2 .TH MC 1 "%DATE_OF_MAN_PAGE%" "MC Version %DISTR_VERSION%" "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.
18 .I \-a, \-\-stickchars
19 Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
22 Force black and white display.
25 Force color mode, please check the section
31 .I \-C arg, \-\-colors=arg
32 Specify a different color set in the command line. The format of arg is
39 .I \-S arg, \-\-skin=arg
40 Specify a name of skin in the command line. Technology of skins is
48 Disable mouse support.
50 .I \-e [file], \-\-edit[=file]
51 Start the internal editor. If the file is specified, open it on
56 Display the compiled\-in search paths for Midnight Commander files.
58 .I \-F, \-\-datadir\-info
59 Display extended info about compiled\-in paths for
62 .I \-\-configure\-options
63 Display configure options.
66 Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo
67 database. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't work.
69 .I \-K file, \-\-keymap=file
70 Specify a name of keymap file in the command line.
73 Don't load key bindings from any file, use default hardcoded keys.
75 .I \-l file, \-\-ftplog=file
76 Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
78 .I \-D N, \-\-debuglevel=N
79 Save the debug level for SMB VFS. N is in 0\-10 range.
81 .I \-P file, \-\-printwd=file
82 Print the last working directory to the specified file. This option is
83 not meant to be used directly. Instead, it's used from a special shell
84 script that automatically changes the current directory of the shell to
85 the last directory the Midnight Commander was in. Source the file
86 .B %prefix%/share/mc/bin/mc.sh
87 (bash and zsh users) or
88 .B %prefix%/share/mc/bin/mc.csh
89 (tcsh users) respectively to define
91 as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
94 Set alternative mode drawing of frameworks.
95 If the section [Lines] is not filled, the symbol for the pseudographics
96 frame is a space, otherwise the frame characters are taken from follow params.
98 .B You can redefine the following variables:
128 default horizontal line
131 default vertical line
140 Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it makes
141 the Midnight Commander use the value of the
143 variable for the terminal information instead of the information on
144 the system wide terminal database
146 .I \-u, \-\-nosubshell
147 Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if the Midnight
148 Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
151 Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if the
152 Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set as an
155 .I \-v file, \-\-view=file
156 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
160 Display the version of the program.
163 Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm\-capable terminals (two
164 screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
167 Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl, Shift
170 Force a "normal tracking" mouse mode. Used when running on
171 xterm\-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
173 If specified, the first path name is the directory to show in the
174 selected panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in
178 The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
179 Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels.
180 By default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the
181 shell command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels.
182 The topmost line is the
186 The menu bar line may not be visible, but appears if you click the
187 topmost line with the mouse or press the F9 key.
189 The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same
190 time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in
191 the current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current
192 panel. Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the
193 directory of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they
194 always ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see the
202 .\"Left and Right Menus"
208 You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply
209 typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line,
210 and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the
211 command line you typed; read the
214 .\"Shell Command Line"
219 sections to learn more about the command line.
220 .\"NODE "Mouse Support"
222 The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated
223 whenever you are running on an
225 terminal (it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to
226 another machine from the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux
229 mouse server running.
231 When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is
232 selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
233 unmarked, depending on the previous state).
235 Double\-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is
236 an executable program; and if the
239 .\"Extension File Edit"
240 has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified
243 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
244 key labels by clicking on them.
246 The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
247 milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the
251 file and changing the
255 If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
256 can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by holding
261 Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the
263 (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the
265 (sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this manual we will
266 use the following abbreviations:
269 means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>.
270 Thus C\-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
273 means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>.
274 If there is no Meta or Alt key, type
276 release it, then type the character <chr>.
279 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
281 All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approximation to
282 the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
284 You may redefine key bindings. See
286 .I redefine hotkey bindings
289 for more info. All other key bindings (described in this manual) relative
293 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
300 section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands appearing in
301 the File menu. This section includes the function keys. Most of these
302 commands perform some action, usually on the selected file or the
309 section documents the keys which select a file or tag files as a
310 target for a later action (the action is usually one from the file
316 .\"Shell Command Line"
317 section list the keys which are used for entering and editing command
318 lines. Most of these copy file names and such from the directory
319 panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the
320 command line history.
325 are used for editing input lines. This means both the command line and
326 the input lines in the query dialogs.
328 .\"NODE " Keys_redefine"
329 .SH " Redefine hotkey bindings"
330 Hotkey bindings may be read from external file (keymap\-file).
331 Initially, Mignight Commander creates key bindings using keymap defined
332 in the source code. Then, two files
333 .B %prefix%/share/mc/mc.keymap
335 .B %sysconfdir%/mc/mc.keymap
336 are loaded always, sequentially reassigned key bindings defined earlier.
337 User\-defined keymap\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
340 1) command line option
343 .B \-\-keymap=\<keymap\>
345 2) Environment variable
351 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
355 .B ~/.config/mc/mc.keymap
358 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
359 contain the absolute path to the keymap\-file (with the extension \.keymap
360 or without it). Search of keymap\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
370 .B %prefix%/share/mc/
372 .\"NODE " Miscellaneous Keys"
373 .SH " Miscellaneous Keys"
374 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
377 if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom of
378 the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no text in the
379 command line then if the selection bar is over a directory the
380 Midnight Commander does a
382 to the selected directory and reloads the information on the panel;
383 if the selection is an executable file then it is executed. Finally,
384 if the extension of the selected file name matches one of the
388 .\"Extension File Edit"
389 then the corresponding command is executed.
392 repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
399 command on a file or on the tagged files.
406 command on the current file or on the tagged files.
409 run the hard link command.
412 run the absolute symbolic link command.
415 run the relative symbolic link command. See the
419 section for more information about symbolic links.
422 set the other panel display mode to information.
425 set the other panel display mode to quick view.
431 .\"External panelize"
437 add directory to hotlist
442 executes the Filtered view command, described in the
445 .\"Internal File Viewer"
462 when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or under
463 an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous command. When ran
464 on the Linux console, the Midnight Commander uses an external program
465 (cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of information on the
468 When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C\-o at any time
469 and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
470 return to your application just type C\-o. If you have an application
471 suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other
472 programs from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
474 .\"NODE " Directory Panels"
475 .SH " Directory Panels"
476 This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
477 you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a
478 look at the section on
480 Left and Right Menus\&.
481 .\"Left and Right Menus"
484 change the current panel. The old other panel becomes the new current
485 panel and the old current panel becomes the new other panel. The
486 selection bar moves from the old current panel to the new current
490 to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo sequence).
491 To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
494 to change charset of panel you may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
495 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
496 cancel the recoding you may select "directory up" (..) in active panel.
497 To cancel the charsets in all directories, select "No translation " in
498 the dialog of encodings.
500 .B Alt\-g, Alt\-r, Alt\-j
501 used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and the bottom one,
505 toggle the current display listing to show the next display listing
507 With this it is possible to quickly switch to brief listing, long
508 listing, user defined listing mode, and back to the default.
510 .B C\-\\\\ (control\-backslash)
515 and change to the selected directory.
518 this is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
519 will prompt for a selection options. When
521 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
523 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
526 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
527 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
528 for one character). If
530 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
531 expressions (see ed (1)). When
533 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
536 is off, the case will be ignored.
539 use the "\\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
543 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
546 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
549 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
552 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
555 move the selection bar one page down.
557 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v
558 move the selection bar one page up.
561 If the currently selected file is a directory, load that directory on
562 the other panel and moves the selection to the next file. If the
563 currently selected file is not a directory, load the parent directory
564 on the other panel and moves the selection to the next file.
567 make the current directory of the current panel also the current
568 directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the listing mode
569 if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the other panel doesn't
572 .B C\-PageUp, C\-PageDown
573 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the currently
574 selected directory respectively.
577 moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to clicking
583 moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to clicking the
587 .B Alt\-Shift\-h, Alt\-H
588 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v' with
590 .\"NODE " Quick search"
592 The Quick search mode allows you to perform fast file search in file panel.
597 to start a filename search in the directory listing.
599 When the search is active, the user input will be added to the search string
600 instead of the command line. If the
602 option is enabled the search string is shown on the mini\-status
603 line. When typing, the selection bar will move to the next file
604 starting with the typed letters. The
608 keys can be used to correct typing mistakes. If C\-s is pressed
609 again, the next match is searched for.
611 If quick search is started with double pressing of C\-s, the previous quick
612 search pattern will be used for current search.
614 Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard
615 characters '*' and '?'.
616 .\"NODE " Shell Command Line"
617 .SH " Shell Command Line"
618 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
619 entering shell commands.
622 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
625 same a Alt\-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
628 copy the full path name of the currently selected file to the command
629 line. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
632 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
639 copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the selected
640 file) of the current panel (C\-x t) or of the other panel (C\-x C\-t) to
644 the first key sequence copies the current path name to the command
645 line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path name to
649 the quote command can be used to insert characters that are otherwise
650 interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
653 use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
654 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
657 displays the history for the current input line.
