mc
(1)
名称
mc - like systems.
用法概要
Please see following description for synopsis
描述
GNU Midnight Commander MC(1)
NAME
mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems.
USAGE
mc [-abcCdfhPstuUVx] [-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [-e [file] ...]
[-v file]
DESCRIPTION
GNU Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager
for Unix-like operating systems.
OPTIONS
-a, --stickchars
Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
-b, --nocolor
Force black and white display.
-c, --color
Force color mode, please check the section Colors for
more information.
-C arg, --colors=arg
Specify a different color set in the command line. The
format of arg is documented in the Colors section.
--configure-options
Display configure options.
-d, --nomouse
Disable mouse support.
-D N, --debuglevel=N
Save the debug level for SMB VFS. N is in 0-10 range.
-e [file], --edit[=file]
Start the internal editor. If the file is specified,
open it on startup. See also mcedit (1).
-f, --datadir
Display the compiled-in search paths for Midnight Com-
mander files.
-F, --datadir-info
Display extended info about compiled-in paths for Mid-
night Commander.
-g, --oldmouse
Force a "normal tracking" mouse mode. Used when running
on xterm-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
-k, --resetsoft
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Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/ter-
minfo database. Only useful on HP terminals when the
function keys don't work.
-K file, --keymap=file
Specify a name of keymap file in the command line.
-l file, --ftplog=file
Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
--nokeymap
Don't load key bindings from any file, use default
hardcoded keys.
-P file, --printwd=file
Print the last working directory to the specified file.
This option is not meant to be used directly. Instead,
it's used from a special shell script that automati-
cally changes the current directory of the shell to the
last directory the Midnight Commander was in. Source
the file /usr/share/mc/mc.sh (bash and zsh users) or
/usr/share/mc.csh (tcsh users) respectively to define
mc as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
-s, --slow
Set alternative mode drawing of frameworks. If the
section [Lines] is not filled, the symbol for the pseu-
dographics frame is a space, otherwise the frame char-
acters are taken from follow params.
You can redefine the following variables:
lefttop
left-top corner
righttop
right-top corner
centertop
center-top cross
centerbottom
center-bottom cross
leftbottom
left-bottom corner
rightbottom
right-bottom corner
leftmiddle
left-middle cross
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rightmiddle
right-middle cross
centermiddle
center cross
horiz
default horizontal line
vert default vertical line
thinhoriz
thin horizontal line
thinvert
thin vertical line
-S arg, --skin=arg
Specify a name of skin in the command line. Technology
of skins is documented in the Skins section.
-t, --termcap
Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and ter-
minfo: it makes the Midnight Commander use the value of
the TERMCAP variable for the terminal information
instead of the information on the system wide terminal
database
-u, --nosubshell
Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense
if the Midnight Commander has been built with concur-
rent shell support).
-U, --subshell
Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes
sense if the Midnight Commander was built with the sub-
shell support set as an optional feature).
-v file, --view=file
Start the internal viewer to view the specified file.
See also mcview (1).
-V, --version
Display the version of the program.
-x, --xterm
Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable
terminals (two screen modes, and able to send mouse
escape sequences).
-X, --no-x11
Do not use X11 to get the state of modifiers Alt, Ctrl,
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Shift
If specified, the first path name is the directory to show
in the selected panel; the second path name is the directory
to be shown in the other panel.
Overview
The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four
parts. Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two
directory panels. By default, the second line from the bot-
tom of the screen is the shell command line, and the bottom
line shows the function key labels. The topmost line is the
menu bar line. The menu bar line may not be visible, but
appears if you click the topmost line with the mouse or
press the F9 key.
The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at
the same time. One of the panels is the current panel (a
selection bar is in the current panel). Almost all opera-
tions take place on the current panel. Some file operations
like Rename and Copy by default use the directory of the
unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they always
ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see
the sections on the Directory Panels, the Left and Right
Menus and the File Menu.
You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander
by simply typing them. Everything you type will appear on
the shell command line, and when you press Enter the Mid-
night Commander will execute the command line you typed;
read the Shell Command Line and Input Line Keys sections to
learn more about the command line.
Mouse Support
The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is
activated whenever you are running on an xterm(1) terminal
(it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connec-
tion to another machine from the xterm) or if you are run-
ning on a Linux console and have the gpm mouse server run-
ning.
When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that
file is selected; if you click with the right button, the
file is marked (or unmarked, depending on the previous
state).
Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if
it is an executable program; and if the extension file has a
program specified for the file's extension, the specified
program is executed.
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Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the
function key labels by clicking on them.
The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing
the ~/.config/mc/ini file and changing the mouse_repeat_rate
parameter.
If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse
support, you can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and
pasting text) by holding down the Shift key.
Keys
Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of
the Control (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the Meta
(sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this manual
we will use the following abbreviations:
C-<chr>
means hold the Control key while typing the character
<chr>. Thus C-f would be: hold the Control key and
type f.
Alt-<chr>
means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>.
If there is no Meta or Alt key, type ESC, release it,
then type the character <chr>.
S-<chr>
means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.
All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approxima-
tion to the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings (default).
You may redefine key bindings. See redefine hotkey bindings
for more info. All other key bindings (described in this
manual) relative to default behavior.
There are many sections which tell about the keys. The fol-
lowing are the most important.
The File Menu section documents the keyboard shortcuts for
the commands appearing in the File menu. This section
includes the function keys. Most of these commands perform
some action, usually on the selected file or the tagged
files.
The Directory Panels section documents the keys which select
a file or tag files as a target for a later action (the
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action is usually one from the file menu).
The Shell Command Line section list the keys which are used
for entering and editing command lines. Most of these copy
file names and such from the directory panels to the command
line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the command line
history.
Input Line Keys are used for editing input lines. This means
both the command line and the input lines in the query
dialogs.
Redefine hotkey bindings
Hotkey bindings may be read from external file
(keymap-file). Initially, Mignight Commander creates key
bindings using keymap defined in the source code. Then, two
files /usr/share/mc/mc.keymap and /usr/share/mc/mc.keymap
are loaded always, sequentially reassigned key bindings
defined earlier. User-defined keymap-file is searched on
the following algorithm (to the first one found):
1) command line option -K <keymap> or --keymap=<keymap>
2) Environment variable MC_KEYMAP
3) Parameter keymap in section [Midnight-Commander] of
config file.
4) File ~/.config/mc/mc.keymap
Command line option, environment variable and parameter in
config file may contain the absolute path to the keymap-file
(with the extension .keymap or without it). Search of
keymap-file will occur in (to the first one found):
1) ~/.config/mc
2) /usr/share/mc/
3) /usr/share/mc/
Miscellaneous Keys
Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other
categories:
Enter
if there is some text in the command line (the one at
the bottom of the panels), then that command is exe-
cuted. If there is no text in the command line then if
the selection bar is over a directory the Midnight Com-
mander does a chdir(2) to the selected directory and
reloads the information on the panel; if the selection
is an executable file then it is executed. Finally, if
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the extension of the selected file name matches one of
the extensions in the extensions file then the corre-
sponding command is executed.
C-l repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
C-x c
run the Chmod command on a file or on the tagged files.
