 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2436 Like C-o, but run a new shell if the subshell is not running.
2445 Jump to the next file.
2448 Jump to the previous file.
2453 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
2456 Extension File Edit section
2457 .\"Extension File Edit"
2458 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor"
2459 .SH "Internal File Editor"
2460 The internal file editor is a full-featured full screen editor. It can
2461 edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible to edit binary files.
2462 The internal file editor is invoked using
2465 .I use_internal_edit
2466 option is set in the initialization file.
2468 The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
2469 paste; key for key undo; pull-down menus; file insertion; macro
2470 commands; regular expression search and replace (and our own
2471 scanf-printf search and replace); shift-arrow text highlighting (if
2472 supported by the terminal); insert-overwrite toggle; word wrap;
2473 autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file
2474 types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands like
2477 The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To see what
2478 keys do what, just consult the appropriate pull-down menu. Other keys
2479 are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting.
2485 pastes from cooledit.clip.
2491 deletes highlighted text. Mouse highlighting also works, and you
2492 can override the mouse as usual by holding down the shift key
2493 while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal mouse highlighting
2496 To define a macro, press
2498 and then type out the key
2499 strokes you want to be executed. Press
2501 again when finished. You can then assign the macro to any key you
2502 like by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you press
2504 and then the assigned key. The macro is also executed if
2505 you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, provided that the
2506 key is not used for any other function. Once defined, the macro
2507 commands go into the file
2508 .B .mc/cedit/cooledit.macros
2509 in your home directory. You can delete a macro by deleting the
2510 appropriate line in this file.
2513 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or
2517 code or another). This is controlled by the
2519 .B @prefix@/share/mc/edit.indent.rc
2521 .B .mc/cedit/edit.indent.rc
2522 in your home directory the first time you use it.
2524 You can use scanf search and replace to search and replace
2525 a C format string. First take a look at the
2529 man pages to see what a format string is and how it works. Consider
2530 following example. Suppose you want to replace all occurrences of an
2531 open bracket, three comma separated numbers, and a close bracket, with
2534 the third number, the word
2536 and then the second number. Then fill in the Replace dialog box as
2540 Enter search string:
2542 Enter replacement string:
2543 apples %d oranges %d
2544 Enter replacement argument order:
2548 The last line specifies that the third and then the second
2549 number are to be used in place of the first and second.
2551 It is advisable to use this feature with Prompt on replace on, because
2552 a match is thought to be found whenever the number of arguments found
2553 matches the number given, which is not always a real match. Scanf also
2554 treats whitespace as being elastic. Note that the scanf format %[ is
2555 very useful for scanning strings, and whitespace.
2557 The editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When editing
2558 binary files, you should set
2560 to 7 bits in the options menu to keep the spacing clean.
2561 .\"NODE "Completion"
2563 Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
2565 Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
2566 attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins
2569 username (if the text begins with
2571 hostname (if the text begins with
2573 or command (if you are on the command line in the position where you
2574 might type a command, possible completions then include shell reserved
2575 words and shell built-in commands as well) in turn. If none of these
2576 matches, filename completion is attempted.
2578 Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
2579 lines, command completion is command line specific. If the completion
2580 is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
2581 following action depends on the setting of the
2582 .I Complete: show all
2587 dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all possibilities pops up next to
2588 the current position and you can select with the arrow keys and
2590 the correct entry. You can also type the first letters in which the
2591 possibilities differ to move to a subset of all possibilities and
2592 complete as much as possible. If you press
2594 again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise the first
2595 item which matches all the previous characters will be highlighted. As
2596 soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you can hide it by
2600 and left and right arrow keys. If
2604 is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
2606 for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
2607 .\"NODE "Virtual File System"
2608 .SH "Virtual File System"
2609 The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the file
2610 system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system switch. The
2611 virtual file system switch allows the Midnight Commander to manipulate
2612 files not located on the Unix file system.
2614 Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
2617 file system, used for accessing the regular Unix file system; the
2619 used to manipulate files on remote systems with the FTP protocol; the
2621 used to manipulate tar and compressed tar files; the
2623 used to recover deleted files on ext2 file systems (the default file
2624 system for Linux systems),
2626 (for manipulating files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh) and
2629 (Midnight Commander file system), a network based file system. If the
2630 code was compiled with
2632 support, you can manipulate files on remote systems with the SMB (CIFS)
2637 (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to easily expand
2638 VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
2640 The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
2641 forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each one
2642 of the file systems is described later in their own section.