658 .\"NODE " General Movement Keys"
659 .SH " General Movement Keys"
660 The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common
661 code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same
662 keys. Each of them also accepts some keys of its own.
664 Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
665 keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
668 moves one line backward.
671 moves one line forward.
673 .B Prev Page, Page Up, Alt\-v
676 .B Next Page, Page Down, C\-v
680 moves to the beginning.
685 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in
686 addition the to ones mentioned above:
688 .B b, C\-b, C\-h, Backspace, Delete
695 moves one half of a page up or down.
698 moves to the beginning or to the end.
699 .\"NODE " Input Line Keys"
700 .SH " Input Line Keys"
701 The input lines (they are used for the
704 .\"Shell Command Line"
705 and for the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
708 puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
711 puts the cursor at the end of the line.
714 move the cursor one position left.
717 move the cursor one position right.
720 moves one word forward.
723 moves one word backward.
726 delete the previous character.
729 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
732 sets the mark for cutting.
735 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer and
736 removes the text from the input line.
739 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer.
742 yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
745 kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
748 Use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
749 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
751 .B Alt\-C\-h, Alt\-Backspace
752 delete one word backward.
755 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
763 The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
764 row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File",
765 "Command", "Options" and "Right".
770 .\"Left and Right Menus"
771 allow you to modify the appearance of the left and right directory
778 lists the actions you can perform on the currently selected file or
785 lists the actions which are more general and bear no relation to the
786 currently selected file or the tagged files.
792 lists the actions which allow you to customize the Midnight Commander.
793 .\"NODE " Left and Right Menus"
794 .SH " Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus"
795 The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the
799 menus (they are named
803 when the horizontal panel split is chosen from the
808 .\"NODE " Listing Mode..."
809 .SH " Listing Mode..."
810 The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
811 four different listing modes available:
817 The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
818 the modification time.
820 The brief view shows only the file name and it has two columns
821 (therefore showing twice as many files as other views). The long view
822 is similar to the output of
824 command. The long view takes the whole screen width.
826 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify
829 The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This
830 may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
831 full screen panel respectively.
833 After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the
834 panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format
837 After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size
838 specifier. This are the available fields you may display:
841 displays the file name.
844 displays the file size.
847 is an alternative form of the
849 format. It displays the size of the files and for directories it just
850 shows SUB\-DIR or UP\-\-DIR.
853 displays a one character wide type field. This character is similar to
854 what is displayed by ls with the \-F flag \-
856 for executable files,
864 for character devices,
870 for symbolic links to directories and
872 for stale symlinks (links that point nowhere).
875 an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
878 file's last modification time.
881 file's last access time.
884 file's status change time.
887 a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
890 an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
893 the number of links to the file.
902 the owner of the file.
905 the group of the file.
908 the inode of the file.
910 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
913 a space in the display format.
916 add a vertical line to the display format.
918 To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add
920 followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If the
921 number is followed by the symbol
923 then the size specifies the minimal field size \- if the program finds
924 out that there is more space on the screen, it will then expand that
929 display corresponds to this format:
931 half type name | size | mtime
935 display corresponds to this format:
937 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
940 This is a nice user display format:
942 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
944 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
947 The info view display information related to the currently
948 selected file and if possible information about the current file
952 The tree view is quite similar to the
956 feature. See the section about it for more information.
959 In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced
962 .\"Internal File Viewer"
963 that displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you
964 select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have access
965 to the usual viewer commands.
966 .\"NODE " Sort Order..."
968 The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
969 by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size,
970 by inode and unsorted. In the Sort order dialog box you can choose
971 the sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
972 order by checking the reverse box.
974 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
980 .BR "Mix all files" ).
983 The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
985 which the files must match to be shown. Regardless
986 of the filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories
987 are always shown in the directory panel.
990 The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
991 useful if other processes have created or removed files.
994 The Midnight Commander uses the F1 \- F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts
995 for commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
996 function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals
997 without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
998 pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
999 (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
1001 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in parentheses):
1005 Invokes the built\-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the
1009 you can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to
1010 follow that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to move
1011 forward and backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the full
1012 list of accepted keys.
1020 The user menu provides an easy way to provide users with a menu and
1021 add extra features to the Midnight Commander.
1025 View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the
1027 Internal File Viewer
1028 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1029 but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an external
1030 file viewer specified by the
1032 environment variable. If
1036 environment variable is tried. If
1038 is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use F13
1039 instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
1040 preprocessing to the file.
1042 .B Filtered View (Alt\-!)
1044 This command prompts for a command
1045 and its arguments (the argument defaults to the currently selected
1046 file name), the output from such command is shown in the internal file
1051 Press F4 to edit the highlighted file. Press F14 (usually F14)
1052 to start the editor with a new, empty file.
1053 Currently they invoke the
1055 editor, or the editor specified in the
1057 environment variable, or the
1059 Internal File Editor
1060 .\"Internal File Editor"
1061 if the use_internal_edit option is on.
1065 Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1066 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1067 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1068 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. Space for destination
1069 file may be preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure option.
1070 During this process, you can press C\-c or ESC to abort the operation.
1071 For details about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\\(.*\\)$
1072 depending on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the
1076 .\"Mask Copy/Rename"
1078 F15 (usually F15) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1079 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1082 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1083 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1088 is used to control the background process.
1092 Create a hard link to the current file.
1094 .B Absolute symlink (C\-x s)
1096 Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
1098 .B Relative symLink (C\-x v)
1100 Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
1102 To those of you who don't know what links are: creating a link to a file
1103 is a bit like copying the file, but both the source filename and the destination
1104 filename represent the same file image. For example, if you edit one of these
1105 files, all changes you make will appear in both files. Some people call
1106 links aliases or shortcuts.
1108 A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
1109 telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you delete
1110 either one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
1111 to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
1112 you don't even want to know.
1114 A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If
1115 the original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite
1116 easy to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight
1117 Commander shows an "@"\-sign in front of the file name if it is a
1118 symbolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
1119 The original file which the link points to is shown on mini\-status line if the
1120 .I "Show mini\-status"
1121 option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the
1122 confusion that can be caused by hard links.
1124 When you press "C\-x s" Midnight Commander will automatically fill in the
1125 complete path+filename of the original file and suggest a name for the link.
1126 You can change either one.
1128 Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the original into
1129 a relative path. An absolute path starts from the root directory:
1131 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc -> /home/frodo/new/mc
1133 A relative link describes the original file's location starting from the
1134 location of the link itself:
1136 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc -> ../new/mc
1138 You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing
1139 "C\-x v" instead of "C\-x s".
1141 .B Rename/Move (F6, F16)
1143 Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1144 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1145 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1146 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. For more details
1147 look at Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
1149 F16 (usually F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1150 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1153 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1154 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1159 is used to control the background process.
1163 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
1167 Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the
1168 currently selected panel. During the process, you can press C\-c or
1169 ESC to abort the operation.
1171 .B Quick cd (Alt\-c)
1176 command if you have full command line and want to cd somewhere.
1180 This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
1181 will prompt for a selection options. When
1183 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
1185 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
1188 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
1189 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
1190 for one character). If
1192 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
1193 expressions (see ed (1)). When
1195 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
1198 is off, the case will be ignored.
1200 .B Unselect group (\\\\)
1202 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the
1206 .B Quit (F10, Shift\-F10)
1208 Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift\-F10 is used when you want to
1209 quit and you are using the shell wrapper. Shift\-F10 will not take you
1210 to the last directory you visited with the Midnight Commander, instead
1211 it will stay at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
1214 This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to
1217 .\"The cd internal command"
1218 somewhere without having to yank and paste the command line. This command
1219 pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter after
1221 on the command line and then you press enter. This features all the things
1222 that are already in the
1224 internal cd command\&.
1225 .\"The cd internal command"
1226 .\"NODE " Command Menu"
1232 command shows a tree figure of the directories.
1238 command allows you to search for a specific file.
1240 The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.
1242 The "Switch panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell command.
1243 This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
1245 The "Compare directories" command compares the directory
1246 panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make
1247 the panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method
1248 compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a
1249 full byte\-by\-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
1250 machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size\-only
1251 compare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the
1252 contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
1257 .\"External panelize"
1258 allows you to execute an external program, and make the output of that
1259 program the contents of the current panel.
1261 The "Command history" command shows a list of typed commands. The
1262 selected command is copied to the command line. The command history
1263 can also be accessed by typing Alt\-p or Alt\-n.
1269 command makes changing of the current directory to often used directories
1276 command shows a dialog window with the list of currently running
1277 internal editors, viewers and other MC modules that support this mode.
1281 "Edit extension file"
1282 .\"Extension File Edit"
1283 command allows you to specify programs to executed when you try to
1284 execute, view, edit and do a bunch of other thing on files
1285 with certain extensions (filename endings).