C-x o
run the Chown command on the current file or on the
tagged files.
C-x l
run the hard link command.
C-x s
run the absolute symbolic link command.
C-x v
run the relative symbolic link command. See the File
Menu section for more information about symbolic links.
C-x i
set the other panel display mode to information.
C-x q
set the other panel display mode to quick view.
C-x !
execute the External panelize command.
C-x h
run the add directory to hotlist command.
Alt-!
executes the Filtered view command, described in the
view command.
Alt-?
executes the Find file command.
Alt-c
pops up the quick cd dialog.
C-o when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD
console or under an xterm, it will show you the output
of the previous command. When ran on the Linux con-
sole, the Midnight Commander uses an external program
(cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of informa-
tion on the screen.
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When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o
at any time and you will be taken back to the Midnight Com-
mander main screen, to return to your application just type
C-o. If you have an application suspended by using this
trick, you won't be able to execute other programs from the
Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended appli-
cation.
Directory Panels
This section lists the keys which operate on the directory
panels. If you want to know how to change the appearance of
the panels take a look at the section on Left and Right
Menus.
Tab, C-i
change the current panel. The old other panel becomes
the new current panel and the old current panel becomes
the new other panel. The selection bar moves from the
old current panel to the new current panel.
Insert, C-t
to tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 ter-
minfo sequence). To untag files, just retag a tagged
file.
M-e to change charset of panel you may use M-e (Alt-e).
Recoding is made from selected codepage into system
codepage. To cancel the recoding you may select "direc-
tory up" (..) in active panel. To cancel the charsets
in all directories, select "No translation " in the
dialog of encodings.
Alt-g, Alt-r, Alt-j
used to select the top file in a panel, the middle file
and the bottom one, respectively.
Alt-t
toggle the current display listing to show the next
display listing mode. With this it is possible to
quickly switch to brief listing, long listing, user
defined listing mode, and back to the default.
C-\ (control-backslash)
show the directory hotlist and change to the selected
directory.
+ (plus)
this is used to select (tag) a group of files. The
Midnight Commander will prompt for a selection options.
When Files only checkbox is on, only files will be
selected. If Files only is off, as files as directo-
ries will be selected. When Shell Patterns checkbox is
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on, the regular expression is much like the filename
globbing in the shell (* standing for zero or more
characters and ? standing for one character). If Shell
Patterns is off, then the tagging of files is done with
normal regular expressions (see ed (1)). When Case sen-
sitive checkbox is on, the selection will be case sen-
sitive characters. If Case sensitive is off, the case
will be ignored.
\ (backslash)
use the "\" key to unselect a group of files. This is
the opposite of the Plus key.
up-key, C-p
move the selection bar to the previous entry in the
panel.
down-key, C-n
move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
home, a1, Alt-<
move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
end, c1, Alt->
move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
next-page, C-v
move the selection bar one page down.
prev-page, Alt-v
move the selection bar one page up.
Alt-o
If the currently selected file is a directory, load
that directory on the other panel and moves the selec-
tion to the next file. If the currently selected file
is not a directory, load the parent directory on the
other panel and moves the selection to the next file.
Alt-i
make the current directory of the current panel also
the current directory of the other panel. Put the
other panel to the listing mode if needed. If the cur-
rent panel is panelized, the other panel doesn't become
panelized.
C-PageUp, C-PageDown
only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and
to the currently selected directory respectively.
Alt-y
moves to the previous directory in the history,
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equivalent to clicking the < with the mouse.
Alt-u
moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent
to clicking the > with the mouse.
Alt-Shift-h, Alt-H
displays the directory history, equivalent to depress-
ing the 'v' with the mouse.
Quick search
The Quick search mode allows you to perform fast file search
in file panel. Press C-s or Alt-s to start a filename
search in the directory listing.
When the search is active, the user input will be added to
the search string instead of the command line. If the Show
mini-status option is enabled the search string is shown on
the mini-status line. When typing, the selection bar will
move to the next file starting with the typed letters. The
Backspace or DEL keys can be used to correct typing mis-
takes. If C-s is pressed again, the next match is searched
for.
If quick search is started with double pressing of C-s, the
previous quick search pattern will be used for current
search.
Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard
characters '*' and '?'.
Shell Command Line
This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive
typing when entering shell commands.
Alt-Enter
copy the currently selected file name to the command
line.
C-Enter
same a Alt-Enter. May not work on remote systems and
some terminals.
C-Shift-Enter
copy the full path name of the currently selected file
to the command line. May not work on remote systems
and some terminals.
Alt-Tab
does the filename, command, variable, username and
hostname completion for you.
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C-x t, C-x C-t
copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files,
the selected file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of
the other panel (C-x C-t) to the command line.
C-x p, C-x C-p
the first key sequence copies the current path name to
the command line, and the second one copies the unse-
lected panel's path name to the command line.
C-q the quote command can be used to insert characters that
are otherwise interpreted by the Midnight Commander
(like the '+' symbol)
Alt-p, Alt-n
use these keys to browse through the command history.
Alt-p takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to
the next one.
Alt-h
displays the history for the current input line.
General Movement Keys
The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use
common code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly
the same keys. Each of them also accepts some keys of its
own.
Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same
movement keys, so this section may be of use for those parts
too.
Up, C-p
moves one line backward.
Down, C-n
moves one line forward.
Prev Page, Page Up, Alt-v
moves one page up.
Next Page, Page Down, C-v
moves one page down.
Home, A1
moves to the beginning.
End, C1
move to the end.
The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following
keys in addition the to ones mentioned above:
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b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
moves one page up.
Space bar
moves one page down.
u, d moves one half of a page up or down.
g, G moves to the beginning or to the end.
Input Line Keys
The input lines (they are used for the command line and for
the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
C-a puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
C-e puts the cursor at the end of the line.
C-b, move-left
move the cursor one position left.
C-f, move-right
move the cursor one position right.
Alt-f
moves one word forward.
Alt-b
moves one word backward.
C-h, Backspace
delete the previous character.
C-d, Delete
delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
C-@ sets the mark for cutting.
C-w copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a
kill buffer and removes the text from the input line.
Alt-w
copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a
kill buffer.
C-y yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
C-k kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
Alt-p, Alt-n
Use these keys to browse through the command history.
Alt-p takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to
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the next one.
Alt-C-h, Alt-Backspace
delete one word backward.
Alt-Tab
does the filename, command, variable, username and
hostname completion for you.
Menu Bar
The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on
the top row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus:
"Left", "File", "Command", "Options" and "Right".
The Left and Right Menus allow you to modify the appearance
of the left and right directory panels.
The File Menu lists the actions you can perform on the cur-
rently selected file or the tagged files.
The Command Menu lists the actions which are more general
and bear no relation to the currently selected file or the
tagged files.
The Options Menu lists the actions which allow you to cus-
tomize the Midnight Commander.
Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus
The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the
Left and Right menus (they are named Above and Below when
the horizontal panel split is chosen from the Layout options
dialog).
Listing Mode...
The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files,
there are four different listing modes available: Full,
Brief, Long and User. The full directory view shows the
file name, the size of the file and the modification time.
