1 .\" -*- mode: troff; coding: UTF-8 -*-
3 .TH MC 1 "%DATE_OF_MAN_PAGE%" "MC Version %DISTR_VERSION%" "GNU Midnight Commander"
6 mc \- Visual shell for Unix\-like systems.
10 [\-abcCdfhPstuUVx] [\-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [\-e [file] ...] [\-v file]
13 GNU Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager for
14 Unix\-like operating systems.
19 .I \-a, \-\-stickchars
20 Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
23 Force black and white display.
26 Force color mode, please check the section
32 .I \-C arg, \-\-colors=arg
33 Specify a different color set in the command line. The format of arg is
40 .I \-\-configure\-options
41 Display configure options.
44 Disable mouse support.
46 .I \-D N, \-\-debuglevel=N
47 Save the debug level for SMB VFS. N is in 0\-10 range.
49 .I \-e [file], \-\-edit[=file]
50 Start the internal editor. If the file is specified, open it on
55 Display the compiled\-in search paths for Midnight Commander files.
57 .I \-F, \-\-datadir\-info
58 Display extended info about compiled\-in paths for
62 Force a "normal tracking" mouse mode. Used when running on
63 xterm\-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
66 Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo
67 database. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't work.
69 .I \-K file, \-\-keymap=file
70 Specify a name of keymap file in the command line.
72 .I \-l file, \-\-ftplog=file
73 Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
76 Don't load key bindings from any file, use default hardcoded keys.
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 Midnight Commander was in. Source the file
83 .B %libexecdir%/mc/mc.sh
84 (bash and zsh users) or
85 .B %libexecdir%/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 following
96 .B You can redefine the following variables:
126 default horizontal line
129 default vertical line
137 .I \-S arg, \-\-skin=arg
138 Specify a name of skin in the command line. Technology of skins is
146 Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it makes
147 Midnight Commander use the value of the
149 variable for the terminal information instead of the information on
150 the system wide terminal database
152 .I \-u, \-\-nosubshell
153 Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if Midnight
154 Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
157 Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if the
158 Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set as an
161 .I \-v file, \-\-view=file
162 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
166 Display the version of the program.
169 Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm\-capable terminals (two
170 screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
173 Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl, Shift
175 If both paths are specified, the first path name is the directory to show
176 in the active panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in
179 If one path is specified, the path name is the directory to show
180 in the active panel; value of "other_dir" from panels.ini is the directory
181 to be shown in the passive panel.
183 If no paths are specified, current directory is shown in the active panel;
184 value of "other_dir" from panels.ini is the directory to be shown in
188 The screen of Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
189 Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels.
190 By default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the
191 shell command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels.
192 The topmost line is the
196 The menu bar line may not be visible, but appears if you click the
197 topmost line with the mouse or press the F9 key.
199 Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same
200 time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in
201 the current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current
202 panel. Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the
203 directory of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they
204 always ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see the
212 .\"Left and Right Menus"
218 You can execute system commands from Midnight Commander by simply
219 typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line,
220 and when you press Enter, Midnight Commander will execute the
221 command line you typed; read the
224 .\"Shell Command Line"
229 sections to learn more about the command line.
230 .\"NODE "Mouse Support"
232 Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated
233 whenever you are running on an
235 terminal (it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to
236 another machine from the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux
239 mouse server running.
241 When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is
242 selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
243 unmarked, depending on the previous state).
245 Double\-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is
246 an executable program; and if the
249 .\"Edit Extension File"
250 has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified
253 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
254 key labels by clicking on them.
256 The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
257 milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the
261 file and changing the
265 If you are running Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
266 can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by holding
271 Some commands in Midnight Commander involve the use of the
273 (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the
275 (sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this manual we will
276 use the following abbreviations:
279 means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>.
280 Thus C\-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
283 means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>.
284 If there is no Meta or Alt key, type
286 release it, then type the character <chr>.
289 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
291 All input lines in Midnight Commander use an approximation to
292 the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
294 You may redefine key bindings. See
296 .I redefine hotkey bindings
299 for more info. All other key bindings (described in this manual) are relative
303 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
310 section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands appearing in
311 the File menu. This section includes the function keys. Most of these
312 commands perform some action, usually on the selected file or the
319 section documents the keys which select a file or tag files as a
320 target for a later action (the action is usually one from the file
326 .\"Shell Command Line"
327 section list the keys which are used for entering and editing command
328 lines. Most of these copy file names and such from the directory
329 panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the
330 command line history.
335 are used for editing input lines. This means both the command line and
336 the input lines in the query dialogs.
338 .\"NODE " Keys_redefine"
339 .SH " Redefine hotkey bindings"
340 Hotkey bindings may be read from external file (keymap\-file).
341 Initially, Midnight Commander creates key bindings using keymap defined
342 in the source code. Then, two files
343 .B %prefix%/share/mc/mc.keymap
345 .B %sysconfdir%/mc/mc.keymap
346 are loaded always, sequentially reassigned key bindings defined earlier.
347 User\-defined keymap\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
350 1) command line option
353 .B \-\-keymap=<keymap>
355 2) Environment variable
361 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
365 .B ~/.config/mc/mc.keymap
368 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
369 contain the absolute path to the keymap\-file (with the extension \.keymap
370 or without it). Search of keymap\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
380 .B %prefix%/share/mc/
382 .\"NODE " Miscellaneous Keys"
383 .SH " Miscellaneous Keys"
384 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
387 if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom of
388 the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no text in the
389 command line then if the selection bar is over a directory the
390 Midnight Commander does a
392 to the selected directory and reloads the information on the panel;
393 if the selection is an executable file then it is executed. Finally,
394 if the extension of the selected file name matches one of the
398 .\"Edit Extension File"
399 then the corresponding command is executed.
402 repaint all the information in Midnight Commander.
409 command on a file or on the tagged files.
416 command on the current file or on the tagged files.
419 run the hard link command.
422 run the absolute symbolic link command.
425 run the relative symbolic link command. See the
429 section for more information about symbolic links.
432 set the other panel display mode to information.
435 set the other panel display mode to quick view.
441 .\"External panelize"
447 add directory to hotlist
452 executes the Filtered view command, described in the
455 .\"Internal File Viewer"
472 when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or under
473 an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous command. When ran
474 on the Linux console, Midnight Commander uses an external program
475 (cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of information on the
478 When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C\-o at any time
479 and you will be taken back to Midnight Commander's main screen, to
480 return to your application just type C\-o. If you have an application
481 suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other
482 programs from Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
484 .\"NODE " Directory Panels"
485 .SH " Directory Panels"
486 This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
487 you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a
488 look at the section on
490 Left and Right Menus\&.
491 .\"Left and Right Menus"
494 change the current panel. The old other panel becomes the new current
495 panel and the old current panel becomes the new other panel. The
496 selection bar moves from the old current panel to the new current
500 to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo sequence).
501 To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
504 to change charset of panel you may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
505 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
506 cancel the recoding you may select "directory up" (..) in active panel.
507 To cancel the charsets in all directories, select "No translation " in
508 the dialog of encodings.
510 .B Alt\-g, Alt\-r, Alt\-j
511 used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and the bottom one,
515 toggle the current display listing to show the next display listing
517 With this it is possible to quickly switch to brief listing, long
518 listing, user defined listing format, and back to the default.
520 .B C\-\\\\ (control\-backslash)
525 and change to the selected directory.
528 this is used to select (tag) a group of files. Midnight Commander
529 will prompt for a selection options. When
531 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
533 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
536 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
537 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
538 for one character). If
540 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
541 expressions (see ed (1)). When
543 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
546 is off, the case will be ignored.
549 use the "\\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
553 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
556 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
559 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
562 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
565 move the selection bar one page down.
567 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v
568 move the selection bar one page up.
571 If the currently selected file is a directory, load that directory on
572 the other panel and moves the selection to the next file. If the
573 currently selected file is not a directory, load the parent directory
574 on the other panel and moves the selection to the next file.
577 make the current directory of the current panel also the current
578 directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the listing mode
579 if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the other panel doesn't
582 .B C\-PageUp, C\-PageDown
583 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the currently
584 selected directory respectively.
587 moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to clicking
593 moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to clicking the
597 .B Alt\-Shift\-h, Alt\-H
598 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v' with
600 .\"NODE " Quick search"
602 The Quick search mode allows you to perform fast file search in file panel.
607 to start a filename search in the directory listing.
609 When the search is active, the user input will be added to the search string
610 instead of the command line. If the
612 option is enabled the search string is shown on the mini\-status
613 line. When typing, the selection bar will move to the next file
614 starting with the typed letters. The
618 keys can be used to correct typing mistakes. If C\-s is pressed
619 again, the next match is searched for.
621 If quick search is started with double pressing of C\-s, the previous quick
622 search pattern will be used for current search.
624 Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard
625 characters '*' and '?'.
626 .\"NODE " Shell Command Line"
627 .SH " Shell Command Line"
628 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
629 entering shell commands.
632 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
635 same a Alt\-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
638 copy the full path name of the currently selected file to the command
639 line. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
642 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
649 copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the selected
650 file) of the current panel (C\-x t) or of the other panel (C\-x C\-t) to
654 the first key sequence copies the current path name to the command
655 line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path name to
659 the quote command can be used to insert characters that are otherwise
660 interpreted by Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
663 use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
664 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
667 displays the history for the current input line.
668 .\"NODE " General Movement Keys"
669 .SH " General Movement Keys"
670 The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common
671 code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same
672 keys. Each of them also accepts some keys of its own.
674 Other parts of Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
675 keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
678 moves one line backward.