1291 command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by
1293 .\"NODE " Directory Tree"
1294 .SH " Directory Tree"
1295 The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
1296 can select a directory from the figure and the Midnight Commander will
1297 change to that directory.
1299 There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree command
1300 is available from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
1301 from the Left or Right menu.
1303 To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the tree
1304 figure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
1305 directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent
1306 directory and press C\-r (or F2).
1308 You can use the following keys:
1311 General movement keys
1312 .\"General Movement Keys"
1316 In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to this
1317 directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to this
1318 directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the
1321 .B C\-r, F2 (Rescan).
1322 Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure is out of date:
1323 it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirectories which don't
1327 Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to remove clutter
1328 from the figure. If you want the directory back to the tree figure
1329 press F2 in its parent directory.
1331 .B F4 (Static/Dynamic).
1332 Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode (default) and the static
1335 In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1336 select a directory. All known directories are shown.
1338 In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1339 select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent
1340 directory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the
1341 parent, sibling and children directories are shown, others are left
1342 out. The tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
1351 Make a new directory below this directory.
1354 Delete this directory from the file system.
1357 Search the next directory matching the search string. If there is
1358 no such directory these keys will move one line down.
1361 Delete the last character of the search string.
1363 .B Any other character.
1364 Add the character to the search string and move to the next directory
1365 which starts with these characters. In the tree view you must first
1366 activate the search mode by pressing C\-s. The search string is shown
1367 in the mini status line.
1369 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
1370 aren't supported in the tree view.
1373 Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
1376 Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
1378 The mouse is supported. A double\-click behaves like Enter. See
1383 .\"NODE " Find File"
1385 The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the
1386 search and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree
1387 button you can select the start directory from the
1393 Option \"Whole words\" allows select only those files containing matches that
1394 form whole words. Like grep \-w.
1396 You can start the search by pressing the OK button.
1397 During the search you can stop from the Stop button and continue from
1400 You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
1401 button will change to the directory of the currently selected
1402 file. The Again button will ask for the parameters for a new
1403 search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panelize
1404 button will place the found files to the current directory panel so
1405 that you can do additional operations on them (view, copy, move,
1406 delete and so on). After panelizing you can press C\-r to return to the
1407 normal file listing.
1409 The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it
1410 allow to set up the list of directories that should be skip during the search
1411 files (for example, you may want to avoid searches on a CD\-ROM or on a NFS
1412 directory that is mounted across a slow link). List components must be separated
1413 with a colon, here is an example:
1416 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1419 Relative paths are supported also. The following example shows how to skip special
1420 directories of version control systems:
1422 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
1425 Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the current absolute path.
1427 You may consider using the
1430 .\"External panelize"
1431 command for some operations. Find file command is for simple queries
1432 only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious searches
1434 .\"NODE " External panelize"
1435 .SH " External panelize"
1436 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
1437 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1439 For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1440 symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external
1441 panelization to run the following command:
1444 find . \-type l \-print
1447 Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel will no
1448 longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
1449 files that are symbolic links.
1451 If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded
1452 from your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file
1453 name from the transfer log files:
1456 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1459 You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive name,
1460 so that you can recall them quickly. You do this by typing the command on
1461 the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a name under
1462 which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just choose that
1463 command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1466 The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories
1467 in the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the
1468 directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dialog,
1469 you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new ones.
1470 To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist command
1471 (C\-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory hotlist,
1472 asking just for the label for the directory.
1474 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using the
1475 CDPATH variable as described in
1478 .\"The cd internal command"
1480 .\"NODE " Extension File Edit"
1481 .SH " Extension File Edit"
1482 This will invoke your editor on the file
1483 .IR ~/.config/mc/mc.ext .
1484 The format of this file following:
1486 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1488 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1491 i.e. everything after the slash until new line is
1500 is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name ends
1511 is a regular expression. File matches if its name matches the regular
1517 is a regular expression. File matches if it is a directory and its name
1518 matches the regular expression.
1523 is a regular expression. File matches if the output of
1525 without the initial "filename:" part matches regular expression
1529 \- matches any file.
1534 \- denotes a common section.
1536 is the name of the section.
1538 Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the format:
1540 (with no spaces around =), where
1544 (invoked on Enter or double click),
1550 (to add rules from the common section).
1552 is any one\-line shell command, with the simple
1554 macro substitution\&.
1555 .\"Macro Substitution"
1557 Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important. If
1558 the appropriate action is missing, search continues as if this rule
1559 didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first and second entry and View
1560 action is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View action
1561 from the second entry will be used).
1563 should match all the actions.
1564 .\"NODE " Background jobs"
1565 .SH " Background Jobs"
1566 This lets you control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1567 process (only copy and move files operations can be done in the
1568 background). You can stop, restart and kill a background job from
1570 .\"NODE " Menu File Edit"
1571 .SH " Menu File Edit"
1572 The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by
1573 the user. When you access the user menu, the
1574 file .mc.menu from the current directory is used if it exists,
1575 but only if it is owned by user or root and is not world\-writable.
1576 If no such file found, ~/.config/mc/menu is tried in the same way,
1577 and otherwise mc uses the default system\-wide menu
1578 %prefix%/share/mc/mc.menu.
1580 The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with
1581 anything but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in
1582 order to be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should
1583 be a letter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the
1584 commands that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1586 When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
1587 copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
1588 /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
1589 normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1590 takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
1592 macro substitution\&.
1593 .\"Macro Substitution"
1595 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1598 A Dump the currently selected file
1601 B Edit a bug report and send it to root
1602 I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:\-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
1604 mail \-s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
1613 H Call the info hypertext browser
1616 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1617 tar cf \- . | (cd %D && tar xvpf \-)
1619 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1620 echo \-n "Name of distribution file: "
1622 ln \-s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1624 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1626 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1627 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1631 .B Default Conditions
1633 Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
1634 start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
1635 true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1638 Condition syntax: = <sub\-cond>
1639 or: = <sub\-cond> | <sub\-cond> ...
1640 or: = <sub\-cond> & <sub\-cond> ...
1642 Sub\-condition is one of following:
1644 y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
1645 (for edit menu only)
1646 f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
1647 F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
1648 d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
1649 D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
1650 t <type> current file of type?
1651 T <type> other file of type?
1652 x <filename> is it executable filename?
1653 ! <sub\-cond> negate the result of sub\-condition
1656 Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according
1657 to the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of
1658 the shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first
1659 line of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1661 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1676 For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't'
1677 type is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the
1678 file. The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the
1679 current panel and false if not.
1681 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1682 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1684 The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1686 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1690 ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1693 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1696 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1697 L List the contents of a compressed tar\-archive
1698 gzip \-cd %f | tar xvf \-
1701 .B Addition Conditions
1703 If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
1704 is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1705 be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
1706 not be included in the menu.
1708 You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1709 with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
1710 want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1711 defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
1712 starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1714 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1715 with '#', space or tab.
1716 .\"NODE " Options Menu"
1718 The Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and
1719 off in several dialogs which are accessible from this menu. Options
1720 are enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1726 command pops up a dialog from which you can change most of settings of
1727 the Midnight Commander.
1733 command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of options how mc
1734 looks like on the screen.
1740 command pops up a dialog from which you specify options of file manager panels.
1746 command pops up a dialog from which you specify which actions you want to
1753 command pops up a dialog from which you may select which characters is your
1754 terminal able to display.
1760 command pops up a dialog from which you test some keys which are not working
1761 on some terminals and you may fix them.
1767 command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS related options.
1773 command saves the current settings of the Left, Right and Options
1774 menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1775 .\"NODE " Configuration"
1776 .SH " Configuration"
1777 The options in this dialog are divided into several groups: "File
1778 operation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run" and "Other options".
1780 .B File operation options
1782 .I Verbose operation.
1783 This toggles whether the file Copy, Rename and Delete operations are
1784 verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each operation). If you have a
1785 slow terminal, you may wish to disable the verbose operation. It is
1786 automatically turned off if the speed of your terminal is less than
1790 If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander computes total byte
1791 sizes and total number of files prior to any Copy, Rename and Delete
1792 operations. This will provide you with a more accurate progress bar
1793 at the expense of some speed. This option has no effect, if
1794 .I Verbose operation
1797 .I Classic progressbar.
1798 If this option is enabled, the progressbar of Copy/Move/Delete operations
1799 is always grown form left to right. If disabled, the growing direction
1800 of progressbar follows to direction of Copy/Move/Delete operation:
1801 from left panel to right one and vice versa. Enabled by default.
1804 When you press F7 to create a new directory, the input line in popup dialog
1805 will be filled by name of current file or directory in active panel.
1806 Disabled by default.
1808 .I Preallocate space
1809 Preallocate space for whole target file, if possible, before copy operation.
1810 Disabled by default.
1814 By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key prefix.
1815 Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to exit a dialog. But there is
1816 a possibility to use a single press of ESC key for that action.