The brief view shows only the file name and it has two col-
umns (therefore showing twice as many files as other views).
The long view is similar to the output of ls -l command. The
long view takes the whole screen width.
If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to
specify the display format.
The user display format must start with a panel size speci-
fier. This may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half
screen panel and a full screen panel respectively.
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After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode
on the panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the
user format string.
After this you add the name of the fields with an optional
size specifier. This are the available fields you may dis-
play:
name displays the file name.
size displays the file size.
bsize
is an alternative form of the size format. It displays
the size of the files and for directories it just shows
SUB-DIR or UP--DIR.
type displays a one character wide type field. This charac-
ter is similar to what is displayed by ls with the -F
flag - * for executable files, / for directories, @ for
links, = for sockets, - for character devices, + for
block devices, | for pipes, ~ for symbolic links to
directories and ! for stale symlinks (links that point
nowhere).
mark an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
mtime
file's last modification time.
atime
file's last access time.
ctime
file's status change time.
perm a string representing the current permission bits of
the file.
mode an octal value with the current permission bits of the
file.
nlink
the number of links to the file.
ngid the GID (numeric).
nuid the UID (numeric).
owner
the owner of the file.
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group
the group of the file.
inode
the inode of the file.
Also you can use following keywords to define the panel lay-
out:
space
a space in the display format.
| add a vertical line to the display format.
To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you
just add : followed by the number of characters you want the
field to have. If the number is followed by the symbol +,
then the size specifies the minimal field size - if the pro-
gram finds out that there is more space on the screen, it
will then expand that field.
For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:
half type name | size | mtime
And the Long display corresponds to this format:
full perm space nlink space owner space group space size
space mtime space name
This is a nice user display format:
half name | size:7 | type mode:3
Panels may also be set to the following modes:
Info The info view display information related to the cur-
rently selected file and if possible information about
the current file system.
Tree The tree view is quite similar to the directory tree
feature. See the section about it for more information.
Quick View
In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced viewer
that displays the contents of the currently selected
file, if you select the panel (with the tab key or the
mouse), you will have access to the usual viewer com-
mands.
Sort Order...
The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by
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modification time, by access time, and by inode information
modification time, by size, by inode and unsorted. In the
Sort order dialog box you can choose the sort order and you
may also specify if you want to sort in reverse order by
checking the reverse box.
By default directories are sorted before files but this can
be changed from the Panel options menu (option Mix all
files).
Filter...
The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern
(for example *.tar.gz) which the files must match to be
shown. Regardless of the filter pattern, the directories and
the links to directories are always shown in the directory
panel.
Reread
The reread command reload the list of files in the direc-
tory. It is useful if other processes have created or
removed files.
File Menu
The Midnight Commander uses the F1 - F10 keys as keyboard
shortcuts for commands appearing in the file menu. The
escape sequences for the function keys are terminfo capabil-
ities kf1 trough kf10. On terminals without function key
support, you can achieve the same functionality by pressing
the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
(corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts
in parentheses):
Help (F1)
Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the help
viewer, you can use the Tab key to select the next link and
the Enter key to follow that link. The keys Space and
Backspace are used to move forward and backward in a help
page. Press F1 again to get the full list of accepted keys.
Menu (F2)
Invoke the user menu. The user menu provides an easy way to
provide users with a menu and add extra features to the Mid-
night Commander.
View (F3, F13)
View the currently selected file. By default this invokes
the Internal File Viewer but if the option "Use internal
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view" is off, it invokes an external file viewer specified
by the VIEWER environment variable. If VIEWER is undefined,
the PAGER environment variable is tried. If PAGER is also
undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If you use F13
instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any for-
matting or preprocessing to the file.
See parameters for external viewer for explain how you may
specify an extended command line options for external view-
ers.
Filtered View (Alt-!)
This command prompts for a command and its arguments (the
argument defaults to the currently selected file name), the
output from such command is shown in the internal file
viewer.
Edit (F4, F14)
Press F4 to edit the highlighted file. Press F14 (usually
F14) to start the editor with a new, empty file. Currently
they invoke the vi editor, or the editor specified in the
EDITOR environment variable, or the Internal File Editor if
the use_internal_edit option is on.
See parameters for external editor for explain how you may
specify an extended command line options for external edi-
tors.
Copy (F5, F15)
Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently
selected file (or the tagged files, if there is at least one
file tagged) to the directory/filename you specify in the
input dialog. The destination defaults to the directory in
the non-selected panel. Space for destination file may be
preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure option.
During this process, you can press C-c or ESC to abort the
operation. For details about source mask (which will be
usually either * or ^\(.*\)$ depending on setting of Use
shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the destination
see Mask copy/rename.
F15 (usually F15) is similar, but defaults to the directory
in the selected panel. It always operates on the selected
file, regardless of any tagged files.
On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the back-
ground by clicking on the background button (or pressing
Alt-b in the dialog box). The Background Jobs is used to
control the background process.
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Link (C-x l)
Create a hard link to the current file.
Absolute symlink (C-x s)
Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
Relative symLink (C-x v)
Create a relative symbolic link to the current file.
To those of you who don't know what links are: creating a
link to a file is a bit like copying the file, but both the
source filename and the destination filename represent the
same file image. For example, if you edit one of these
files, all changes you make will appear in both files. Some
people call links aliases or shortcuts.
A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there
is no way of telling which one is the original and which is
the link. If you delete either one of them the other one is
still intact. It is very difficult to notice that the files
represent the same image. Use hard links when you don't even
want to know.
A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original
file. If the original file is deleted the symbolic link is
useless. It is quite easy to notice that the files represent
the same image. The Midnight Commander shows an "@"-sign in
front of the file name if it is a symbolic link to somewhere
(except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)). The
original file which the link points to is shown on mini-sta-
tus line if the Show mini-status option is enabled. Use sym-
bolic links when you want to avoid the confusion that can be
caused by hard links.
When you press "C-x s" Midnight Commander will automatically
fill in the complete path+filename of the original file and
suggest a name for the link. You can change either one.
Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the
original into a relative path. An absolute path starts from
the root directory:
/home/frodo/mc/mc -> /home/frodo/new/mc
A relative link describes the original file's location
starting from the location of the link itself:
/home/frodo/mc/mc -> ../new/mc
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You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path
by pressing "C-x v" instead of "C-x s".
Rename/Move (F6, F16)
Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently
selected file (or the tagged files, if there is at least one
file tagged) to the directory/filename you specify in the
input dialog. The destination defaults to the directory in
the non-selected panel. For more details look at Copy (F5)
operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
F16 (usually F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory
in the selected panel. It always operates on the selected
file, regardless of any tagged files.
On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the back-
ground by clicking on the background button (or pressing
Alt-b in the dialog box). The Background Jobs is used to
control the background process.
Mkdir (F7)
Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
Delete (F8)
Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in
the currently selected panel. During the process, you can
press C-c or ESC to abort the operation.
Quick cd (Alt-c) Use the quick cd command if you have full
command line and want to cd somewhere.
