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
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.
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 \-P file, \-\-printwd=file
79 Print the last working directory to the specified file. This option is
80 not meant to be used directly. Instead, it's used from a special shell
81 script that automatically changes the current directory of the shell to
82 the last directory the Midnight Commander was in. Source the file
83 .B @prefix@/share/mc/bin/mc.sh
84 (bash and zsh users) or
85 .B @prefix@/share/mc/bin/mc.csh
86 (tcsh users) respectively to define
88 as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
91 Set alternative mode drawing of frameworks.
92 If the section [Lines] is not filled, the symbol for the pseudographics
93 frame is a space, otherwise the frame characters are taken from follow params.
95 .B You can redefine the following variables:
125 default horizontal line
128 default vertical line
137 Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it makes
138 the Midnight Commander use the value of the
140 variable for the terminal information instead of the information on
141 the system wide terminal database
143 .I \-u, \-\-nosubshell
144 Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if the Midnight
145 Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
148 Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if the
149 Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set as an
152 .I \-v file, \-\-view=file
153 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
157 Display the version of the program.
160 Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm\-capable terminals (two
161 screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
164 Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl, Shift
167 Force a "normal tracking" mouse mode. Used when running on
168 xterm\-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
170 If specified, the first path name is the directory to show in the
171 selected panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in
175 The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
176 Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels.
177 By default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the
178 shell command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels.
179 The topmost line is the
183 The menu bar line may not be visible, but appears if you click the
184 topmost line with the mouse or press the F9 key.
186 The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same
187 time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in
188 the current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current
189 panel. Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the
190 directory of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they
191 always ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see the
199 .\"Left and Right Menus"
205 You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply
206 typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line,
207 and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the
208 command line you typed; read the
211 .\"Shell Command Line"
216 sections to learn more about the command line.
217 .\"NODE "Mouse Support"
219 The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated
220 whenever you are running on an
222 terminal (it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to
223 another machine from the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux
226 mouse server running.
228 When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is
229 selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
230 unmarked, depending on the previous state).
232 Double\-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is
233 an executable program; and if the
236 .\"Extension File Edit"
237 has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified
240 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
241 key labels by clicking on them.
243 The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
244 milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the
248 file and changing the
252 If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
253 can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by holding
258 Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the
260 (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the
262 (sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this manual we will
263 use the following abbreviations:
266 means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>.
267 Thus C\-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
270 means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>.
271 If there is no Meta or Alt key, type
273 release it, then type the character <chr>.
276 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
278 All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approximation to
279 the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
281 You may redefine key bindings. See
283 .I redefine hotkey bindings
286 for more info. All other key bindings (described in this manual) relative
290 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
297 section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands appearing in
298 the File menu. This section includes the function keys. Most of these
299 commands perform some action, usually on the selected file or the
306 section documents the keys which select a file or tag files as a
307 target for a later action (the action is usually one from the file
313 .\"Shell Command Line"
314 section list the keys which are used for entering and editing command
315 lines. Most of these copy file names and such from the directory
316 panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the
317 command line history.
322 are used for editing input lines. This means both the command line and
323 the input lines in the query dialogs.
325 .\"NODE " Keys_redefine"
326 .SH " Redefine hotkey bindings"
327 Hotkey bindings may be read from external file (keymap\-file).
328 A keymap\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
331 1) command line option
334 .B \-\-keymap=\<keymap\>
336 2) Environment variable
342 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
346 .B ~/.config/mc/mc.keymap
349 .B @sysconfdir@/mc/mc.keymap
352 .B @prefix@/share/mc/mc.keymap
354 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
355 contain the absolute path to the keymap\-file (with the extension \.keymap
356 or without it). Search of keymap\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
366 .B @prefix@/share/mc/
368 .\"NODE " Miscellaneous Keys"
369 .SH " Miscellaneous Keys"
370 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
373 if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom of
374 the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no text in the
375 command line then if the selection bar is over a directory the
376 Midnight Commander does a
378 to the selected directory and reloads the information on the panel;
379 if the selection is an executable file then it is executed. Finally,
380 if the extension of the selected file name matches one of the
384 .\"Extension File Edit"
385 then the corresponding command is executed.
388 repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
395 command on a file or on the tagged files.
402 command on the current file or on the tagged files.
405 run the hard link command.
408 run the absolute symbolic link command.
411 run the relative symbolic link command. See the
415 section for more information about symbolic links.
418 set the other panel display mode to information.
421 set the other panel display mode to quick view.
427 .\"External panelize"
433 add directory to hotlist
438 executes the Filtered view command, described in the
441 .\"Internal File Viewer"
458 when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or under
459 an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous command. When ran
460 on the Linux console, the Midnight Commander uses an external program
461 (cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of information on the
464 When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C\-o at any time
465 and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
466 return to your application just type C\-o. If you have an application
467 suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other
468 programs from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
470 .\"NODE " Directory Panels"
471 .SH " Directory Panels"
472 This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
473 you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a
474 look at the section on
476 Left and Right Menus\&.
477 .\"Left and Right Menus"
480 change the current panel. The old other panel becomes the new current
481 panel and the old current panel becomes the new other panel. The
482 selection bar moves from the old current panel to the new current
486 to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo sequence).
487 To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
490 to change charset of panel you may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
491 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
492 cancel the recoding you may select "directory up" (..) in active panel.
493 To cancel the charsets in all directories, select "No translation " in
494 the dialog of encodings.
496 .B Alt\-g, Alt\-r, Alt\-j
497 used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and the bottom one,
501 toggle the current display listing to show the next display listing
503 With this it is possible to quickly switch to brief listing, long
504 listing, user defined listing mode, and back to the default.
506 .B C\-\\\\ (control\-backslash)
511 and change to the selected directory.
514 this is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
515 will prompt for a selection options. When
517 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
519 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
522 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
523 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
524 for one character). If
526 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
527 expressions (see ed (1)). When
529 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
532 is off, the case will be ignored.
535 use the "\\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
539 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
542 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
545 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
548 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
551 move the selection bar one page down.
553 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v
554 move the selection bar one page up.
557 If the currently selected file is a directory, load that directory on
558 the other panel and moves the selection to the next file. If the
559 currently selected file is not a directory, load the parent directory
560 on the other panel and moves the selection to the next file.
563 make the current directory of the current panel also the current
564 directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the listing mode
565 if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the other panel doesn't
568 .B C\-PageUp, C\-PageDown
569 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the currently
570 selected directory respectively.
573 moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to clicking
579 moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to clicking the
583 .B Alt\-Shift\-h, Alt\-H
584 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v' with
586 .\"NODE " Quick search"
588 The Quick search mode allows to perform fast file search in file panel.
593 to start a filename search in the directory listing.
595 When the search is active, the user input will be added to the search string
596 instead of the command line. If the
598 option is enabled the search string is shown on the mini\-status
599 line. When typing, the selection bar will move to the next file
600 starting with the typed letters. The
604 keys can be used to correct typing mistakes. If C\-s is pressed
605 again, the next match is searched for.
607 If quick search is started with double pressing of C\-s, the previous quick
608 search pattern will be used for current search.
610 Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard
611 characters '*' and '?'.
612 .\"NODE " Shell Command Line"
613 .SH " Shell Command Line"
614 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
615 entering shell commands.
618 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
621 same a Alt\-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
624 copy the full path name of the currently selected file to the command
625 line. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
628 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
635 copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the selected
636 file) of the current panel (C\-x t) or of the other panel (C\-x C\-t) to
640 the first key sequence copies the current path name to the command
641 line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path name to
645 the quote command can be used to insert characters that are otherwise
646 interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
649 use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
650 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
653 displays the history for the current input line.
654 .\"NODE " General Movement Keys"
655 .SH " General Movement Keys"
656 The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common
657 code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same
658 keys. Each of them also accepts some keys of its own.
660 Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
661 keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
664 moves one line backward.
667 moves one line forward.
669 .B Prev Page, Page Up, Alt\-v
672 .B Next Page, Page Down, C\-v
676 moves to the beginning.
681 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in
682 addition the to ones mentioned above:
684 .B b, C\-b, C\-h, Backspace, Delete
691 moves one half of a page up or down.
694 moves to the beginning or to the end.
695 .\"NODE " Input Line Keys"
696 .SH " Input Line Keys"
697 The input lines (they are used for the
700 .\"Shell Command Line"
701 and for the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
704 puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
707 puts the cursor at the end of the line.
710 move the cursor one position left.
713 move the cursor one position right.
716 moves one word forward.
719 moves one word backward.
722 delete the previous character.
725 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
728 sets the mark for cutting.
731 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer and
732 removes the text from the input line.
735 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer.