681 moves one line forward.
683 .B Prev Page, Page Up, Alt\-v
686 .B Next Page, Page Down, C\-v
690 moves to the beginning.
695 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in
696 addition the to ones mentioned above:
698 .B b, C\-b, C\-h, Backspace, Delete
705 moves one half of a page up or down.
708 moves to the beginning or to the end.
709 .\"NODE " Input Line Keys"
710 .SH " Input Line Keys"
711 The input lines (they are used for the
714 .\"Shell Command Line"
715 and for the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
718 puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
721 puts the cursor at the end of the line.
724 move the cursor one position left.
727 move the cursor one position right.
730 moves one word forward.
733 moves one word backward.
736 delete the previous character.
739 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
742 sets the mark for cutting.
745 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer and
746 removes the text from the input line.
749 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer.
752 yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
755 kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
758 Use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
759 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
761 .B Alt\-C\-h, Alt\-Backspace
762 delete one word backward.
765 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
773 The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
774 row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File",
775 "Command", "Options" and "Right".
780 .\"Left and Right Menus"
781 allow you to modify the appearance of the left and right directory
788 lists the actions you can perform on the currently selected file or
795 lists the actions which are more general and bear no relation to the
796 currently selected file or the tagged files.
802 lists the actions which allow you to customize Midnight Commander.
803 .\"NODE " Left and Right Menus"
804 .SH " Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus"
805 The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the
809 menus (they are named
813 when the horizontal panel split is chosen from the
818 .\"NODE " Listing Format..."
819 .SH " Listing Format..."
820 The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
821 four different listing formats available:
827 The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
828 the modification time.
830 The brief view shows only the file name and it has from 1 up to 9 columns
831 (therefore showing more files unlike other views). The long view
832 is similar to the output of
834 command. The long view takes the whole screen width.
836 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify
839 The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This
840 may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
841 full screen panel respectively.
843 After the panel size, you may specify how many listings to fit in the
844 panel, side\-by\-side (in other words: how many times to repeat the
845 fields horizontally). This defaults to 1. You may change this by adding a
846 number from 1 to 9 to the format string.
848 After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size
849 specifier. This are the available fields you may display:
852 displays the file name.
855 displays the file size.
858 is an alternative form of the
860 format. It displays the size of the files and for directories it just
861 shows SUB\-DIR or UP\-\-DIR.
864 displays a one character wide type field. This character is similar to
865 what is displayed by ls with the \-F flag \-
867 for executable files,
875 for character devices,
881 for symbolic links to directories and
883 for stale symlinks (links that point nowhere).
886 an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
889 file's last modification time.
892 file's last access time.
895 file's status change time.
898 a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
901 an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
904 the number of links to the file.
913 the owner of the file.
916 the group of the file.
919 the inode of the file.
921 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
924 a space in the display format.
927 add a vertical line to the display format.
929 To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add
931 followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If the
932 number is followed by the symbol
934 then the size specifies the minimal field size \- if the program finds
935 out that there is more space on the screen, it will then expand that
940 display corresponds to this format:
942 half type name | size | mtime
946 display corresponds to this format:
948 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
951 This is a nice user display format:
953 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
955 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
958 The info view display information related to the currently
959 selected file and if possible information about the current file
963 The tree view is quite similar to the
967 feature. See the section about it for more information.
970 In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced
973 .\"Internal File Viewer"
974 that displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you
975 select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have access
976 to the usual viewer commands.
977 .\"NODE " Sort Order..."
979 The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
980 by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size,
981 by inode and unsorted. In the Sort order dialog box you can choose
982 the sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
983 order by checking the reverse box.
985 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
991 .BR "Mix all files" ).
994 The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
996 which the files must match to be shown. Regardless
997 of the filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories
998 are always shown in the directory panel.
1001 The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
1002 useful if other processes have created or removed files.
1003 .\"NODE " File Menu"
1005 Midnight Commander uses the F1 \- F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts
1006 for commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
1007 function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals
1008 without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
1009 pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
1010 (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
1012 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in parentheses):
1016 Invokes the built\-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the
1020 you can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to
1021 follow that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to move
1022 forward and backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the full
1023 list of accepted keys.
1031 The user menu provides an easy way to provide users with a menu and
1032 add extra features to Midnight Commander.
1036 View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the
1038 Internal File Viewer
1039 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1040 but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an external
1041 file viewer specified by the
1043 environment variable. If
1047 environment variable is tried. If
1049 is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use F13
1050 instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
1051 preprocessing to the file.
1055 parameters for external viewer
1056 .\"Parameters for external editor or viewer"
1057 for explain how you may specify an extended command line options
1058 for external viewers.
1060 .B Filtered View (Alt\-!)
1062 This command prompts for a command
1063 and its arguments (the argument defaults to the currently selected
1064 file name), the output from such command is shown in the internal file
1069 Press F4 to edit the highlighted file. Press F14 (usually F14)
1070 to start the editor with a new, empty file.
1071 Currently they invoke the
1073 editor, or the editor specified in the
1075 environment variable, or the
1077 Internal File Editor
1078 .\"Internal File Editor"
1079 if the use_internal_edit option is on.
1083 parameters for external editor
1084 .\"Parameters for external editor or viewer"
1085 for explain how you may specify an extended command line options
1086 for external editors.
1090 Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1091 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1092 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1093 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. Space for destination
1094 file may be preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure option.
1095 During this process, you can press C\-c or ESC to abort the operation.
1096 For details about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\\(.*\\)$
1097 depending on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the
1101 .\"Mask Copy/Rename"
1103 F15 (usually F15) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1104 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1107 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1108 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1113 is used to control the background process.
1117 Create a hard link to the current file.
1119 .B Absolute symlink (C\-x s)
1121 Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
1123 .B Relative symLink (C\-x v)
1125 Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
1127 To those of you who don't know what links are: creating a link to a file
1128 is a bit like copying the file, but both the source filename and the destination
1129 filename represent the same file image. For example, if you edit one of these
1130 files, all changes you make will appear in both files. Some people call
1131 links aliases or shortcuts.
1133 A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
1134 telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you delete
1135 either one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
1136 to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
1137 you don't even want to know.
1139 A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If
1140 the original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite
1141 easy to notice that the files represent the same image. Midnight
1142 Commander shows an "@"\-sign in front of the file name if it is a
1143 symbolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
1144 The original file which the link points to is shown on mini\-status line if the
1145 .I "Show mini\-status"
1146 option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the
1147 confusion that can be caused by hard links.
1149 When you press "C\-x s" Midnight Commander will automatically fill in the
1150 complete path+filename of the original file and suggest a name for the link.
1151 You can change either one.
1153 Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the original into
1154 a relative path. An absolute path starts from the root directory:
1156 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc \-> /home/frodo/new/mc
1158 A relative link describes the original file's location starting from the
1159 location of the link itself:
1161 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc \-> ../new/mc
1163 You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing
1164 "C\-x v" instead of "C\-x s".
1166 .B Rename/Move (F6, F16)
1168 Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1169 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1170 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1171 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. For more details
1172 look at Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
1174 F16 (usually F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1175 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1178 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1179 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1184 is used to control the background process.
1188 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
1192 Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the
1193 currently selected panel. During the process, you can press C\-c or
1194 ESC to abort the operation.
1196 .B Quick cd (Alt\-c)
1201 command if you have full command line and want to cd somewhere.
1205 This is used to select (tag) a group of files. Midnight Commander
1206 will prompt for a selection options. When
1208 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
1210 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
1213 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
1214 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
1215 for one character). If
1217 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
1218 expressions (see ed (1)). When
1220 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
1223 is off, the case will be ignored.
1225 .B Unselect group (\\\\)
1227 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the
1231 .B Quit (F10, Shift\-F10)
1233 Terminate Midnight Commander. Shift\-F10 is used when you want to
1234 quit and you are using the shell wrapper. Shift\-F10 will not take you
1235 to the last directory you visited with Midnight Commander, instead
1236 it will stay at the directory where you started Midnight Commander.
1239 This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to
1242 .\"The cd internal command"
1243 somewhere without having to yank and paste the command line. This command
1244 pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter after
1246 on the command line and then you press enter. This features all the things
1247 that are already in the
1249 internal cd command\&.
1250 .\"The cd internal command"
1251 .\"NODE " Command Menu"
1257 command shows a tree figure of the directories.
1263 command allows you to search for a specific file.
1265 The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.
1267 The "Switch panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell command.
1268 This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
1270 The "Compare directories" command compares the directory
1271 panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make
1272 the panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method
1273 compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a
1274 full byte\-by\-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
1275 machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size\-only
1276 compare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the
1277 contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
1282 .\"External panelize"
1283 allows you to execute an external program, and make the output of that
1284 program the contents of the current panel.
1286 The "Command history" command shows a list of typed commands. The
1287 selected command is copied to the command line. The command history
1288 can also be accessed by typing Alt\-p or Alt\-n.
1294 command makes changing of the current directory to often used directories
1301 command shows a dialog window with the list of currently running
1302 internal editors, viewers and other MC modules that support this mode.
1306 "Edit extension file"
1307 .\"Edit Extension File"
1308 command allows you to specify programs to executed when you try to
1309 execute, view, edit and do a bunch of other thing on files
1310 with certain extensions (filename endings).
1316 command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by
1318 .\"NODE " Directory Tree"
1319 .SH " Directory Tree"
1320 The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
1321 can select a directory from the figure and Midnight Commander will
1322 change to that directory.
1324 There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree command
1325 is available from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
1326 from the Left or Right menu.