Select group (+)
This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight
Commander will prompt for a selection options. When Files
only checkbox is on, only files will be selected. If Files
only is off, as files as directories will be selected. When
Shell Patterns checkbox is on, the regular expression is
much like the filename globbing in the shell (* standing for
zero or more characters and ? standing for one character).
If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging of files is done
with normal regular expressions (see ed (1)). When Case sen-
sitive checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive
characters. If Case sensitive is off, the case will be
ignored.
Unselect group (\)
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Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
the Select group command.
Quit (F10, Shift-F10)
Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift-F10 is used when
you want to quit and you are using the shell wrapper.
Shift-F10 will not take you to the last directory you vis-
ited with the Midnight Commander, instead it will stay at
the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
Quick cd
This command is useful if you have a full command line and
want to cd somewhere without having to yank and paste the
command line. This command pops up a small dialog, where you
enter everything you would enter after cd on the command
line and then you press enter. This features all the things
that are already in the internal cd command.
Command Menu
The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the direc-
tories.
The "Find file" command allows you to search for a specific
file.
The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two
directory panels.
The "Switch panels on/off" command shows the output of the
last shell command. This works only on xterm and on Linux
and FreeBSD console.
The "Compare directories" command compares the directory
panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) com-
mand to make the panels identical. There are three compare
methods. The quick method compares only file size and file
date. The thorough method makes a full byte-by-byte compare.
The thorough method is not available if the machine does not
support the mmap(2) system call. The size-only compare
method just compares the file sizes and does not check the
contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
The "External panelize" allows you to execute an external
program, and make the output of that program the contents of
the current panel.
The "Command history" command shows a list of typed com-
mands. The selected command is copied to the command line.
The command history can also be accessed by typing Alt-p or
Alt-n.
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The "Directory hotlist" command makes changing of the cur-
rent directory to often used directories faster.
The "Screen list" command shows a dialog window with the
list of currently running internal editors, viewers and
other MC modules that support this mode.
The "Edit extension file" command allows you to specify pro-
grams to executed when you try to execute, view, edit and do
a bunch of other thing on files with certain extensions
(filename endings).
The "Edit menu file" command may be used for editing the
user menu (which appears by pressing F2).
Directory Tree
The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the direc-
tories. You can select a directory from the figure and the
Midnight Commander will change to that directory.
There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory
tree command is available from Commands menu. The other way
is to select tree view from the Left or Right menu.
To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the
tree figure by scanning only a small subset of all the
directories. If the directory which you want to see is miss-
ing, move to its parent directory and press C-r (or F2).
You can use the following keys:
General movement keys are accepted.
Enter. In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and
changes to this directory in the current panel. In the tree
view, changes to this directory in the other panel and stays
in tree view mode in the current panel.
C-r, F2 (Rescan). Rescan this directory. Use this when the
tree figure is out of date: it is missing subdirectories or
shows some subdirectories which don't exist any more.
F3 (Forget). Delete this directory from the tree figure.
Use this to remove clutter from the figure. If you want the
directory back to the tree figure press F2 in its parent
directory.
F4 (Static/Dynamic). Toggle between the dynamic navigation
mode (default) and the static navigation mode.
In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down
keys to select a directory. All known directories are shown.
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In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the Up and Down
keys to select a sibling directory, the Left key to move to
the parent directory, and the Right key to move to a child
directory. Only the parent, sibling and children directories
are shown, others are left out. The tree figure changes
dynamically as you traverse.
F5 (Copy). Copy the directory.
F6 (RenMov). Move the directory.
F7 (Mkdir). Make a new directory below this directory.
F8 (Delete). Delete this directory from the file system.
C-s, Alt-s. Search the next directory matching the search
string. If there is no such directory these keys will move
one line down.
C-h, Backspace. Delete the last character of the search
string.
Any other character. Add the character to the search string
and move to the next directory which starts with these char-
acters. In the tree view you must first activate the search
mode by pressing C-s. The search string is shown in the mini
status line.
The following actions are available only in the directory
tree. They aren't supported in the tree view.
F1 (Help). Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
Esc, F10. Exit the directory tree. Do not change the direc-
tory.
The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter.
See also the section on mouse support.
Find File
The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for
the search and the filename to be searched for. By pressing
the Tree button you can select the start directory from the
directory tree figure.
Option form whole words. Like grep -w.
You can start the search by pressing the OK button. During
the search you can stop from the Stop button and continue
from the Start button.
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You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys.
The Chdir button will change to the directory of the cur-
rently selected file. The Again button will ask for the
parameters for a new search. The Quit button quits the
search operation. The Panelize button will place the found
files to the current directory panel so that you can do
additional operations on them (view, copy, move, delete and
so on). After panelizing you can press C-r to return to the
normal file listing.
The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field
below it allow to set up the list of directories that should
be skip during the search files (for example, you may want
to avoid searches on a CD-ROM or on a NFS directory that is
mounted across a slow link). List components must be sepa-
rated with a colon, here is an example:
/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
Relative paths are supported also. The following example
shows how to skip special directories of version control
systems:
/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the
current absolute path.
You may consider using the External panelize command for
some operations. Find file command is for simple queries
only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious
searches as you would like.
External panelize
The External panelize allows you to execute an external pro-
gram, and make the output of that program the contents of
the current panel.
For example, if you want to manipulate in one of the panels
all the symbolic links in the current directory, you can use
external panelization to run the following command:
find . -type l -print
Upon command completion, the directory contents of the panel
will no longer be the directory listing of the current
directory, but all the files that are symbolic links.
If you want to panelize all of the files that have been
downloaded from your FTP server, you can use this awk com-
mand to extract the file name from the transfer log files:
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awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
You may want to save often used panelize commands under a
descriptive name, so that you can recall them quickly. You
do this by typing the command on the input line and pressing
Add new button. Then you enter a name under which you want
the command to be saved. Next time, you just choose that
command from the list and do not have to type it again.
Hotlist
The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the direc-
tories in the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander
will change to the directory corresponding to the selected
label. From the hotlist dialog, you can remove already cre-
ated label/directory pairs and add new ones. To add new
directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist command
(C-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory
hotlist, asking just for the label for the directory.
This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may con-
sider using the CDPATH variable as described in internal cd
command description.
Extension File Edit
This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.con-
fig/mc/mc.ext. The format of this file following:
All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
Lines starting in the first column should have following
format:
keyword/expr, i.e. everything after the slash until new line
is expr.
keyword can be:
shell
- expr is an extension (no wildcards). File matches it
its name ends with expr. Example: shell/.tar matches
*.tar.
regex
- expr is a regular expression. File matches if its
name matches the regular expression.
directory
- expr is a regular expression. File matches if it is
a directory and its name matches the regular expres-
sion.
type - expr is a regular expression. File matches if the
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output of file %f without the initial "filename:" part
matches regular expression expr.
default
- matches any file. expr is ignored.
include
- denotes a common section. expr is the name of the
section.
Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be
of the format: keyword=command (with no spaces around =),
where keyword should be: Open (invoked on Enter or double
click), View (F3), Edit (F4) or Include (to add rules from
the common section). command is any one-line shell command,
with the simple macro substitution.
Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is
important. If the appropriate action is missing, search
continues as if this rule didn't match (i.e. if a file
matches the first and second entry and View action is miss-
ing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View action
from the second entry will be used). default should match
all the actions.
Background Jobs
This lets you control the state of any background Midnight
Commander process (only copy and move files operations can
be done in the background). You can stop, restart and kill
a background job from here.
Menu File Edit
The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be cus-
tomized by the user. When you access the user menu, the file
.mc.menu from the current directory is used if it exists,
but only if it is owned by user or root and is not
world-writable. If no such file found, ~/.config/mc/menu is
tried in the same way, and otherwise mc uses the default
system-wide menu /usr/share/mc/mc.menu.
The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start
with anything but space or tab are considered entries for
the menu (in order to be able to use it like a hot key, the
first character should be a letter). All the lines that
start with a space or a tab are the commands that will be
executed when the entry is selected.
When an option is selected all the command lines of the
option are copied to a temporary file in the temporary
directory (usually /usr/tmp) and then that file is executed.
This allows the user to put normal shell constructs in the
menus. Also simple macro substitution takes place before
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executing the menu code. For more information, see macro
substitution.
Here is a sample mc.menu file:
A Dump the currently selected file
od -c %f
B Edit a bug report and send it to root
I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
vi $I
mail -s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
rm -f $I
M Read mail
emacs -f rmail
N Read Usenet news
emacs -f gnus
H Call the info hypertext browser
info
J Copy current directory to other panel recursively
tar cf - . | (cd %D && tar xvpf -)
K Make a release of the current subdirectory
echo -n "Name of distribution file: "
read tar
ln -s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
cd ..
tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar
= f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
X Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
tar xzvf %f
Default Conditions
Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condi-
tion must start from the first column with a '=' character.
If the condition is true, the menu entry will be the default
entry.
Condition syntax: = <sub-cond>
or: = <sub-cond> | <sub-cond> ...
or: = <sub-cond> & <sub-cond> ...
Sub-condition is one of following:
y <pattern> syntax of current file matching pattern?
(for edit menu only)
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f <pattern> current file matching pattern?
F <pattern> other file matching pattern?
d <pattern> current directory matching pattern?
D <pattern> other directory matching pattern?
t <type> current file of type?
T <type> other file of type?
x <filename> is it executable filename?
! <sub-cond> negate the result of sub-condition
Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression,
according to the shell patterns option. You can override the
global value of the shell patterns option by writing
"shell_patterns=x" on the first line of the menu file (where
"x" is either 0 or 1).
Type is one or more of the following characters:
n not a directory
r regular file
d directory
l link
c character device
b block device
f FIFO (pipe)
s socket
x executable file
t tagged
For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo.
The 't' type is a little special because it acts on the
panel instead of the file. The condition '=t t' is true if
there are tagged files in the current panel and false if
not.
If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug
trace will be shown whenever the value of the condition is
calculated.
The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
= f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
is calculated as
( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
= f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
L List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -
Addition Conditions
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If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '='
(or '=?') it is an addition condition. If the condition is
true the menu entry will be included in the menu. If the
condition is false the menu entry will not be included in
the menu.
You can combine default and addition conditions by starting
condition with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want
debug trace). If you want to use two different conditions,
one for adding and another for defaulting, you can precede a
menu entry with two condition lines, one starting with '+'
and another starting with '='.
Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines
must start with '#', space or tab.
Options Menu
The Midnight Commander has some options that may be toggled
on and off in several dialogs which are accessible from this
menu. Options are enabled if they have an asterisk or "x" in
front of them.
The Configuration command pops up a dialog from which you
can change most of settings of the Midnight Commander.
The Layout command pops up a dialog from which you specify a
bunch of options how mc looks like on the screen.
The Panel options command pops up a dialog from which you
specify options of file manager panels.
The Confirmation command pops up a dialog from which you
specify which actions you want to confirm.
The Display bits command pops up a dialog from which you may
select which characters is your terminal able to display.
The Learn keys command pops up a dialog from which you test
some keys which are not working on some terminals and you
may fix them.
The Virtual FS command pops up a dialog from which you spec-
ify some VFS related options.
The Save setup command saves the current settings of the
Left, Right and Options menus. A small number of other set-
tings is saved, too.
Configuration
The options in this dialog are divided into several groups:
"File operation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run"
and "Other options".
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File operation options
Verbose operation. This toggles whether the file Copy,
Rename and Delete operations are verbose (i.e., display a
dialog box for each operation). If you have a slow terminal,
you may wish to disable the verbose operation. It is auto-
matically turned off if the speed of your terminal is less
than 9600 bps.
Compute totals. If this option is enabled, the Midnight
Commander computes total byte sizes and total number of
files prior to any Copy, Rename and Delete operations. This
will provide you with a more accurate progress bar at the
expense of some speed. This option has no effect, if Verbose
operation is disabled.
Classic progressbar. If this option is enabled, the pro-
gressbar of Copy/Move/Delete operations is always grown form
left to right. If disabled, the growing direction of pro-
gressbar follows to direction of Copy/Move/Delete operation:
from left panel to right one and vice versa. Enabled by
default.
Mkdir autoname When you press F7 to create a new directory,
the input line in popup dialog will be filled by name of
current file or directory in active panel. Disabled by
default.
Preallocate space Preallocate space for whole target file,
if possible, before copy operation. Disabled by default.
Esc key mode.
By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a
key prefix. Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to
exit a dialog. But there is a possibility to use a single
press of ESC key for that action.
Single press. By default this option is disabled. If you'll
enable it, the ESC key will act as a prefix key for set up
time interval (see Timeout option below), and if no extra
keys have arrived, then the ESC key is interpreted as a can-
cel key (ESC ESC).
Timeout. This options is used to setup the time interval
(in microseconds) for single press of ESC key. By default,
this inrerval is one second (1000000 microseconds). Also the
timeout can be set via KEYBOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US environment
variable (also in microseconds), which has higher priority
than Timeout option value.
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Pause after run
After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can
pause, so that you can examine the output of the command.
There are three possible settings for this variable:
Never. Means that you do not want to see the output of your
command. If you are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or
an xterm, you will be able to see the output of the command
by typing C-o.
Ondumbterminals. You will get the pause message on termi-
nals that are not capable of showing the output of the last
command executed (any terminal that is not an xterm or the
Linux console).
Always. The program will pause after executing all of your
commands.
Other options
Use internal editor. If this option is enabled, the
built-in file editor is used to edit files. If the option is
disabled, the editor specified in the EDITOR environment
variable is used. If no editor is specified, vi is used.
See the section on the internal file editor.
Use internal viewer. If this option is enabled, the
built-in file viewer is used to view files. If the option is
disabled, the pager specified in the PAGER environment vari-
able is used. If no pager is specified, the view command is
used. See the section on the internal file viewer.
Ask new file name If this option is enabled, file name is
asked before open new file in editor.
Auto menus. If this option is enabled, the user menu will
be invoked at startup. Useful for building menus for
non-unixers.