738 yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
741 kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
744 Use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
745 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
747 .B Alt\-C\-h, Alt\-Backspace
748 delete one word backward.
751 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
759 The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
760 row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File",
761 "Command", "Options" and "Right".
766 .\"Left and Right Menus"
767 allow you to modify the appearance of the left and right directory
774 lists the actions you can perform on the currently selected file or
781 lists the actions which are more general and bear no relation to the
782 currently selected file or the tagged files.
788 lists the actions which allow you to customize the Midnight Commander.
789 .\"NODE " Left and Right Menus"
790 .SH " Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus"
791 The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the
795 menus (they are named
799 when the horizontal panel split is chosen from the
804 .\"NODE " Listing Mode..."
805 .SH " Listing Mode..."
806 The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
807 four different listing modes available:
813 The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
814 the modification time.
816 The brief view shows only the file name and it has two columns
817 (therefore showing twice as many files as other views). The long view
818 is similar to the output of
820 command. The long view takes the whole screen width.
822 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify
825 The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This
826 may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
827 full screen panel respectively.
829 After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the
830 panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format
833 After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size
834 specifier. This are the available fields you may display:
837 displays the file name.
840 displays the file size.
843 is an alternative form of the
845 format. It displays the size of the files and for directories it just
846 shows SUB\-DIR or UP\-\-DIR.
849 displays a one character wide type field. This character is similar to
850 what is displayed by ls with the \-F flag \-
852 for executable files,
860 for character devices,
866 for symbolic links to directories and
868 for stale symlinks (links that point nowhere).
871 an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
874 file's last modification time.
877 file's last access time.
880 file's status change time.
883 a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
886 an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
889 the number of links to the file.
898 the owner of the file.
901 the group of the file.
904 the inode of the file.
906 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
909 a space in the display format.
912 add a vertical line to the display format.
914 To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add
916 followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If the
917 number is followed by the symbol
919 then the size specifies the minimal field size \- if the program finds
920 out that there is more space on the screen, it will then expand that
925 display corresponds to this format:
927 half type name | size | mtime
931 display corresponds to this format:
933 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
936 This is a nice user display format:
938 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
940 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
943 The info view display information related to the currently
944 selected file and if possible information about the current file
948 The tree view is quite similar to the
952 feature. See the section about it for more information.
955 In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced
958 .\"Internal File Viewer"
959 that displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you
960 select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have access
961 to the usual viewer commands.
962 .\"NODE " Sort Order..."
964 The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
965 by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size,
966 by inode and unsorted. In the Sort order dialog box you can choose
967 the sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
968 order by checking the reverse box.
970 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
976 .BR "Mix all files" ).
979 The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
981 which the files must match to be shown. Regardless
982 of the filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories
983 are always shown in the directory panel.
986 The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
987 useful if other processes have created or removed files.
990 The Midnight Commander uses the F1 \- F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts
991 for commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
992 function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals
993 without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
994 pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
995 (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
997 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in parentheses):
1001 Invokes the built\-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the
1005 you can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to
1006 follow that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to move
1007 forward and backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the full
1008 list of accepted keys.
1016 The user menu provides an easy way to provide users with a menu and
1017 add extra features to the Midnight Commander.
1021 View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the
1023 Internal File Viewer
1024 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1025 but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an external
1026 file viewer specified by the
1028 environment variable. If
1032 environment variable is tried. If
1034 is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use F13
1035 instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
1036 preprocessing to the file.
1038 .B Filtered View (Alt\-!)
1040 This command prompts for a command
1041 and its arguments (the argument defaults to the currently selected
1042 file name), the output from such command is shown in the internal file
1047 Press F4 to edit the highlighted file. Press F14 (usually F14)
1048 to start the editor with a new, empty file.
1049 Currently they invoke the
1051 editor, or the editor specified in the
1053 environment variable, or the
1055 Internal File Editor
1056 .\"Internal File Editor"
1057 if the use_internal_edit option is on.
1061 Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1062 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1063 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1064 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. Space for destination
1065 file may be preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure option.
1066 During this process, you can press C\-c or ESC to abort the operation.
1067 For details about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\\(.*\\)$
1068 depending on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the
1072 .\"Mask Copy/Rename"
1074 F15 (usually F15) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1075 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1078 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1079 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1084 is used to control the background process.
1088 Create a hard link to the current file.
1090 .B Absolute symlink (C\-x s)
1092 Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
1094 .B Relative symLink (C\-x v)
1096 Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
1098 To those of you who don't know what links are: creating a link to a file
1099 is a bit like copying the file, but both the source filename and the destination
1100 filename represent the same file image. For example, if you edit one of these
1101 files, all changes you make will appear in both files. Some people call
1102 links aliases or shortcuts.
1104 A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
1105 telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you delete
1106 either one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
1107 to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
1108 you don't even want to know.
1110 A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If
1111 the original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite
1112 easy to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight
1113 Commander shows an "@"\-sign in front of the file name if it is a
1114 symbolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
1115 The original file which the link points to is shown on mini\-status line if the
1116 .I "Show mini\-status"
1117 option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the
1118 confusion that can be caused by hard links.
1120 When you press "C\-x s" Midnight Commander will automatically fill in the
1121 complete path+filename of the original file and suggest a name for the link.
1122 You can change either one.
1124 Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the original into
1125 a relative path. An absolute path starts from the root directory:
1127 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc -> /home/frodo/new/mc
1129 A relative link describes the original file's location starting from the
1130 location of the link itself:
1132 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc -> ../new/mc
1134 You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing
1135 "C\-x v" instead of "C\-x s".
1137 .B Rename/Move (F6, F16)
1139 Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1140 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1141 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1142 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. For more details
1143 look at Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
1145 F16 (usually F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1146 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1149 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1150 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1155 is used to control the background process.
1159 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
1163 Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the
1164 currently selected panel. During the process, you can press C\-c or
1165 ESC to abort the operation.
1167 .B Quick cd (Alt\-c)
1172 command if you have full command line and want to cd somewhere.
1176 This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
1177 will prompt for a selection options. When
1179 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
1181 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
1184 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
1185 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
1186 for one character). If
1188 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
1189 expressions (see ed (1)). When
1191 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
1194 is off, the case will be ignored.
1196 .B Unselect group (\\\\)
1198 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the
1202 .B Quit (F10, Shift\-F10)
1204 Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift\-F10 is used when you want to
1205 quit and you are using the shell wrapper. Shift\-F10 will not take you
1206 to the last directory you visited with the Midnight Commander, instead
1207 it will stay at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
1210 This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to
1213 .\"The cd internal command"
1214 somewhere without having to yank and paste the command line. This command
1215 pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter after
1217 on the command line and then you press enter. This features all the things
1218 that are already in the
1220 internal cd command\&.
1221 .\"The cd internal command"
1222 .\"NODE " Command Menu"
1228 command shows a tree figure of the directories.
1234 command allows you to search for a specific file.
1236 The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.
1238 The "Switch panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell command.
1239 This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
1241 The "Compare directories" command compares the directory
1242 panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make
1243 the panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method
1244 compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a
1245 full byte\-by\-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
1246 machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size\-only
1247 compare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the
1248 contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
1253 .\"External panelize"
1254 allows you to execute an external program, and make the output of that
1255 program the contents of the current panel.
1257 The "Command history" command shows a list of typed commands. The
1258 selected command is copied to the command line. The command history
1259 can also be accessed by typing Alt\-p or Alt\-n.
1265 command makes changing of the current directory to often used directories
1272 command shows a dialog window with the list of currently running
1273 internal editors, viewers and other MC modules that support this mode.
1277 "Edit extension file"
1278 .\"Extension File Edit"
1279 command allows you to specify programs to executed when you try to
1280 execute, view, edit and do a bunch of other thing on files
1281 with certain extensions (filename endings).
1287 command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by
1289 .\"NODE " Directory Tree"
1290 .SH " Directory Tree"
1291 The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
1292 can select a directory from the figure and the Midnight Commander will
1293 change to that directory.
1295 There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree command
1296 is available from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
1297 from the Left or Right menu.
1299 To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the tree
1300 figure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
1301 directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent
1302 directory and press C\-r (or F2).
1304 You can use the following keys:
1307 General movement keys
1308 .\"General Movement Keys"
1312 In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to this
1313 directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to this
1314 directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the
1317 .B C\-r, F2 (Rescan).
1318 Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure is out of date:
1319 it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirectories which don't
1323 Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to remove clutter
1324 from the figure. If you want the directory back to the tree figure
1325 press F2 in its parent directory.
1327 .B F4 (Static/Dynamic).