1328 To get rid of long delays, Midnight Commander creates the tree
1329 figure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
1330 directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent
1331 directory and press C\-r (or F2).
1333 You can use the following keys:
1336 General movement keys
1337 .\"General Movement Keys"
1341 In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to this
1342 directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to this
1343 directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the
1346 .B C\-r, F2 (Rescan).
1347 Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure is out of date:
1348 it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirectories which don't
1352 Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to remove clutter
1353 from the figure. If you want the directory back to the tree figure
1354 press F2 in its parent directory.
1356 .B F4 (Static/Dynamic).
1357 Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode (default) and the static
1360 In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1361 select a directory. All known directories are shown.
1363 In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1364 select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent
1365 directory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the
1366 parent, sibling and children directories are shown, others are left
1367 out. The tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
1376 Make a new directory below this directory.
1379 Delete this directory from the file system.
1382 Search the next directory matching the search string. If there is
1383 no such directory these keys will move one line down.
1386 Delete the last character of the search string.
1388 .B Any other character.
1389 Add the character to the search string and move to the next directory
1390 which starts with these characters. In the tree view you must first
1391 activate the search mode by pressing C\-s. The search string is shown
1392 in the mini status line.
1394 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
1395 aren't supported in the tree view.
1398 Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
1401 Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
1403 The mouse is supported. A double\-click behaves like Enter. See
1408 .\"NODE " Find File"
1410 The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the
1411 search and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree
1412 button you can select the start directory from the
1418 The "File name" input field contains a filename pattern to be searched
1419 for. It is interpreted as a shell pattern or as a regular expression
1420 depending on the state of the "Using shell patterns" checkbox. An empty
1421 value is valid and matches any file name.
1423 The "Content" input field contains a string to search for within the
1424 files. Leave this field empty to disable searching file contents.
1426 Option "Whole words" allows select only those files containing matches that
1427 form whole words. Like grep \-w.
1429 You can start the search by pressing the OK button.
1430 During the search you can stop from the Stop button and continue from
1433 You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
1434 button will change to the directory of the currently selected
1435 file. The Again button will ask for the parameters for a new
1436 search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panelize
1437 button will place the found files to the current directory panel so
1438 that you can do additional operations on them (view, copy, move,
1439 delete and so on). To return to the normal file listing, change directory
1442 The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it
1443 allow to set up the list of directories that should be skip during the search
1444 files (for example, you may want to avoid searches on a CD\-ROM or on a NFS
1445 directory that is mounted across a slow link). List components must be separated
1446 with a colon, here is an example:
1449 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1452 Relative paths are supported also. The following example shows how to skip special
1453 directories of version control systems:
1455 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
1458 Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the current absolute path.
1460 You may consider using the
1463 .\"External panelize"
1464 command for some operations. Find file command is for simple queries
1465 only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious searches
1467 .\"NODE " External panelize"
1468 .SH " External panelize"
1469 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
1470 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1472 For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1473 symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external
1474 panelization to run the following command:
1477 find . \-type l \-print
1480 Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel will no
1481 longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
1482 files that are symbolic links.
1484 If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded
1485 from your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file
1486 name from the transfer log files:
1489 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1492 You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive name,
1493 so that you can recall them quickly. You do this by typing the command on
1494 the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a name under
1495 which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just choose that
1496 command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1499 The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories
1500 in the directory hotlist. Midnight Commander will change to the
1501 directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dialog,
1502 you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new ones.
1503 To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist command
1504 (C\-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory hotlist,
1505 asking just for the label for the directory.
1507 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using the
1508 CDPATH variable as described in
1511 .\"The cd internal command"
1513 .\"NODE " Edit Extension File"
1514 .SH " Edit Extension File"
1515 This will invoke your editor on the file
1516 .IR ~/.config/mc/mc.ext .
1517 The format of this file following:
1519 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1521 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1524 i.e. everything after the slash until new line is
1533 is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name ends
1544 is a regular expression. File matches if its name matches the regular
1550 is a regular expression. File matches if it is a directory and its name
1551 matches the regular expression.
1556 is a regular expression. File matches if the output of
1558 without the initial "filename:" part matches regular expression
1562 \- matches any file.
1567 \- denotes a common section.
1569 is the name of the section.
1571 Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the format:
1573 (with no spaces around =), where
1577 (invoked on Enter or double click),
1583 (to add rules from the common section).
1585 is any one\-line shell command, with the simple
1587 macro substitution\&.
1588 .\"Macro Substitution"
1590 Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important. If
1591 the appropriate action is missing, search continues as if this rule
1592 didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first and second entry and View
1593 action is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View action
1594 from the second entry will be used).
1596 should match all the actions.
1597 .\"NODE " Background jobs"
1598 .SH " Background Jobs"
1599 This lets you control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1600 process (only copy and move files operations can be done in the
1601 background). You can stop, restart and kill a background job from
1603 .\"NODE " Edit Menu File"
1604 .SH " Edit Menu File"
1605 The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by
1606 the user. When you access the user menu, the
1607 file .mc.menu from the current directory is used if it exists,
1608 but only if it is owned by user or root and is not world\-writable.
1609 If no such file found, ~/.config/mc/menu is tried in the same way,
1610 and otherwise mc uses the default system\-wide menu
1611 %prefix%/share/mc/mc.menu.
1613 The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with
1614 anything but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in
1615 order to be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should
1616 be a letter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the
1617 commands that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1619 When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
1620 copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
1621 /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
1622 normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1623 takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
1625 macro substitution\&.
1626 .\"Macro Substitution"
1628 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1631 A Dump the currently selected file
1634 B Edit a bug report and send it to root
1635 I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:\-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
1637 mail \-s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
1646 H Call the info hypertext browser
1649 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1650 tar cf \- . | (cd %D && tar xvpf \-)
1652 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1653 echo \-n "Name of distribution file: "
1655 ln \-s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1657 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1659 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1660 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1664 .B Default Conditions
1666 Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
1667 start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
1668 true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1671 Condition syntax: = <sub\-cond>
1672 or: = <sub\-cond> | <sub\-cond> ...
1673 or: = <sub\-cond> & <sub\-cond> ...
1675 Sub\-condition is one of following:
1677 y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
1678 (for edit menu only)
1679 f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
1680 F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
1681 d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
1682 D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
1683 t <type> current file of type?
1684 T <type> other file of type?
1685 x <filename> is it executable filename?
1686 ! <sub\-cond> negate the result of sub\-condition
1689 Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according
1690 to the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of
1691 the shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first
1692 line of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1694 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1709 For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't'
1710 type is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the
1711 file. The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the
1712 current panel and false if not.
1714 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1715 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1717 The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1719 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1723 ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1726 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1729 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1730 L List the contents of a compressed tar\-archive
1731 gzip \-cd %f | tar xvf \-
1734 .B Addition Conditions
1736 If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
1737 is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1738 be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
1739 not be included in the menu.
1741 You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1742 with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
1743 want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1744 defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
1745 starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1747 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1748 with '#', space or tab.
1749 .\"NODE " Options Menu"
1751 Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and
1752 off in several dialogs which are accessible from this menu. Options
1753 are enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1759 command pops up a dialog from which you can change most of settings of
1766 command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of options how mc
1767 looks like on the screen.
1773 command pops up a dialog from which you specify options of file manager panels.
1779 command pops up a dialog from which you specify which actions you want to
1786 command pops up a dialog from which you specify the skin.
1792 command pops up a dialog from which you may select which characters is your
1793 terminal able to display.
1799 command pops up a dialog from which you test some keys which are not working
1800 on some terminals and you may fix them.
1806 command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS related options.
1812 command saves the current settings of the Left, Right and Options
1813 menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1814 .\"NODE " Configuration"
1815 .SH " Configuration"
1816 The options in this dialog are divided into several groups: "File
1817 operation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run" and "Other options".
1819 .B File operation options
1821 .I Verbose operation.
1822 This toggles whether the file Copy, Rename and Delete operations are
1823 verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each operation). If you have a
1824 slow terminal, you may wish to disable the verbose operation. It is
1825 automatically turned off if the speed of your terminal is less than
1829 If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander computes total byte
1830 sizes and total number of files prior to any Copy, Rename and Delete
1831 operations. This will provide you with a more accurate progress bar
1832 at the expense of some speed. This option has no effect, if
1833 .I Verbose operation
1836 .I Classic progressbar.
1837 If this option is enabled, the progressbar of Copy/Move/Delete operations
1838 is always grown form left to right. If disabled, the growing direction
1839 of progressbar follows to direction of Copy/Move/Delete operation:
1840 from left panel to right one and vice versa. Enabled by default.
1843 When you press F7 to create a new directory, the input line in popup dialog
1844 will be filled by name of current file or directory in active panel.
1845 Disabled by default.
1847 .I Preallocate space.
1848 Preallocate space for whole target file, if possible, before copy operation.
1849 Disabled by default.
1853 By default, Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key prefix.
1854 Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to exit a dialog. But there is
1855 a possibility to use a single press of ESC key for that action.
1858 By default this option is disabled. If you'll enable it, the ESC key
1859 will act as a prefix key for set up time interval (see
1861 option below), and if no extra keys have arrived, then the ESC key
1862 is interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).
1865 This options is used to setup the time interval (in microseconds)
1866 for single press of ESC key. By default, this interval is one second
1867 (1000000 microseconds). Also the timeout can be set via KEYBOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US
1868 environment variable (also in microseconds), which has higher priority
1869 than Timeout option value.