Drop down menus. When this option is enabled, the pull down
menus will be activated as soon as you press the F9 key.
Otherwise, you will only get the menu title, and you will
have to activate the menu either with the arrow keys or with
the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using hotkeys.
Shell Patterns. By default the Select, Unselect and Filter
commands will use shell-like regular expressions. The fol-
lowing conversions are performed to achieve this: the '*' is
replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?' is
replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and '.' by the lit-
eral dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular
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expressions are the ones described in ed(1).
Complete: show all. By default the Midnight Commander pops
up all possible completions if the completion is ambiguous
only when you press Alt-Tab for the second time. For the
first time, it just completes as much as possible and beeps
in the case of ambiguity. Enable this option if you want to
see all possible completions even after pressing Alt-Tab the
first time.
Rotating dash. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Com-
mander shows a rotating dash in the upper right corner as a
work in progress indicator.
Cd follows links. This option, if set, causes the Midnight
Commander to follow the logical chain of directories when
changing current directory either in the panels, or using
the cd command. This is the default behavior of bash. When
unset, the Midnight Commander follows the real directory
structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory through
a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
and not to the directory where the link was present.
Safe delete. If this option is enabled, deleting files and
directory hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more dif-
ficult. The default selection in the confirmation dialogs
for deletion changes from "Yes" to "No". This option is
disabled by default.
Auto save setup. If this option is enabled, when you exit
the Midnight Commander the configurable options of the Mid-
night Commander are saved in the ~/.config/mc/ini file.
Layout
The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the gen-
eral layout of screen. The options in this dialog are
divided into several groups: "Panel split", "Console output"
and "Other options".
Panel split
The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory
panels. You can specify whether the area is split to the
panels in Vertical
or Horizontal direction. Panel layout can be changed using
Alt-, (Alt-comma) shortcut.
Equal split. By default, panels have equal sizes. Using
this option you can specify an unequal split.
Console output
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On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many
lines are shown in the output window. This option is avail-
able if Midnight Commander runs on native console only.
Other options
Menu bar visible. If enabled, main menu of Midnight Comman-
der is always visible on the top row of screen above panels.
Enabled by default.
Command prompt. If enabled, command line is avalable.
Enabled by default.
Keybar visible. If enabled, 10 lables associated with
F1-F10 keys are located at the bottom row of screen. Enabled
by default.
Hintbar visible. If enabled, the one-line hints are visible
below panels. Enabled by default.
XTerm window title. When run in a terminal emulator for
X11, Midnight Commander sets the terminal window title to
the current working directory and updates it when necessary.
If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some incor-
rect output on startup and directory change, turn off this
option. Enabled by default.
Show free space. If enabled, free space and total space of
current file system is shown at the bottom frame of panel.
Enabled by default.
Panel options
Main panel options
Show mini-status. If enabled, one line of status informa-
tion about the currently selected item is shown at the bot-
tom of the panels. Enabled by default.
Use SI size units. If this option is enabled, Midnight Com-
mander will use SI units (powers of 1000) when displaying
any byte sizes. The suffixes (k, m ...) are shown in lower-
case. If disabled (default), Midnight Commander will use
binary units (powers of 1024) and the suffixes are shown in
upper case (K, M ...)
Mix all files. If this option is enabled, all files and
directories are shown mixed together. If the option is dis-
abled (default), directories (and links to directories) are
shown at the beginning of the listing, and other files
below.
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Show backup files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will
show files ending with a tilde. Otherwise, they won't be
shown (like GNU's ls option -B). Enabled by default.
Show hidden files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will
show all files that start with a dot (like ls -a). Disabled
by default.
Fast directory reload. If this option is enabled, the Mid-
night Commander will use a trick to determine if the direc-
tory contents have changed. The trick is to reload the
directory only if the i-node of the directory has changed;
this means that reloads only happen when files are created
or deleted. If what changes is the i-node for a file in the
directory (file size changes, mode or owner changes, etc)
the display is not updated. In these cases, if you have the
option on, you have to rescan the directory manually (with
C-r). Disabled by default.
Mark moves down. If enabled, the selection bar will move
down when you mark a file (with Insert key). Enabled by
default.
Reverse files only. Allow revert selection of files only.
Enabled by default. If enabled, the reverse selection is
applied to files only, not to directories. The selection of
directories is untouched. If off, the reverse selection is
applied to files as well to directories: all unselected
items become selected, and vice versa.
Simple swap. If both panels contain file listing, simple
swap means that panels exchange its screen positions: left
panel become right one, and vice versa. If this option is
unchecked, file listing panels exchange its content keeping
listing format and sort options. Unchecked by default.
Auto save panels setup. If this option is enabled, when you
exit the Midnight Commander the current settings of panels
are saved in the ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file. Disabled by
default.
Navigation
Lynx-like motion. If this option is enabled, you may use
the arrows keys to automatically chdir if the current selec-
tion is a subdirectory and the shell command line is empty.
By default, this setting is off.
Page scrolling. If set (the default), panel will scroll by
half the display when the cursor reaches the end or the
beginning of the panel, otherwise it will just scroll a file
at a time.
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Mouse page scrolling. Controls whenever scrolling with the
mouse wheel is done by pages or line by line on the panels.
File highlight
You can specify whether permissions and file types should be
highlighted with distinctive Colors. If the permission
highlighting is enabled, the parts of the perm and mode dis-
play fields which apply to the user running Midnight Comman-
der are highlighted with the color defined by the selected
keyword. If the file type highlighting is enabled, file
names are colored according to rules described in
/usr/share/mc/filehighlight.ini file. See Filenames High-
light for more info.
Quick search
You can specify how the Quick search mode should works: case
insensitively, case sensitively or be matched to the the
panel sort order: case sensitive or not.
Confirmation
In this dialog you configure the confirmation options for
file deletion, overwriting files, execution by pressing
enter, quitting the program, directory hotlist entries dele-
tion and history cleanup.
and.
Display bits
This is used to configure the range of visible characters on
the screen. This setting may be 7-bits if your termi-
nal/curses supports only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 dis-
plays all the characters in the ISO-8859-1 map and full 8
bits is for those terminals that can display full 8 bit
characters.
Learn keys
This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional keys,
cursor arrows and some other keys to make them work properly
on your terminal. They often don't, since many terminal
databases are incomplete or broken.
You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving
keys ('h' left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you
press any cursor movement key and it is recognized, you can
use that key as well.
You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you
press a key and it is recognized properly, OK should appear
next to the name of that key. Once a key is marked OK it
starts working as usually, e.g. F1 pressed the first time
will just check that the F1 key works, but after that it
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will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys. The
Tab key should be working always.
If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK
appear after pressing one of these. Then you may want to
redefine it. Do it by pressing the button with the name of
that key (either by the mouse or by Enter or Space after
selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then a message
box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and
wait until the message box disappears. If you want to
abort, just press Escape once and wait.
When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The
definitions for the keys you have redefined will be written
into the [terminal:TERM] section of your ~/.config/mc/ini
file (where TERM is the name of your current terminal). The
definitions of the keys that were already working properly
are not saved.