1328 Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode (default) and the static
1331 In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1332 select a directory. All known directories are shown.
1334 In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1335 select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent
1336 directory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the
1337 parent, sibling and children directories are shown, others are left
1338 out. The tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
1347 Make a new directory below this directory.
1350 Delete this directory from the file system.
1353 Search the next directory matching the search string. If there is
1354 no such directory these keys will move one line down.
1357 Delete the last character of the search string.
1359 .B Any other character.
1360 Add the character to the search string and move to the next directory
1361 which starts with these characters. In the tree view you must first
1362 activate the search mode by pressing C\-s. The search string is shown
1363 in the mini status line.
1365 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
1366 aren't supported in the tree view.
1369 Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
1372 Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
1374 The mouse is supported. A double\-click behaves like Enter. See
1379 .\"NODE " Find File"
1381 The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the
1382 search and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree
1383 button you can select the start directory from the
1389 Option \"Whole words\" allows select only those files containing matches that
1390 form whole words. Like grep \-w.
1392 You can start the search by pressing the OK button.
1393 During the search you can stop from the Stop button and continue from
1396 You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
1397 button will change to the directory of the currently selected
1398 file. The Again button will ask for the parameters for a new
1399 search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panelize
1400 button will place the found files to the current directory panel so
1401 that you can do additional operations on them (view, copy, move,
1402 delete and so on). After panelizing you can press C\-r to return to the
1403 normal file listing.
1405 The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it
1406 allow to set up the list of directories that should be skip during the search
1407 files (for example, you may want to avoid searches on a CD\-ROM or on a NFS
1408 directory that is mounted across a slow link). List components must be separated
1409 with a colon, here is an example:
1412 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1415 Relative paths are supported also. The following example shows how to skip special
1416 directories of version control systems:
1418 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
1421 Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the current absolute path.
1423 You may consider using the
1426 .\"External panelize"
1427 command for some operations. Find file command is for simple queries
1428 only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious searches
1430 .\"NODE " External panelize"
1431 .SH " External panelize"
1432 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
1433 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1435 For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1436 symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external
1437 panelization to run the following command:
1440 find . \-type l \-print
1443 Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel will no
1444 longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
1445 files that are symbolic links.
1447 If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded
1448 from your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file
1449 name from the transfer log files:
1452 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1455 You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive name,
1456 so that you can recall them quickly. You do this by typing the command on
1457 the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a name under
1458 which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just choose that
1459 command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1462 The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories
1463 in the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the
1464 directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dialog,
1465 you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new ones.
1466 To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist command
1467 (C\-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory hotlist,
1468 asking just for the label for the directory.
1470 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using the
1471 CDPATH variable as described in
1474 .\"The cd internal command"
1476 .\"NODE " Extension File Edit"
1477 .SH " Extension File Edit"
1478 This will invoke your editor on the file
1479 .IR ~/.config/mc/mc.ext .
1480 The format of this file following:
1482 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1484 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1487 i.e. everything after the slash until new line is
1496 is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name ends
1507 is a regular expression. File matches if its name matches the regular
1513 is a regular expression. File matches if it is a directory and its name
1514 matches the regular expression.
1519 is a regular expression. File matches if the output of
1521 without the initial "filename:" part matches regular expression
1525 \- matches any file.
1530 \- denotes a common section.
1532 is the name of the section.
1534 Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the format:
1536 (with no spaces around =), where
1540 (invoked on Enter or double click),
1546 (to add rules from the common section).
1548 is any one\-line shell command, with the simple
1550 macro substitution\&.
1551 .\"Macro Substitution"
1553 Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important. If
1554 the appropriate action is missing, search continues as if this rule
1555 didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first and second entry and View
1556 action is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View action
1557 from the second entry will be used).
1559 should match all the actions.
1560 .\"NODE " Background jobs"
1561 .SH " Background Jobs"
1562 This lets you control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1563 process (only copy and move files operations can be done in the
1564 background). You can stop, restart and kill a background job from
1566 .\"NODE " Menu File Edit"
1567 .SH " Menu File Edit"
1568 The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by
1569 the user. When you access the user menu, the
1570 file .mc.menu from the current directory is used if it exists,
1571 but only if it is owned by user or root and is not world\-writable.
1572 If no such file found, ~/.config/mc/menu is tried in the same way,
1573 and otherwise mc uses the default system\-wide menu
1574 @prefix@/share/mc/mc.menu.
1576 The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with
1577 anything but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in
1578 order to be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should
1579 be a letter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the
1580 commands that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1582 When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
1583 copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
1584 /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
1585 normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1586 takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
1588 macro substitution\&.
1589 .\"Macro Substitution"
1591 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1594 A Dump the currently selected file
1597 B Edit a bug report and send it to root
1598 I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:\-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
1600 mail \-s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
1609 H Call the info hypertext browser
1612 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1613 tar cf \- . | (cd %D && tar xvpf \-)
1615 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1616 echo \-n "Name of distribution file: "
1618 ln \-s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1620 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1622 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1623 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1627 .B Default Conditions
1629 Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
1630 start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
1631 true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1634 Condition syntax: = <sub\-cond>
1635 or: = <sub\-cond> | <sub\-cond> ...
1636 or: = <sub\-cond> & <sub\-cond> ...
1638 Sub\-condition is one of following:
1640 y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
1641 (for edit menu only)
1642 f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
1643 F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
1644 d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
1645 D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
1646 t <type> current file of type?
1647 T <type> other file of type?
1648 x <filename> is it executable filename?
1649 ! <sub\-cond> negate the result of sub\-condition
1652 Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according
1653 to the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of
1654 the shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first
1655 line of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1657 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1672 For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't'
1673 type is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the
1674 file. The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the
1675 current panel and false if not.
1677 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1678 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1680 The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1682 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1686 ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1689 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1692 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1693 L List the contents of a compressed tar\-archive
1694 gzip \-cd %f | tar xvf \-
1697 .B Addition Conditions
1699 If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
1700 is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1701 be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
1702 not be included in the menu.
1704 You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1705 with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
1706 want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1707 defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
1708 starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1710 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1711 with '#', space or tab.
1712 .\"NODE " Options Menu"
1714 The Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and
1715 off in several dialogs which are accessible from this menu. Options
1716 are enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1722 command pops up a dialog from which you can change most of settings of
1723 the Midnight Commander.
1729 command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of options how mc
1730 looks like on the screen.
1736 command pops up a dialog from which you specify options of file manager panels.
1742 command pops up a dialog from which you specify which actions you want to
1749 command pops up a dialog from which you may select which characters is your
1750 terminal able to display.
1756 command pops up a dialog from which you test some keys which are not working
1757 on some terminals and you may fix them.
1763 command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS related options.
1769 command saves the current settings of the Left, Right and Options
1770 menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1771 .\"NODE " Configuration"
1772 .SH " Configuration"
1773 The options in this dialog are divided into several groups: "File
1774 operation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run" and "Other options".
1776 .B File operation options
1778 .I Verbose operation.
1779 This toggles whether the file Copy, Rename and Delete operations are
1780 verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each operation). If you have a
1781 slow terminal, you may wish to disable the verbose operation. It is
1782 automatically turned off if the speed of your terminal is less than
1786 If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander computes total byte
1787 sizes and total number of files prior to any Copy, Rename and Delete
1788 operations. This will provide you with a more accurate progress bar
1789 at the expense of some speed. This option has no effect, if
1790 .I Verbose operation
1793 .I Classic progressbar.
1794 If this option is enabled, the progressbar of Copy/Move/Delete operations
1795 is always grown form left to right. If disabled, the growing direction
1796 of progressbar follows to direction of Copy/Move/Delete operation:
1797 from left panel to right one and vice versa. Enabled by default.
1800 When you press F7 to create a new directory, the input line in popup dialog
1801 will be filled by name of current file or directory in active panel.
1802 Disabled by default.
1804 .I Preallocate space
1805 Preallocate space for whole target file, if possible, before copy operation.
1806 Disabled by default.
1810 By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key prefix.
1811 Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to exit a dialog. But there is
1812 a possibility to use a single press of ESC key for that action.
1815 By default this option is disabled. If you'll enable it, the ESC key
1816 will act as a prefix key for set up time interval (see
1818 option below), and if no extra keys have arrived, then the ESC key
1819 is interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).
1822 This options is used to setup the time interval (in microseconds)
1823 for single press of ESC key. By default, this inrerval is one second
1824 (1000000 microseconds). Also the timeout can be set via KEYBOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US
1825 environment variable (also in microseconds), which has higher priority
1826 than Timeout option value.
1830 After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can pause, so
1831 that you can examine the output of the command. There are three
1832 possible settings for this variable:
1835 Means that you do not want to see the output of your command. If you
1836 are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will be able to
1837 see the output of the command by typing C\-o.