1873 After executing your commands, Midnight Commander can pause, so
1874 that you can examine the output of the command. There are three
1875 possible settings for this variable:
1878 Means that you do not want to see the output of your command. If you
1879 are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will be able to
1880 see the output of the command by typing C\-o.
1882 .I On dumb terminals.
1883 You will get the pause message on terminals that are not capable of
1884 showing the output of the last command executed (any terminal that is
1885 not an xterm or the Linux console).
1888 The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1892 .I Use internal editor.
1893 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file editor is used to edit
1894 files. If the option is disabled, the editor specified in the
1896 environment variable is used.
1897 If no editor is specified,
1899 is used. See the section on the
1901 internal file editor\&.
1902 .\"Internal File Editor"
1904 .I Use internal viewer.
1905 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file viewer is used to view
1906 files. If the option is disabled, the pager specified in the
1908 environment variable is used.
1909 If no pager is specified, the
1911 command is used. See the section on the
1913 internal file viewer\&.
1914 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1916 .I Ask new file name.
1917 If this option is enabled, file name is asked before open new file in editor.
1920 If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup.
1921 Useful for building menus for non\-unixers.
1924 When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will be activated as
1925 soon as you press the F9 key. Otherwise, you will only get the menu title,
1926 and you will have to activate the menu either with the arrow keys or with
1927 the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using hotkeys.
1930 By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands will use shell\-like
1931 regular expressions. The following conversions are performed to achieve
1932 this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?'
1933 is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and '.' by the literal
1934 dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular expressions are the
1935 ones described in ed(1).
1937 .I Complete: show all.
1938 By default, Midnight Commander pops up all possible
1942 if the completion is ambiguous only when you press
1944 for the second time. For the first time, it just completes as much as
1945 possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity. Enable this option if you
1946 want to see all possible completions even after pressing
1951 If this option is enabled, the
1952 Midnight Commander shows a rotating dash in the upper right corner
1953 as a work in progress indicator.
1955 .I Cd follows links.
1956 This option, if set, causes Midnight Commander to follow the
1957 logical chain of directories when changing current directory
1958 either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
1959 behavior of bash. When unset, Midnight Commander follows the
1960 real directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory
1961 through a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
1962 and not to the directory where the link was present.
1965 If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory hotlist entries
1966 unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default selection in the
1967 confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes" to "No".
1968 This option is disabled by default.
1971 If this option is enabled, when you exit Midnight Commander, the
1972 configurable options of Midnight Commander are saved in the
1973 ~/.config/mc/ini file.
1976 The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1977 of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into several groups:
1978 "Panel split", "Console output" and "Other options".
1982 The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1983 can specify whether the area is split to the panels in
1987 direction. Panel layout can be changed using Alt\-, (Alt\-comma) shortcut.
1990 By default, panels have equal sizes. Using this option you can specify
1995 On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are shown
1996 in the output window. This option is available if Midnight Commander runs
1997 on native console only.
2001 .I Menu bar visible.
2002 If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is always visible on the top row
2003 of screen above panels. Enabled by default.
2006 If enabled, command line is avalable. Enabled by default.
2009 If enabled, 10 lables associated with F1\-F10 keys are located at the bottom
2010 row of screen. Enabled by default.
2013 If enabled, the one\-line hints are visible below panels. Enabled by default.
2015 .I XTerm window title.
2016 When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight Commander sets the
2017 terminal window title to the current working directory and updates it
2018 when necessary. If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some
2019 incorrect output on startup and directory change, turn off this option.
2023 If enabled, free space and total space of current file system is shown
2024 at the bottom frame of panel. Enabled by default.
2025 .\"NODE " Panel options"
2026 .SH " Panel options"
2027 .B Main panel options
2029 .I Show mini\-status.
2030 If enabled, one line of status information about the currently selected item
2031 is shown at the bottom of the panels. Enabled by default.
2033 .I Use SI size units.
2034 If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander will use SI prefixes (base 10)
2035 when displaying any byte sizes. If disabled (default), Midnight Commander will
2036 use IEC prefixes (base 2).
2039 If this option is enabled, all files and directories are shown mixed
2040 together. If the option is disabled (default), directories (and links to
2041 directories) are shown at the beginning of the listing, and other files below.
2043 .I Show backup files.
2044 If enabled, Midnight Commander will show files ending with a tilde.
2045 Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls option \-B). Enabled by default.
2047 .I Show hidden files.
2048 If enabled, Midnight Commander will show all files that start with
2049 a dot (like ls \-a). Disabled by default.
2051 .I Fast directory reload.
2052 If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander will use a trick to
2053 determine if the directory contents have changed. The trick is to reload
2054 the directory only if the i\-node of the directory has changed; this means
2055 that reloads only happen when files are created or deleted. If what
2056 changes is the i\-node for a file in the directory (file size changes,
2057 mode or owner changes, etc) the display is not updated. In these cases,
2058 if you have the option on, you have to rescan the directory manually
2059 (with C\-r). Disabled by default.
2062 If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you mark a file (with
2063 Insert key). Enabled by default.
2065 .I Reverse files only.
2066 Allow revert selection of files only. Enabled by default.
2067 If enabled, the reverse selection is applied to files only, not to directories.
2068 The selection of directories is untouched. If off, the reverse selection
2069 is applied to files as well to directories: all unselected items become
2070 selected, and vice versa.
2073 If both panels contain file listing, simple swap means that panels exchange
2074 its screen positions: left panel become right one, and vice versa. If this
2075 option is unchecked, file listing panels exchange its content keeping listing
2076 format and sort options. Unchecked by default.
2078 .I Auto save panels setup.
2079 If this option is enabled, when you exit Midnight Commander, the
2080 current settings of panels are saved in the ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file.
2081 Disabled by default.
2085 .I Lynx\-like motion.
2086 If this option is enabled, you may use the arrows keys to automatically
2087 chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory and the shell command
2088 line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
2091 If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when the
2092 cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, otherwise it
2093 will just scroll a file at a time.
2095 .I Center scrolling.
2096 If set, panel will scroll when the cursor reaches the middle of the
2097 panel column, only hitting the top or bottom of the panel when actually on
2098 the first or last file. This behavior applies when scrolling one file
2099 at a time, and does not apply to the page up/down keys.
2101 .I Mouse page scrolling.
2102 Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel is done by pages or
2103 line by line on the panels.
2107 You can specify whether
2111 should be highlighted with distinctive
2115 If the permission highlighting is enabled, the parts of the
2121 .\"Listing Format..."
2122 which apply to the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with
2123 the color defined by the
2125 keyword. If the file type highlighting is enabled, file names are colored
2126 according to rules described in
2127 %sysconfdir%/mc/filehighlight.ini
2131 .\"Filenames Highlight"
2136 You can specify how the
2140 mode should work: case insensitively, case sensitively or be matched
2141 to the panel sort order: case sensitive or not.
2142 .\"NODE " Confirmation"
2144 In this dialog you configure the confirmation options for file deletion,
2145 overwriting files, execution by pressing enter, quitting the program,
2146 directory hotlist entries deletion and history cleanup.
2147 .\"NODE " Appearance"
2149 In this dialog you can select the skin to be used.
2155 section for technical details about the skin definition files.
2156 .\"NODE " Display bits"
2158 This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
2159 screen. This setting may be 7\-bits if your terminal/curses supports
2160 only seven output bits, ISO\-8859\-1 displays all the characters in the
2161 ISO\-8859\-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
2162 full 8 bit characters.
2163 .\"NODE " Learn keys"
2165 This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor
2166 arrows and some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
2167 They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or broken.
2169 You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
2170 left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor movement
2171 key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
2173 You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a
2174 key and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name
2175 of that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually,
2176 e.g. F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works,
2177 but after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys.
2178 The Tab key should be working always.
2180 If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after
2181 pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by pressing
2182 the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or by Enter
2183 or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then a message
2184 box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait until the
2185 message box disappears. If you want to abort, just press Escape once
2188 When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions
2189 for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [terminal:TERM]
2190 section of your ~/.config/mc/ini file (where TERM is the name of your current
2191 terminal). The definitions of the keys that were already working properly
2193 .\"NODE " Virtual FS"
2195 This option gives you control over the settings of the
2197 Virtual File System\&.
2198 .\"Virtual File System"
2200 Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information related to some
2201 of the virtual file systems to speed up the access to the files in the
2202 file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
2204 Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
2205 compressed tar files), Midnight Commander needs to create temporary
2206 uncompressed files on your disk.
2208 Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk
2209 take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
2210 information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
2211 access to frequently used file systems.
2213 Because of the format of the tar archives, the
2215 needs to read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most
2216 tar files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in
2217 extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
2218 in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a
2221 Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
2222 it's common that you will leave a tar file and then re\-enter it later.
2223 Since decompression is slow, Midnight Commander will cache the
2224 information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires, all
2225 the resources associated with the file system are released. The default
2226 timeout is set to one minute.
2232 (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote FTP servers. It has
2235 .I ftp anonymous password
2236 is the password used when you login as "anonymous". Some sites require
2237 a valid e\-mail address. On the other hand, you probably don't want to
2238 give your real e\-mail address to untrusted sites, especially if you are
2239 not using spam filtering.
2241 ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a cache.
2242 The cache expire time is configurable with the
2243 .I ftpfs directory cache timeout
2244 option. A low value for this option may slow down every operation on
2245 the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a request to the
2248 You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern
2249 firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below), so
2250 FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
2253 .I Always use ftp proxy
2254 is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to enable proxy for certain
2261 If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the
2262 %prefix%/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that
2263 are local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a
2264 domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names are
2265 directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the
2266 specified FTP proxy.