2643 .\"NODE " FTP File System"
2644 .SH " FTP File System"
2645 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
2646 machines. To actually use it, you can use the
2648 item in the menu or directly change your current directory using the
2650 command to a path name that looks like this:
2652 .I /#ftp:[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
2659 elements are optional. If you specify the
2661 element, the Midnight Commander will login to the remote machine as that
2662 user, otherwise it will use your login name or the login name from the
2666 element is the password used for the connection. Using the password in
2667 the VFS directory name is not recommended, because it can appear on the
2668 screen in clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
2670 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend
2672 (an exclamation sign) to the hostname.
2677 /#ftp:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
2678 /#ftp:tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
2679 /#ftp:!behind.firewall.edu/pub
2680 /#ftp:guest@remote-host.com:40/pub
2681 /#ftp:miguel:xxx@server/pub
2688 dialog box for ftpfs options.
2689 .\"NODE " Tar File System"
2690 .SH " Tar File System"
2691 The tar file system provides you with read-only access to your tar
2692 files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command. To change
2693 your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
2694 tar file by using the following syntax:
2696 .I /filename.tar#utar/[dir-inside-tar]
2698 The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
2699 that usually you just point to a tar file and press return to enter
2700 into the tar file, see the
2703 .\"Extension File Edit"
2704 section for details on how this is done.
2709 mc-3.0.tar.gz#utar/mc-3.0/vfs
2710 /ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar#utar
2713 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
2714 .\"NODE " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
2715 .SH " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
2716 The fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
2717 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To use
2718 this, the other side has to either run fish server, or has to have
2719 bash-compatible shell.
2721 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
2722 into a special directory which name is in the following
2725 .I /#sh:[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
2732 elements are optional. If you specify the
2734 element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
2735 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
2739 are 'C' - use compression and 'rsh' use rsh instead of ssh. If the
2741 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
2747 /#sh:onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
2748 /#sh:joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
2749 /#sh:joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
2751 .\"NODE " Network File System"
2752 .SH " Network File System"
2753 The Midnight Commander file system is a network base file system that
2754 allows you to manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were
2755 local. To use this, the remote machine must be running the mcserv(8)
2758 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
2759 directory which name is in the following format:
2761 .I /#mc:[user@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
2767 elements are optional. If you specify the
2769 element then the Midnight Commander will try to logon on the remote
2770 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
2774 element is used when the remote server is running on a special port
2775 (see the mcserv(8) manual page for more information about ports);
2778 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will
2784 /#mc:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
2785 /#mc:joe@foo.edu:11321/private
2787 .\"NODE " Undelete File System"
2788 .SH " Undelete File System"
2789 On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete
2790 facilities, you will have the undelete file system available.
2791 Recovery of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems. The
2792 undelete file system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to:
2793 retrieve all of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and
2794 to extract the selected files into a regular partition.
2796 To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
2797 formed by the "/#undel" prefix and the file name where the actual
2798 file system resides.
2800 For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
2801 first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
2807 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
2808 before you start browsing files there.
2809 .\"NODE " SMB File System"
2810 .SH " SMB File System"
2811 The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB
2812 (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups,
2813 Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba.
2814 To actually use it, you may try to use the panel command "SMB link..."
2815 (accessible from the menubar) or you may directly change your current
2816 directory to it using the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
2818 .I /#smb:[user@]machine[/service][/remote-dir]
2825 elements are optional.
2831 can be specified in an input dialog.
2838 /#smb:guest@machine/Public/Irlex
2840 .\"NODE " EXTernal File System"
2841 .SH " EXTernal File System"
2843 allows to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU Midnight
2844 Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
2846 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
2848 1. Stand-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
2849 file. They represent certain system-wide data as a directory tree.
2850 You can invoke them by typing
2851 .RI ' "cd #fsname" '
2852 where fsname is an extfs short name (see below). Examples of such
2853 filesystems include audio (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of
2854 all Debian packages in the system).