1839 .IR On dumb terminals .
1840 You will get the pause message on terminals that are not capable of
1841 showing the output of the last command executed (any terminal that is
1842 not an xterm or the Linux console).
1845 The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1849 .I Use internal editor.
1850 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file editor is used to edit
1851 files. If the option is disabled, the editor specified in the
1853 environment variable is used.
1854 If no editor is specified,
1856 is used. See the section on the
1858 internal file editor\&.
1859 .\"Internal File Editor"
1861 .I Use internal viewer.
1862 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file viewer is used to view
1863 files. If the option is disabled, the pager specified in the
1865 environment variable is used.
1866 If no pager is specified, the
1868 command is used. See the section on the
1870 internal file viewer\&.
1871 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1874 If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup.
1875 Useful for building menus for non\-unixers.
1878 When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will be activated as
1879 soon as you press the F9 key. Otherwise, you will only get the menu title,
1880 and you will have to activate the menu either with the arrow keys or with
1881 the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using hotkeys.
1884 By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands will use shell\-like
1885 regular expressions. The following conversions are performed to achieve
1886 this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?'
1887 is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and '.' by the literal
1888 dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular expressions are the
1889 ones described in ed(1).
1891 .I Complete: show all.
1892 By default the Midnight Commander pops up all possible
1896 if the completion is ambiguous only when you press
1898 for the second time. For the first time, it just completes as much as
1899 possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity. Enable this option if you
1900 want to see all possible completions even after pressing
1905 If this option is enabled, the
1906 Midnight Commander shows a rotating dash in the upper right corner
1907 as a work in progress indicator.
1909 .I Cd follows links.
1910 This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander to follow the
1911 logical chain of directories when changing current directory
1912 either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
1913 behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows the
1914 real directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory
1915 through a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
1916 and not to the directory where the link was present.
1919 If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory hotlist entries
1920 unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default selection in the
1921 confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes" to "No".
1922 This option is disabled by default.
1925 If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
1926 configurable options of the Midnight Commander are saved in the
1927 ~/.config/mc/ini file.
1930 The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1931 of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into several groups:
1932 "Panel split", "Console output" and "Other options".
1936 The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1937 can specify whether the area is split to the panels in
1941 direction. Panel layout can be changed using Alt\-, (Alt\-comma) shortcut.
1944 By default, panels have equal sizes. Using this option you can specify
1949 On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are shown
1950 in the output window. This option is available if Midnight Commander runs
1951 on native console only.
1955 .I Menu bar visible.
1956 If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is always visible on the top row
1957 of screen above panels. Enabled by default.
1960 If enabled, command line is avalable. Enabled by default.
1963 If enabled, 10 lables associated with F1\-F10 keys are located at the bottom
1964 row of screen. Enabled by default.
1967 If enabled, the one\-line hints are visible below panels. Enabled by default.
1969 .I XTerm window title.
1970 When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight Commander sets the
1971 terminal window title to the current working directory and updates it
1972 when necessary. If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some
1973 incorrect output on startup and directory change, turn off this option.
1977 If enabled, free space and total space of current file system is shown
1978 at the bottom frame of panel. Enabled by default.
1979 .\"NODE " Panel options"
1980 .SH " Panel options"
1981 .B Main panel options
1983 .I Show mini\-status.
1984 If enabled, one line of status information about the currently selected item
1985 is shown at the bottom of the panels. Enabled by default.
1987 .I Use SI size units.
1988 If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander will use SI units (powers of 1000)
1989 when displaying any byte sizes. The suffixes (k, m ...) are shown in lowercase.
1990 If disabled (default), Midnight Commander will use binary units (powers of 1024)
1991 and the suffixes are shown in upper case (K, M ...)
1994 If this option is enabled, all files and directories are shown mixed
1995 together. If the option is desabled (default), directories (and links to
1996 directories) are shown at the beginning of the listing, and other files below.
1998 .I Show backup files.
1999 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show files ending with a tilde.
2000 Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls option \-B). Enabled by default.
2002 .I Show hidden files.
2003 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show all files that start with
2004 a dot (like ls \-a). Disabled by default.
2006 .I Fast directory reload.
2007 If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander will use a trick to
2008 determine if the directory contents have changed. The trick is to reload
2009 the directory only if the i\-node of the directory has changed; this means
2010 that reloads only happen when files are created or deleted. If what
2011 changes is the i\-node for a file in the directory (file size changes,
2012 mode or owner changes, etc) the display is not updated. In these cases,
2013 if you have the option on, you have to rescan the directory manually
2014 (with C\-r). Disabled by default.
2017 If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you mark a file (with
2018 Insert key). Enabled by default.
2020 .I Reverse files only.
2021 Allow revert selection of files only. Enabled by default.
2022 If enabled, the reverse selection is applied to files only, not to directories.
2023 The selection of directories is untouched. If off, the reverse selection
2024 is applied to files as well to directories: all unselected items become
2025 selected, and vice versa.
2028 If both panels contain file listing, simple swap means that panels exchange
2029 its screen positions: left panel become right one, and vice versa. If this
2030 option is unchecked, file listing panels exchange its content keeping listing
2031 format and sort options. Unchecked by default.
2033 .I Auto save panels setup.
2034 If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
2035 current settings of panels are saved in the ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file.
2036 Disabled by default.
2040 .I Lynx\-like motion.
2041 If this option is enabled, you may use the arrows keys to automatically
2042 chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory and the shell command
2043 line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
2046 If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when the
2047 cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, otherwise it
2048 will just scroll a file at a time.
2050 .I Mouse page scrolling.
2051 Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel is done by pages or
2052 line by line on the panels.
2056 You can specify whether
2060 should be highlighted with distinctive
2064 If the permission highlighting is enabled, the parts of the
2071 which apply to the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with
2072 the color defined by the
2074 keyword. If the file type highlighting is enabled, file names are colored
2075 according to rules described in @sysconfdir@/mc/filehighlight.ini file. See
2078 .\"Filenames Highlight"
2083 You can specify how the
2087 mode should works: case insensitively, case sensitively or be matched
2088 to the the panel sort order: case sensitive or not.
2089 .\"NODE " Confirmation"
2091 In this dialog you configure the confirmation options for file deletion,
2092 overwriting files, execution by pressing enter, quitting the program,
2093 directory hotlist entries deletion and history cleanup.
2095 .\"NODE " Display bits"
2097 This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
2098 screen. This setting may be 7\-bits if your terminal/curses supports
2099 only seven output bits, ISO\-8859\-1 displays all the characters in the
2100 ISO\-8859\-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
2101 full 8 bit characters.
2102 .\"NODE " Learn keys"
2104 This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor
2105 arrows and some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
2106 They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or broken.
2108 You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
2109 left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor movement
2110 key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
2112 You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a
2113 key and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name
2114 of that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually,
2115 e.g. F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works,
2116 but after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys.
2117 The Tab key should be working always.
2119 If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after
2120 pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by pressing
2121 the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or by Enter
2122 or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then a message
2123 box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait until the
2124 message box disappears. If you want to abort, just press Escape once
2127 When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions
2128 for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [terminal:TERM]
2129 section of your ~/.config/mc/ini file (where TERM is the name of your current
2130 terminal). The definitions of the keys that were already working properly
2132 .\"NODE " Virtual FS"
2134 This option gives you control over the settings of the
2136 Virtual File System\&.
2137 .\"Virtual File System"
2139 The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information related to some
2140 of the virtual file systems to speed up the access to the files in the
2141 file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
2143 Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
2144 compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander needs to create temporary
2145 uncompressed files on your disk.
2147 Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk
2148 take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
2149 information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
2150 access to frequently used file systems.
2152 Because of the format of the tar archives, the
2154 needs to read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most
2155 tar files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in
2156 extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
2157 in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a
2160 Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
2161 it's common that you will leave a tar file and then re\-enter it later.
2162 Since decompression is slow, the Midnight Commander will cache the
2163 information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires, all
2164 the resources associated with the file system are released. The default
2165 timeout is set to one minute.
2171 (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote FTP servers. It has
2174 .I ftp anonymous password
2175 is the password used when you login as "anonymous". Some sites require
2176 a valid e\-mail address. On the other hand, you probably don't want to
2177 give your real e\-mail address to untrusted sites, especially if you are
2178 not using spam filtering.
2180 ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a cache.