2268 You can enable using
2270 file, which keeps login names and passwords for ftp servers. See netrc
2271 (5) for the description of the .netrc format.
2274 enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection for data transfer is
2275 initiated by the client, not by the server. This option is recommended
2276 and enabled by default. If this option is turned off, the data
2277 connection is initiated by the server. This may not work with some
2279 .\"NODE " Save Setup"
2281 At startup, Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
2282 information from the ~/.config/mc/ini file. If this file
2283 doesn't exist, it will load the information from the system\-wide
2284 configuration file, located in %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ini. If the
2285 system\-wide configuration file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
2289 command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by saving the
2290 current settings of the
2293 .\"Left and Right Menus"
2302 option, MC will always save the current settings when exiting.
2304 There also exist settings which can't be changed from the menus. To
2305 change these settings you have to edit the setup file with your
2306 favorite editor. See the section on
2309 .\"Special Settings"
2310 for more information.
2312 .\"NODE "Executing operating system commands"
2313 .SH "Executing operating system commands"
2314 You may execute commands by typing them directly in Midnight
2315 Commander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to
2316 execute with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
2318 If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, Midnight
2319 Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the
2323 .\"Edit Extension File"
2324 If a match is found then the code associated with that extension is
2325 executed. A very simple
2328 .\"Macro Substitution"
2329 takes place before executing the command.
2330 .\"NODE " The cd internal command"
2331 .SH " The cd internal command"
2334 command is interpreted by Midnight Commander, it is not passed to
2335 the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle all of the
2336 nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does, although it
2339 .I Tilde substitution.
2340 The (~) will be substituted with your home directory, if you append a
2341 username after the tilde, then it will be substituted with the login
2342 directory of the specified user.
2344 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
2345 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
2347 .I Previous directory.
2348 You can jump to the directory you were previously by using the special
2349 directory name '\-' like this:
2352 .I CDPATH directories.
2353 If the directory specified to the
2355 command is not in the current directory, then Midnight Commander
2356 uses the value in the environment variable
2358 to search for the directory in any of the named directories.
2360 For example you could set your
2362 variable to ~/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to
2363 any of the directories inside the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from
2364 any place in the file system by using its relative name (for example
2365 cd linux could take you to /usr/src/linux).
2366 .\"NODE " Macro Substitution"
2367 .SH " Macro Substitution"
2374 extension dependent command\&,
2375 .\"Edit Extension File"
2376 or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
2377 substitution takes place.
2382 The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position. For edit
2386 The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
2389 The block file name.
2392 The error file name.
2395 The current menu name.
2398 The current file name.
2401 The extension of current file name.
2404 The current file name without extension.
2407 The current directory name.
2410 The current file in the unselected panel.
2413 The directory name of the unselected panel.
2416 The currently tagged files.
2419 The tagged files in the unselected panel.
2422 Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are untagged.
2423 You can use this macro only once per menu file entry or extension file
2424 entry, because next time there will be no tagged files.
2427 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise the
2431 This is a special macro that is used to change the current directory
2432 to the directory specified in front of it. This is used primarily as
2435 Virtual File System\&.
2436 .\"Virtual File System"
2439 This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This macro can be
2440 used alone, or with arguments. If you pass any arguments to this
2441 macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
2445 to force the viewer into ascii mode;
2447 to force the viewer into hex mode;
2449 to tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold and underline
2452 to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the text
2459 Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text inside
2460 the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is substituted by the text
2461 typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10 to cancel. This macro
2462 doesn't work on the command line yet.
2464 .I %var{ENV:default}
2465 If environment variable
2469 is substituted. Otherwise, the value of
2472 .\"NODE " The subshell support"
2473 .SH " The subshell support"
2474 The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
2475 shells: bash, ash (BusyBox and Debian), tcsh, zsh and fish.
2477 When the subshell support is active, Midnight Commander will
2478 spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the
2480 variable and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd
2481 file) and run it in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell
2482 each time you execute a command, the command will be passed to the
2483 subshell as if you had typed it. This also allows you to change the
2484 environment variables, use shell functions and define aliases that are
2485 valid until you quit Midnight Commander.
2488 users may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc (fallback ~/.bashrc)
2489 and special keyboard maps in ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc (fallback ~/.inputrc).
2492 users (BusyBox or Debian) may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/ashrc (fallback ~/.profile).
2495 users cannot specify mc-specific startup commands at present. They have to rely on
2496 shell-specific startup files.
2498 The following paragraphs are relevant only when the subshell support is
2501 You can suspend applications at any
2502 time with the sequence C\-o and jump back to Midnight Commander, if
2503 you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other
2504 external commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
2506 The basic prompt displayed by Midnight Commander is of the form
2507 "user@host:current_path$ ". When using a capable shell, like Bash, the
2508 prompt displayed by Midnight Commander will be the same prompt that you
2509 are currently using in your shell.
2511 (There's a known problem when using fish: the prompt is displayed only in
2512 full screen mode (Ctrl-o), not when the panels are visible.)
2518 section has more information on how you can control subshell usage (-U/-u).
2519 Furthermore, to set a specific subshell different from your current SHELL variable or
2520 login shell defined in /etc/passwd, you may call MC like this:
2521 .B SHELL=/bin/myshell mc
2524 The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
2525 files and directories. It can be invoked with the C\-x c key combination.
2527 The Chmod window has two parts \-
2532 In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory
2533 and its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
2535 In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which
2536 correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute
2537 bits, you can see the octal value change in the File section.
2539 To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the
2543 key. To change the state of the check buttons or to select a button
2546 You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate them.
2547 Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on the buttons.
2549 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
2551 When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on
2552 the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits
2553 you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked
2556 Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
2559 button, which will act on all the tagged files.
2562 set only marked attributes to all selected files
2565 set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2568 clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2571 set the attributes of one file
2574 cancel the Chmod command
2577 The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
2578 key for this command is C\-x o.
2579 .\"NODE "Advanced Chown"
2580 .SH "Advanced Chown"
2581 The Advanced Chown command is the
2589 command combined into one window. You can change the permissions and
2590 owner/group of files at once.
2591 .\"NODE "File Operations"
2592 .SH "File Operations"
2593 When you copy, move or delete files, Midnight Commander shows the
2594 file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being processed
2595 and uses up to three progress bars. The file bar indicates the
2596 percentage of the current file that has been processed so far. The
2597 count bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The
2598 bytes bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files
2599 that has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes
2602 There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
2603 button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort
2604 button will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are
2607 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
2610 The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
2611 Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file or the Abort
2612 button to abort the operation altogether. You can also select the Retry
2613 button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
2615 The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
2616 the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
2617 the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
2618 button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
2619 None button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if the
2620 source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
2621 operation by pressing the Abort button.
2623 The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
2624 which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory
2625 recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the All button to
2626 delete all the directories and the None button to skip all the non\-empty
2627 directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing the Abort
2628 button. If you selected the Yes or All button you will be asked for a
2629 confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you want to do the
2632 If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them only the files
2633 on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped files
2635 .\"NODE "Mask Copy/Rename"
2636 .SH "Mask Copy/Rename"
2637 The copy/move operations let you translate the names of files in an
2638 easy way. To do it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
2639 usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
2640 All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
2641 the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
2642 matching the source mask are renamed.
2644 There are other options which you can set:
2648 determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source
2649 directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target
2650 directory or whether would you like to copy their content.
2652 .B Dive into subdirs
2654 determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be copied,
2655 but the target directory already exists. The default action is to copy
2656 the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
2657 Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into the
2660 For example, you want to copy directory
2666 which is an already existing directory. Normally (when
2667 .B Dive into subdirs
2668 is not set), mc would copy file
2672 By enabling this option the
2674 directory will be created, and
2677 .IR /bla/foo/foo/bar .
2679 .B Preserve attributes
2681 determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you
2682 are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is not
2683 set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
2685 .B Use shell patterns
2687 When this option is on you can use the '*' and '?' wildcards in the source
2688 mask. They work like they do in the shell. In the target mask only the '*'
2689 and '\\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The first '*' wildcard in the target
2690 mask corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source mask,
2691 the second '*' corresponds to the second group and so on. The '\\1' wildcard
2692 corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source mask, the '\\2' wildcard
2693 corresponds to the second group and so on all the way up to '\\9'.
2694 The '\\0' wildcard is the whole filename of the source file.
2698 If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is "/bla/*.tgz" and the
2699 file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in "/bla".
2701 Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c" would
2702 become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
2703 destination is "\\2.\\1".
2705 .B Use shell patterns off
2707 When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
2708 grouping anymore. You must use '\\(...\\)' expressions in the source
2709 mask to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is
2710 more flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks
2711 are similar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
2715 If the source mask is "^\\(.*\\)\\.tar\\.gz$", the destination is
2716 "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy
2717 will be "/bla/foo.tgz".
2719 Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
2720 will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
2721 "^\\(.*\\)\\.\\(.*\\)$" and the destination is "\\2.\\1".
2725 You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\\u'
2726 or '\\l' in the target mask, the next character will be converted to
2727 uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.
2729 If you use '\\U' or '\\L' in the target mask, the next characters will
2730 be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the
2731 next '\\E' or next '\\U', '\\L' or the end of the file name.
2733 The '\\u' and '\\l' are stronger than '\\U' and '\\L'.
2735 For example, if the source mask is '*' (
2736 .I Use shell patterns
2737 on) or '^\\(.*\\)$' (
2738 .I Use shell patterns
2739 off) and the target mask is '\\L\\u*' the file names will be converted
2740 to have initial upper case and otherwise lower case.
