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 the 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 follow params.
95 .B You can redefine the following variables:
125 default horizontal line
128 default vertical line
136 .I \-S arg, \-\-skin=arg
137 Specify a name of skin in the command line. Technology of skins is
145 Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it makes
146 the Midnight Commander use the value of the
148 variable for the terminal information instead of the information on
149 the system wide terminal database
151 .I \-u, \-\-nosubshell
152 Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if the Midnight
153 Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
156 Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if the
157 Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set as an
160 .I \-v file, \-\-view=file
161 Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also
165 Display the version of the program.
168 Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm\-capable terminals (two
169 screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
172 Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl, Shift
174 If both paths are specified, the first path name is the directory to show
175 in the active panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in
178 If one path is specified, the path name is the directory to show
179 in the active panel; value of "other_dir" from panels.ini is the directory
180 to be shown in the passive panel.
182 If no paths are specified, current directory is shown in the active panel;
183 value of "other_dir" from panels.ini is the directory to be shown in
187 The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
188 Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels.
189 By default, the second line from the bottom of the screen is the
190 shell command line, and the bottom line shows the function key labels.
191 The topmost line is the
195 The menu bar line may not be visible, but appears if you click the
196 topmost line with the mouse or press the F9 key.
198 The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same
199 time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in
200 the current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current
201 panel. Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the
202 directory of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they
203 always ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see the
211 .\"Left and Right Menus"
217 You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply
218 typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command line,
219 and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the
220 command line you typed; read the
223 .\"Shell Command Line"
228 sections to learn more about the command line.
229 .\"NODE "Mouse Support"
231 The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated
232 whenever you are running on an
234 terminal (it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to
235 another machine from the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux
238 mouse server running.
240 When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is
241 selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
242 unmarked, depending on the previous state).
244 Double\-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is
245 an executable program; and if the
248 .\"Edit Extension File"
249 has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified
252 Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
253 key labels by clicking on them.
255 The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
256 milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the
260 file and changing the
264 If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
265 can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by holding
270 Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the
272 (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the
274 (sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this manual we will
275 use the following abbreviations:
278 means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>.
279 Thus C\-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
282 means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>.
283 If there is no Meta or Alt key, type
285 release it, then type the character <chr>.
288 means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
290 All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approximation to
291 the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
293 You may redefine key bindings. See
295 .I redefine hotkey bindings
298 for more info. All other key bindings (described in this manual) are relative
302 There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
309 section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands appearing in
310 the File menu. This section includes the function keys. Most of these
311 commands perform some action, usually on the selected file or the
318 section documents the keys which select a file or tag files as a
319 target for a later action (the action is usually one from the file
325 .\"Shell Command Line"
326 section list the keys which are used for entering and editing command
327 lines. Most of these copy file names and such from the directory
328 panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the
329 command line history.
334 are used for editing input lines. This means both the command line and
335 the input lines in the query dialogs.
337 .\"NODE " Keys_redefine"
338 .SH " Redefine hotkey bindings"
339 Hotkey bindings may be read from external file (keymap\-file).
340 Initially, Mignight Commander creates key bindings using keymap defined
341 in the source code. Then, two files
342 .B %prefix%/share/mc/mc.keymap
344 .B %sysconfdir%/mc/mc.keymap
345 are loaded always, sequentially reassigned key bindings defined earlier.
346 User\-defined keymap\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
349 1) command line option
352 .B \-\-keymap=<keymap>
354 2) Environment variable
360 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
364 .B ~/.config/mc/mc.keymap
367 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
368 contain the absolute path to the keymap\-file (with the extension \.keymap
369 or without it). Search of keymap\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
379 .B %prefix%/share/mc/
381 .\"NODE " Miscellaneous Keys"
382 .SH " Miscellaneous Keys"
383 Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
386 if there is some text in the command line (the one at the bottom of
387 the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no text in the
388 command line then if the selection bar is over a directory the
389 Midnight Commander does a
391 to the selected directory and reloads the information on the panel;
392 if the selection is an executable file then it is executed. Finally,
393 if the extension of the selected file name matches one of the
397 .\"Edit Extension File"
398 then the corresponding command is executed.
401 repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
408 command on a file or on the tagged files.
415 command on the current file or on the tagged files.
418 run the hard link command.
421 run the absolute symbolic link command.
424 run the relative symbolic link command. See the
428 section for more information about symbolic links.
431 set the other panel display mode to information.
434 set the other panel display mode to quick view.
440 .\"External panelize"
446 add directory to hotlist
451 executes the Filtered view command, described in the
454 .\"Internal File Viewer"
471 when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or under
472 an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous command. When ran
473 on the Linux console, the Midnight Commander uses an external program
474 (cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of information on the
477 When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C\-o at any time
478 and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
479 return to your application just type C\-o. If you have an application
480 suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other
481 programs from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
483 .\"NODE " Directory Panels"
484 .SH " Directory Panels"
485 This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
486 you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a
487 look at the section on
489 Left and Right Menus\&.
490 .\"Left and Right Menus"
493 change the current panel. The old other panel becomes the new current
494 panel and the old current panel becomes the new other panel. The
495 selection bar moves from the old current panel to the new current
499 to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo sequence).
500 To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
503 to change charset of panel you may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
504 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
505 cancel the recoding you may select "directory up" (..) in active panel.
506 To cancel the charsets in all directories, select "No translation " in
507 the dialog of encodings.
509 .B Alt\-g, Alt\-r, Alt\-j
510 used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file and the bottom one,
514 toggle the current display listing to show the next display listing
516 With this it is possible to quickly switch to brief listing, long
517 listing, user defined listing mode, and back to the default.
519 .B C\-\\\\ (control\-backslash)
524 and change to the selected directory.
527 this is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
528 will prompt for a selection options. When
530 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
532 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
535 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
536 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
537 for one character). If
539 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
540 expressions (see ed (1)). When
542 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
545 is off, the case will be ignored.
548 use the "\\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
552 move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
555 move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
558 move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
561 move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
564 move the selection bar one page down.
566 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v
567 move the selection bar one page up.
570 If the currently selected file is a directory, load that directory on
571 the other panel and moves the selection to the next file. If the
572 currently selected file is not a directory, load the parent directory
573 on the other panel and moves the selection to the next file.
576 make the current directory of the current panel also the current
577 directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the listing mode
578 if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the other panel doesn't
581 .B C\-PageUp, C\-PageDown
582 only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the currently
583 selected directory respectively.
586 moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to clicking
592 moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to clicking the
596 .B Alt\-Shift\-h, Alt\-H
597 displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v' with
599 .\"NODE " Quick search"
601 The Quick search mode allows you to perform fast file search in file panel.
606 to start a filename search in the directory listing.
608 When the search is active, the user input will be added to the search string
609 instead of the command line. If the
611 option is enabled the search string is shown on the mini\-status
612 line. When typing, the selection bar will move to the next file
613 starting with the typed letters. The
617 keys can be used to correct typing mistakes. If C\-s is pressed
618 again, the next match is searched for.
620 If quick search is started with double pressing of C\-s, the previous quick
621 search pattern will be used for current search.
623 Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard
624 characters '*' and '?'.
625 .\"NODE " Shell Command Line"
626 .SH " Shell Command Line"
627 This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
628 entering shell commands.
631 copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
634 same a Alt\-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
637 copy the full path name of the currently selected file to the command
638 line. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
641 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
648 copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the selected
649 file) of the current panel (C\-x t) or of the other panel (C\-x C\-t) to
653 the first key sequence copies the current path name to the command
654 line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path name to
658 the quote command can be used to insert characters that are otherwise
659 interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
662 use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
663 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
666 displays the history for the current input line.
667 .\"NODE " General Movement Keys"
668 .SH " General Movement Keys"
669 The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common
670 code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same
671 keys. Each of them also accepts some keys of its own.
673 Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
674 keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
677 moves one line backward.
680 moves one line forward.
682 .B Prev Page, Page Up, Alt\-v
685 .B Next Page, Page Down, C\-v
689 moves to the beginning.
694 The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in
695 addition the to ones mentioned above:
697 .B b, C\-b, C\-h, Backspace, Delete
704 moves one half of a page up or down.
707 moves to the beginning or to the end.
708 .\"NODE " Input Line Keys"
709 .SH " Input Line Keys"
710 The input lines (they are used for the
713 .\"Shell Command Line"
714 and for the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
717 puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
720 puts the cursor at the end of the line.
723 move the cursor one position left.
726 move the cursor one position right.
729 moves one word forward.
732 moves one word backward.
735 delete the previous character.
738 delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
741 sets the mark for cutting.
744 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer and
745 removes the text from the input line.
748 copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer.
751 yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
754 kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
757 Use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt\-p takes you
758 to the last entry, Alt\-n takes you to the next one.
760 .B Alt\-C\-h, Alt\-Backspace
761 delete one word backward.
764 does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
772 The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
773 row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File",
774 "Command", "Options" and "Right".
779 .\"Left and Right Menus"
780 allow you to modify the appearance of the left and right directory
787 lists the actions you can perform on the currently selected file or
794 lists the actions which are more general and bear no relation to the
795 currently selected file or the tagged files.
801 lists the actions which allow you to customize the Midnight Commander.
802 .\"NODE " Left and Right Menus"
803 .SH " Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus"
804 The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the
808 menus (they are named
812 when the horizontal panel split is chosen from the
817 .\"NODE " Listing Mode..."