1819 By default this option is disabled. If you'll enable it, the ESC key
1820 will act as a prefix key for set up time interval (see
1822 option below), and if no extra keys have arrived, then the ESC key
1823 is interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).
1826 This options is used to setup the time interval (in microseconds)
1827 for single press of ESC key. By default, this inrerval is one second
1828 (1000000 microseconds). Also the timeout can be set via KEYBOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US
1829 environment variable (also in microseconds), which has higher priority
1830 than Timeout option value.
1834 After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can pause, so
1835 that you can examine the output of the command. There are three
1836 possible settings for this variable:
1839 Means that you do not want to see the output of your command. If you
1840 are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will be able to
1841 see the output of the command by typing C\-o.
1843 .IR On dumb terminals .
1844 You will get the pause message on terminals that are not capable of
1845 showing the output of the last command executed (any terminal that is
1846 not an xterm or the Linux console).
1849 The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1853 .I Use internal editor.
1854 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file editor is used to edit
1855 files. If the option is disabled, the editor specified in the
1857 environment variable is used.
1858 If no editor is specified,
1860 is used. See the section on the
1862 internal file editor\&.
1863 .\"Internal File Editor"
1865 .I Use internal viewer.
1866 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file viewer is used to view
1867 files. If the option is disabled, the pager specified in the
1869 environment variable is used.
1870 If no pager is specified, the
1872 command is used. See the section on the
1874 internal file viewer\&.
1875 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1877 .I Ask new file name
1878 If this option is enabled, file name is asked before open new file in editor.
1881 If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup.
1882 Useful for building menus for non\-unixers.
1885 When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will be activated as
1886 soon as you press the F9 key. Otherwise, you will only get the menu title,
1887 and you will have to activate the menu either with the arrow keys or with
1888 the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using hotkeys.
1891 By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands will use shell\-like
1892 regular expressions. The following conversions are performed to achieve
1893 this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?'
1894 is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and '.' by the literal
1895 dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular expressions are the
1896 ones described in ed(1).
1898 .I Complete: show all.
1899 By default the Midnight Commander pops up all possible
1903 if the completion is ambiguous only when you press
1905 for the second time. For the first time, it just completes as much as
1906 possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity. Enable this option if you
1907 want to see all possible completions even after pressing
1912 If this option is enabled, the
1913 Midnight Commander shows a rotating dash in the upper right corner
1914 as a work in progress indicator.
1916 .I Cd follows links.
1917 This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander to follow the
1918 logical chain of directories when changing current directory
1919 either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
1920 behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows the
1921 real directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory
1922 through a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
1923 and not to the directory where the link was present.
1926 If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory hotlist entries
1927 unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default selection in the
1928 confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes" to "No".
1929 This option is disabled by default.
1932 If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
1933 configurable options of the Midnight Commander are saved in the
1934 ~/.config/mc/ini file.
1937 The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1938 of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into several groups:
1939 "Panel split", "Console output" and "Other options".
1943 The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1944 can specify whether the area is split to the panels in
1948 direction. Panel layout can be changed using Alt\-, (Alt\-comma) shortcut.
1951 By default, panels have equal sizes. Using this option you can specify
1956 On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are shown
1957 in the output window. This option is available if Midnight Commander runs
1958 on native console only.
1962 .I Menu bar visible.
1963 If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is always visible on the top row
1964 of screen above panels. Enabled by default.
1967 If enabled, command line is avalable. Enabled by default.
1970 If enabled, 10 lables associated with F1\-F10 keys are located at the bottom
1971 row of screen. Enabled by default.
1974 If enabled, the one\-line hints are visible below panels. Enabled by default.
1976 .I XTerm window title.
1977 When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight Commander sets the
1978 terminal window title to the current working directory and updates it
1979 when necessary. If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some
1980 incorrect output on startup and directory change, turn off this option.
1984 If enabled, free space and total space of current file system is shown
1985 at the bottom frame of panel. Enabled by default.
1986 .\"NODE " Panel options"
1987 .SH " Panel options"
1988 .B Main panel options
1990 .I Show mini\-status.
1991 If enabled, one line of status information about the currently selected item
1992 is shown at the bottom of the panels. Enabled by default.
1994 .I Use SI size units.
1995 If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander will use SI units (powers of 1000)
1996 when displaying any byte sizes. The suffixes (k, m ...) are shown in lowercase.
1997 If disabled (default), Midnight Commander will use binary units (powers of 1024)
1998 and the suffixes are shown in upper case (K, M ...)
2001 If this option is enabled, all files and directories are shown mixed
2002 together. If the option is desabled (default), directories (and links to
2003 directories) are shown at the beginning of the listing, and other files below.
2005 .I Show backup files.
2006 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show files ending with a tilde.
2007 Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls option \-B). Enabled by default.
2009 .I Show hidden files.
2010 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show all files that start with
2011 a dot (like ls \-a). Disabled by default.
2013 .I Fast directory reload.
2014 If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander will use a trick to
2015 determine if the directory contents have changed. The trick is to reload
2016 the directory only if the i\-node of the directory has changed; this means
2017 that reloads only happen when files are created or deleted. If what
2018 changes is the i\-node for a file in the directory (file size changes,
2019 mode or owner changes, etc) the display is not updated. In these cases,
2020 if you have the option on, you have to rescan the directory manually
2021 (with C\-r). Disabled by default.
2024 If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you mark a file (with
2025 Insert key). Enabled by default.
2027 .I Reverse files only.
2028 Allow revert selection of files only. Enabled by default.
2029 If enabled, the reverse selection is applied to files only, not to directories.
2030 The selection of directories is untouched. If off, the reverse selection
2031 is applied to files as well to directories: all unselected items become
2032 selected, and vice versa.
2035 If both panels contain file listing, simple swap means that panels exchange
2036 its screen positions: left panel become right one, and vice versa. If this
2037 option is unchecked, file listing panels exchange its content keeping listing
2038 format and sort options. Unchecked by default.
2040 .I Auto save panels setup.
2041 If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
2042 current settings of panels are saved in the ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file.
2043 Disabled by default.
2047 .I Lynx\-like motion.
2048 If this option is enabled, you may use the arrows keys to automatically
2049 chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory and the shell command
2050 line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
2053 If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when the
2054 cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, otherwise it
2055 will just scroll a file at a time.
2057 .I Mouse page scrolling.
2058 Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel is done by pages or
2059 line by line on the panels.
2063 You can specify whether
2067 should be highlighted with distinctive
2071 If the permission highlighting is enabled, the parts of the
2078 which apply to the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with
2079 the color defined by the
2081 keyword. If the file type highlighting is enabled, file names are colored
2082 according to rules described in
2083 %sysconfdir%/mc/filehighlight.ini
2087 .\"Filenames Highlight"
2092 You can specify how the
2096 mode should works: case insensitively, case sensitively or be matched
2097 to the the panel sort order: case sensitive or not.
2098 .\"NODE " Confirmation"
2100 In this dialog you configure the confirmation options for file deletion,
2101 overwriting files, execution by pressing enter, quitting the program,
2102 directory hotlist entries deletion and history cleanup.
2104 .\"NODE " Display bits"
2106 This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
2107 screen. This setting may be 7\-bits if your terminal/curses supports
2108 only seven output bits, ISO\-8859\-1 displays all the characters in the
2109 ISO\-8859\-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
2110 full 8 bit characters.
2111 .\"NODE " Learn keys"
2113 This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor
2114 arrows and some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
2115 They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or broken.
2117 You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
2118 left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor movement
2119 key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
2121 You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a
2122 key and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name
2123 of that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually,
2124 e.g. F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works,
2125 but after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys.
2126 The Tab key should be working always.
2128 If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after
2129 pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by pressing
2130 the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or by Enter
2131 or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then a message
2132 box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait until the
2133 message box disappears. If you want to abort, just press Escape once
2136 When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions
2137 for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [terminal:TERM]
2138 section of your ~/.config/mc/ini file (where TERM is the name of your current
2139 terminal). The definitions of the keys that were already working properly
2141 .\"NODE " Virtual FS"
2143 This option gives you control over the settings of the
2145 Virtual File System\&.
2146 .\"Virtual File System"
2148 The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information related to some
2149 of the virtual file systems to speed up the access to the files in the
2150 file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
2152 Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
2153 compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander needs to create temporary
2154 uncompressed files on your disk.
2156 Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk
2157 take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
2158 information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
2159 access to frequently used file systems.
2161 Because of the format of the tar archives, the
2163 needs to read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most
2164 tar files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in
2165 extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
2166 in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a
2169 Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
2170 it's common that you will leave a tar file and then re\-enter it later.
2171 Since decompression is slow, the Midnight Commander will cache the
2172 information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires, all
2173 the resources associated with the file system are released. The default
2174 timeout is set to one minute.
2180 (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote FTP servers. It has
2183 .I ftp anonymous password
2184 is the password used when you login as "anonymous". Some sites require
2185 a valid e\-mail address. On the other hand, you probably don't want to
2186 give your real e\-mail address to untrusted sites, especially if you are
2187 not using spam filtering.