2742 You can also use '\\' as a quote character. For example, '\\\\' is
2743 a backslash and '\\*' is an asterisk.
2747 commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks in the target,
2748 so that they'll point to the same location as it did before. With absolute
2749 symbolic links this does nothing, but if you have a relative one, it will
2750 recompute its value, adding necessary ../ and other directory parts and making
2751 the value as short as possible (most modern filesystems keep short symlinks
2752 inside inodes and thus don't waste much disk space).
2754 .\"NODE "Select/Unselect Files"
2755 .SH "Select/Unselect Files"
2756 The dialog of group of files and directories selection or uselection.
2761 allow enter the regular expression of filenames that will be
2762 selected/unselected.
2766 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
2768 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
2771 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
2772 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
2773 for one character). If
2775 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
2776 expressions (see ed (1)). When
2778 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
2781 is off, the case will be ignored.
2782 .\"NODE "Diff Viewer"
2783 .SH "Internal Diff Viewer"
2784 The mcdiff is a visual diff tool. You can compare two files and edit them
2785 in\-place (diffs are updated dynamically). You can browse and view a working
2786 copy from popular version control systems (GIT, Subversion, etc).
2788 Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of Midnight
2792 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2795 Save modified files.
2798 Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
2801 Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
2804 Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be merged.
2813 Exit from diff viewer.
2816 Toggle show of hunk status.
2819 Toggle show of line numbers.
2822 Maximize left panel.
2825 Make panels equal in width.
2828 Reduce the size of the right panel.
2831 Reduce the size of the left panel.
2834 Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2840 Swap contents of diff panels.
2846 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2849 Find next diff hunk.
2852 Find previous diff hunk.
2858 Scroll one line forward.
2861 Scroll one line backward.
2870 Moves to the line beginning.
2873 Moves to the line end.
2876 Move to the file beginning.
2879 Move to the file end.
2880 .\"NODE "Internal File Viewer"
2881 .SH "Internal File Viewer"
2882 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex.
2883 To toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
2885 The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or
2886 the file type to display the information.
2887 Some character sequences, which appear most often in preformatted manual
2888 pages, are displayed bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display
2891 When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and
2892 constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing
2893 the quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text
2894 with constants like this:
2897 "String" 34 0xBB 012 "more text"
2900 Numbers are always interpreted in hex. In the example above, "34" is
2901 interpreted as 0x34. The prefix "0x" isn't really needed: we could type
2902 "BB" instead of "0xBB". And "012" is interpreted as 0x12, not as an octal
2905 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the
2906 Midnight Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2909 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2912 Toggle the wrap mode.
2915 Toggle the hex mode.
2918 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display
2922 Regular expression search.
2925 Reverse regular expression search.
2928 Normal search / hex mode search.
2931 Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else
2935 Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else
2939 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or if
2940 a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the
2941 output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
2942 on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter
2946 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
2947 will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with
2948 different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
2951 Exit the internal file viewer.
2953 .B next\-page, space, C\-v.
2954 Scroll one page forward.
2956 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v, C\-b, Backspace.
2957 Scroll one page backward.
2960 Scroll one line forward.
2963 Scroll one line backward.
2969 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2978 Jump to the next file.
2981 Jump to the previous file.
2987 to change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
2988 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
2989 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
2992 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
2995 Edit Extension File section
2996 .\"Edit Extension File"
2998 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor"
2999 .SH "Internal File Editor"
3000 The internal file editor is a full\-featured full screen editor. It can
3001 edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible to edit binary files.
3002 The internal file editor is invoked using
3005 .I use_internal_edit
3006 option is set in the initialization file.
3008 The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
3009 paste; key for key undo; pull\-down menus; file insertion; macro
3010 commands; regular expression search and replace; shift\-arrow text highlighting
3011 (if supported by the terminal); insert\-overwrite toggle; word wrap;
3012 autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file
3013 types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands like
3019 Options of editor in ini\-file
3020 .\"Internal File Editor / options"
3022 The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To see what
3023 keys do what, just consult the appropriate pull\-down menu. Other keys
3024 are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting.
3030 pastes from mcedit.clip.
3036 deletes highlighted text. Mouse highlighting also works, and you
3037 can override the mouse as usual by holding down the shift key
3038 while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal mouse highlighting
3041 To define a macro, press
3043 and then type out the key
3044 strokes you want to be executed. Press
3046 again when finished. You can then assign the macro to any key you
3047 like by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you press
3049 and then the assigned key. The macro is also executed if
3050 you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, provided that the
3051 key is not used for any other function. Once defined, the macro
3052 commands go into the file
3053 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.macros
3054 You can delete a macro by deleting the
3055 appropriate line in this file.
3057 To change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
3058 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
3059 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
3063 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or
3067 code or another). This is controlled by the
3069 .B %prefix%/share/mc/edit.indent.rc
3071 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/edit.indent.rc
3072 in your home directory the first time you use it.
3074 The editor also displays non\-us characters (160+). When editing
3075 binary files, you should set
3077 to 7 bits in the options menu to keep the spacing clean.
3079 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor / options"
3080 .SH "Options of editor in ini\-file"
3082 Some editor options of ini\-file are described in this section.
3083 Options are placed in [Midnight\-Commander] section
3085 .I editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
3086 Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or just from
3087 begin of file to cursor position (0)
3089 .\"NODE "Screen selector"
3090 .SH "Screen selector"
3091 Midnight Commander supports running many internal modules (such as
3092 editor, viewer and diff viewer) simultaneously and switching between
3093 them without closing open files. Using several file managers at a time,
3094 however, is not currently supported.
3096 Let's call each of these modules a screen. There are three ways to
3097 switch between screens, using one of these global shortcuts:
3100 switch to the next screen;
3103 switch to the previous screen;
3106 open a dialog window with the list of currently open screens (or use the
3107 "Screen list" menu item).
3108 .\"NODE "Completion"
3110 Let Midnight Commander type for you.
3112 Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
3113 attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins
3116 username (if the text begins with
3118 hostname (if the text begins with
3120 or command (if you are on the command line in the position where you
3121 might type a command, possible completions then include shell reserved
3122 words and shell built\-in commands as well) in turn. If none of these
3123 matches, filename completion is attempted.
3125 Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
3126 lines, command completion is command line specific. If the completion
3127 is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
3128 following action depends on the setting of the
3136 dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all possibilities pops up next to
3137 the current position and you can select with the arrow keys and
3139 the correct entry. You can also type the first letters in which the
3140 possibilities differ to move to a subset of all possibilities and
3141 complete as much as possible. If you press
3143 again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise the first
3144 item which matches all the previous characters will be highlighted. As
3145 soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you can hide it by
3149 and left and right arrow keys. If
3153 is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
3155 for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
3158 .BR ? ", " * " and " &
3159 symbols (as \fB\\?\fR, \fB\\*\fR, \fB\\&\fR )
3160 in filenames to disallow use them as metasymbols in regular expressions
3161 when substitution is performed in the input line.
3163 .\"NODE "Virtual File System"
3164 .SH "Virtual File System"
3165 Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the file
3166 system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system switch. The
3167 virtual file system switch allows Midnight Commander to manipulate
3168 files not located on the Unix file system.
3170 Currently, Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
3173 file system, used for accessing the regular Unix file system; the
3175 used to manipulate files on remote systems with the FTP protocol; the
3177 used to manipulate tar and compressed tar files; the
3179 used to recover deleted files on ext2 file systems (the default file
3180 system for Linux systems),
3182 (for manipulating files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh).
3183 If the code was compiled with
3185 (for manipulating files over SFTP connections).
3186 If the code was compiled with
3188 support, you can manipulate files on remote systems with the SMB (CIFS)
3193 (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to easily expand
3194 VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
3196 The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
3197 forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each one
3198 of the file systems is described later in their own section.
3199 .\"NODE " FTP File System"
3200 .SH " FTP File System"
3201 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
3202 machines. To actually use it, you can use the
3204 item in the menu or directly change your current directory using the
3206 command to a path name that looks like this:
3208 .I ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote\-dir]
3215 elements are optional. If you specify the
3217 element, Midnight Commander will login to the remote machine as that
3218 user, otherwise it will use anonymous login or the login name from the
3222 element is the password used for the connection. Using the password in
3223 the VFS directory name is not recommended, because it can appear on the
3224 screen in clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
3226 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend
3228 (an exclamation sign) to the hostname.
3233 ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
3234 ftp://tsx\-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
3235 ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
3236 ftp://guest@remote\-host.com:40/pub
3237 ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
3244 dialog box for ftpfs options.
3245 .\"NODE " Tar File System"
3246 .SH " Tar File System"
3247 The tar file system provides you with read\-only access to your tar
3248 files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command. To change
3249 your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
3250 tar file by using the following syntax:
3252 .I /filename.tar/utar://[dir\-inside\-tar]
3254 The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
3255 that usually you just point to a tar file and press return to enter
3256 into the tar file, see the
3259 .\"Edit Extension File"
3260 section for details on how this is done.
3265 mc\-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc\-3.0/vfs
3266 /ftp/GCC/gcc\-2.7.0.tar/utar://
3269 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
3270 .\"NODE " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3271 .SH " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3272 The fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
3273 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To use
3274 this, the other side has to either run fish server, or has to have
3275 bash\-compatible shell.