818 .SH " Listing Mode..."
819 The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
820 four different listing modes available:
826 The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
827 the modification time.
829 The brief view shows only the file name and it has from 1 up to 9 columns
830 (therefore showing more files unlike other views). The long view
831 is similar to the output of
833 command. The long view takes the whole screen width.
835 If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify
838 The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This
839 may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
840 full screen panel respectively.
842 After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the
843 panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format
846 After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size
847 specifier. This are the available fields you may display:
850 displays the file name.
853 displays the file size.
856 is an alternative form of the
858 format. It displays the size of the files and for directories it just
859 shows SUB\-DIR or UP\-\-DIR.
862 displays a one character wide type field. This character is similar to
863 what is displayed by ls with the \-F flag \-
865 for executable files,
873 for character devices,
879 for symbolic links to directories and
881 for stale symlinks (links that point nowhere).
884 an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
887 file's last modification time.
890 file's last access time.
893 file's status change time.
896 a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
899 an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
902 the number of links to the file.
911 the owner of the file.
914 the group of the file.
917 the inode of the file.
919 Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
922 a space in the display format.
925 add a vertical line to the display format.
927 To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add
929 followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If the
930 number is followed by the symbol
932 then the size specifies the minimal field size \- if the program finds
933 out that there is more space on the screen, it will then expand that
938 display corresponds to this format:
940 half type name | size | mtime
944 display corresponds to this format:
946 full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime
949 This is a nice user display format:
951 half name | size:7 | type mode:3
953 Panels may also be set to the following modes:
956 The info view display information related to the currently
957 selected file and if possible information about the current file
961 The tree view is quite similar to the
965 feature. See the section about it for more information.
968 In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced
971 .\"Internal File Viewer"
972 that displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you
973 select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have access
974 to the usual viewer commands.
975 .\"NODE " Sort Order..."
977 The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
978 by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size,
979 by inode and unsorted. In the Sort order dialog box you can choose
980 the sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
981 order by checking the reverse box.
983 By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
989 .BR "Mix all files" ).
992 The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
994 which the files must match to be shown. Regardless
995 of the filter pattern, the directories and the links to directories
996 are always shown in the directory panel.
999 The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
1000 useful if other processes have created or removed files.
1001 .\"NODE " File Menu"
1003 The Midnight Commander uses the F1 \- F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts
1004 for commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
1005 function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals
1006 without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
1007 pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
1008 (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
1010 The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in parentheses):
1014 Invokes the built\-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the
1018 you can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to
1019 follow that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to move
1020 forward and backward in a help page. Press F1 again to get the full
1021 list of accepted keys.
1029 The user menu provides an easy way to provide users with a menu and
1030 add extra features to the Midnight Commander.
1034 View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the
1036 Internal File Viewer
1037 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1038 but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an external
1039 file viewer specified by the
1041 environment variable. If
1045 environment variable is tried. If
1047 is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use F13
1048 instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
1049 preprocessing to the file.
1053 parameters for external viewer
1054 .\"Parameters for external editor or viewer"
1055 for explain how you may specify an extended command line options
1056 for external viewers.
1058 .B Filtered View (Alt\-!)
1060 This command prompts for a command
1061 and its arguments (the argument defaults to the currently selected
1062 file name), the output from such command is shown in the internal file
1067 Press F4 to edit the highlighted file. Press F14 (usually F14)
1068 to start the editor with a new, empty file.
1069 Currently they invoke the
1071 editor, or the editor specified in the
1073 environment variable, or the
1075 Internal File Editor
1076 .\"Internal File Editor"
1077 if the use_internal_edit option is on.
1081 parameters for external editor
1082 .\"Parameters for external editor or viewer"
1083 for explain how you may specify an extended command line options
1084 for external editors.
1088 Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1089 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1090 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1091 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. Space for destination
1092 file may be preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure option.
1093 During this process, you can press C\-c or ESC to abort the operation.
1094 For details about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\\(.*\\)$
1095 depending on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the
1099 .\"Mask Copy/Rename"
1101 F15 (usually F15) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1102 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1105 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1106 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1111 is used to control the background process.
1115 Create a hard link to the current file.
1117 .B Absolute symlink (C\-x s)
1119 Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
1121 .B Relative symLink (C\-x v)
1123 Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
1125 To those of you who don't know what links are: creating a link to a file
1126 is a bit like copying the file, but both the source filename and the destination
1127 filename represent the same file image. For example, if you edit one of these
1128 files, all changes you make will appear in both files. Some people call
1129 links aliases or shortcuts.
1131 A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there is no way of
1132 telling which one is the original and which is the link. If you delete
1133 either one of them the other one is still intact. It is very difficult
1134 to notice that the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
1135 you don't even want to know.
1137 A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If
1138 the original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite
1139 easy to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight
1140 Commander shows an "@"\-sign in front of the file name if it is a
1141 symbolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
1142 The original file which the link points to is shown on mini\-status line if the
1143 .I "Show mini\-status"
1144 option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the
1145 confusion that can be caused by hard links.
1147 When you press "C\-x s" Midnight Commander will automatically fill in the
1148 complete path+filename of the original file and suggest a name for the link.
1149 You can change either one.
1151 Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the original into
1152 a relative path. An absolute path starts from the root directory:
1154 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc \-> /home/frodo/new/mc
1156 A relative link describes the original file's location starting from the
1157 location of the link itself:
1159 .I /home/frodo/mc/mc \-> ../new/mc
1161 You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing
1162 "C\-x v" instead of "C\-x s".
1164 .B Rename/Move (F6, F16)
1166 Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or
1167 the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
1168 directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination
1169 defaults to the directory in the non\-selected panel. For more details
1170 look at Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
1172 F16 (usually F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
1173 selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
1176 On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
1177 clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt\-b in the dialog
1182 is used to control the background process.
1186 Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
1190 Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the
1191 currently selected panel. During the process, you can press C\-c or
1192 ESC to abort the operation.
1194 .B Quick cd (Alt\-c)
1199 command if you have full command line and want to cd somewhere.
1203 This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
1204 will prompt for a selection options. When
1206 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
1208 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
1211 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
1212 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
1213 for one character). If
1215 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
1216 expressions (see ed (1)). When
1218 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
1221 is off, the case will be ignored.
1223 .B Unselect group (\\\\)
1225 Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the
1229 .B Quit (F10, Shift\-F10)
1231 Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift\-F10 is used when you want to
1232 quit and you are using the shell wrapper. Shift\-F10 will not take you
1233 to the last directory you visited with the Midnight Commander, instead
1234 it will stay at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
1237 This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to
1240 .\"The cd internal command"
1241 somewhere without having to yank and paste the command line. This command
1242 pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter after
1244 on the command line and then you press enter. This features all the things
1245 that are already in the
1247 internal cd command\&.
1248 .\"The cd internal command"
1249 .\"NODE " Command Menu"
1255 command shows a tree figure of the directories.
1261 command allows you to search for a specific file.
1263 The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.
1265 The "Switch panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell command.
1266 This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
1268 The "Compare directories" command compares the directory
1269 panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make
1270 the panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method
1271 compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a
1272 full byte\-by\-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
1273 machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size\-only
1274 compare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the
1275 contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
1280 .\"External panelize"
1281 allows you to execute an external program, and make the output of that
1282 program the contents of the current panel.
1284 The "Command history" command shows a list of typed commands. The
1285 selected command is copied to the command line. The command history
1286 can also be accessed by typing Alt\-p or Alt\-n.
1292 command makes changing of the current directory to often used directories
1299 command shows a dialog window with the list of currently running
1300 internal editors, viewers and other MC modules that support this mode.
1304 "Edit extension file"
1305 .\"Edit Extension File"
1306 command allows you to specify programs to executed when you try to
1307 execute, view, edit and do a bunch of other thing on files
1308 with certain extensions (filename endings).
1314 command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by
1316 .\"NODE " Directory Tree"
1317 .SH " Directory Tree"
1318 The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
1319 can select a directory from the figure and the Midnight Commander will
1320 change to that directory.
1322 There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory tree command
1323 is available from Commands menu. The other way is to select tree view
1324 from the Left or Right menu.
1326 To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the tree
1327 figure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
1328 directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent
1329 directory and press C\-r (or F2).
1331 You can use the following keys:
1334 General movement keys
1335 .\"General Movement Keys"
1339 In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to this
1340 directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to this
1341 directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the
1344 .B C\-r, F2 (Rescan).
1345 Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure is out of date:
1346 it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirectories which don't
1350 Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to remove clutter
1351 from the figure. If you want the directory back to the tree figure
1352 press F2 in its parent directory.
1354 .B F4 (Static/Dynamic).
1355 Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode (default) and the static
1358 In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1359 select a directory. All known directories are shown.
1361 In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
1362 select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent
1363 directory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the
1364 parent, sibling and children directories are shown, others are left
1365 out. The tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
1374 Make a new directory below this directory.
1377 Delete this directory from the file system.
1380 Search the next directory matching the search string. If there is
1381 no such directory these keys will move one line down.
1384 Delete the last character of the search string.
1386 .B Any other character.
1387 Add the character to the search string and move to the next directory
1388 which starts with these characters. In the tree view you must first
1389 activate the search mode by pressing C\-s. The search string is shown
1390 in the mini status line.
1392 The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
1393 aren't supported in the tree view.