Virtual FS
This option gives you control over the settings of the Vir-
tual File System.
The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information
related to some of the virtual file systems to speed up the
access to the files in the file system (for example, direc-
tory listings fetched from FTP servers).
Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files
(for example, compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander
needs to create temporary uncompressed files on your disk.
Since both the information in memory and the temporary files
on disk take up resources, you may want to tune the parame-
ters of the cached information to decrease your resource
usage or to maximize the speed of access to frequently used
file systems.
Because of the format of the tar archives, the Tar filesys-
tem needs to read the whole file just to load the file
entries. Since most tar files are usually kept compressed
(plain tar files are species in extinction), the tar file
system has to uncompress the file on the disk in a temporary
location and then access the uncompressed file as a regular
tar file.
Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all
over the disk, it's common that you will leave a tar file
and then re-enter it later. Since decompression is slow,
the Midnight Commander will cache the information in memory
for a limited time. When the timeout expires, all the
resources associated with the file system are released. The
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default timeout is set to one minute.
The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories
on remote FTP servers. It has several options.
ftp anonymous password is the password used when you login
as "anonymous". Some sites require a valid e-mail address.
On the other hand, you probably don't want to give your real
e-mail address to untrusted sites, especially if you are not
using spam filtering.
ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP
server in a cache. The cache expire time is configurable
with the ftpfs directory cache timeout option. A low value
for this option may slow down every operation on the ftpfs
because every operation would require sending a request to
the FTP server.
You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that
most modern firewalls are fully transparent at least for
passive FTP (see below), so FTP proxies are considered obso-
lete.
If Always use ftp proxy is not set, you can use the exclama-
tion sign to enable proxy for certain hosts. See FTP File
System for examples.
If this option is set, the program will do two things: con-
sult the /usr/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing
host names that are local (if the host name starts with a
dot, it is assumed to be a domain) and to assume that any
hostnames without dots in their names are directly accessi-
ble. All other hosts will be accessed through the specified
FTP proxy.
You can enable using ~/.netrc file, which keeps login names
and passwords for ftp servers. See netrc (5) for the
description of the .netrc format.
Use passive mode enables using FTP passive mode, when the
connection for data transfer is initiated by the client, not
by the server. This option is recommended and enabled by
default. If this option is turned off, the data connection
is initiated by the server. This may not work with some
firewalls.
Save Setup
At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initial-
ization information from the ~/.config/mc/ini file. If this
file doesn't exist, it will load the information from the
system-wide configuration file, located in
/usr/share/mc/mc.ini. If the system-wide configuration file
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doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
The Save Setup command creates the ~/.config/mc/ini file by
saving the current settings of the Left, Right and Options
menus.
If you activate the auto save setup option, MC will always
save the current settings when exiting.
There also exist settings which can't be changed from the
menus. To change these settings you have to edit the setup
file with your favorite editor. See the section on Special
Settings for more information.
Executing operating system commands
You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Mid-
night Commander's input line, or by selecting the program
you want to execute with the selection bar in one of the
panels and hitting Enter.
If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the
Midnight Commander checks the extension of the selected file
against the extensions in the Extensions File. If a match
is found then the code associated with that extension is
executed. A very simple macro expansion takes place before
executing the command.
The cd internal command
The cd command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander, it
is not passed to the command shell for execution. Thus it
may not handle all of the nice macro expansion and substitu-
tion that your shell does, although it does some of them:
Tilde substitution. The (~) will be substituted with your
home directory, if you append a username after the tilde,
then it will be substituted with the login directory of the
specified user.
For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user
guest, while ~/guest is the directory guest in your home
directory.
Previous directory. You can jump to the directory you were
previously by using the special directory name '-' like
this: cd -
CDPATH directories. If the directory specified to the cd
command is not in the current directory, then The Midnight
Commander uses the value in the environment variable CDPATH
to search for the directory in any of the named directories.
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For example you could set your CDPATH variable to
~/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to any
of the directories inside the ~/src and /usr/src directo-
ries, from any place in the file system by using its rela-
tive name (for example cd linux could take you to
/usr/src/linux).
Macro Substitution
When accessing a user menu, or executing an extension depen-
dent command, or running a command from the command line
input, a simple macro substitution takes place.
The macros are:
%i The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column
position. For edit menu only.
%y The syntax type of current file. For edit menu only.
%k The block file name.
%e The error file name.
%m The current menu name.
%f and %p
The current file name.
%x The extension of current file name.
%b The current file name without extension.
%d The current directory name.
%F The current file in the unselected panel.
%D The directory name of the unselected panel.
%t The currently tagged files.
%T The tagged files in the unselected panel.
%u and %U
Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the
files are untagged. You can use this macro only once
per menu file entry or extension file entry, because
next time there will be no tagged files.
%s and %S
The selected files: The tagged files if there are any.
Otherwise the current file.
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%cd This is a special macro that is used to change the cur-
rent directory to the directory specified in front of
it. This is used primarily as an interface to the Vir-
tual File System.
%view
This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer. This
macro can be used alone, or with arguments. If you
pass any arguments to this macro, they should be
enclosed in brackets.
The arguments are: ascii to force the viewer into ascii
mode; hex to force the viewer into hex mode; nroff to
tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold and
underline sequences of nroff; unformatted to tell the
viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the
text bold or underlined.
%% The % character
%{some text}
Prompt for the substitution. An input box is shown and
the text inside the braces is used as a prompt. The
macro is substituted by the text typed by the user. The
user can press ESC or F10 to cancel. This macro doesn't
work on the command line yet.
%var{ENV:default}
If environment variable ENV is unset, the default is
substituted. Otherwise, the value of ENV is substi-
tuted.
The subshell support
The subshell support is a compile time option, that works
with the shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.
When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander
will spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined
in the SHELL variable and if it is not defined, then the one
in the /etc/passwd file) and run it in a pseudo terminal,
instead of invoking a new shell each time you execute a com-
mand, the command will be passed to the subshell as if you
had typed it. This also allows you to change the environ-
ment variables, use shell functions and define aliases that
are valid until you quit the Midnight Commander.
If you are using bash you can specify startup commands for
the subshell in your ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc file and spe-
cial keyboard maps in the ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc file.
tcsh users may specify startup commands in the
~/.local/share/mc/tcshrc file.
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When the subshell code is used, you can suspend applications
at any time with the sequence C-o and jump back to the Mid-
night Commander, if you interrupt an application, you will
not be able to run other external commands until you quit
the application you interrupted.
An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the
prompt displayed by the Midnight Commander is the same
prompt that you are currently using in your shell.
The OPTIONS section has more information on how you can con-
trol the subshell code.
Chmod
The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a
group of files and directories. It can be invoked with the
C-x c key combination.
The Chmod window has two parts - Permissions and File.
In the File section are displayed the name of the file or
directory and its permissions in octal form, as well as its
owner and group.
In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons
which correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change
the attribute bits, you can see the octal value change in
the File section.
To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use
the arrow keys or the Tab key. To change the state of the
check buttons or to select a button use Space. You can also
use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate them.
Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on the buttons.