2189 ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a cache.
2190 The cache expire time is configurable with the
2191 .I ftpfs directory cache timeout
2192 option. A low value for this option may slow down every operation on
2193 the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a request to the
2196 You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern
2197 firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below), so
2198 FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
2201 .I Always use ftp proxy
2202 is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to enable proxy for certain
2209 If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the
2210 %prefix%/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that
2211 are local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a
2212 domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names are
2213 directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the
2214 specified FTP proxy.
2216 You can enable using
2218 file, which keeps login names and passwords for ftp servers. See netrc
2219 (5) for the description of the .netrc format.
2222 enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection for data transfer is
2223 initiated by the client, not by the server. This option is recommended
2224 and enabled by default. If this option is turned off, the data
2225 connection is initiated by the server. This may not work with some
2227 .\"NODE " Save Setup"
2229 At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
2230 information from the ~/.config/mc/ini file. If this file
2231 doesn't exist, it will load the information from the system\-wide
2232 configuration file, located in %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ini. If the
2233 system\-wide configuration file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
2237 command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by saving the
2238 current settings of the
2241 .\"Left and Right Menus"
2250 option, MC will always save the current settings when exiting.
2252 There also exist settings which can't be changed from the menus. To
2253 change these settings you have to edit the setup file with your
2254 favorite editor. See the section on
2257 .\"Special Settings"
2258 for more information.
2260 .\"NODE "Executing operating system commands"
2261 .SH "Executing operating system commands"
2262 You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight
2263 Commander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to
2264 execute with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
2266 If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the Midnight
2267 Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the
2271 .\"Extension File Edit"
2272 If a match is found then the code associated with that extension is
2273 executed. A very simple
2276 .\"Macro Substitution"
2277 takes place before executing the command.
2278 .\"NODE " The cd internal command"
2279 .SH " The cd internal command"
2282 command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander, it is not passed to
2283 the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle all of the
2284 nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does, although it
2287 .I Tilde substitution.
2288 The (~) will be substituted with your home directory, if you append a
2289 username after the tilde, then it will be substituted with the login
2290 directory of the specified user.
2292 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
2293 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
2295 .I Previous directory.
2296 You can jump to the directory you were previously by using the special
2297 directory name '\-' like this:
2300 .I CDPATH directories.
2301 If the directory specified to the
2303 command is not in the current directory, then The Midnight Commander
2304 uses the value in the environment variable
2306 to search for the directory in any of the named directories.
2308 For example you could set your
2310 variable to ~/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to
2311 any of the directories inside the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from
2312 any place in the file system by using its relative name (for example
2313 cd linux could take you to /usr/src/linux).
2314 .\"NODE " Macro Substitution"
2315 .SH " Macro Substitution"
2322 extension dependent command\&,
2323 .\"Extension File Edit"
2324 or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
2325 substitution takes place.
2330 The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position. For edit
2334 The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
2337 The block file name.
2340 The error file name.
2343 The current menu name.
2346 The current file name.
2349 The extension of current file name.
2352 The current file name without extension.
2355 The current directory name.
2358 The current file in the unselected panel.
2361 The directory name of the unselected panel.
2364 The currently tagged files.
2367 The tagged files in the unselected panel.
2370 Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are untagged.
2371 You can use this macro only once per menu file entry or extension file
2372 entry, because next time there will be no tagged files.
2375 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise the
2379 This is a special macro that is used to change the current directory
2380 to the directory specified in front of it. This is used primarily as
2383 Virtual File System\&.
2384 .\"Virtual File System"
2387 This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This macro can be
2388 used alone, or with arguments. If you pass any arguments to this
2389 macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
2393 to force the viewer into ascii mode;
2395 to force the viewer into hex mode;
2397 to tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold and underline
2400 to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the text
2407 Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text inside
2408 the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is substituted by the text
2409 typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10 to cancel. This macro
2410 doesn't work on the command line yet.
2412 .I %var{ENV:default}
2413 If environment variable
2417 is substituted. Otherwise, the value of
2420 .\"NODE " The subshell support"
2421 .SH " The subshell support"
2422 The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
2423 shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.
2425 When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander will
2426 spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the
2428 variable and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd
2429 file) and run it in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell
2430 each time you execute a command, the command will be passed to the
2431 subshell as if you had typed it. This also allows you to change the
2432 environment variables, use shell functions and define aliases that are
2433 valid until you quit the Midnight Commander.
2437 you can specify startup
2438 commands for the subshell in your ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc file and
2439 special keyboard maps in the ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc file.
2441 users may specify startup commands in the ~/.local/share/mc/tcshrc file.
2443 When the subshell code is used, you can suspend applications at any
2444 time with the sequence C\-o and jump back to the Midnight Commander, if
2445 you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other
2446 external commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
2448 An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the prompt
2449 displayed by the Midnight Commander is the same prompt that you are
2450 currently using in your shell.
2456 section has more information on how you can control the subshell code.
2459 The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
2460 files and directories. It can be invoked with the C\-x c key combination.
2462 The Chmod window has two parts \-
2467 In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory
2468 and its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
2470 In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which
2471 correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute
2472 bits, you can see the octal value change in the File section.
2474 To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the
2478 key. To change the state of the check buttons or to select a button
2481 You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate them.
2482 Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on the buttons.
2484 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
2486 When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on
2487 the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits
2488 you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked
2491 Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
2494 button, which will act on all the tagged files.
2497 set only marked attributes to all selected files
2500 set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2503 clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2506 set the attributes of one file
2509 cancel the Chmod command
2512 The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
2513 key for this command is C\-x o.
2514 .\"NODE "Advanced Chown"
2515 .SH "Advanced Chown"
2516 The Advanced Chown command is the
2524 command combined into one window. You can change the permissions and
2525 owner/group of files at once.
2526 .\"NODE "File Operations"
2527 .SH "File Operations"
2528 When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander shows the
2529 file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being processed
2530 and uses up to three progress bars. The file bar indicates the
2531 percentage of the current file that has been processed so far. The
2532 count bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The
2533 bytes bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files
2534 that has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes
2537 There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
2538 button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort
2539 button will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are
2542 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
2545 The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
2546 Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file or the Abort
2547 button to abort the operation altogether. You can also select the Retry
2548 button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
2550 The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
2551 the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
2552 the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
2553 button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
2554 None button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if the
2555 source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
2556 operation by pressing the Abort button.
2558 The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
2559 which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory
2560 recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the All button to
2561 delete all the directories and the None button to skip all the non\-empty
2562 directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing the Abort
2563 button. If you selected the Yes or All button you will be asked for a
2564 confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you want to do the
2567 If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them only the files
2568 on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped files
2570 .\"NODE "Mask Copy/Rename"
2571 .SH "Mask Copy/Rename"
2572 The copy/move operations let you translate the names of files in an
2573 easy way. To do it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
2574 usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
2575 All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
2576 the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
2577 matching the source mask are renamed.
2579 There are other options which you can set:
2583 determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source
2584 directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target
2585 directory or whether would you like to copy their content.
2587 .B Dive into subdirs
2589 determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be copied,
2590 but the target directory already exists. The default action is to copy
2591 the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
2592 Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into the
2595 For example, you want to copy directory
2601 which is an already existing directory. Normally (when
2602 .B Dive into subdirs
2603 is not set), mc would copy file
2607 By enabling this option the
2609 directory will be created, and
2612 .IR /bla/foo/foo/bar .
2614 .B Preserve attributes
2616 determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you
2617 are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is not
2618 set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
2620 .B Use shell patterns
2622 When this option is on you can use the '*' and '?' wildcards in the source
2623 mask. They work like they do in the shell. In the target mask only the '*'
2624 and '\\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The first '*' wildcard in the target
2625 mask corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source mask,
2626 the second '*' corresponds to the second group and so on. The '\\1' wildcard
2627 corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source mask, the '\\2' wildcard
2628 corresponds to the second group and so on all the way up to '\\9'.
2629 The '\\0' wildcard is the whole filename of the source file.
2633 If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is "/bla/*.tgz" and the
2634 file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in "/bla".
2636 Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c" would
2637 become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
2638 destination is "\\2.\\1".
2640 .B Use shell patterns off
2642 When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
2643 grouping anymore. You must use '\\(...\\)' expressions in the source
2644 mask to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is
2645 more flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks
2646 are similar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
2650 If the source mask is "^\\(.*\\)\\.tar\\.gz$", the destination is
2651 "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy
2652 will be "/bla/foo.tgz".
2654 Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
2655 will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
2656 "^\\(.*\\)\\.\\(.*\\)$" and the destination is "\\2.\\1".
2660 You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\\u'
2661 or '\\l' in the target mask, the next character will be converted to
2662 uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.