1396 Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
1399 Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
1401 The mouse is supported. A double\-click behaves like Enter. See
1406 .\"NODE " Find File"
1408 The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the
1409 search and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree
1410 button you can select the start directory from the
1416 Option \"Whole words\" allows select only those files containing matches that
1417 form whole words. Like grep \-w.
1419 You can start the search by pressing the OK button.
1420 During the search you can stop from the Stop button and continue from
1423 You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
1424 button will change to the directory of the currently selected
1425 file. The Again button will ask for the parameters for a new
1426 search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panelize
1427 button will place the found files to the current directory panel so
1428 that you can do additional operations on them (view, copy, move,
1429 delete and so on). After panelizing you can press C\-r to return to the
1430 normal file listing.
1432 The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it
1433 allow to set up the list of directories that should be skip during the search
1434 files (for example, you may want to avoid searches on a CD\-ROM or on a NFS
1435 directory that is mounted across a slow link). List components must be separated
1436 with a colon, here is an example:
1439 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
1442 Relative paths are supported also. The following example shows how to skip special
1443 directories of version control systems:
1445 /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
1448 Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the current absolute path.
1450 You may consider using the
1453 .\"External panelize"
1454 command for some operations. Find file command is for simple queries
1455 only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious searches
1457 .\"NODE " External panelize"
1458 .SH " External panelize"
1459 The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
1460 make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
1462 For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels all the
1463 symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external
1464 panelization to run the following command:
1467 find . \-type l \-print
1470 Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel will no
1471 longer be the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
1472 files that are symbolic links.
1474 If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded
1475 from your FTP server, you can use this awk command to extract the file
1476 name from the transfer log files:
1479 awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
1482 You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descriptive name,
1483 so that you can recall them quickly. You do this by typing the command on
1484 the input line and pressing Add new button. Then you enter a name under
1485 which you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just choose that
1486 command from the list and do not have to type it again.
1489 The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories
1490 in the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the
1491 directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dialog,
1492 you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new ones.
1493 To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist command
1494 (C\-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory hotlist,
1495 asking just for the label for the directory.
1497 This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using the
1498 CDPATH variable as described in
1501 .\"The cd internal command"
1503 .\"NODE " Edit Extension File"
1504 .SH " Edit Extension File"
1505 This will invoke your editor on the file
1506 .IR ~/.config/mc/mc.ext .
1507 The format of this file following:
1509 All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
1511 Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
1514 i.e. everything after the slash until new line is
1523 is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it its name ends
1534 is a regular expression. File matches if its name matches the regular
1540 is a regular expression. File matches if it is a directory and its name
1541 matches the regular expression.
1546 is a regular expression. File matches if the output of
1548 without the initial "filename:" part matches regular expression
1552 \- matches any file.
1557 \- denotes a common section.
1559 is the name of the section.
1561 Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the format:
1563 (with no spaces around =), where
1567 (invoked on Enter or double click),
1573 (to add rules from the common section).
1575 is any one\-line shell command, with the simple
1577 macro substitution\&.
1578 .\"Macro Substitution"
1580 Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is important. If
1581 the appropriate action is missing, search continues as if this rule
1582 didn't match (i.e. if a file matches the first and second entry and View
1583 action is missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View action
1584 from the second entry will be used).
1586 should match all the actions.
1587 .\"NODE " Background jobs"
1588 .SH " Background Jobs"
1589 This lets you control the state of any background Midnight Commander
1590 process (only copy and move files operations can be done in the
1591 background). You can stop, restart and kill a background job from
1593 .\"NODE " Edit Menu File"
1594 .SH " Edit Menu File"
1595 The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by
1596 the user. When you access the user menu, the
1597 file .mc.menu from the current directory is used if it exists,
1598 but only if it is owned by user or root and is not world\-writable.
1599 If no such file found, ~/.config/mc/menu is tried in the same way,
1600 and otherwise mc uses the default system\-wide menu
1601 %prefix%/share/mc/mc.menu.
1603 The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with
1604 anything but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in
1605 order to be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should
1606 be a letter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the
1607 commands that will be executed when the entry is selected.
1609 When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
1610 copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
1611 /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
1612 normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
1613 takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
1615 macro substitution\&.
1616 .\"Macro Substitution"
1618 Here is a sample mc.menu file:
1621 A Dump the currently selected file
1624 B Edit a bug report and send it to root
1625 I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:\-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
1627 mail \-s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
1636 H Call the info hypertext browser
1639 J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
1640 tar cf \- . | (cd %D && tar xvpf \-)
1642 K Make a release of the current subdirectory
1643 echo \-n "Name of distribution file: "
1645 ln \-s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
1647 tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
1649 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1650 X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
1654 .B Default Conditions
1656 Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
1657 start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
1658 true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
1661 Condition syntax: = <sub\-cond>
1662 or: = <sub\-cond> | <sub\-cond> ...
1663 or: = <sub\-cond> & <sub\-cond> ...
1665 Sub\-condition is one of following:
1667 y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
1668 (for edit menu only)
1669 f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
1670 F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
1671 d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
1672 D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
1673 t <type> current file of type?
1674 T <type> other file of type?
1675 x <filename> is it executable filename?
1676 ! <sub\-cond> negate the result of sub\-condition
1679 Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according
1680 to the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of
1681 the shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first
1682 line of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
1684 Type is one or more of the following characters:
1699 For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't'
1700 type is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the
1701 file. The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the
1702 current panel and false if not.
1704 If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
1705 shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
1707 The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
1709 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1713 ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
1716 Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
1719 = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
1720 L List the contents of a compressed tar\-archive
1721 gzip \-cd %f | tar xvf \-
1724 .B Addition Conditions
1726 If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
1727 is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
1728 be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
1729 not be included in the menu.
1731 You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
1732 with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
1733 want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
1734 defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
1735 starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
1737 Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
1738 with '#', space or tab.
1739 .\"NODE " Options Menu"
1741 The Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled on and
1742 off in several dialogs which are accessible from this menu. Options
1743 are enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them.
1749 command pops up a dialog from which you can change most of settings of
1750 the Midnight Commander.
1756 command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of options how mc
1757 looks like on the screen.
1763 command pops up a dialog from which you specify options of file manager panels.
1769 command pops up a dialog from which you specify which actions you want to
1776 command pops up a dialog from which you specify the skin.
1782 command pops up a dialog from which you may select which characters is your
1783 terminal able to display.
1789 command pops up a dialog from which you test some keys which are not working
1790 on some terminals and you may fix them.
1796 command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS related options.
1802 command saves the current settings of the Left, Right and Options
1803 menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
1804 .\"NODE " Configuration"
1805 .SH " Configuration"
1806 The options in this dialog are divided into several groups: "File
1807 operation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run" and "Other options".
1809 .B File operation options
1811 .I Verbose operation.
1812 This toggles whether the file Copy, Rename and Delete operations are
1813 verbose (i.e., display a dialog box for each operation). If you have a
1814 slow terminal, you may wish to disable the verbose operation. It is
1815 automatically turned off if the speed of your terminal is less than
1819 If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander computes total byte
1820 sizes and total number of files prior to any Copy, Rename and Delete
1821 operations. This will provide you with a more accurate progress bar
1822 at the expense of some speed. This option has no effect, if
1823 .I Verbose operation
1826 .I Classic progressbar.
1827 If this option is enabled, the progressbar of Copy/Move/Delete operations
1828 is always grown form left to right. If disabled, the growing direction
1829 of progressbar follows to direction of Copy/Move/Delete operation:
1830 from left panel to right one and vice versa. Enabled by default.
1833 When you press F7 to create a new directory, the input line in popup dialog
1834 will be filled by name of current file or directory in active panel.
1835 Disabled by default.
1837 .I Preallocate space.
1838 Preallocate space for whole target file, if possible, before copy operation.
1839 Disabled by default.
1843 By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key prefix.
1844 Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to exit a dialog. But there is
1845 a possibility to use a single press of ESC key for that action.
1848 By default this option is disabled. If you'll enable it, the ESC key
1849 will act as a prefix key for set up time interval (see
1851 option below), and if no extra keys have arrived, then the ESC key
1852 is interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).
1855 This options is used to setup the time interval (in microseconds)
1856 for single press of ESC key. By default, this inrerval is one second
1857 (1000000 microseconds). Also the timeout can be set via KEYBOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US
1858 environment variable (also in microseconds), which has higher priority
1859 than Timeout option value.
1863 After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can pause, so
1864 that you can examine the output of the command. There are three
1865 possible settings for this variable:
1868 Means that you do not want to see the output of your command. If you
1869 are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will be able to
1870 see the output of the command by typing C\-o.
1872 .I On dumb terminals.
1873 You will get the pause message on terminals that are not capable of
1874 showing the output of the last command executed (any terminal that is
1875 not an xterm or the Linux console).
1878 The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
1882 .I Use internal editor.
1883 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file editor is used to edit
1884 files. If the option is disabled, the editor specified in the
1886 environment variable is used.
1887 If no editor is specified,
1889 is used. See the section on the
1891 internal file editor\&.
1892 .\"Internal File Editor"
1894 .I Use internal viewer.
1895 If this option is enabled, the built\-in file viewer is used to view
1896 files. If the option is disabled, the pager specified in the
1898 environment variable is used.
1899 If no pager is specified, the
1901 command is used. See the section on the
1903 internal file viewer\&.
1904 .\"Internal File Viewer"
1906 .I Ask new file name.