2181 The cache expire time is configurable with the
2182 .I ftpfs directory cache timeout
2183 option. A low value for this option may slow down every operation on
2184 the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a request to the
2187 You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern
2188 firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below), so
2189 FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
2192 .I Always use ftp proxy
2193 is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to enable proxy for certain
2200 If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the
2201 @prefix@/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that
2202 are local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a
2203 domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names are
2204 directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the
2205 specified FTP proxy.
2207 You can enable using
2209 file, which keeps login names and passwords for ftp servers. See netrc
2210 (5) for the description of the .netrc format.
2213 enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection for data transfer is
2214 initiated by the client, not by the server. This option is recommended
2215 and enabled by default. If this option is turned off, the data
2216 connection is initiated by the server. This may not work with some
2218 .\"NODE " Save Setup"
2220 At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
2221 information from the ~/.config/mc/ini file. If this file
2222 doesn't exist, it will load the information from the system\-wide
2223 configuration file, located in @prefix@/share/mc/mc.ini. If the
2224 system\-wide configuration file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
2228 command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by saving the
2229 current settings of the
2232 .\"Left and Right Menus"
2241 option, MC will always save the current settings when exiting.
2243 There also exist settings which can't be changed from the menus. To
2244 change these settings you have to edit the setup file with your
2245 favorite editor. See the section on
2248 .\"Special Settings"
2249 for more information.
2251 .\"NODE "Executing operating system commands"
2252 .SH "Executing operating system commands"
2253 You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight
2254 Commander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to
2255 execute with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
2257 If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the Midnight
2258 Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the
2262 .\"Extension File Edit"
2263 If a match is found then the code associated with that extension is
2264 executed. A very simple
2267 .\"Macro Substitution"
2268 takes place before executing the command.
2269 .\"NODE " The cd internal command"
2270 .SH " The cd internal command"
2273 command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander, it is not passed to
2274 the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle all of the
2275 nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does, although it
2278 .I Tilde substitution.
2279 The (~) will be substituted with your home directory, if you append a
2280 username after the tilde, then it will be substituted with the login
2281 directory of the specified user.
2283 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
2284 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
2286 .I Previous directory.
2287 You can jump to the directory you were previously by using the special
2288 directory name '\-' like this:
2291 .I CDPATH directories.
2292 If the directory specified to the
2294 command is not in the current directory, then The Midnight Commander
2295 uses the value in the environment variable
2297 to search for the directory in any of the named directories.
2299 For example you could set your
2301 variable to ~/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to
2302 any of the directories inside the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from
2303 any place in the file system by using its relative name (for example
2304 cd linux could take you to /usr/src/linux).
2305 .\"NODE " Macro Substitution"
2306 .SH " Macro Substitution"
2313 extension dependent command\&,
2314 .\"Extension File Edit"
2315 or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
2316 substitution takes place.
2321 The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position. For edit
2325 The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
2328 The block file name.
2331 The error file name.
2334 The current menu name.
2337 The current file name.
2340 The extension of current file name.
2343 The current file name without extension.
2346 The current directory name.
2349 The current file in the unselected panel.
2352 The directory name of the unselected panel.
2355 The currently tagged files.
2358 The tagged files in the unselected panel.
2361 Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are untagged.
2362 You can use this macro only once per menu file entry or extension file
2363 entry, because next time there will be no tagged files.
2366 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise the
2370 This is a special macro that is used to change the current directory
2371 to the directory specified in front of it. This is used primarily as
2374 Virtual File System\&.
2375 .\"Virtual File System"
2378 This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This macro can be
2379 used alone, or with arguments. If you pass any arguments to this
2380 macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
2384 to force the viewer into ascii mode;
2386 to force the viewer into hex mode;
2388 to tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold and underline
2391 to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the text
2398 Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text inside
2399 the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is substituted by the text
2400 typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10 to cancel. This macro
2401 doesn't work on the command line yet.
2403 .I %var{ENV:default}
2404 If environment variable
2408 is substituted. Otherwise, the value of
2411 .\"NODE " The subshell support"
2412 .SH " The subshell support"
2413 The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
2414 shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.
2416 When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander will
2417 spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the
2419 variable and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd
2420 file) and run it in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell
2421 each time you execute a command, the command will be passed to the
2422 subshell as if you had typed it. This also allows you to change the
2423 environment variables, use shell functions and define aliases that are
2424 valid until you quit the Midnight Commander.
2428 you can specify startup
2429 commands for the subshell in your ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc file and
2430 special keyboard maps in the ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc file.
2432 users may specify startup commands in the ~/.local/share/mc/tcshrc file.
2434 When the subshell code is used, you can suspend applications at any
2435 time with the sequence C\-o and jump back to the Midnight Commander, if
2436 you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other
2437 external commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
2439 An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the prompt
2440 displayed by the Midnight Commander is the same prompt that you are
2441 currently using in your shell.
2447 section has more information on how you can control the subshell code.
2450 The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
2451 files and directories. It can be invoked with the C\-x c key combination.
2453 The Chmod window has two parts \-
2458 In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory
2459 and its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
2461 In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which
2462 correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute
2463 bits, you can see the octal value change in the File section.
2465 To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the
2469 key. To change the state of the check buttons or to select a button
2472 You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate them.
2473 Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on the buttons.
2475 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
2477 When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on
2478 the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits
2479 you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked
2482 Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
2485 button, which will act on all the tagged files.
2488 set only marked attributes to all selected files
2491 set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2494 clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2497 set the attributes of one file
2500 cancel the Chmod command
2503 The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
2504 key for this command is C\-x o.
2505 .\"NODE "Advanced Chown"
2506 .SH "Advanced Chown"
2507 The Advanced Chown command is the
2515 command combined into one window. You can change the permissions and
2516 owner/group of files at once.
2517 .\"NODE "File Operations"
2518 .SH "File Operations"
2519 When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander shows the
2520 file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being processed
2521 and uses up to three progress bars. The file bar indicates the
2522 percentage of the current file that has been processed so far. The
2523 count bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The
2524 bytes bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files
2525 that has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes
2528 There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
2529 button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort
2530 button will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are
2533 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
2536 The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
2537 Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file or the Abort
2538 button to abort the operation altogether. You can also select the Retry
2539 button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
2541 The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
2542 the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
2543 the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
2544 button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
2545 None button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if the
2546 source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
2547 operation by pressing the Abort button.
2549 The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
2550 which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory
2551 recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the All button to
2552 delete all the directories and the None button to skip all the non\-empty
2553 directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing the Abort
2554 button. If you selected the Yes or All button you will be asked for a
2555 confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you want to do the
2558 If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them only the files
2559 on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped files
2561 .\"NODE "Mask Copy/Rename"
2562 .SH "Mask Copy/Rename"
2563 The copy/move operations let you translate the names of files in an
2564 easy way. To do it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
2565 usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
2566 All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
2567 the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
2568 matching the source mask are renamed.
2570 There are other options which you can set:
2574 determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source
2575 directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target
2576 directory or whether would you like to copy their content.
2578 .B Dive into subdirs
2580 determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be copied,
2581 but the target directory already exists. The default action is to copy
2582 the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
2583 Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into the
2586 For example, you want to copy directory
2592 which is an already existing directory. Normally (when
2593 .B Dive into subdirs
2594 is not set), mc would copy file
2598 By enabling this option the
2600 directory will be created, and
2603 .IR /bla/foo/foo/bar .
2605 .B Preserve attributes
2607 determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you
2608 are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is not
2609 set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
2611 .B Use shell patterns on
2613 When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*' and '?'
2614 wildcards in the source mask. They work like they do in the shell. In
2615 the target mask only the '*' and '\\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The
2616 first '*' wildcard in the target mask corresponds to the first wildcard
2617 group in the source mask, the second '*' corresponds to the second group
2618 and so on. The '\\1' wildcard corresponds to the first wildcard group
2619 in the source mask, the '\\2' wildcard corresponds to the second group
2620 and so on all the way up to '\\9'. The '\\0' wildcard is the whole
2621 filename of the source file.
2625 If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is "/bla/*.tgz" and the
2626 file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in "/bla".
2628 Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c" would
2629 become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
2630 destination is "\\2.\\1".
2632 .B Use shell patterns off
2634 When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
2635 grouping anymore. You must use '\\(...\\)' expressions in the source
2636 mask to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is
2637 more flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks
2638 are similar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
2642 If the source mask is "^\\(.*\\)\\.tar\\.gz$", the destination is
2643 "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy
2644 will be "/bla/foo.tgz".
2646 Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
2647 will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
2648 "^\\(.*\\)\\.\\(.*\\)$" and the destination is "\\2.\\1".
2652 You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\\u'
2653 or '\\l' in the target mask, the next character will be converted to
2654 uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.