3277 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
3278 into a special directory which name is in the following
3281 .I sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote\-dir]
3288 elements are optional. If you specify the
3290 element, Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
3291 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
3297 'C' \- use compression;
3298 'r' \- use rsh instead of ssh;
3299 port \- specify the port used by remote server.
3303 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
3309 sh://onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
3310 sh://joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
3311 sh://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
3312 sh://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
3314 .\"NODE " SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem"
3315 .SH " SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem"
3316 The SFTP file system is a network based file system that allows you to
3317 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local.
3319 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
3320 into a special directory which name is in the following
3323 .I sftp://[user@]machine:[port]/[remote\-dir]
3330 elements are optional. If you specify the
3332 element, Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
3333 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
3335 \- specify the port used by remote server (22 by default).
3338 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
3344 sftp://onlyrsh.mx/linux/local
3345 sftp://joe:password@want.compression.edu/private
3346 sftp://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
3347 sftp://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
3349 .\"NODE " Undelete File System"
3350 .SH " Undelete File System"
3351 On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete
3352 facilities, you will have the undelete file system available.
3353 Recovery of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems. The
3354 undelete file system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to
3355 retrieve all of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and
3356 to extract the selected files into a regular partition.
3358 To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
3359 formed by the "undel://" prefix and the file name where the actual
3360 file system resides.
3362 For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
3363 first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
3369 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
3370 before you start browsing files there.
3371 .\"NODE " SMB File System"
3372 .SH " SMB File System"
3373 The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB
3374 (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups,
3375 Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba.
3376 To actually use it, you may try to use the panel command "SMB link..."
3377 (accessible from the menubar) or you may directly change your current
3378 directory to it using the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
3380 .I smb://[user@]machine[/service][/remote\-dir]
3387 elements are optional.
3393 can be specified in an input dialog.
3400 smb://guest@machine/Public/Irlex
3402 .\"NODE " EXTernal File System"
3403 .SH " EXTernal File System"
3405 allows you to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU Midnight
3406 Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
3408 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
3410 1. Stand\-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
3411 file. They represent certain system\-wide data as a directory tree.
3412 You can invoke them by typing
3413 .RI ' "cd fsname://" '
3414 where fsname is an extfs short name (see below). Examples of such
3415 filesystems include audio (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of
3416 all Debian packages in the system).
3418 For example, to list CD\-Audio tracks on your CD\-ROM drive, type
3424 2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
3425 contents of a file as a directory tree. It can consist of 'real' files
3426 compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages
3427 in a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
3430 should be appended to the archive name. Note that the archive itself
3431 can be on another vfs.
3433 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
3436 cd documents.zip/uzip://
3439 In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory. For
3440 instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
3441 history. An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell
3442 commands inside extfs, just like any other non\-local VFS.
3444 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
3447 access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette
3451 front end to Debian's APT package management system
3452 .RI ( "cd apt://" ).
3455 audio CD ripping and playing
3458 .IR "cd device/audio://" ).
3461 package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution
3462 .RI ( "cd file.bpp/bpp://" ).
3465 package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution
3466 .RI ( "cd file.deb/deb://" ).
3469 Debian GNU/Linux installed packages
3470 .RI ( "cd deb://" ).
3473 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator
3474 .RI ( "cd hp48://" ).
3477 browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs
3478 .RI ( "cd filename/lslR://" ).
3481 mbox\-style mailbox files support
3482 .RI ( "cd mailbox/mailfs://" ).
3485 extfs to handle unified and context diffs
3486 .RI ( "cd filename/patchfs://" ).
3490 .RI ( "cd filename/rpm://" ).
3493 RPM database management
3494 .RI ( "cd rpms://" ).
3496 .B ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
3498 .RI ( "cd archive/xxxx://"
3499 where xxxx is one of:
3507 You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as described in the
3510 .\"Edit Extension File"
3511 section. Here is an example entry for Debian packages:
3519 Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
3520 color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Sometimes
3521 it gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode
3522 using the \-c and \-b flag respectively.
3524 If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
3525 ncurses, it will also check the variable
3527 if it is set, it has the same effect as the \-c flag.
3529 You may specify terminals that always force color mode
3532 variable to the Colors section of the initialization file. This will
3533 prevent Midnight Commander from trying to detect if your terminal
3534 supports color. Example:
3538 color_terminals=linux,xterm
3539 color_terminals=terminal\-name1,terminal\-name2...
3542 The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang, ncurses does
3543 not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the
3544 information in the terminal database.
3546 Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
3547 Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
3549 or the Colors section in the initialization file.
3551 In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the
3553 variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a terminal by
3554 using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:
3559 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
3562 The format for the color definition is:
3565 <keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
3568 The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected, disabled, marked,
3569 markselect, errors, input, inputmark, inputunchanged, commandlinemark,
3570 reverse, gauge, header, inputhistory, commandhistory. Button bar colors are:
3571 bbarhotkey, bbarbutton. Status bar color: statusbar. Menu colors are: menunormal,
3572 menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, menuinactive. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus,
3573 dhotnormal, dhotfocus, dtitle. Error dialog colors are: errdfocus, errdhotnormal,
3574 errdhotfocus, errdtitle. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold,
3575 helplink, helpslink, helptitle. Viewer colors are: viewnormal, viewbold,
3576 viewunderline, viewselected. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked,
3577 editwhitespace, editlinestate. Popup menu colors are: pmenunormal, pmenusel,
3581 determines the color of panel header, the line that contains column titles
3582 and sort mode indicator.
3585 determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
3588 determines the color of the filled part of the progress bar (gauge),
3589 which is used to show the user the progress of file operations, such as
3593 determines the color of the widget that cannot be selected.
3595 The dialog boxes use the following colors:
3597 is used for the normal text,
3599 is the color used for the currently selected component,
3601 is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in normal
3602 components, whereas the
3604 color is used for the highlighted color in the currently selected
3607 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menunormal, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel
3608 and menuinactive tags instead.
3610 Help uses the following colors:
3612 is used for normal text,
3614 is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual page,
3616 is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the manual page,
3618 is used for not selected hyperlinks and
3620 is used for selected hyperlink.
3622 Popup menu uses following colors:
3624 is used for non\-selected menu items and as a main color of popup menu window,
3626 is used for selected menu item,
3628 is used for popup menu title.
3630 The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
3631 brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta,
3632 cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword
3633 for transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be
3634 used for background color. Another special keyword "base" means mc's main
3635 colors. When 256 colors are available, they can be specified either as
3636 color16 to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and gray0 to gray23. Example:
3640 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
3643 Attributes can be any of bold, italic, underline, reverse and blink, appended by a
3644 plus sign if more than one are desired. The special word "none" means no
3645 attributes, without attempting to fall back to base_color. Example:
3648 menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
3653 You can change the appearance of Midnight Commander.
3654 To do this, you must specify a file that contain descriptions of colors
3655 and lines to draw boxes. Redefining of the colors is entirely compatible
3656 with the assignment of colors, as described in Section
3661 If your skin contains any true\-color definitions, you should define
3662 the 'truecolors' key set to TRUE value in [skin] section. If true\-color
3663 is not used but 256\-color is, you should define '256colors' instead.
3665 A skin\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
3668 1) command line option
3673 2) Environment variable
3679 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
3683 .B %sysconfdir%/mc/skins/default.ini
3686 .B %prefix%/share/mc/skins/default.ini
3689 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
3690 contain the absolute path to the skin\-file (with the extension \.ini
3691 or without it). Search of skin\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
3694 .B ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
3697 .B %sysconfdir%/mc/skins/
3700 .B %prefix%/share/mc/skins/
3704 For getting extended info, refer to:
3707 Description of section and parameters
3711 Color pair definitions
3715 Color and attribute aliases
3727 .\"NODE " Skins sections"
3728 .SH " Description of section and parameters"
3732 contain metainfo for skin\-file. Parameter
3734 contain short text about skin.
3739 contain descriptions of color pairs for filenames highlighting.
3740 Name of parameters must be equal to names of sections into
3741 filehighlight.ini file.
3745 .\"Filenames Highlight"
3746 for getting more info.
3751 describes the elements that are used everywhere.
3754 Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they not contain
3764 cursor on selected data
3767 color of the filled part of the progress bar
3770 color of input lines used in query dialogs
3773 color of input selected text
3776 color of input text before first modification or cursor movement
3779 color of selected text in command line
3786 describes the elements that are placed on dialog windows (except error dialogs).
3789 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3792 Color of active element (in focus)
3798 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3803 describes the elements that are placed on error dialog windows
3806 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3812 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3817 describes the elements that are placed in menu. This section describes
3818 system menu (called by F9) and user\-defined menus (called by F2 in panels
3819 and by F11 in editor).
3822 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3828 Color of menu hotkeys
3831 Color of active menu item (in focus)
3834 Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
3837 Color of inactive menu
3842 describes the elements that are placed on help window.
3845 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3848 Color pair for element with
3853 Color pair for element with
3861 Color of active link (on focus)
3866 describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
3869 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3872 Color pair for element with
3877 Color of selected text
3880 Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
3883 Color for line state area
3888 describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
3891 Color pair for element with
3895 .\"NODE " Skins colors"
3896 .SH " Color pair definitions"
3897 Any parameter in skin\-file contain definition of color pair.
3899 Color pairs described as two colors and the optional attributes
3900 separated by ';'. First field sets the foreground color, second
3901 field sets background color, third field sets the attributes.
3902 Any of the fields may be omitted, in this case value will be
3903 taken from default color pair (global color pair or from default
3904 color pair of this section).