1907 If this option is enabled, file name is asked before open new file in editor.
1910 If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup.
1911 Useful for building menus for non\-unixers.
1914 When this option is enabled, the pull down menus will be activated as
1915 soon as you press the F9 key. Otherwise, you will only get the menu title,
1916 and you will have to activate the menu either with the arrow keys or with
1917 the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using hotkeys.
1920 By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands will use shell\-like
1921 regular expressions. The following conversions are performed to achieve
1922 this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?'
1923 is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and '.' by the literal
1924 dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular expressions are the
1925 ones described in ed(1).
1927 .I Complete: show all.
1928 By default the Midnight Commander pops up all possible
1932 if the completion is ambiguous only when you press
1934 for the second time. For the first time, it just completes as much as
1935 possible and beeps in the case of ambiguity. Enable this option if you
1936 want to see all possible completions even after pressing
1941 If this option is enabled, the
1942 Midnight Commander shows a rotating dash in the upper right corner
1943 as a work in progress indicator.
1945 .I Cd follows links.
1946 This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander to follow the
1947 logical chain of directories when changing current directory
1948 either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
1949 behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows the
1950 real directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory
1951 through a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
1952 and not to the directory where the link was present.
1955 If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory hotlist entries
1956 unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default selection in the
1957 confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes" to "No".
1958 This option is disabled by default.
1961 If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
1962 configurable options of the Midnight Commander are saved in the
1963 ~/.config/mc/ini file.
1966 The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
1967 of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into several groups:
1968 "Panel split", "Console output" and "Other options".
1972 The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You
1973 can specify whether the area is split to the panels in
1977 direction. Panel layout can be changed using Alt\-, (Alt\-comma) shortcut.
1980 By default, panels have equal sizes. Using this option you can specify
1985 On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are shown
1986 in the output window. This option is available if Midnight Commander runs
1987 on native console only.
1991 .I Menu bar visible.
1992 If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is always visible on the top row
1993 of screen above panels. Enabled by default.
1996 If enabled, command line is avalable. Enabled by default.
1999 If enabled, 10 lables associated with F1\-F10 keys are located at the bottom
2000 row of screen. Enabled by default.
2003 If enabled, the one\-line hints are visible below panels. Enabled by default.
2005 .I XTerm window title.
2006 When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight Commander sets the
2007 terminal window title to the current working directory and updates it
2008 when necessary. If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some
2009 incorrect output on startup and directory change, turn off this option.
2013 If enabled, free space and total space of current file system is shown
2014 at the bottom frame of panel. Enabled by default.
2015 .\"NODE " Panel options"
2016 .SH " Panel options"
2017 .B Main panel options
2019 .I Show mini\-status.
2020 If enabled, one line of status information about the currently selected item
2021 is shown at the bottom of the panels. Enabled by default.
2023 .I Use SI size units.
2024 If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander will use SI units (powers of 1000)
2025 when displaying any byte sizes. The suffixes (k, m ...) are shown in lowercase.
2026 If disabled (default), Midnight Commander will use binary units (powers of 1024)
2027 and the suffixes are shown in upper case (K, M ...)
2030 If this option is enabled, all files and directories are shown mixed
2031 together. If the option is disabled (default), directories (and links to
2032 directories) are shown at the beginning of the listing, and other files below.
2034 .I Show backup files.
2035 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show files ending with a tilde.
2036 Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls option \-B). Enabled by default.
2038 .I Show hidden files.
2039 If enabled, the Midnight Commander will show all files that start with
2040 a dot (like ls \-a). Disabled by default.
2042 .I Fast directory reload.
2043 If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander will use a trick to
2044 determine if the directory contents have changed. The trick is to reload
2045 the directory only if the i\-node of the directory has changed; this means
2046 that reloads only happen when files are created or deleted. If what
2047 changes is the i\-node for a file in the directory (file size changes,
2048 mode or owner changes, etc) the display is not updated. In these cases,
2049 if you have the option on, you have to rescan the directory manually
2050 (with C\-r). Disabled by default.
2053 If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you mark a file (with
2054 Insert key). Enabled by default.
2056 .I Reverse files only.
2057 Allow revert selection of files only. Enabled by default.
2058 If enabled, the reverse selection is applied to files only, not to directories.
2059 The selection of directories is untouched. If off, the reverse selection
2060 is applied to files as well to directories: all unselected items become
2061 selected, and vice versa.
2064 If both panels contain file listing, simple swap means that panels exchange
2065 its screen positions: left panel become right one, and vice versa. If this
2066 option is unchecked, file listing panels exchange its content keeping listing
2067 format and sort options. Unchecked by default.
2069 .I Auto save panels setup.
2070 If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
2071 current settings of panels are saved in the ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file.
2072 Disabled by default.
2076 .I Lynx\-like motion.
2077 If this option is enabled, you may use the arrows keys to automatically
2078 chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory and the shell command
2079 line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
2082 If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when the
2083 cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, otherwise it
2084 will just scroll a file at a time.
2086 .I Mouse page scrolling.
2087 Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel is done by pages or
2088 line by line on the panels.
2092 You can specify whether
2096 should be highlighted with distinctive
2100 If the permission highlighting is enabled, the parts of the
2107 which apply to the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with
2108 the color defined by the
2110 keyword. If the file type highlighting is enabled, file names are colored
2111 according to rules described in
2112 %sysconfdir%/mc/filehighlight.ini
2116 .\"Filenames Highlight"
2121 You can specify how the
2125 mode should works: case insensitively, case sensitively or be matched
2126 to the the panel sort order: case sensitive or not.
2127 .\"NODE " Confirmation"
2129 In this dialog you configure the confirmation options for file deletion,
2130 overwriting files, execution by pressing enter, quitting the program,
2131 directory hotlist entries deletion and history cleanup.
2132 .\"NODE " Appearance"
2134 In this dialog you can select the skin to be used.
2140 section for technical details about the skin definition files.
2141 .\"NODE " Display bits"
2143 This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
2144 screen. This setting may be 7\-bits if your terminal/curses supports
2145 only seven output bits, ISO\-8859\-1 displays all the characters in the
2146 ISO\-8859\-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
2147 full 8 bit characters.
2148 .\"NODE " Learn keys"
2150 This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys, cursor
2151 arrows and some other keys to make them work properly on your terminal.
2152 They often don't, since many terminal databases are incomplete or broken.
2154 You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h'
2155 left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor movement
2156 key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
2158 You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a
2159 key and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name
2160 of that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually,
2161 e.g. F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works,
2162 but after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys.
2163 The Tab key should be working always.
2165 If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after
2166 pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by pressing
2167 the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or by Enter
2168 or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then a message
2169 box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait until the
2170 message box disappears. If you want to abort, just press Escape once
2173 When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions
2174 for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [terminal:TERM]
2175 section of your ~/.config/mc/ini file (where TERM is the name of your current
2176 terminal). The definitions of the keys that were already working properly
2178 .\"NODE " Virtual FS"
2180 This option gives you control over the settings of the
2182 Virtual File System\&.
2183 .\"Virtual File System"
2185 The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information related to some
2186 of the virtual file systems to speed up the access to the files in the
2187 file system (for example, directory listings fetched from FTP servers).
2189 Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for example,
2190 compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander needs to create temporary
2191 uncompressed files on your disk.
2193 Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk
2194 take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
2195 information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
2196 access to frequently used file systems.
2198 Because of the format of the tar archives, the
2200 needs to read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most
2201 tar files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in
2202 extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
2203 in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a
2206 Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
2207 it's common that you will leave a tar file and then re\-enter it later.
2208 Since decompression is slow, the Midnight Commander will cache the
2209 information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires, all
2210 the resources associated with the file system are released. The default
2211 timeout is set to one minute.
2217 (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote FTP servers. It has
2220 .I ftp anonymous password
2221 is the password used when you login as "anonymous". Some sites require
2222 a valid e\-mail address. On the other hand, you probably don't want to
2223 give your real e\-mail address to untrusted sites, especially if you are
2224 not using spam filtering.
2226 ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a cache.
2227 The cache expire time is configurable with the
2228 .I ftpfs directory cache timeout
2229 option. A low value for this option may slow down every operation on
2230 the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a request to the
2233 You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern
2234 firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below), so
2235 FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
2238 .I Always use ftp proxy
2239 is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to enable proxy for certain
2246 If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the
2247 %prefix%/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that
2248 are local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a
2249 domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names are
2250 directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the
2251 specified FTP proxy.
2253 You can enable using
2255 file, which keeps login names and passwords for ftp servers. See netrc
2256 (5) for the description of the .netrc format.
2259 enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection for data transfer is
2260 initiated by the client, not by the server. This option is recommended
2261 and enabled by default. If this option is turned off, the data
2262 connection is initiated by the server. This may not work with some
2264 .\"NODE " Save Setup"
2266 At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
2267 information from the ~/.config/mc/ini file. If this file
2268 doesn't exist, it will load the information from the system\-wide
2269 configuration file, located in %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ini. If the
2270 system\-wide configuration file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
2274 command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by saving the
2275 current settings of the
2278 .\"Left and Right Menus"
2287 option, MC will always save the current settings when exiting.
2289 There also exist settings which can't be changed from the menus. To
2290 change these settings you have to edit the setup file with your
2291 favorite editor. See the section on
2294 .\"Special Settings"
2295 for more information.