2656 If you use '\\U' or '\\L' in the target mask, the next characters will
2657 be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the
2658 next '\\E' or next '\\U', '\\L' or the end of the file name.
2660 The '\\u' and '\\l' are stronger than '\\U' and '\\L'.
2662 For example, if the source mask is '*' (shell patterns on) or '^\\(.*\\)$'
2663 (shell patterns off) and the target mask is '\\L\\u*' the file names
2664 will be converted to have initial upper case and otherwise lower case.
2666 You can also use '\\' as a quote character. For example, '\\\\' is
2667 a backslash and '\\*' is an asterisk.
2671 commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks in the target,
2672 so that they'll point to the same location as it did before. With absolute
2673 symbolic links this does nothing, but if you have a relative one, it will
2674 recompute its value, adding necessary ../ and other directory parts and making
2675 the value as short as possible (most modern filesystems keep short symlinks
2676 inside inodes and thus don't waste much disk space).
2678 .\"NODE "Select/Unselect Files"
2679 .SH "Select/Unselect Files"
2680 The dialog of group of files and directories selection or uselection.
2685 allow enter the regular expression of filenames that will be
2686 selected/unselected.
2690 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
2692 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
2695 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
2696 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
2697 for one character). If
2699 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
2700 expressions (see ed (1)). When
2702 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
2705 is off, the case will be ignored.
2706 .\"NODE "Diff Viewer"
2707 .SH "Internal Diff Viewer"
2708 The mcdiff is a visual diff tool. You can compare two files and edit them
2709 in\-place (diffs are updated dynamically). You can browse and view a working
2710 copy from popular version control systems (GIT, Subversion, etc).
2712 Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of Midnight
2716 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2719 Save modified files.
2722 Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
2725 Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
2728 Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be merged.
2737 Exit from diff viewer.
2740 Toggle show of hunk status.
2743 Toggle show of line numbers.
2746 Maximize left panel.
2749 Make panels equal in width.
2752 Reduce the size of the right panel.
2755 Reduce the size of the left panel.
2758 Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2764 Swap contents of diff panels.
2770 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2773 Find next diff hunk.
2776 Find previous diff hunk.
2782 Scroll one line forward.
2785 Scroll one line backward.
2794 Moves to the line beginning.
2797 Moves to the line end.
2800 Move to the file beginning.
2803 Move to the file end.
2804 .\"NODE "Internal File Viewer"
2805 .SH "Internal File Viewer"
2806 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex.
2807 To toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
2809 The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or
2810 the file type to display the information.
2811 Some character sequences, which appear most often in preformatted manual
2812 pages, are displayed bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display
2815 When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and
2816 constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing
2817 the quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text
2818 with constants like this:
2821 "String" \-1 0xBB 012 "more text"
2824 Note that 012 is an octal number. \-1 is converted to 0xFF.
2826 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the
2827 Midnight Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2830 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2833 Toggle the wrap mode.
2836 Toggle the hex mode.
2839 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display
2843 Regular expression search.
2846 Reverse regular expression search.
2849 Normal search / hex mode search.
2852 Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else
2856 Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else
2860 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or if
2861 a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the
2862 output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
2863 on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter
2867 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
2868 will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with
2869 different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
2872 Exit the internal file viewer.
2874 .B next\-page, space, C\-v.
2875 Scroll one page forward.
2877 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v, C\-b, Backspace.
2878 Scroll one page backward.
2881 Scroll one line forward.
2884 Scroll one line backward.
2890 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2899 Jump to the next file.
2902 Jump to the previous file.
2908 to change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
2909 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
2910 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
2913 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
2916 Extension File Edit section
2917 .\"Extension File Edit"
2919 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor"
2920 .SH "Internal File Editor"
2921 The internal file editor is a full\-featured full screen editor. It can
2922 edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible to edit binary files.
2923 The internal file editor is invoked using
2926 .I use_internal_edit
2927 option is set in the initialization file.
2929 The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
2930 paste; key for key undo; pull\-down menus; file insertion; macro
2931 commands; regular expression search and replace; shift\-arrow text highlighting
2932 (if supported by the terminal); insert\-overwrite toggle; word wrap;
2933 autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file
2934 types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands like
2940 Options of editor in ini\-file
2941 .\"Internal File Editor / options"
2943 The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To see what
2944 keys do what, just consult the appropriate pull\-down menu. Other keys
2945 are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting.
2951 pastes from mcedit.clip.
2957 deletes highlighted text. Mouse highlighting also works, and you
2958 can override the mouse as usual by holding down the shift key
2959 while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal mouse highlighting
2962 To define a macro, press
2964 and then type out the key
2965 strokes you want to be executed. Press
2967 again when finished. You can then assign the macro to any key you
2968 like by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you press
2970 and then the assigned key. The macro is also executed if
2971 you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, provided that the
2972 key is not used for any other function. Once defined, the macro
2973 commands go into the file
2974 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.macros
2975 You can delete a macro by deleting the
2976 appropriate line in this file.
2978 To change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
2979 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
2980 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
2984 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or
2988 code or another). This is controlled by the
2990 .B @prefix@/share/mc/edit.indent.rc
2992 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/edit.indent.rc
2993 in your home directory the first time you use it.
2995 The editor also displays non\-us characters (160+). When editing
2996 binary files, you should set
2998 to 7 bits in the options menu to keep the spacing clean.
3000 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor / options"
3001 .SH "Options of editor in ini\-file"
3003 Some editor options of ini\-file are described in this section.
3004 Options are placed in [Midnight\-Commander] section
3006 .I editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
3007 Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or just from
3008 begin of file to cursor position (0)
3010 .\"NODE "Screen selector"
3011 .SH "Screen selector"
3012 Midnight Commander supports running many internal modules (such as
3013 editor, viewer and diff viewer) simultaneously and switching between
3014 them without closing open files. Using several file managers at a time,
3015 however, is not currently supported.
3017 Let's call each of these modules a screen. There are three ways to
3018 switch between screens, using one of these global shortcuts:
3021 switch to the next screen;
3024 switch to the previous screen;
3027 open a dialog window with the list of currently open screens (or use the
3028 "Screen list" menu item).
3029 .\"NODE "Completion"
3031 Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
3033 Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
3034 attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins
3037 username (if the text begins with
3039 hostname (if the text begins with
3041 or command (if you are on the command line in the position where you
3042 might type a command, possible completions then include shell reserved
3043 words and shell built\-in commands as well) in turn. If none of these
3044 matches, filename completion is attempted.
3046 Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
3047 lines, command completion is command line specific. If the completion
3048 is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
3049 following action depends on the setting of the
3050 .I Complete: show all
3055 dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all possibilities pops up next to
3056 the current position and you can select with the arrow keys and
3058 the correct entry. You can also type the first letters in which the
3059 possibilities differ to move to a subset of all possibilities and
3060 complete as much as possible. If you press
3062 again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise the first
3063 item which matches all the previous characters will be highlighted. As
3064 soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you can hide it by
3068 and left and right arrow keys. If
3072 is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
3074 for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
3075 .\"NODE "Virtual File System"
3076 .SH "Virtual File System"
3077 The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the file
3078 system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system switch. The
3079 virtual file system switch allows the Midnight Commander to manipulate
3080 files not located on the Unix file system.
3082 Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
3085 file system, used for accessing the regular Unix file system; the
3087 used to manipulate files on remote systems with the FTP protocol; the
3089 used to manipulate tar and compressed tar files; the
3091 used to recover deleted files on ext2 file systems (the default file
3092 system for Linux systems),
3094 (for manipulating files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh).
3095 If the code was compiled with
3097 support, you can manipulate files on remote systems with the SMB (CIFS)
3102 (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to easily expand
3103 VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
3105 The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
3106 forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each one
3107 of the file systems is described later in their own section.
3108 .\"NODE " FTP File System"
3109 .SH " FTP File System"
3110 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
3111 machines. To actually use it, you can use the
3113 item in the menu or directly change your current directory using the
3115 command to a path name that looks like this:
3117 .I ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote\-dir]
3124 elements are optional. If you specify the
3126 element, the Midnight Commander will login to the remote machine as that
3127 user, otherwise it will use anonymous login or the login name from the
3131 element is the password used for the connection. Using the password in
3132 the VFS directory name is not recommended, because it can appear on the
3133 screen in clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
3135 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend
3137 (an exclamation sign) to the hostname.
3142 ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
3143 ftp://tsx\-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
3144 ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
3145 ftp://guest@remote\-host.com:40/pub
3146 ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
3153 dialog box for ftpfs options.