2664 If you use '\\U' or '\\L' in the target mask, the next characters will
2665 be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the
2666 next '\\E' or next '\\U', '\\L' or the end of the file name.
2668 The '\\u' and '\\l' are stronger than '\\U' and '\\L'.
2670 For example, if the source mask is '*' (
2671 .I Use shell patterns
2672 on) or '^\\(.*\\)$' (
2673 .I Use shell patterns
2674 off) and the target mask is '\\L\\u*' the file names will be converted
2675 to have initial upper case and otherwise lower case.
2677 You can also use '\\' as a quote character. For example, '\\\\' is
2678 a backslash and '\\*' is an asterisk.
2682 commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks in the target,
2683 so that they'll point to the same location as it did before. With absolute
2684 symbolic links this does nothing, but if you have a relative one, it will
2685 recompute its value, adding necessary ../ and other directory parts and making
2686 the value as short as possible (most modern filesystems keep short symlinks
2687 inside inodes and thus don't waste much disk space).
2689 .\"NODE "Select/Unselect Files"
2690 .SH "Select/Unselect Files"
2691 The dialog of group of files and directories selection or uselection.
2696 allow enter the regular expression of filenames that will be
2697 selected/unselected.
2701 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
2703 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
2706 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
2707 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
2708 for one character). If
2710 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
2711 expressions (see ed (1)). When
2713 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
2716 is off, the case will be ignored.
2717 .\"NODE "Diff Viewer"
2718 .SH "Internal Diff Viewer"
2719 The mcdiff is a visual diff tool. You can compare two files and edit them
2720 in\-place (diffs are updated dynamically). You can browse and view a working
2721 copy from popular version control systems (GIT, Subversion, etc).
2723 Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of Midnight
2727 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2730 Save modified files.
2733 Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
2736 Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
2739 Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be merged.
2748 Exit from diff viewer.
2751 Toggle show of hunk status.
2754 Toggle show of line numbers.
2757 Maximize left panel.
2760 Make panels equal in width.
2763 Reduce the size of the right panel.
2766 Reduce the size of the left panel.
2769 Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2775 Swap contents of diff panels.
2781 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2784 Find next diff hunk.
2787 Find previous diff hunk.
2793 Scroll one line forward.
2796 Scroll one line backward.
2805 Moves to the line beginning.
2808 Moves to the line end.
2811 Move to the file beginning.
2814 Move to the file end.
2815 .\"NODE "Internal File Viewer"
2816 .SH "Internal File Viewer"
2817 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex.
2818 To toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
2820 The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or
2821 the file type to display the information.
2822 Some character sequences, which appear most often in preformatted manual
2823 pages, are displayed bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display
2826 When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and
2827 constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing
2828 the quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text
2829 with constants like this:
2832 "String" \-1 0xBB 012 "more text"
2835 Note that 012 is an octal number. \-1 is converted to 0xFF.
2837 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the
2838 Midnight Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2841 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2844 Toggle the wrap mode.
2847 Toggle the hex mode.
2850 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display
2854 Regular expression search.
2857 Reverse regular expression search.
2860 Normal search / hex mode search.
2863 Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else
2867 Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else
2871 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or if
2872 a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the
2873 output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
2874 on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter
2878 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
2879 will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with
2880 different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
2883 Exit the internal file viewer.
2885 .B next\-page, space, C\-v.
2886 Scroll one page forward.
2888 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v, C\-b, Backspace.
2889 Scroll one page backward.
2892 Scroll one line forward.
2895 Scroll one line backward.
2901 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2910 Jump to the next file.
2913 Jump to the previous file.
2919 to change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
2920 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
2921 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
2924 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
2927 Extension File Edit section
2928 .\"Extension File Edit"
2930 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor"
2931 .SH "Internal File Editor"
2932 The internal file editor is a full\-featured full screen editor. It can
2933 edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible to edit binary files.
2934 The internal file editor is invoked using
2937 .I use_internal_edit
2938 option is set in the initialization file.
2940 The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
2941 paste; key for key undo; pull\-down menus; file insertion; macro
2942 commands; regular expression search and replace; shift\-arrow text highlighting
2943 (if supported by the terminal); insert\-overwrite toggle; word wrap;
2944 autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file
2945 types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands like
2951 Options of editor in ini\-file
2952 .\"Internal File Editor / options"
2954 The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To see what
2955 keys do what, just consult the appropriate pull\-down menu. Other keys
2956 are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting.
2962 pastes from mcedit.clip.
2968 deletes highlighted text. Mouse highlighting also works, and you
2969 can override the mouse as usual by holding down the shift key
2970 while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal mouse highlighting
2973 To define a macro, press
2975 and then type out the key
2976 strokes you want to be executed. Press
2978 again when finished. You can then assign the macro to any key you
2979 like by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you press
2981 and then the assigned key. The macro is also executed if
2982 you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, provided that the
2983 key is not used for any other function. Once defined, the macro
2984 commands go into the file
2985 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.macros
2986 You can delete a macro by deleting the
2987 appropriate line in this file.
2989 To change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
2990 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
2991 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
2995 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or
2999 code or another). This is controlled by the
3001 .B %prefix%/share/mc/edit.indent.rc
3003 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/edit.indent.rc
3004 in your home directory the first time you use it.
3006 The editor also displays non\-us characters (160+). When editing
3007 binary files, you should set
3009 to 7 bits in the options menu to keep the spacing clean.
3011 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor / options"
3012 .SH "Options of editor in ini\-file"
3014 Some editor options of ini\-file are described in this section.
3015 Options are placed in [Midnight\-Commander] section
3017 .I editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
3018 Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or just from
3019 begin of file to cursor position (0)
3021 .\"NODE "Screen selector"
3022 .SH "Screen selector"
3023 Midnight Commander supports running many internal modules (such as
3024 editor, viewer and diff viewer) simultaneously and switching between
3025 them without closing open files. Using several file managers at a time,
3026 however, is not currently supported.
3028 Let's call each of these modules a screen. There are three ways to
3029 switch between screens, using one of these global shortcuts:
3032 switch to the next screen;
3035 switch to the previous screen;
3038 open a dialog window with the list of currently open screens (or use the
3039 "Screen list" menu item).
3040 .\"NODE "Completion"
3042 Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
3044 Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
3045 attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins
3048 username (if the text begins with
3050 hostname (if the text begins with
3052 or command (if you are on the command line in the position where you
3053 might type a command, possible completions then include shell reserved
3054 words and shell built\-in commands as well) in turn. If none of these
3055 matches, filename completion is attempted.
3057 Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
3058 lines, command completion is command line specific. If the completion
3059 is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
3060 following action depends on the setting of the
3061 .I Complete: show all
3066 dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all possibilities pops up next to
3067 the current position and you can select with the arrow keys and
3069 the correct entry. You can also type the first letters in which the
3070 possibilities differ to move to a subset of all possibilities and
3071 complete as much as possible. If you press
3073 again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise the first
3074 item which matches all the previous characters will be highlighted. As
3075 soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you can hide it by
3079 and left and right arrow keys. If
3083 is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
3085 for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
3086 .\"NODE "Virtual File System"
3087 .SH "Virtual File System"
3088 The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the file
3089 system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system switch. The
3090 virtual file system switch allows the Midnight Commander to manipulate
3091 files not located on the Unix file system.
3093 Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
3096 file system, used for accessing the regular Unix file system; the
3098 used to manipulate files on remote systems with the FTP protocol; the
3100 used to manipulate tar and compressed tar files; the
3102 used to recover deleted files on ext2 file systems (the default file
3103 system for Linux systems),
3105 (for manipulating files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh).
3106 If the code was compiled with
3108 (for manipulating files over SFTP connections).
3109 If the code was compiled with
3111 support, you can manipulate files on remote systems with the SMB (CIFS)
3116 (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to easily expand
3117 VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
3119 The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
3120 forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each one
3121 of the file systems is described later in their own section.
3122 .\"NODE " FTP File System"
3123 .SH " FTP File System"
3124 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
3125 machines. To actually use it, you can use the
3127 item in the menu or directly change your current directory using the
3129 command to a path name that looks like this:
3131 .I ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote\-dir]
3138 elements are optional. If you specify the
3140 element, the Midnight Commander will login to the remote machine as that
3141 user, otherwise it will use anonymous login or the login name from the
3145 element is the password used for the connection. Using the password in
3146 the VFS directory name is not recommended, because it can appear on the
3147 screen in clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
3149 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend
3151 (an exclamation sign) to the hostname.
3156 ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
3157 ftp://tsx\-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
3158 ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
3159 ftp://guest@remote\-host.com:40/pub
3160 ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
3167 dialog box for ftpfs options.
3168 .\"NODE " Tar File System"
3169 .SH " Tar File System"
3170 The tar file system provides you with read\-only access to your tar
3171 files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command. To change
3172 your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
3173 tar file by using the following syntax:
3175 .I /filename.tar/utar://[dir\-inside\-tar]
3177 The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
3178 that usually you just point to a tar file and press return to enter
3179 into the tar file, see the
3182 .\"Extension File Edit"
3183 section for details on how this is done.