2297 .\"NODE "Executing operating system commands"
2298 .SH "Executing operating system commands"
2299 You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight
2300 Commander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to
2301 execute with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
2303 If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the Midnight
2304 Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the
2308 .\"Edit Extension File"
2309 If a match is found then the code associated with that extension is
2310 executed. A very simple
2313 .\"Macro Substitution"
2314 takes place before executing the command.
2315 .\"NODE " The cd internal command"
2316 .SH " The cd internal command"
2319 command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander, it is not passed to
2320 the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle all of the
2321 nice macro expansion and substitution that your shell does, although it
2324 .I Tilde substitution.
2325 The (~) will be substituted with your home directory, if you append a
2326 username after the tilde, then it will be substituted with the login
2327 directory of the specified user.
2329 For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
2330 ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
2332 .I Previous directory.
2333 You can jump to the directory you were previously by using the special
2334 directory name '\-' like this:
2337 .I CDPATH directories.
2338 If the directory specified to the
2340 command is not in the current directory, then The Midnight Commander
2341 uses the value in the environment variable
2343 to search for the directory in any of the named directories.
2345 For example you could set your
2347 variable to ~/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to
2348 any of the directories inside the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from
2349 any place in the file system by using its relative name (for example
2350 cd linux could take you to /usr/src/linux).
2351 .\"NODE " Macro Substitution"
2352 .SH " Macro Substitution"
2359 extension dependent command\&,
2360 .\"Edit Extension File"
2361 or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
2362 substitution takes place.
2367 The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column position. For edit
2371 The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
2374 The block file name.
2377 The error file name.
2380 The current menu name.
2383 The current file name.
2386 The extension of current file name.
2389 The current file name without extension.
2392 The current directory name.
2395 The current file in the unselected panel.
2398 The directory name of the unselected panel.
2401 The currently tagged files.
2404 The tagged files in the unselected panel.
2407 Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are untagged.
2408 You can use this macro only once per menu file entry or extension file
2409 entry, because next time there will be no tagged files.
2412 The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise the
2416 This is a special macro that is used to change the current directory
2417 to the directory specified in front of it. This is used primarily as
2420 Virtual File System\&.
2421 .\"Virtual File System"
2424 This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This macro can be
2425 used alone, or with arguments. If you pass any arguments to this
2426 macro, they should be enclosed in brackets.
2430 to force the viewer into ascii mode;
2432 to force the viewer into hex mode;
2434 to tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold and underline
2437 to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the text
2444 Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and the text inside
2445 the braces is used as a prompt. The macro is substituted by the text
2446 typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10 to cancel. This macro
2447 doesn't work on the command line yet.
2449 .I %var{ENV:default}
2450 If environment variable
2454 is substituted. Otherwise, the value of
2457 .\"NODE " The subshell support"
2458 .SH " The subshell support"
2459 The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
2460 shells: bash, ash (BusyBox and Debian), tcsh, zsh and fish.
2462 When the subshell support is active, Midnight Commander will
2463 spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the
2465 variable and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd
2466 file) and run it in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell
2467 each time you execute a command, the command will be passed to the
2468 subshell as if you had typed it. This also allows you to change the
2469 environment variables, use shell functions and define aliases that are
2470 valid until you quit the Midnight Commander.
2473 users may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc (fallback ~/.bashrc)
2474 and special keyboard maps in ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc (fallback ~/.inputrc).
2477 users (BusyBox or Debian) may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/ashrc (fallback ~/.profile).
2480 users cannot specify mc-specific startup commands at present. They have to rely on
2481 shell-specific startup files.
2483 The following paragraphs are relevant only when the subshell support is
2486 You can suspend applications at any
2487 time with the sequence C\-o and jump back to the Midnight Commander, if
2488 you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other
2489 external commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
2491 The basic prompt displayed by Midnight Commander is of the form
2492 "user@host:current_path$ ". When using a capable shell, like Bash, the
2493 prompt displayed by Midnight Commander will be the same prompt that you
2494 are currently using in your shell.
2496 (There's a known problem when using fish: the prompt is displayed only in
2497 full screen mode (Ctrl-o), not when the panels are visible.)
2503 section has more information on how you can control subshell usage (-U/-u).
2504 Furthermore, to set a specific subshell different from your current SHELL variable or
2505 login shell defined in /etc/passwd, you may call MC like this:
2506 .B SHELL=/bin/myshell mc
2509 The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
2510 files and directories. It can be invoked with the C\-x c key combination.
2512 The Chmod window has two parts \-
2517 In the File section are displayed the name of the file or directory
2518 and its permissions in octal form, as well as its owner and group.
2520 In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons which
2521 correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute
2522 bits, you can see the octal value change in the File section.
2524 To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the
2528 key. To change the state of the check buttons or to select a button
2531 You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate them.
2532 Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on the buttons.
2534 To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
2536 When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on
2537 the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits
2538 you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked
2541 Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
2544 button, which will act on all the tagged files.
2547 set only marked attributes to all selected files
2550 set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2553 clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
2556 set the attributes of one file
2559 cancel the Chmod command
2562 The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
2563 key for this command is C\-x o.
2564 .\"NODE "Advanced Chown"
2565 .SH "Advanced Chown"
2566 The Advanced Chown command is the
2574 command combined into one window. You can change the permissions and
2575 owner/group of files at once.
2576 .\"NODE "File Operations"
2577 .SH "File Operations"
2578 When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander shows the
2579 file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being processed
2580 and uses up to three progress bars. The file bar indicates the
2581 percentage of the current file that has been processed so far. The
2582 count bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The
2583 bytes bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files
2584 that has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes
2587 There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
2588 button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort
2589 button will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are
2592 There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
2595 The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices.
2596 Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file or the Abort
2597 button to abort the operation altogether. You can also select the Retry
2598 button if you fixed the problem from another terminal.
2600 The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
2601 the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
2602 the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
2603 button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
2604 None button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if the
2605 source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
2606 operation by pressing the Abort button.
2608 The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
2609 which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory
2610 recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the All button to
2611 delete all the directories and the None button to skip all the non\-empty
2612 directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing the Abort
2613 button. If you selected the Yes or All button you will be asked for a
2614 confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you want to do the
2617 If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them only the files
2618 on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped files
2620 .\"NODE "Mask Copy/Rename"
2621 .SH "Mask Copy/Rename"
2622 The copy/move operations let you translate the names of files in an
2623 easy way. To do it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
2624 usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
2625 All the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
2626 the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
2627 matching the source mask are renamed.
2629 There are other options which you can set:
2633 determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source
2634 directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target
2635 directory or whether would you like to copy their content.
2637 .B Dive into subdirs
2639 determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be copied,
2640 but the target directory already exists. The default action is to copy
2641 the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
2642 Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into the
2645 For example, you want to copy directory
2651 which is an already existing directory. Normally (when
2652 .B Dive into subdirs
2653 is not set), mc would copy file
2657 By enabling this option the
2659 directory will be created, and
2662 .IR /bla/foo/foo/bar .
2664 .B Preserve attributes
2666 determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you
2667 are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is not
2668 set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
2670 .B Use shell patterns
2672 When this option is on you can use the '*' and '?' wildcards in the source
2673 mask. They work like they do in the shell. In the target mask only the '*'
2674 and '\\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The first '*' wildcard in the target
2675 mask corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source mask,
2676 the second '*' corresponds to the second group and so on. The '\\1' wildcard
2677 corresponds to the first wildcard group in the source mask, the '\\2' wildcard
2678 corresponds to the second group and so on all the way up to '\\9'.
2679 The '\\0' wildcard is the whole filename of the source file.
2683 If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is "/bla/*.tgz" and the
2684 file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy will be "foo.tgz" in "/bla".
2686 Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c" would
2687 become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and the
2688 destination is "\\2.\\1".
2690 .B Use shell patterns off
2692 When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
2693 grouping anymore. You must use '\\(...\\)' expressions in the source
2694 mask to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is
2695 more flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks
2696 are similar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
2700 If the source mask is "^\\(.*\\)\\.tar\\.gz$", the destination is
2701 "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy
2702 will be "/bla/foo.tgz".
2704 Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
2705 will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
2706 "^\\(.*\\)\\.\\(.*\\)$" and the destination is "\\2.\\1".
2710 You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\\u'
2711 or '\\l' in the target mask, the next character will be converted to
2712 uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.
2714 If you use '\\U' or '\\L' in the target mask, the next characters will
2715 be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the
2716 next '\\E' or next '\\U', '\\L' or the end of the file name.
2718 The '\\u' and '\\l' are stronger than '\\U' and '\\L'.
2720 For example, if the source mask is '*' (
2721 .I Use shell patterns
2722 on) or '^\\(.*\\)$' (
2723 .I Use shell patterns
2724 off) and the target mask is '\\L\\u*' the file names will be converted
2725 to have initial upper case and otherwise lower case.
2727 You can also use '\\' as a quote character. For example, '\\\\' is
2728 a backslash and '\\*' is an asterisk.
2732 commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks in the target,
2733 so that they'll point to the same location as it did before. With absolute
2734 symbolic links this does nothing, but if you have a relative one, it will
2735 recompute its value, adding necessary ../ and other directory parts and making
2736 the value as short as possible (most modern filesystems keep short symlinks
2737 inside inodes and thus don't waste much disk space).
2739 .\"NODE "Select/Unselect Files"
2740 .SH "Select/Unselect Files"
2741 The dialog of group of files and directories selection or uselection.
2746 allow enter the regular expression of filenames that will be
2747 selected/unselected.