2856 For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive, type
2862 2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
2863 contents of a file as a directory tree. It can consist of 'real' files
2864 compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages
2865 in a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
2868 should be appended to the archive name. Note that the archive itself
2869 can be on another vfs.
2871 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
2874 cd documents.zip#uzip
2877 In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory. For
2878 instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
2879 history. An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell
2880 commands inside extfs, just like any other non-local VFS.
2882 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
2885 access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette
2889 front end to Debian's APT package management system
2893 audio CD ripping and playing
2896 .IR "cd device#audio" ).
2899 package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution
2900 .RI ( "cd file.bpp#bpp" ).
2903 package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution
2904 .RI ( "cd file.deb#deb" ).
2907 Debian GNU/Linux installed packages
2911 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator
2915 browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs
2916 .RI ( "cd filename#lslR" ).
2919 mbox-style mailbox files support
2920 .RI ( "cd mailbox#mailfs" ).
2923 extfs to handle unified and context diffs
2924 .RI ( "cd filename#patchfs" ).
2928 .RI ( "cd filename#rpm" ).
2931 RPM database management
2934 .B ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
2936 .RI ( "cd archive#xxxx"
2937 where xxxx is one of:
2945 You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as described in the
2948 .\"Extension File Edit"
2949 section. Here is an example entry for Debian packages:
2957 The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
2958 color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Sometimes
2959 it gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode
2960 using the -c and -b flag respectively.
2962 If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
2963 ncurses, it will also check the variable
2965 if it is set, it has the same effect as the -c flag.
2967 You may specify terminals that always force color mode
2970 variable to the Colors section of the initialization file. This will
2971 prevent the Midnight Commander from trying to detect if your terminal
2972 supports color. Example:
2976 color_terminals=linux,xterm
2977 color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
2980 The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang, ncurses does
2981 not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the
2982 information in the terminal database.
2984 The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
2985 Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
2987 or the Colors section in the initialization file.
2989 In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the
2991 variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a terminal by
2992 using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:
2997 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
3000 The format for the color definition is:
3003 <keyword>=<foregroundcolor>,<backgroundcolor>:<keyword>= ...
3006 The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected, marked,
3007 markselect, errors, input, reverse, gauge. Menu colors are: menu,
3008 menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus,
3009 dhotnormal, dhotfocus. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic,
3010 helpbold, helplink, helpslink. Viewer color is: viewunderline. Special
3011 highlighting colors are: executable, directory, link, stalelink, device,
3012 special, core. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked.
3015 determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
3018 determines the color of the filled part of the progress bar (gauge),
3019 which is used to show the user the progress of file operations, such as
3022 The dialog boxes use the following colors:
3024 is used for the normal text,
3026 is the color used for the currently selected component,
3028 is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in normal
3029 components, whereas the
3031 color is used for the highlighted color in the currently selected
3034 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menu, menusel, menuhot and
3035 menuhotsel tags instead.
3037 Help uses the following colors:
3039 is used for normal text,
3041 is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual page,
3043 is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the manual page,
3045 is used for not selected hyperlinks and
3047 is used for selected hyperlink.
3049 Special highlight colors determine how files are displayed when file
3050 highlighting is enabled (see the section on
3055 is used for directories or symbolic links to directories;
3057 for executable files;
3059 is used for symbolic links which are neither stale nor linked
3062 is used for stale symbolic links;
3064 - character and block devices;
3066 is used for special files, such as pipes and sockets;
3070 The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
3071 brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta,
3072 cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword
3073 for transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be
3074 used for background color. Example:
3078 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
3080 .\"NODE "Special Settings"
3081 .SH "Special Settings"
3082 Most of the settings of the Midnight Commander can be changed from the
3083 menus. However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
3084 changed by editing the setup file.
3086 These variables may be set in your ~/.mc/ini file:
3088 .I clear_before_exec
3089 By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before executing a
3090 command. If you would prefer to see the output of the command at the
3091 bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.mc/ini file and change the value of
3092 the field clear_before_exec to 0.
3095 If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that directory. If
3096 this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirmation before changing
3097 the directory if you have files tagged.
3099 .I ftpfs_retry_seconds
3100 This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Commander will wait
3101 before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has denied the
3102 login. If the value is zero, the login will no be retried.