3154 .\"NODE " Tar File System"
3155 .SH " Tar File System"
3156 The tar file system provides you with read\-only access to your tar
3157 files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command. To change
3158 your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
3159 tar file by using the following syntax:
3161 .I /filename.tar/utar://[dir\-inside\-tar]
3163 The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
3164 that usually you just point to a tar file and press return to enter
3165 into the tar file, see the
3168 .\"Extension File Edit"
3169 section for details on how this is done.
3174 mc\-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc\-3.0/vfs
3175 /ftp/GCC/gcc\-2.7.0.tar/utar://
3178 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
3179 .\"NODE " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3180 .SH " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3181 The fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
3182 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To use
3183 this, the other side has to either run fish server, or has to have
3184 bash\-compatible shell.
3186 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
3187 into a special directory which name is in the following
3190 .I sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote\-dir]
3197 elements are optional. If you specify the
3199 element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
3200 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
3206 'C' \- use compression;
3207 'r' \- use rsh instead of ssh;
3208 port \- specify the port used by remote server.
3212 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
3218 sh://onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
3219 sh://joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
3220 sh://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
3221 sh://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
3223 .\"NODE " Undelete File System"
3224 .SH " Undelete File System"
3225 On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete
3226 facilities, you will have the undelete file system available.
3227 Recovery of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems. The
3228 undelete file system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to
3229 retrieve all of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and
3230 to extract the selected files into a regular partition.
3232 To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
3233 formed by the "undel://" prefix and the file name where the actual
3234 file system resides.
3236 For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
3237 first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
3243 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
3244 before you start browsing files there.
3245 .\"NODE " SMB File System"
3246 .SH " SMB File System"
3247 The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB
3248 (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups,
3249 Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba.
3250 To actually use it, you may try to use the panel command "SMB link..."
3251 (accessible from the menubar) or you may directly change your current
3252 directory to it using the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
3254 .I smb://[user@]machine[/service][/remote\-dir]
3261 elements are optional.
3267 can be specified in an input dialog.
3274 smb://guest@machine/Public/Irlex
3276 .\"NODE " EXTernal File System"
3277 .SH " EXTernal File System"
3279 allows to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU Midnight
3280 Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
3282 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
3284 1. Stand\-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
3285 file. They represent certain system\-wide data as a directory tree.
3286 You can invoke them by typing
3287 .RI ' "cd fsname://" '
3288 where fsname is an extfs short name (see below). Examples of such
3289 filesystems include audio (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of
3290 all Debian packages in the system).
3292 For example, to list CD\-Audio tracks on your CD\-ROM drive, type
3298 2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
3299 contents of a file as a directory tree. It can consist of 'real' files
3300 compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages
3301 in a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
3304 should be appended to the archive name. Note that the archive itself
3305 can be on another vfs.
3307 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
3310 cd documents.zip/uzip://
3313 In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory. For
3314 instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
3315 history. An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell
3316 commands inside extfs, just like any other non\-local VFS.
3318 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
3321 access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette
3325 front end to Debian's APT package management system
3326 .RI ( "cd apt://" ).
3329 audio CD ripping and playing
3332 .IR "cd device/audio://" ).
3335 package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution
3336 .RI ( "cd file.bpp/bpp://" ).
3339 package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution
3340 .RI ( "cd file.deb/deb://" ).
3343 Debian GNU/Linux installed packages
3344 .RI ( "cd deb://" ).
3347 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator
3348 .RI ( "cd hp48://" ).
3351 browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs
3352 .RI ( "cd filename/lslR://" ).
3355 mbox\-style mailbox files support
3356 .RI ( "cd mailbox/mailfs://" ).
3359 extfs to handle unified and context diffs
3360 .RI ( "cd filename/patchfs://" ).
3364 .RI ( "cd filename/rpm://" ).
3367 RPM database management
3368 .RI ( "cd rpms://" ).
3370 .B ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
3372 .RI ( "cd archive/xxxx://"
3373 where xxxx is one of:
3381 You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as described in the
3384 .\"Extension File Edit"
3385 section. Here is an example entry for Debian packages:
3393 The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
3394 color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Sometimes
3395 it gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode
3396 using the \-c and \-b flag respectively.
3398 If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
3399 ncurses, it will also check the variable
3401 if it is set, it has the same effect as the \-c flag.
3403 You may specify terminals that always force color mode
3406 variable to the Colors section of the initialization file. This will
3407 prevent the Midnight Commander from trying to detect if your terminal
3408 supports color. Example:
3412 color_terminals=linux,xterm
3413 color_terminals=terminal\-name1,terminal\-name2...
3416 The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang, ncurses does
3417 not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the
3418 information in the terminal database.
3420 The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
3421 Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
3423 or the Colors section in the initialization file.
3425 In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the
3427 variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a terminal by
3428 using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:
3433 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
3436 The format for the color definition is:
3439 <keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
3442 The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected, disabled, marked,
3443 markselect, errors, input, inputmark, inputunchanged, commandlinemark,
3444 reverse, gauge, header, inputhistory, commandhistory. Button bar colors are:
3445 bbarhotkey, bbarbutton. Status bar color: statusbar. Menu colors are: menunormal,
3446 menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, menuinactive. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus,
3447 dhotnormal, dhotfocus, dtitle. Error dialog colors are: errdfocus, errdhotnormal,
3448 errdhotfocus, errdtitle. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold,
3449 helplink, helpslink, helptitle. Viewer color are: viewbold, viewunderline, viewselected.
3450 Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked, editwhitespace, editlinestate.
3451 Popup menu colors are: pmenunormal, pmenusel, pmenutitle.
3454 determines the color of panel header, the line that contains column titles
3455 and sort mode indicator.
3458 determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
3461 determines the color of the filled part of the progress bar (gauge),
3462 which is used to show the user the progress of file operations, such as
3466 determines the color of the widget that cannot be selected.
3468 The dialog boxes use the following colors:
3470 is used for the normal text,
3472 is the color used for the currently selected component,
3474 is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in normal
3475 components, whereas the
3477 color is used for the highlighted color in the currently selected
3480 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menunormal, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel
3481 and menuinactive tags instead.
3483 Help uses the following colors:
3485 is used for normal text,
3487 is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual page,
3489 is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the manual page,
3491 is used for not selected hyperlinks and
3493 is used for selected hyperlink.
3495 Popup menu uses following colors:
3497 is used for non-selected menu items and as a main color of popup menu window,
3499 is used for selected menu item,
3501 is used for popup menu title.
3503 The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
3504 brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta,
3505 cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword
3506 for transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be
3507 used for background color. Another special keyword "base" means mc's main
3508 colors. When 256 colors are available, they can be specified either as
3509 color16 to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and gray0 to gray23. Example:
3513 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
3516 Attributes can be any of bold, underline, reverse and blink, appended by a
3517 plus sign if more than one are desired. The special word "none" means no
3518 attributes, without attempting to fall back to base_color. Example:
3521 menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
3526 You can change the appearance of Midnight Commander.
3527 To do this, you must specify a file that contain descriptions of colors
3528 and lines to draw boxes. Redefining of the colors is entirely compatible
3529 with the assignment of colors, as described in Section
3534 If your skin contains any of 256\-color definitions, you should define
3535 the '256colors' key set to TRUE value in [skin] section.
3538 A skin\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
3541 1) command line option
3544 .B \-\-skin=\<skin\>
3546 2) Environment variable
3552 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
3556 .B @sysconfdir@/mc/skins/default.ini
3559 .B @prefix@/share/mc/skins/default.ini
3562 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
3563 contain the absolute path to the skin\-file (with the extension \.ini
3564 or without it). Search of skin\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
3567 .B ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
3570 .B @sysconfdir@/mc/skins/
3573 .B @prefix@/share/mc/skins/
3577 For getting extended info, refer to:
3580 Description of section and parameters
3584 Color pair definitions
3596 .\"NODE " Skins sections"
3597 .SH " Description of section and parameters"
3601 contain metainfo for skin\-file. Parameter
3603 contain short text about skin.
3608 contain descriptions of color pairs for filenames highlighting.
3609 Name of parameters must be equal to names of sections into
3610 filehighlight.ini file.
3614 .\"Filenames Highlight"
3615 for getting more info.
3620 describes the elements that are used everywhere.
3623 Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they not contain
3633 cursor on selected data
3636 color of the filled part of the progress bar
3639 color of input lines used in query dialogs
3642 color of input selected text
3645 color of input text before first modification or cursor movement
3648 color of selected text in command line
3655 describes the elements that are placed on dialog windows (except error dialogs).
3658 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3661 Color of active element (in focus)
3667 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3672 describes the elements that are placed on error dialog windows
3675 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3681 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3686 describes the elements that are placed in menu. This section describes
3687 system menu (called by F9) and user\-defined menus (called by F2 in panels
3688 and by F11 in editor).