2751 checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If
2753 is off, as files as directories will be selected.
2756 checkbox is on, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
2757 in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing
2758 for one character). If
2760 is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
2761 expressions (see ed (1)). When
2763 checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.
2766 is off, the case will be ignored.
2767 .\"NODE "Diff Viewer"
2768 .SH "Internal Diff Viewer"
2769 The mcdiff is a visual diff tool. You can compare two files and edit them
2770 in\-place (diffs are updated dynamically). You can browse and view a working
2771 copy from popular version control systems (GIT, Subversion, etc).
2773 Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of Midnight
2777 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2780 Save modified files.
2783 Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
2786 Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
2789 Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be merged.
2798 Exit from diff viewer.
2801 Toggle show of hunk status.
2804 Toggle show of line numbers.
2807 Maximize left panel.
2810 Make panels equal in width.
2813 Reduce the size of the right panel.
2816 Reduce the size of the left panel.
2819 Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2825 Swap contents of diff panels.
2831 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2834 Find next diff hunk.
2837 Find previous diff hunk.
2843 Scroll one line forward.
2846 Scroll one line backward.
2855 Moves to the line beginning.
2858 Moves to the line end.
2861 Move to the file beginning.
2864 Move to the file end.
2865 .\"NODE "Internal File Viewer"
2866 .SH "Internal File Viewer"
2867 The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex.
2868 To toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
2870 The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or
2871 the file type to display the information.
2872 Some character sequences, which appear most often in preformatted manual
2873 pages, are displayed bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display
2876 When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and
2877 constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing
2878 the quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text
2879 with constants like this:
2882 "String" \-1 0xBB 012 "more text"
2885 Note that 012 is an octal number. \-1 is converted to 0xFF.
2887 Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the
2888 Midnight Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
2891 Invoke the built\-in hypertext help viewer.
2894 Toggle the wrap mode.
2897 Toggle the hex mode.
2900 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display
2904 Regular expression search.
2907 Reverse regular expression search.
2910 Normal search / hex mode search.
2913 Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else
2917 Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else
2921 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or if
2922 a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the
2923 output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
2924 on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter
2928 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
2929 will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with
2930 different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
2933 Exit the internal file viewer.
2935 .B next\-page, space, C\-v.
2936 Scroll one page forward.
2938 .B prev\-page, Alt\-v, C\-b, Backspace.
2939 Scroll one page backward.
2942 Scroll one line forward.
2945 Scroll one line backward.
2951 Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
2960 Jump to the next file.
2963 Jump to the previous file.
2969 to change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
2970 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
2971 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
2974 It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
2977 Edit Extension File section
2978 .\"Edit Extension File"
2980 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor"
2981 .SH "Internal File Editor"
2982 The internal file editor is a full\-featured full screen editor. It can
2983 edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible to edit binary files.
2984 The internal file editor is invoked using
2987 .I use_internal_edit
2988 option is set in the initialization file.
2990 The features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
2991 paste; key for key undo; pull\-down menus; file insertion; macro
2992 commands; regular expression search and replace; shift\-arrow text highlighting
2993 (if supported by the terminal); insert\-overwrite toggle; word wrap;
2994 autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file
2995 types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands like
3001 Options of editor in ini\-file
3002 .\"Internal File Editor / options"
3004 The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To see what
3005 keys do what, just consult the appropriate pull\-down menu. Other keys
3006 are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting.
3012 pastes from mcedit.clip.
3018 deletes highlighted text. Mouse highlighting also works, and you
3019 can override the mouse as usual by holding down the shift key
3020 while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal mouse highlighting
3023 To define a macro, press
3025 and then type out the key
3026 strokes you want to be executed. Press
3028 again when finished. You can then assign the macro to any key you
3029 like by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you press
3031 and then the assigned key. The macro is also executed if
3032 you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, provided that the
3033 key is not used for any other function. Once defined, the macro
3034 commands go into the file
3035 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.macros
3036 You can delete a macro by deleting the
3037 appropriate line in this file.
3039 To change charset of displayed text may use M\-e (Alt\-e).
3040 Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
3041 cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset
3045 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or
3049 code or another). This is controlled by the
3051 .B %prefix%/share/mc/edit.indent.rc
3053 .B ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/edit.indent.rc
3054 in your home directory the first time you use it.
3056 The editor also displays non\-us characters (160+). When editing
3057 binary files, you should set
3059 to 7 bits in the options menu to keep the spacing clean.
3061 .\"NODE "Internal File Editor / options"
3062 .SH "Options of editor in ini\-file"
3064 Some editor options of ini\-file are described in this section.
3065 Options are placed in [Midnight\-Commander] section
3067 .I editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
3068 Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or just from
3069 begin of file to cursor position (0)
3071 .\"NODE "Screen selector"
3072 .SH "Screen selector"
3073 Midnight Commander supports running many internal modules (such as
3074 editor, viewer and diff viewer) simultaneously and switching between
3075 them without closing open files. Using several file managers at a time,
3076 however, is not currently supported.
3078 Let's call each of these modules a screen. There are three ways to
3079 switch between screens, using one of these global shortcuts:
3082 switch to the next screen;
3085 switch to the previous screen;
3088 open a dialog window with the list of currently open screens (or use the
3089 "Screen list" menu item).
3090 .\"NODE "Completion"
3092 Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
3094 Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
3095 attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins
3098 username (if the text begins with
3100 hostname (if the text begins with
3102 or command (if you are on the command line in the position where you
3103 might type a command, possible completions then include shell reserved
3104 words and shell built\-in commands as well) in turn. If none of these
3105 matches, filename completion is attempted.
3107 Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
3108 lines, command completion is command line specific. If the completion
3109 is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
3110 following action depends on the setting of the
3118 dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all possibilities pops up next to
3119 the current position and you can select with the arrow keys and
3121 the correct entry. You can also type the first letters in which the
3122 possibilities differ to move to a subset of all possibilities and
3123 complete as much as possible. If you press
3125 again, only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise the first
3126 item which matches all the previous characters will be highlighted. As
3127 soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears, but you can hide it by
3131 and left and right arrow keys. If
3135 is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
3137 for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
3140 .BR ? ", " * " and " &
3141 symbols (as \fB\\?\fR, \fB\\*\fR, \fB\\&\fR )
3142 in filenames to disallow use them as metasymbols in regular expressions
3143 when substitution is performed in the input line.
3145 .\"NODE "Virtual File System"
3146 .SH "Virtual File System"
3147 The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the file
3148 system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system switch. The
3149 virtual file system switch allows the Midnight Commander to manipulate
3150 files not located on the Unix file system.
3152 Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
3155 file system, used for accessing the regular Unix file system; the
3157 used to manipulate files on remote systems with the FTP protocol; the
3159 used to manipulate tar and compressed tar files; the
3161 used to recover deleted files on ext2 file systems (the default file
3162 system for Linux systems),
3164 (for manipulating files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh).
3165 If the code was compiled with
3167 (for manipulating files over SFTP connections).
3168 If the code was compiled with
3170 support, you can manipulate files on remote systems with the SMB (CIFS)
3175 (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to easily expand
3176 VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.
3178 The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
3179 forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each one
3180 of the file systems is described later in their own section.
3181 .\"NODE " FTP File System"
3182 .SH " FTP File System"
3183 The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files on remote
3184 machines. To actually use it, you can use the
3186 item in the menu or directly change your current directory using the
3188 command to a path name that looks like this:
3190 .I ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote\-dir]
3197 elements are optional. If you specify the
3199 element, the Midnight Commander will login to the remote machine as that
3200 user, otherwise it will use anonymous login or the login name from the
3204 element is the password used for the connection. Using the password in
3205 the VFS directory name is not recommended, because it can appear on the
3206 screen in clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
3208 To enable using FTP proxy, prepend
3210 (an exclamation sign) to the hostname.
3215 ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
3216 ftp://tsx\-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
3217 ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
3218 ftp://guest@remote\-host.com:40/pub
3219 ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
3226 dialog box for ftpfs options.
3227 .\"NODE " Tar File System"
3228 .SH " Tar File System"
3229 The tar file system provides you with read\-only access to your tar
3230 files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command. To change
3231 your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
3232 tar file by using the following syntax:
3234 .I /filename.tar/utar://[dir\-inside\-tar]
3236 The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
3237 that usually you just point to a tar file and press return to enter
3238 into the tar file, see the
3241 .\"Edit Extension File"
3242 section for details on how this is done.
3247 mc\-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc\-3.0/vfs
3248 /ftp/GCC/gcc\-2.7.0.tar/utar://
3251 The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
3252 .\"NODE " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3253 .SH " FIle transfer over SHell filesystem"
3254 The fish file system is a network based file system that allows you to
3255 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local. To use
3256 this, the other side has to either run fish server, or has to have
3257 bash\-compatible shell.
3259 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
3260 into a special directory which name is in the following
3263 .I sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote\-dir]
3270 elements are optional. If you specify the
3272 element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
3273 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
3279 'C' \- use compression;
3280 'r' \- use rsh instead of ssh;
3281 port \- specify the port used by remote server.
3285 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
3291 sh://onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
3292 sh://joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
3293 sh://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
3294 sh://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
3296 .\"NODE " SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem"
3297 .SH " SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem"
3298 The SFTP file system is a network based file system that allows you to
3299 manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they were local.