3188 mc\-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc\-3.0/vfs
3189 /ftp/GCC/gcc\-2.7.0.tar/utar://
3192 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
3193 .\"NODE " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3194 .SH " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3195 The fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
3196 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To use
3197 this, the other side has to either run fish server, or has to have
3198 bash\-compatible shell.
3200 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
3201 into a special directory which name is in the following
3204 .I sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote\-dir]
3211 elements are optional. If you specify the
3213 element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
3214 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
3220 'C' \- use compression;
3221 'r' \- use rsh instead of ssh;
3222 port \- specify the port used by remote server.
3226 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
3232 sh://onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
3233 sh://joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
3234 sh://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
3235 sh://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
3237 .\"NODE " SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem"
3238 .SH " SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem"
3239 The SFTP file system is a network based file system that allows you to
3240 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local.
3242 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
3243 into a special directory which name is in the following
3246 .I sftp://[user@]machine:[port]/[remote\-dir]
3253 elements are optional. If you specify the
3255 element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
3256 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
3258 \- specify the port used by remote server (22 by default).
3261 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
3267 sftp://onlyrsh.mx/linux/local
3268 sftp://joe:password@want.compression.edu/private
3269 sftp://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
3270 sftp://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
3272 .\"NODE " Undelete File System"
3273 .SH " Undelete File System"
3274 On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete
3275 facilities, you will have the undelete file system available.
3276 Recovery of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems. The
3277 undelete file system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to
3278 retrieve all of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and
3279 to extract the selected files into a regular partition.
3281 To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
3282 formed by the "undel://" prefix and the file name where the actual
3283 file system resides.
3285 For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
3286 first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
3292 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
3293 before you start browsing files there.
3294 .\"NODE " SMB File System"
3295 .SH " SMB File System"
3296 The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB
3297 (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups,
3298 Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba.
3299 To actually use it, you may try to use the panel command "SMB link..."
3300 (accessible from the menubar) or you may directly change your current
3301 directory to it using the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
3303 .I smb://[user@]machine[/service][/remote\-dir]
3310 elements are optional.
3316 can be specified in an input dialog.
3323 smb://guest@machine/Public/Irlex
3325 .\"NODE " EXTernal File System"
3326 .SH " EXTernal File System"
3328 allows you to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU Midnight
3329 Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
3331 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
3333 1. Stand\-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
3334 file. They represent certain system\-wide data as a directory tree.
3335 You can invoke them by typing
3336 .RI ' "cd fsname://" '
3337 where fsname is an extfs short name (see below). Examples of such
3338 filesystems include audio (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of
3339 all Debian packages in the system).
3341 For example, to list CD\-Audio tracks on your CD\-ROM drive, type
3347 2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
3348 contents of a file as a directory tree. It can consist of 'real' files
3349 compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages
3350 in a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
3353 should be appended to the archive name. Note that the archive itself
3354 can be on another vfs.
3356 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
3359 cd documents.zip/uzip://
3362 In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory. For
3363 instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
3364 history. An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell
3365 commands inside extfs, just like any other non\-local VFS.
3367 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
3370 access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette
3374 front end to Debian's APT package management system
3375 .RI ( "cd apt://" ).
3378 audio CD ripping and playing
3381 .IR "cd device/audio://" ).
3384 package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution
3385 .RI ( "cd file.bpp/bpp://" ).
3388 package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution
3389 .RI ( "cd file.deb/deb://" ).
3392 Debian GNU/Linux installed packages
3393 .RI ( "cd deb://" ).
3396 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator
3397 .RI ( "cd hp48://" ).
3400 browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs
3401 .RI ( "cd filename/lslR://" ).
3404 mbox\-style mailbox files support
3405 .RI ( "cd mailbox/mailfs://" ).
3408 extfs to handle unified and context diffs
3409 .RI ( "cd filename/patchfs://" ).
3413 .RI ( "cd filename/rpm://" ).
3416 RPM database management
3417 .RI ( "cd rpms://" ).
3419 .B ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
3421 .RI ( "cd archive/xxxx://"
3422 where xxxx is one of:
3430 You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as described in the
3433 .\"Extension File Edit"
3434 section. Here is an example entry for Debian packages:
3442 The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
3443 color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Sometimes
3444 it gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode
3445 using the \-c and \-b flag respectively.
3447 If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
3448 ncurses, it will also check the variable
3450 if it is set, it has the same effect as the \-c flag.
3452 You may specify terminals that always force color mode
3455 variable to the Colors section of the initialization file. This will
3456 prevent the Midnight Commander from trying to detect if your terminal
3457 supports color. Example:
3461 color_terminals=linux,xterm
3462 color_terminals=terminal\-name1,terminal\-name2...
3465 The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang, ncurses does
3466 not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the
3467 information in the terminal database.
3469 The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
3470 Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
3472 or the Colors section in the initialization file.
3474 In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the
3476 variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a terminal by
3477 using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:
3482 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
3485 The format for the color definition is:
3488 <keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
3491 The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected, disabled, marked,
3492 markselect, errors, input, inputmark, inputunchanged, commandlinemark,
3493 reverse, gauge, header, inputhistory, commandhistory. Button bar colors are:
3494 bbarhotkey, bbarbutton. Status bar color: statusbar. Menu colors are: menunormal,
3495 menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, menuinactive. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus,
3496 dhotnormal, dhotfocus, dtitle. Error dialog colors are: errdfocus, errdhotnormal,
3497 errdhotfocus, errdtitle. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold,
3498 helplink, helpslink, helptitle. Viewer color are: viewbold, viewunderline, viewselected.
3499 Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked, editwhitespace, editlinestate.
3500 Popup menu colors are: pmenunormal, pmenusel, pmenutitle.
3503 determines the color of panel header, the line that contains column titles
3504 and sort mode indicator.
3507 determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
3510 determines the color of the filled part of the progress bar (gauge),
3511 which is used to show the user the progress of file operations, such as
3515 determines the color of the widget that cannot be selected.
3517 The dialog boxes use the following colors:
3519 is used for the normal text,
3521 is the color used for the currently selected component,
3523 is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in normal
3524 components, whereas the
3526 color is used for the highlighted color in the currently selected
3529 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menunormal, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel
3530 and menuinactive tags instead.
3532 Help uses the following colors:
3534 is used for normal text,
3536 is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual page,
3538 is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the manual page,
3540 is used for not selected hyperlinks and
3542 is used for selected hyperlink.
3544 Popup menu uses following colors:
3546 is used for non-selected menu items and as a main color of popup menu window,
3548 is used for selected menu item,
3550 is used for popup menu title.
3552 The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
3553 brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta,
3554 cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword
3555 for transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be
3556 used for background color. Another special keyword "base" means mc's main
3557 colors. When 256 colors are available, they can be specified either as
3558 color16 to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and gray0 to gray23. Example:
3562 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
3565 Attributes can be any of bold, underline, reverse and blink, appended by a
3566 plus sign if more than one are desired. The special word "none" means no
3567 attributes, without attempting to fall back to base_color. Example:
3570 menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
3575 You can change the appearance of Midnight Commander.
3576 To do this, you must specify a file that contain descriptions of colors
3577 and lines to draw boxes. Redefining of the colors is entirely compatible
3578 with the assignment of colors, as described in Section
3583 If your skin contains any of 256\-color definitions, you should define
3584 the '256colors' key set to TRUE value in [skin] section.
3587 A skin\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
3590 1) command line option
3593 .B \-\-skin=\<skin\>
3595 2) Environment variable
3601 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
3605 .B %sysconfdir%/mc/skins/default.ini
3608 .B %prefix%/share/mc/skins/default.ini
3611 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
3612 contain the absolute path to the skin\-file (with the extension \.ini
3613 or without it). Search of skin\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
3616 .B ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
3619 .B @sysconfdir@/mc/skins/
3622 .B %prefix%/share/mc/skins/
3626 For getting extended info, refer to:
3629 Description of section and parameters
3633 Color pair definitions
3645 .\"NODE " Skins sections"
3646 .SH " Description of section and parameters"
3650 contain metainfo for skin\-file. Parameter
3652 contain short text about skin.
3657 contain descriptions of color pairs for filenames highlighting.
3658 Name of parameters must be equal to names of sections into
3659 filehighlight.ini file.
3663 .\"Filenames Highlight"
3664 for getting more info.
3669 describes the elements that are used everywhere.
3672 Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they not contain
3682 cursor on selected data
3685 color of the filled part of the progress bar
3688 color of input lines used in query dialogs
3691 color of input selected text
3694 color of input text before first modification or cursor movement
3697 color of selected text in command line
3704 describes the elements that are placed on dialog windows (except error dialogs).