3691 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3697 Color of menu hotkeys
3700 Color of active menu item (in focus)
3703 Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
3706 Color of inactive menu
3711 describes the elements that are placed on help window.
3714 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3717 Color pair for element with
3722 Color pair for element with
3730 Color of active link (on focus)
3735 describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
3738 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3741 Color pair for element with
3746 Color of selected text
3749 Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
3752 Color for line state area
3757 describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
3760 Color pair for element with
3764 .\"NODE " Skins colors"
3765 .SH " Color pair definitions"
3766 Any parameter in skin\-file contain definition of color pair.
3768 Color pairs described as two colors and the optional attributes
3769 separated by ';'. First field sets the foreground color, second
3770 field sets background color, third field sets the attributes.
3771 Any of the fields may be omitted, in this case value will be
3772 taken from default color pair (global color pair or from default
3773 color pair of this section).
3780 _default_=green;black
3781 # green (default) on blue
3783 # yellow on black (default)
3784 # underlined yellow on black (default)
3785 marked=yellow;;underline
3789 Possible colors (names) and attributes are described in
3795 .\"NODE " Skins lines"
3797 Lines sets in section
3799 into skin\-file. By default single lines are used, but you may redefine
3800 to usage of any utf\-8 symbols (like to lines, for example).
3803 When you build Midnight Commander with the Ncurses screen library
3804 usage of drawing lines is limited!
3805 Possible only drawing a single lines.
3806 For all questions and comments please contact the developers of Ncurses.
3809 Descriptions of parameters
3813 left\-top line fragment.
3816 right\-top line fragment.
3819 down branch of horizontal line
3822 up branch of horizontal line
3825 left\-bottom line fragment
3828 right\-bottom line fragment
3831 right branch of vertical line
3834 left branch of vertical line
3846 thin horizontal line
3852 .\"NODE " Skins oldcolors"
3853 .SH " Compatibility"
3855 Appointment of color by skin\-files fully compatible with
3856 the appointment of the colors described in
3862 In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the skin file and is
3865 .\"NODE "Filenames Highlight"
3866 .SH "Filenames Highlight"
3867 Section [filehighlight] in current skin\-file contains key names as
3868 highlight groups and values as color pairs. Color pairs is documented
3875 Rules of filenames highlight are placed in @prefix@/share/mc/filehighlight.ini file
3876 (~/.config/mc/filehighlight.ini).
3877 Name of section in this file must be equal to parameters names in
3878 [filehighlight] section (in current skin\-file).
3880 Keys in these groups are:
3883 file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
3886 regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is ignored.
3889 list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
3892 (make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
3893 rule case sentitive (true) or not (false).
3895 `type' key may have values:
3899 \- DIR (all directories)
3901 \- LINK (all links except stale link)
3905 \- DEVICE (all device files)
3908 \- SPECIAL (all special files)
3915 .\"NODE "Special Settings"
3916 .SH "Special Settings"
3917 Most of the Midnight Commander settings can be changed from the
3918 menus. However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
3919 changed by editing the setup file.
3921 These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
3923 .I clear_before_exec
3924 By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before executing a
3925 command. If you would prefer to see the output of the command at the
3926 bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.config/mc/ini file and change the value of
3927 the field clear_before_exec to 0.
3930 If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that directory. If
3931 this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirmation before changing
3932 the directory if you have files tagged.
3934 .I ftpfs_retry_seconds
3935 This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Commander will wait
3936 before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has denied the
3937 login. If the value is zero, the login will no be retried.
3940 Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the internal
3941 file viewer. Normally this value is not significant, because the code
3942 automatically adjusts the number of updates to skip according to the
3943 rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on very slow machines or
3944 terminals with a fast keyboard auto repeat, a big value can make screen
3947 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best behavior,
3948 and that is the default value.
3950 .I mouse_move_pages_viewer
3951 Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by line
3952 on the internal file viewer.
3954 .I only_leading_plus_minus
3955 Allow special treatment for '+', '\-', '*' in the command line (select,
3956 unselect, reverse selection) only if the command line is empty. You
3957 don't need to quote those characters in the middle of the command line.
3958 On the other hand, you cannot use them to change selection when the
3959 command line is not empty.
3961 .I show_output_starts_shell
3962 This variable only works if you are not using the subshell support.
3963 When you use the C\-o keystroke to go back to the user screen, if this
3964 one is set, you will get a fresh shell. Otherwise, pressing any key
3965 will bring you back to the Midnight Commander.
3967 .I timeformat_recent
3968 Change the time format used to display dates less than 6 months from
3970 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
3971 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
3974 Change the time format used to display dates older than 6 months from
3975 now or for dates in the future.
3976 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
3977 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
3980 If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work slightly
3981 different on the panels, instead of moving the selection to the first
3982 and last files in the panels, they will act as follows:
3984 The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else go to the
3985 top line unless it is already on the top line, in this case it will go
3986 to the first file in the panel.
3988 The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line, if over
3989 it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at the bottom
3990 line, in such case it will move the selection to the last file name in
3993 .I use_file_to_guess_type
3994 If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file command to
3995 match the file types listed on the
3998 .\"Extension File Edit"
4001 If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file system
4002 on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload the other panel with the
4003 contents of the selected directory.
4005 .I fish_directory_timeout
4006 This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in seconds. The
4007 default value is 900 seconds.
4010 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4011 utility like 'xclip' to read text into X selection from file.
4015 clipboard_store=xclip \-i
4019 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4020 utility like 'xclip' to print the selection to standard out.
4024 clipboard_pastee=xclip \-o
4027 .I autodetect_codeset
4028 This option allows use the `enca' command to autodetect codeset of text files
4029 in internal viewer and editor. List of valid values can be obtain by the
4030 `enca \-\-list languages | cut \-d : \-f1' command. Option must be located
4031 in the [Misc] section.
4036 autodetect_codeset=russian
4038 .\"NODE "Terminal databases"
4039 .SH "Terminal databases"
4040 The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal
4041 database without requiring root privileges. The Midnight Commander
4042 searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
4043 the Midnight Commander library directory) and in the
4044 ~/.config/mc/ini file for the section
4045 "terminal:your\-terminal\-name" and then for the section
4046 "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol that
4047 you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the definition for the
4048 key. You can use the special \\e form to represent the escape character
4049 and the ^x to represent the control\-x character.
4051 The possible key symbols are:
4054 f0 to f20 Function keys f0\-f20
4061 right right arrow key
4064 insert the insert character
4065 delete the delete character
4066 complete to do completion
4069 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
4070 set this in the ini file:
4077 Also now you can use
4078 .I extended learn keys.
4082 ctrl\-alt\-right=\\e[[1;6C
4083 ctrl\-alt\-left=\\e[[1;6D
4087 This means that ctrl+alt+left sends a \\e[[1;6D escape sequence
4088 and therefore Midnight Commander interprets "\\e[[1;6D" as Ctrl\-Alt\-Left.
4093 key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke the completion
4094 process, this is invoked with Alt\-tab, but you can define other keys to do
4095 the same work (on those keyboard with tons of nice and unused keys
4100 Full paths below may vary between installations. They are also affected
4101 by the MC_DATADIR environment variable. If it's set, its value is used
4102 instead of @prefix@/share/mc in the paths below.
4104 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.hlp
4106 The help file for the program.
4108 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.ext
4110 The default system\-wide extensions file.
4112 .I ~/.config/mc/mc.ext
4114 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
4115 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if present.
4117 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.ini
4119 The default system\-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used only if
4120 the user doesn't have his own ~/.config/mc/ini file.
4122 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.lib
4124 Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this file
4125 affect all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini or not. Currently, only
4128 .\"Terminal databases"
4129 are loaded from mc.lib.
4133 User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded
4134 from here instead of the system\-wide startup file.
4136 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.hint
4138 This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
4140 .I @prefix@/share/mc/mc.menu
4142 This file contains the default system\-wide applications menu.
4144 .I ~/.config/mc/menu
4146 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used instead
4147 of the system\-wide applications menu.
4151 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view features.
4153 .I ~/.local/share/mc.menu
4155 Local user\-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used instead of
4156 the home or system\-wide applications menu.
4159 This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
4160 License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built\-in
4161 help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
4162 .\"NODE "AVAILABILITY"
4164 The latest version of this program can be found at
4165 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mc/.
4168 ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
4172 The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
4173 http://www.midnight\-commander.org/
4177 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
4181 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains to
4184 If you want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
4185 this address: mc\-devel@gnome.org.
4187 Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program
4190 displays this information), the operating system you are running the
4191 program on. If the program crashes, we would appreciate a stack trace.