3301 To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
3302 into a special directory which name is in the following
3305 .I sftp://[user@]machine:[port]/[remote\-dir]
3312 elements are optional. If you specify the
3314 element, the Midnight Commander will try to login on the remote
3315 machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
3317 \- specify the port used by remote server (22 by default).
3320 element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will be
3326 sftp://onlyrsh.mx/linux/local
3327 sftp://joe:password@want.compression.edu/private
3328 sftp://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
3329 sftp://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
3331 .\"NODE " Undelete File System"
3332 .SH " Undelete File System"
3333 On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs undelete
3334 facilities, you will have the undelete file system available.
3335 Recovery of deleted files is only available on ext2 file systems. The
3336 undelete file system is just an interface to the ext2fs library to
3337 retrieve all of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and
3338 to extract the selected files into a regular partition.
3340 To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special file name
3341 formed by the "undel://" prefix and the file name where the actual
3342 file system resides.
3344 For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
3345 first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
3351 It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
3352 before you start browsing files there.
3353 .\"NODE " SMB File System"
3354 .SH " SMB File System"
3355 The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines with SMB
3356 (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for Workgroups,
3357 Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Samba.
3358 To actually use it, you may try to use the panel command "SMB link..."
3359 (accessible from the menubar) or you may directly change your current
3360 directory to it using the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
3362 .I smb://[user@]machine[/service][/remote\-dir]
3369 elements are optional.
3375 can be specified in an input dialog.
3382 smb://guest@machine/Public/Irlex
3384 .\"NODE " EXTernal File System"
3385 .SH " EXTernal File System"
3387 allows you to integrate numerous features and file types into GNU Midnight
3388 Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.
3390 Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
3392 1. Stand\-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
3393 file. They represent certain system\-wide data as a directory tree.
3394 You can invoke them by typing
3395 .RI ' "cd fsname://" '
3396 where fsname is an extfs short name (see below). Examples of such
3397 filesystems include audio (list audio tracks on the CD) or apt (list of
3398 all Debian packages in the system).
3400 For example, to list CD\-Audio tracks on your CD\-ROM drive, type
3406 2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which represent
3407 contents of a file as a directory tree. It can consist of 'real' files
3408 compressed in an archive (urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages
3409 in a mailbox (mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
3412 should be appended to the archive name. Note that the archive itself
3413 can be on another vfs.
3415 For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip type
3418 cd documents.zip/uzip://
3421 In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory. For
3422 instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from directory
3423 history. An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell
3424 commands inside extfs, just like any other non\-local VFS.
3426 Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
3429 access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette
3433 front end to Debian's APT package management system
3434 .RI ( "cd apt://" ).
3437 audio CD ripping and playing
3440 .IR "cd device/audio://" ).
3443 package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution
3444 .RI ( "cd file.bpp/bpp://" ).
3447 package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution
3448 .RI ( "cd file.deb/deb://" ).
3451 Debian GNU/Linux installed packages
3452 .RI ( "cd deb://" ).
3455 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator
3456 .RI ( "cd hp48://" ).
3459 browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs
3460 .RI ( "cd filename/lslR://" ).
3463 mbox\-style mailbox files support
3464 .RI ( "cd mailbox/mailfs://" ).
3467 extfs to handle unified and context diffs
3468 .RI ( "cd filename/patchfs://" ).
3472 .RI ( "cd filename/rpm://" ).
3475 RPM database management
3476 .RI ( "cd rpms://" ).
3478 .B ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
3480 .RI ( "cd archive/xxxx://"
3481 where xxxx is one of:
3489 You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as described in the
3492 .\"Edit Extension File"
3493 section. Here is an example entry for Debian packages:
3501 The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
3502 color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Sometimes
3503 it gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode
3504 using the \-c and \-b flag respectively.
3506 If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
3507 ncurses, it will also check the variable
3509 if it is set, it has the same effect as the \-c flag.
3511 You may specify terminals that always force color mode
3514 variable to the Colors section of the initialization file. This will
3515 prevent the Midnight Commander from trying to detect if your terminal
3516 supports color. Example:
3520 color_terminals=linux,xterm
3521 color_terminals=terminal\-name1,terminal\-name2...
3524 The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang, ncurses does
3525 not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the
3526 information in the terminal database.
3528 The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
3529 Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
3531 or the Colors section in the initialization file.
3533 In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the
3535 variable. You can specify an alternate color map for a terminal by
3536 using the terminal name as the key in this section. Example:
3541 xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
3544 The format for the color definition is:
3547 <keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
3550 The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal, selected, disabled, marked,
3551 markselect, errors, input, inputmark, inputunchanged, commandlinemark,
3552 reverse, gauge, header, inputhistory, commandhistory. Button bar colors are:
3553 bbarhotkey, bbarbutton. Status bar color: statusbar. Menu colors are: menunormal,
3554 menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, menuinactive. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus,
3555 dhotnormal, dhotfocus, dtitle. Error dialog colors are: errdfocus, errdhotnormal,
3556 errdhotfocus, errdtitle. Help colors are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold,
3557 helplink, helpslink, helptitle. Viewer colors are: viewnormal, viewbold,
3558 viewunderline, viewselected. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked,
3559 editwhitespace, editlinestate. Popup menu colors are: pmenunormal, pmenusel,
3563 determines the color of panel header, the line that contains column titles
3564 and sort mode indicator.
3567 determines the color of input lines used in query dialogs.
3570 determines the color of the filled part of the progress bar (gauge),
3571 which is used to show the user the progress of file operations, such as
3575 determines the color of the widget that cannot be selected.
3577 The dialog boxes use the following colors:
3579 is used for the normal text,
3581 is the color used for the currently selected component,
3583 is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in normal
3584 components, whereas the
3586 color is used for the highlighted color in the currently selected
3589 Menus use the same scheme but uses the menunormal, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel
3590 and menuinactive tags instead.
3592 Help uses the following colors:
3594 is used for normal text,
3596 is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual page,
3598 is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the manual page,
3600 is used for not selected hyperlinks and
3602 is used for selected hyperlink.
3604 Popup menu uses following colors:
3606 is used for non\-selected menu items and as a main color of popup menu window,
3608 is used for selected menu item,
3610 is used for popup menu title.
3612 The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
3613 brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta,
3614 cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a special keyword
3615 for transparent background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be
3616 used for background color. Another special keyword "base" means mc's main
3617 colors. When 256 colors are available, they can be specified either as
3618 color16 to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and gray0 to gray23. Example:
3622 base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
3625 Attributes can be any of bold, italic, underline, reverse and blink, appended by a
3626 plus sign if more than one are desired. The special word "none" means no
3627 attributes, without attempting to fall back to base_color. Example:
3630 menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
3635 You can change the appearance of Midnight Commander.
3636 To do this, you must specify a file that contain descriptions of colors
3637 and lines to draw boxes. Redefining of the colors is entirely compatible
3638 with the assignment of colors, as described in Section
3643 If your skin contains any of 256\-color definitions, you should define
3644 the '256colors' key set to TRUE value in [skin] section.
3647 A skin\-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the first one found):
3650 1) command line option
3655 2) Environment variable
3661 .B [Midnight\-Commander]
3665 .B %sysconfdir%/mc/skins/default.ini
3668 .B %prefix%/share/mc/skins/default.ini
3671 Command line option, environment variable and parameter in config file may
3672 contain the absolute path to the skin\-file (with the extension \.ini
3673 or without it). Search of skin\-file will occur in (to the first one found):
3676 .B ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
3679 .B @sysconfdir@/mc/skins/
3682 .B %prefix%/share/mc/skins/
3686 For getting extended info, refer to:
3689 Description of section and parameters
3693 Color pair definitions
3705 .\"NODE " Skins sections"
3706 .SH " Description of section and parameters"
3710 contain metainfo for skin\-file. Parameter
3712 contain short text about skin.
3717 contain descriptions of color pairs for filenames highlighting.
3718 Name of parameters must be equal to names of sections into
3719 filehighlight.ini file.
3723 .\"Filenames Highlight"
3724 for getting more info.
3729 describes the elements that are used everywhere.
3732 Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they not contain
3742 cursor on selected data
3745 color of the filled part of the progress bar
3748 color of input lines used in query dialogs
3751 color of input selected text
3754 color of input text before first modification or cursor movement
3757 color of selected text in command line
3764 describes the elements that are placed on dialog windows (except error dialogs).
3767 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3770 Color of active element (in focus)
3776 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3781 describes the elements that are placed on error dialog windows
3784 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3790 Color of hotkeys in focused element
3795 describes the elements that are placed in menu. This section describes
3796 system menu (called by F9) and user\-defined menus (called by F2 in panels
3797 and by F11 in editor).
3800 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3806 Color of menu hotkeys
3809 Color of active menu item (in focus)
3812 Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
3815 Color of inactive menu
3820 describes the elements that are placed on help window.
3823 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3826 Color pair for element with
3831 Color pair for element with
3839 Color of active link (on focus)
3844 describes the colors of elements placed in editor.
3847 Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_ if not specified
3850 Color pair for element with
3855 Color of selected text
3858 Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
3861 Color for line state area
3866 describes the colors of elements placed in viewer.
3869 Color pair for element with
3873 .\"NODE " Skins colors"
3874 .SH " Color pair definitions"
3875 Any parameter in skin\-file contain definition of color pair.
3877 Color pairs described as two colors and the optional attributes
3878 separated by ';'. First field sets the foreground color, second
3879 field sets background color, third field sets the attributes.