3105 Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the internal
3106 file viewer. Normally this value is not significant, because the code
3107 automatically adjusts the number of updates to skip according to the
3108 rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on very slow machines or
3109 terminals with a fast keyboard auto repeat, a big value can make screen
3112 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best behavior,
3113 and that is the default value.
3116 Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by
3119 .I mouse_move_pages_viewer
3120 Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by line
3121 on the internal file viewer.
3124 By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key prefix
3125 (old_esc_mode=0). If this option is set (old_esc_mode=1), the ESC key
3126 will act as a prefix key for one second, and if no extra keys have
3127 arrived, then the ESC key is interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).
3129 .I only_leading_plus_minus
3130 Allow special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in the command line (select,
3131 unselect, reverse selection) only if the command line is empty. You
3132 don't need to quote those characters in the middle of the command line.
3133 On the other hand, you cannot use them to change selection when the
3134 command line is not empty.
3136 .I panel_scroll_pages
3137 If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when the
3138 cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, otherwise it
3139 will just scroll a file at a time.
3141 .I show_output_starts_shell
3142 This variable only works if you are not using the subshell support.
3143 When you use the C-o keystroke to go back to the user screen, if this
3144 one is set, you will get a fresh shell. Otherwise, pressing any key
3145 will bring you back to the Midnight Commander.
3148 If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work slightly
3149 different on the panels, instead of moving the selection to the first
3150 and last files in the panels, they will act as follows:
3152 The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else go to the
3153 top line unless it is already on the top line, in this case it will go
3154 to the first file in the panel.
3156 The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line, if over
3157 it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at the bottom
3158 line, in such case it will move the selection to the last file name in
3161 .I use_file_to_guess_type
3162 If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file command to
3163 match the file types listed on the
3166 .\"Extension File Edit"
3169 If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file system
3170 on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload the other panel with the
3171 contents of the selected directory.
3172 .\"NODE "Terminal databases"
3173 .SH "Terminal databases"
3174 The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal
3175 database without requiring root privileges. The Midnight Commander
3176 searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
3177 the Midnight Commander library directory) and in the ~/.mc/ini file for
3178 the section "terminal:your-terminal-name" and then for the section
3179 "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol that
3180 you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the definition for the
3181 key. You can use the special \\e form to represent the escape character
3182 and the ^x to represent the control-x character.
3184 The possible key symbols are:
3187 f0 to f20 Function keys f0-f20
3194 right right arrow key
3197 insert the insert character
3198 delete the delete character
3199 complete to do completion
3202 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
3203 set this in the ini file:
3211 key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke the completion
3212 process, this is invoked with M-tab, but you can define other keys to do
3213 the same work (on those keyboard with tons of nice and unused keys
3218 The program will retrieve all of its information relative to the
3219 MC_DATADIR environment variable. If this variable is not set, it will
3220 fall back to the @prefix@/share/mc directory.
3222 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.hlp
3224 The help file for the program.
3226 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.ext
3228 The default system-wide extensions file.
3232 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
3233 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if present.
3235 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.ini
3237 The default system-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used only if
3238 the user doesn't have his own ~/.mc/ini file.
3240 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.lib
3242 Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this file
3243 affect all users, whether they have ~/.mc/ini or not. Currently, only
3246 .\"Terminal databases"
3247 are loaded from mc.lib.
3251 User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded
3252 from here instead of the system-wide startup file.
3254 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.hint
3256 This file contains the hints (cookies) displayed by the program.
3258 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.menu
3260 This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.
3264 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used instead
3265 of the system-wide applications menu.
3269 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view features.
3273 Local user-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used instead of
3274 the home or system-wide applications menu.
3277 This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
3278 License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built-in
3279 help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
3280 .\"NODE "AVAILABILITY"
3282 The latest version of this program can be found at
3283 ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/utils/file/managers/mc/.
3286 ed(1), gpm(1), mcserv(8), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
3290 The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
3291 http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/
3295 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
3299 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains to
3302 If you want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
3303 this address: mc-devel@gnome.org.
3305 Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program
3308 displays this information), the operating system you are running the
3309 program on. If the program crashes, we would appreciate a stack trace.