3911 _default_=green;black
3912 # green (default) on blue
3914 # yellow on black (default)
3915 # underlined yellow on black (default)
3916 marked=yellow;;underline
3920 Possible colors (names) and attributes are described in
3926 .\"NODE " Skins aliases"
3927 .SH " Color and attribute aliases"
3928 This optional section might define aliases for single colors (not color pairs)
3929 as well as combination of attributes; in other words, for semicolon\-separated
3930 fragments of parameters. Aliases can refer to other aliases as long as they
3939 myfavattr=bold+italic
3941 _default_=myfavfg;myfavbg;myfavattr
3944 .\"NODE " Skins lines"
3946 Lines sets in section
3948 into skin\-file. By default single lines are used, but you may redefine
3949 to usage of any utf\-8 symbols (like to lines, for example).
3952 When you build Midnight Commander with the Ncurses screen library
3953 usage of drawing lines is limited!
3954 Possible only drawing a single lines.
3955 For all questions and comments please contact the developers of Ncurses.
3958 Descriptions of parameters
3962 left\-top line fragment.
3965 right\-top line fragment.
3968 down branch of horizontal line
3971 up branch of horizontal line
3974 left\-bottom line fragment
3977 right\-bottom line fragment
3980 right branch of vertical line
3983 left branch of vertical line
3995 thin horizontal line
4001 .\"NODE " Skins oldcolors"
4002 .SH " Compatibility"
4004 Appointment of color by skin\-files fully compatible with
4005 the appointment of the colors described in
4011 In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the skin file and is
4014 .\"NODE "Filenames Highlight"
4015 .SH "Filenames Highlight"
4016 Section [filehighlight] in current skin\-file contains key names as
4017 highlight groups and values as color pairs. Color pairs is documented
4024 Rules of filenames highlight are placed in %prefix%/share/mc/filehighlight.ini file
4025 (~/.config/mc/filehighlight.ini).
4026 Name of section in this file must be equal to parameters names in
4027 [filehighlight] section (in current skin\-file).
4029 Keys in these groups are:
4032 file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
4035 regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is ignored.
4038 list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
4041 (make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
4042 rule case sensitive (true) or not (false).
4044 `type' key may have values:
4048 \- DIR (all directories)
4050 \- LINK (all links except stale link)
4054 \- DEVICE (all device files)
4057 \- SPECIAL (all special files)
4064 .\"NODE "Special Settings"
4065 .SH "Special Settings"
4066 Most of Midnight Commander settings can be changed from the
4067 menus. However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
4068 changed by editing the setup file.
4070 These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
4072 .I clear_before_exec
4073 By default, Midnight Commander clears the screen before executing a
4074 command. If you would prefer to see the output of the command at the
4075 bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.config/mc/ini file and change the value of
4076 the field clear_before_exec to 0.
4079 If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that directory. If
4080 this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirmation before changing
4081 the directory if you have files tagged.
4083 .I ftpfs_retry_seconds
4084 This value is the number of seconds Midnight Commander will wait
4085 before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has denied the
4086 login. If the value is zero, the login will no be retried.
4089 Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the internal
4090 file viewer. Normally this value is not significant, because the code
4091 automatically adjusts the number of updates to skip according to the
4092 rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on very slow machines or
4093 terminals with a fast keyboard auto repeat, a big value can make screen
4096 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best behavior,
4097 and that is the default value.
4099 .I mouse_move_pages_viewer
4100 Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by line
4101 on the internal file viewer.
4103 .I only_leading_plus_minus
4104 Allow special treatment for '+', '\-', '*' in the command line (select,
4105 unselect, reverse selection) only if the command line is empty. You
4106 don't need to quote those characters in the middle of the command line.
4107 On the other hand, you cannot use them to change selection when the
4108 command line is not empty.
4110 .I show_output_starts_shell
4111 This variable only works if you are not using the subshell support.
4112 When you use the C\-o keystroke to go back to the user screen, if this
4113 one is set, you will get a fresh shell. Otherwise, pressing any key
4114 will bring you back to Midnight Commander.
4116 .I timeformat_recent
4117 Change the time format used to display dates less than 6 months from
4119 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
4120 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
4123 Change the time format used to display dates older than 6 months from
4124 now or for dates in the future.
4125 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
4126 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
4129 If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work slightly
4130 different on the panels, instead of moving the selection to the first
4131 and last files in the panels, they will act as follows:
4133 The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else go to the
4134 top line unless it is already on the top line, in this case it will go
4135 to the first file in the panel.
4137 The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line, if over
4138 it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at the bottom
4139 line, in such case it will move the selection to the last file name in
4142 .I use_file_to_guess_type
4143 If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file command to
4144 match the file types listed on the
4147 .\"Edit Extension File"
4150 If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file system
4151 on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload the other panel with the
4152 contents of the selected directory.
4154 .I fish_directory_timeout
4155 This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in seconds. The
4156 default value is 900 seconds.
4159 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4160 utility like 'xclip' to read text into X selection from file.
4164 clipboard_store=xclip \-i
4168 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4169 utility like 'xclip' to print the selection to standard out.
4173 clipboard_paste=xclip \-o
4176 .I autodetect_codeset
4177 This option allows use the `enca' command to autodetect codeset of text files
4178 in internal viewer and editor. List of valid values can be obtain by the
4179 `enca \-\-list languages | cut \-d : \-f1' command. Option must be located
4180 in the [Misc] section.
4185 autodetect_codeset=russian
4187 .\"NODE "Parameters for external editor or viewer"
4188 .SH "Parameters for external editor or viewer"
4189 Midnight Commander provides a way for specify an options for external editors
4190 and viewers. Midnight Commander tries to search the
4191 "[External editor or viewer parameters]" section in the system initialization file
4192 (the mc.lib file located in Midnight Commander's library directory)
4193 and then in the ~/.config/mc/ini file. The option name should be equal to the name
4194 (full pathname) of external editor or viewer. The option value can contain following
4198 The filename to edit/view.
4201 The start line in the opening file.
4206 [External editor or viewer parameters]
4207 vi=%filename +%lineno
4208 joe=%filename +%lineno
4209 more=%filename +%lineno
4212 Start line is passed to the external editor/viewer only if it is called from the
4218 If external editor/viewer is launched via F4/F3 keys, MC hopes that program
4219 (at least "joe", but probably others too) has an own feature that by default
4220 opens the file where it was last open. MC doesn't prevent external editor/viewer
4221 to save and restore position in opened files.
4222 .\"NODE "Terminal databases"
4223 .SH "Terminal databases"
4224 Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal
4225 database without requiring root privileges. Midnight Commander
4226 searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
4227 Midnight Commander's library directory) and in the
4228 ~/.config/mc/ini file for the section
4229 "terminal:your\-terminal\-name" and then for the section
4230 "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol that
4231 you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the definition for the
4232 key. You can use the special \\e form to represent the escape character
4233 and the ^x to represent the control\-x character.
4235 The possible key symbols are:
4238 f0 to f20 Function keys f0\-f20
4245 right right arrow key
4248 insert the insert character
4249 delete the delete character
4250 complete to do completion
4253 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
4254 set this in the ini file:
4261 Also now you can use
4262 .I extended learn keys.
4266 ctrl\-alt\-right=\\e[[1;6C
4267 ctrl\-alt\-left=\\e[[1;6D
4271 This means that ctrl+alt+left sends a \\e[[1;6D escape sequence
4272 and therefore Midnight Commander interprets "\\e[[1;6D" as Ctrl\-Alt\-Left.
4277 key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke the completion
4278 process, this is invoked with Alt\-tab, but you can define other keys to do
4279 the same work (on those keyboard with tons of nice and unused keys
4284 Full paths below may vary between installations. They are also affected
4287 environment variable. If it's set, its value is used instead of
4288 %prefix%/share/mc in the paths below.
4290 .I %prefix%/share/mc/help/mc.hlp
4292 The help file for the program.
4294 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ext
4296 The default system\-wide extensions file.
4298 .I ~/.config/mc/mc.ext
4300 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
4301 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if present.
4303 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ini
4305 The default system\-wide setup for Midnight Commander, used only if
4306 the user doesn't have his own ~/.config/mc/ini file.
4308 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.lib
4310 Global settings for Midnight Commander. Settings in this file
4311 affect all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini or not. Currently, only
4314 .\"Terminal databases"
4315 are loaded from mc.lib.
4319 User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded
4320 from here instead of the system\-wide startup file.
4322 .I %prefix%/share/mc/hints/mc.hint
4324 This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
4326 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.menu
4328 This file contains the default system\-wide applications menu.
4330 .I ~/.config/mc/menu
4332 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used instead
4333 of the system\-wide applications menu.
4337 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view features.
4339 .I ~/.local/share/mc.menu
4341 Local user\-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used instead of
4342 the home or system\-wide applications menu.
4344 To change default root directory of MC, you can use
4346 environment variable. The value of MC_PROFILE_ROOT must be an absolute path.
4347 If MC_PROFILE_ROOT is unset or empty, HOME variable is used. If HOME is unset
4348 or empty, MC directories are get from GLib library.
4351 This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
4352 License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built\-in
4353 help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
4354 .\"NODE "AVAILABILITY"
4356 The latest version of this program can be found at
4357 http://ftp.midnight\-commander.org/.
4360 ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
4364 Midnight Commander's page on the World Wide Web:
4365 http://www.midnight\-commander.org/
4369 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
4373 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains to
4376 If you want to report a problem with the program, please create bugreport
4377 at http://www.midnight\-commander.org/.
4379 Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program
4382 displays this information), the operating system you are running the
4383 program on. If the program crashes, we would appreciate a stack trace.