3880 Any of the fields may be omitted, in this case value will be
3881 taken from default color pair (global color pair or from default
3882 color pair of this section).
3889 _default_=green;black
3890 # green (default) on blue
3892 # yellow on black (default)
3893 # underlined yellow on black (default)
3894 marked=yellow;;underline
3898 Possible colors (names) and attributes are described in
3904 .\"NODE " Skins lines"
3906 Lines sets in section
3908 into skin\-file. By default single lines are used, but you may redefine
3909 to usage of any utf\-8 symbols (like to lines, for example).
3912 When you build Midnight Commander with the Ncurses screen library
3913 usage of drawing lines is limited!
3914 Possible only drawing a single lines.
3915 For all questions and comments please contact the developers of Ncurses.
3918 Descriptions of parameters
3922 left\-top line fragment.
3925 right\-top line fragment.
3928 down branch of horizontal line
3931 up branch of horizontal line
3934 left\-bottom line fragment
3937 right\-bottom line fragment
3940 right branch of vertical line
3943 left branch of vertical line
3955 thin horizontal line
3961 .\"NODE " Skins oldcolors"
3962 .SH " Compatibility"
3964 Appointment of color by skin\-files fully compatible with
3965 the appointment of the colors described in
3971 In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the skin file and is
3974 .\"NODE "Filenames Highlight"
3975 .SH "Filenames Highlight"
3976 Section [filehighlight] in current skin\-file contains key names as
3977 highlight groups and values as color pairs. Color pairs is documented
3984 Rules of filenames highlight are placed in %prefix%/share/mc/filehighlight.ini file
3985 (~/.config/mc/filehighlight.ini).
3986 Name of section in this file must be equal to parameters names in
3987 [filehighlight] section (in current skin\-file).
3989 Keys in these groups are:
3992 file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
3995 regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is ignored.
3998 list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
4001 (make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make 'extensions'
4002 rule case sentitive (true) or not (false).
4004 `type' key may have values:
4008 \- DIR (all directories)
4010 \- LINK (all links except stale link)
4014 \- DEVICE (all device files)
4017 \- SPECIAL (all special files)
4024 .\"NODE "Special Settings"
4025 .SH "Special Settings"
4026 Most of the Midnight Commander settings can be changed from the
4027 menus. However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
4028 changed by editing the setup file.
4030 These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
4032 .I clear_before_exec
4033 By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before executing a
4034 command. If you would prefer to see the output of the command at the
4035 bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.config/mc/ini file and change the value of
4036 the field clear_before_exec to 0.
4039 If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that directory. If
4040 this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirmation before changing
4041 the directory if you have files tagged.
4043 .I ftpfs_retry_seconds
4044 This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Commander will wait
4045 before attempting to reconnect to an FTP server that has denied the
4046 login. If the value is zero, the login will no be retried.
4049 Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the internal
4050 file viewer. Normally this value is not significant, because the code
4051 automatically adjusts the number of updates to skip according to the
4052 rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on very slow machines or
4053 terminals with a fast keyboard auto repeat, a big value can make screen
4056 It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best behavior,
4057 and that is the default value.
4059 .I mouse_move_pages_viewer
4060 Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by line
4061 on the internal file viewer.
4063 .I only_leading_plus_minus
4064 Allow special treatment for '+', '\-', '*' in the command line (select,
4065 unselect, reverse selection) only if the command line is empty. You
4066 don't need to quote those characters in the middle of the command line.
4067 On the other hand, you cannot use them to change selection when the
4068 command line is not empty.
4070 .I show_output_starts_shell
4071 This variable only works if you are not using the subshell support.
4072 When you use the C\-o keystroke to go back to the user screen, if this
4073 one is set, you will get a fresh shell. Otherwise, pressing any key
4074 will bring you back to the Midnight Commander.
4076 .I timeformat_recent
4077 Change the time format used to display dates less than 6 months from
4079 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
4080 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
4083 Change the time format used to display dates older than 6 months from
4084 now or for dates in the future.
4085 See strftime or date man page for the format specification. If this
4086 option is absent, default timeformat is used.
4089 If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work slightly
4090 different on the panels, instead of moving the selection to the first
4091 and last files in the panels, they will act as follows:
4093 The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else go to the
4094 top line unless it is already on the top line, in this case it will go
4095 to the first file in the panel.
4097 The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line, if over
4098 it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at the bottom
4099 line, in such case it will move the selection to the last file name in
4102 .I use_file_to_guess_type
4103 If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file command to
4104 match the file types listed on the
4107 .\"Edit Extension File"
4110 If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse the file system
4111 on a Tree panel, it will automatically reload the other panel with the
4112 contents of the selected directory.
4114 .I fish_directory_timeout
4115 This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache entry in seconds. The
4116 default value is 900 seconds.
4119 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4120 utility like 'xclip' to read text into X selection from file.
4124 clipboard_store=xclip \-i
4128 This variable contains path (with options) to the external clipboard
4129 utility like 'xclip' to print the selection to standard out.
4133 clipboard_paste=xclip \-o
4136 .I autodetect_codeset
4137 This option allows use the `enca' command to autodetect codeset of text files
4138 in internal viewer and editor. List of valid values can be obtain by the
4139 `enca \-\-list languages | cut \-d : \-f1' command. Option must be located
4140 in the [Misc] section.
4145 autodetect_codeset=russian
4147 .\"NODE "Parameters for external editor or viewer"
4148 .SH "Parameters for external editor or viewer"
4149 The Midnight Commander provides a way for specify an options for external editors
4150 and viewers. The Midnight Commander tries to search the
4151 "[External editor or viewer parameters]" section in the system initialization file
4152 (the mc.lib file located in the Midnight Commander library directory)
4153 and then in the ~/.config/mc/ini file. The option name should be equal to the name
4154 (full pathname) of external editor or viewer. The option value can contain following
4158 The filename to edit/view.
4161 The start line in the opening file.
4166 [External editor or viewer parameters]
4167 vi=%filename +%lineno
4168 joe=%filename +%lineno
4169 more=%filename +%lineno
4172 Start line is passed to the external editor/viewer only if it is called from the
4178 If external editor/viewer is launched via F4/F3 keys, MC hopes that program
4179 (at least "joe", but probably others too) has an own feature that by default
4180 opens the file where it was last open. MC doesn't prevent external editor/viewer
4181 to save and restore position in opened files.
4182 .\"NODE "Terminal databases"
4183 .SH "Terminal databases"
4184 The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal
4185 database without requiring root privileges. The Midnight Commander
4186 searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
4187 the Midnight Commander library directory) and in the
4188 ~/.config/mc/ini file for the section
4189 "terminal:your\-terminal\-name" and then for the section
4190 "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol that
4191 you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the definition for the
4192 key. You can use the special \\e form to represent the escape character
4193 and the ^x to represent the control\-x character.
4195 The possible key symbols are:
4198 f0 to f20 Function keys f0\-f20
4205 right right arrow key
4208 insert the insert character
4209 delete the delete character
4210 complete to do completion
4213 For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
4214 set this in the ini file:
4221 Also now you can use
4222 .I extended learn keys.
4226 ctrl\-alt\-right=\\e[[1;6C
4227 ctrl\-alt\-left=\\e[[1;6D
4231 This means that ctrl+alt+left sends a \\e[[1;6D escape sequence
4232 and therefore Midnight Commander interprets "\\e[[1;6D" as Ctrl\-Alt\-Left.
4237 key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke the completion
4238 process, this is invoked with Alt\-tab, but you can define other keys to do
4239 the same work (on those keyboard with tons of nice and unused keys
4244 Full paths below may vary between installations. They are also affected
4247 environment variable. If it's set, its value is used instead of
4248 %prefix%/share/mc in the paths below.
4250 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.hlp
4252 The help file for the program.
4254 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ext
4256 The default system\-wide extensions file.
4258 .I ~/.config/mc/mc.ext
4260 User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
4261 file. They override the contents of the system wide files if present.
4263 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.ini
4265 The default system\-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used only if
4266 the user doesn't have his own ~/.config/mc/ini file.
4268 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.lib
4270 Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this file
4271 affect all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini or not. Currently, only
4274 .\"Terminal databases"
4275 are loaded from mc.lib.
4279 User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded
4280 from here instead of the system\-wide startup file.
4282 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.hint
4284 This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
4286 .I %prefix%/share/mc/mc.menu
4288 This file contains the default system\-wide applications menu.
4290 .I ~/.config/mc/menu
4292 User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used instead
4293 of the system\-wide applications menu.
4297 The directory list for the directory tree and tree view features.
4299 .I ~/.local/share/mc.menu
4301 Local user\-defined menu. If this file is present, it is used instead of
4302 the home or system\-wide applications menu.
4304 To change default root directory of MC, you can use
4306 environment variable. The value of MC_HOME must be an absolute path. If MC_HOME
4307 is unset or empty, HOME variable is used. If HOME is unset or empty, MC
4308 directories are get from GLib library.
4311 This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
4312 License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built\-in
4313 help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
4314 .\"NODE "AVAILABILITY"
4316 The latest version of this program can be found at
4317 http://ftp.midnight\-commander.org/.
4320 ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
4324 The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
4325 http://www.midnight\-commander.org/
4329 Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in the source
4333 See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what remains to
4336 If you want to report a problem with the program, please create bugreport
4337 at http://www.midnight\-commander.org/.
4339 Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the program
4342 displays this information), the operating system you are running the
4343 program on. If the program crashes, we would appreciate a stack trace.