3707 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3710 Color of active element (in focus)
3716 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3721 describes the elements that are placed on error dialog windows
3724 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3730 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3735 describes the elements that are placed in menu. This section describes
3736 system menu (called by F9) and user\-defined menus (called by F2 in panels
3737 and by F11 in editor).
3740 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3746 Color of menu hotkeys
3749 Color of active menu item (in focus)
3752 Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
3755 Color of inactive menu
3760 describes the elements that are placed on help window.
3763 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3766 Color pair for element with
3771 Color pair for element with
3779 Color of active link (on focus)
3784 describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
3787 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3790 Color pair for element with
3795 Color of selected text
3798 Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
3801 Color for line state area
3806 describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
3809 Color pair for element with
3813 .\"NODE " Skins colors"
3814 .SH " Color pair definitions"
3815 Any parameter in skin\-file contain definition of color pair.
3817 Color pairs described as two colors and the optional attributes
3818 separated by ';'. First field sets the foreground color, second
3819 field sets background color, third field sets the attributes.
3820 Any of the fields may be omitted, in this case value will be
3821 taken from default color pair (global color pair or from default
3822 color pair of this section).
3829 _default_=green;black
3830 # green (default) on blue
3832 # yellow on black (default)
3833 # underlined yellow on black (default)
3834 marked=yellow;;underline
3838 Possible colors (names) and attributes are described in
3844 .\"NODE " Skins lines"
3846 Lines sets in section
3848 into skin\-file. By default single lines are used, but you may redefine
3849 to usage of any utf\-8 symbols (like to lines, for example).
3852 When you build Midnight Commander with the Ncurses screen library
3853 usage of drawing lines is limited!
3854 Possible only drawing a single lines.
3855 For all questions and comments please contact the developers of Ncurses.
3858 Descriptions of parameters
3862 left\-top line fragment.
3865 right\-top line fragment.
3868 down branch of horizontal line
3871 up branch of horizontal line
3874 left\-bottom line fragment
3877 right\-bottom line fragment
3880 right branch of vertical line
3883 left branch of vertical line
3895 thin horizontal line
3901 .\"NODE " Skins oldcolors"
3902 .SH " Compatibility"
3904 Appointment of color by skin\-files fully compatible with
3905 the appointment of the colors described in
3911 In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the skin file and is
3914 .\"NODE "Filenames Highlight"
3915 .SH "Filenames Highlight"
3916 Section [filehighlight] in current skin\-file contains key names as
3917 highlight groups and values as color pairs. Color pairs is documented
3924 Rules of filenames highlight are placed in %prefix%/share/mc/filehighlight.ini file
3925 (~/.config/mc/filehighlight.ini).
3926 Name of section in this file must be equal to parameters names in
3927 [filehighlight] section (in current skin\-file).
3929 Keys in these groups are:
3932 file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
3935 regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is ignored.
3938 list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
3941 (make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
3942 rule case sentitive (true) or not (false).
3944 `type' key may have values:
3948 \- DIR (all directories)
3950 \- LINK (all links except stale link)
3954 \- DEVICE (all device files)
3957 \- SPECIAL (all special files)
3964 .\"NODE "Special Settings"
3965 .SH "Special Settings"
3966 Most of the Midnight Commander settings can be changed from the
3967 menus. However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
3968 changed by editing the setup file.
3970 These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
3972 .I clear_before_exec
3973 By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before executing a
3974 command. If you would prefer to see the output of the command at the
3975 bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.config/mc/ini file and change the value of
3976 the field clear_before_exec to 0.
3979 If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that directory. If
3980 this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirmation before changing
3981 the directory if you have files tagged.
3983 .I ftpfs_retry_seconds
3984 This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Commander will wait
3985 before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has denied the
3986 login. If the value is zero, the login will no be retried.
3989 Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the internal
3990 file viewer. Normally this value is not significant, because the code
3991 automatically adjusts the number of updates to skip according to the
3992 rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on very slow machines or
3993 terminals with a fast keyboard auto repeat, a big value can make screen
3996 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best behavior,
3997 and that is the default value.
3999 .I mouse_move_pages_viewer
4000 Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by line
4001 on the internal file viewer.
4003 .I only_leading_plus_minus
4004 Allow special treatment for '+', '\-', '*' in the command line (select,
4005 unselect, reverse selection) only if the command line is empty. You
4006 don't need to quote those characters in the middle of the command line.
4007 On the other hand, you cannot use them to change selection when the
4008 command line is not empty.
4010 .I show_output_starts_shell
4011 This variable only works if you are not using the subshell support.
4012 When you use the C\-o keystroke to go back to the user screen, if this
4013 one is set, you will get a fresh shell. Otherwise, pressing any key
4014 will bring you back to the Midnight Commander.
4016 .I timeformat_recent
4017 Change the time format used to display dates less than 6 months from
4019 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
4020 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
4023 Change the time format used to display dates older than 6 months from
4024 now or for dates in the future.
4025 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
4026 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
4029 If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work slightly
4030 different on the panels, instead of moving the selection to the first
4031 and last files in the panels, they will act as follows:
4033 The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else go to the
4034 top line unless it is already on the top line, in this case it will go
4035 to the first file in the panel.
4037 The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line, if over
4038 it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at the bottom
4039 line, in such case it will move the selection to the last file name in
4042 .I use_file_to_guess_type
4043 If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file command to
4044 match the file types listed on the
4047 .\"Extension File Edit"
4050 If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file system
4051 on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload the other panel with the
4052 contents of the selected directory.
4054 .I fish_directory_timeout
4055 This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in seconds. The
4056 default value is 900 seconds.
4059 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4060 utility like 'xclip' to read text into X selection from file.
4064 clipboard_store=xclip \-i
4068 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4069 utility like 'xclip' to print the selection to standard out.
4073 clipboard_pastee=xclip \-o
4076 .I autodetect_codeset
4077 This option allows use the `enca' command to autodetect codeset of text files
4078 in internal viewer and editor. List of valid values can be obtain by the
4079 `enca \-\-list languages | cut \-d : \-f1' command. Option must be located
4080 in the [Misc] section.
4085 autodetect_codeset=russian
4087 .\"NODE "Terminal databases"
4088 .SH "Terminal databases"
4089 The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal
4090 database without requiring root privileges. The Midnight Commander
4091 searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
4092 the Midnight Commander library directory) and in the
4093 ~/.config/mc/ini file for the section
4094 "terminal:your\-terminal\-name" and then for the section
4095 "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol that
4096 you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the definition for the
4097 key. You can use the special \\e form to represent the escape character
4098 and the ^x to represent the control\-x character.
4100 The possible key symbols are:
4103 f0 to f20 Function keys f0\-f20
4110 right right arrow key
4113 insert the insert character
4114 delete the delete character
4115 complete to do completion
4118 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
4119 set this in the ini file:
4126 Also now you can use
4127 .I extended learn keys.
4131 ctrl\-alt\-right=\\e[[1;6C
4132 ctrl\-alt\-left=\\e[[1;6D
4136 This means that ctrl+alt+left sends a \\e[[1;6D escape sequence
4137 and therefore Midnight Commander interprets "\\e[[1;6D" as Ctrl\-Alt\-Left.
4142 key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke the completion
4143 process, this is invoked with Alt\-tab, but you can define other keys to do
4144 the same work (on those keyboard with tons of nice and unused keys
4149 Full paths below may vary between installations. They are also affected
4152 environment variable. If it's set, its value is used instead of
4153 %prefix%/share/mc in the paths below.
4155 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.hlp
4157 The help file for the program.
4159 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ext
4161 The default system\-wide extensions file.
4163 .I ~/.config/mc/mc.ext
4165 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
4166 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if present.
4168 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ini
4170 The default system\-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used only if
4171 the user doesn't have his own ~/.config/mc/ini file.
4173 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.lib
4175 Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this file
4176 affect all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini or not. Currently, only
4179 .\"Terminal databases"
4180 are loaded from mc.lib.
4184 User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded
4185 from here instead of the system\-wide startup file.
4187 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.hint
4189 This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
4191 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.menu
4193 This file contains the default system\-wide applications menu.
4195 .I ~/.config/mc/menu
4197 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used instead
4198 of the system\-wide applications menu.
4202 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view features.
4204 .I ~/.local/share/mc.menu
4206 Local user\-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used instead of
4207 the home or system\-wide applications menu.
4209 To change default root directory of MC, you can use
4211 environment variable. The value of MC_HOME must be an absolute path. If MC_HOME
4212 is unset or empty, HOME variable is used. If HOME is unset or empty, MC
4213 directories are get from GLib library.
4216 This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
4217 License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built\-in
4218 help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
4219 .\"NODE "AVAILABILITY"
4221 The latest version of this program can be found at
4222 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mc/.
4225 ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
4229 The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
4230 http://www.midnight\-commander.org/
4234 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
4238 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains to
4241 If you want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
4242 this address: mc\-devel@gnome.org.
4244 Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program
4247 displays this information), the operating system you are running the
4248 program on. If the program crashes, we would appreciate a stack trace.