To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
When working with a group of files or directories, you just
click on the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have
selected the bits you want to change, you select one of the
action buttons (Set marked or Clear marked).
Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified,
you can use the [Set all] button, which will act on all the
tagged files.
[Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected
files
[Set marked] set marked bits in attributes of all selected
files
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[Clean marked] clear marked bits in attributes of all
selected files
[Set] set the attributes of one file
[Cancel] cancel the Chmod command
Chown
The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a
file. The hot key for this command is C-x o.
Advanced Chown
The Advanced Chown command is the Chmod and Chown command
combined into one window. You can change the permissions and
owner/group of files at once.
File Operations
When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander
shows the file operations dialog. It shows the files cur-
rently being processed and uses up to three progress bars.
The file bar indicates the percentage of the current file
that has been processed so far. The count bar shows how
many of the tagged files have been handled. The bytes bar
indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged
files that has been handled. If the verbose option is off,
the file and bytes bars are not shown.
There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing
the Skip button will skip the rest of the current file.
Pressing the Abort button will abort the whole operation,
the rest of the files are skipped.
There are three other dialogs which you can run into during
the file operations.
The error dialog informs about error conditions and has
three choices. Normally you select either the Skip button
to skip the file or the Abort button to abort the operation
altogether. You can also select the Retry button if you
fixed the problem from another terminal.
The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move
a file on the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the
dates and sizes of the both files. Press the Yes button to
overwrite the file, the No button to skip the file, the All
button to overwrite all the files, the None button to never
overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if the source
file is newer than the target file. You can abort the whole
operation by pressing the Abort button.
The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete
a directory which is not empty. Press the Yes button to
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delete the directory recursively, the No button to skip the
directory, the All button to delete all the directories and
the None button to skip all the non-empty directories. You
can abort the whole operation by pressing the Abort button.
If you selected the Yes or All button you will be asked for
a confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you
want to do the recursive delete.
If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them
only the files on which the operation succeeded are
untagged. Failed and skipped files are left tagged.
Mask Copy/Rename
The copy/move operations let you translate the names of
files in an easy way. To do it, you have to specify the
correct source mask and usually in the trailing part of the
destination specify some wildcards. All the files matching
the source mask are copied/renamed according to the target
mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files
matching the source mask are renamed.
There are other options which you can set:
Follow links
determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the
source directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links
in the target directory or whether would you like to copy
their content.
Dive into subdirs
determines the behavior when the source directory is about
to be copied, but the target directory already exists. The
default action is to copy the contents of the source direc-
tory into the target directory. Enabling this option causes
copying the source directory itself into the target direc-
tory.
For example, you want to copy directory /foo containing file
bar to /bla/foo, which is an already existing directory.
Normally (when Dive into subdirs is not set), mc would copy
file /foo/bar into the file /bla/foo/bar. By enabling this
option the /bla/foo/foo directory will be created, and
/foo/bar will be copied into /bla/foo/foo/bar.
Preserve attributes
determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps
and (if you are root) the ownership of the original files.
If this option is not set, the current value of the umask
will be respected.
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Use shell patterns
When this option is on you can use the '*' and '?' wildcards
in the source mask. They work like they do in the shell. In
the target mask only the '*' and '\<digit>' wildcards are
allowed. The first '*' wildcard in the target mask corre-
sponds to the first wildcard group in the source mask, the
second '*' corresponds to the second group and so on. The
'\1' wildcard corresponds to the first wildcard group in the
source mask, the '\2' wildcard corresponds to the second
group and so on all the way up to '\9'. The '\0' wildcard
is the whole filename of the source file.
Two examples:
If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is
"/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the
copy will be "foo.tgz" in "/bla".
Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that
"file.c" would become "c.file" and so on. The source mask
for this is "*.*" and the destination is "\2.\1".
Use shell patterns off
When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do
automatic grouping anymore. You must use '\(...\)' expres-
sions in the source mask to specify meaning for the wild-
cards in the target mask. This is more flexible but also
requires more typing. Otherwise target masks are similar to
the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
Two examples:
If the source mask is "^\(.*\)\.tar\.gz$", the destination
is "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz",
the copy will be "/bla/foo.tgz".
Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so
that "file.c" will become "c.file" and so on. The source
mask for this is "^\(.*\)\.\(.*\)$" and the destination is
"\2.\1".
Case Conversions
You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use
'\u' or '\l' in the target mask, the next character will be
converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.
If you use '\U' or '\L' in the target mask, the next charac-
ters will be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspond-
ingly up to the next '\E' or next '\U', '\L' or the end of
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the file name.
The '\u' and '\l' are stronger than '\U' and '\L'.
For example, if the source mask is '*' ( Use shell patterns
on) or '^\(.*\)$' ( Use shell patterns off) and the target
mask is '\L\u*' the file names will be converted to have
initial upper case and otherwise lower case.
You can also use '\' as a quote character. For example, '\\'
is a backslash and '\*' is an asterisk.
Stable symlinks
commands Midnight Commander, that it should change symlinks
in the target, so that they'll point to the same location as
it did before. With absolute symbolic links this does noth-
ing, but if you have a relative one, it will recompute its
value, adding necessary ../ and other directory parts and
making the value as short as possible (most modern filesys-
tems keep short symlinks inside inodes and thus don't waste
much disk space).
Select/Unselect Files
The dialog of group of files and directories selection or
uselection. The input line allow enter the regular expres-
sion of filenames that will be selected/unselected.
When Files only checkbox is on, only files will be selected.
If Files only is off, as files as directories will be
selected. When Shell Patterns checkbox is on, the regular
expression is much like the filename globbing in the shell
(* standing for zero or more characters and ? standing for
one character). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging
of files is done with normal regular expressions (see ed
(1)). When Case sensitive checkbox is on, the selection will
be case sensitive characters. If Case sensitive is off, the
case will be ignored.
Internal Diff Viewer
The mcdiff is a visual diff tool. You can compare two files
and edit them in-place (diffs are updated dynamically). You
can browse and view a working copy from popular version con-
trol systems (GIT, Subversion, etc).
Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of
Midnight Commander.
F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
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F2 Save modified files.
F4 Edit file of the left panel in the internal editor.
F14 Edit file of the right panel in the internal editor.
F5 Merge the current hunk. Only the current hunk will be
merged.
F7 Start search.
F17 Continue search.
F10, Esc, q Exit from diff viewer.
Alt-s, s Toggle show of hunk status.
Alt-n, l Toggle show of line numbers.
f Maximize left panel.
= Make panels equal in width.
> Reduce the size of the right panel.
< Reduce the size of the left panel.
c Toggle show of trailing carriage return (CR) symbol as ^M.
2, 3, 4, 8 Set tabulation size
C-u Swap contents of diff panels.
C-r Refresh the screen.
C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
Enter, Space, n Find next diff hunk.
Backspace, p Find previous diff hunk.
g Go to line.
Down Scroll one line forward.
Up Scroll one line backward.
PageUp Move one page up.
PageDown Mves one page down.
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Home, A1 Moves to the line beginning.
End Moves to the line end.
C-Home Move to the file beginning.
C-End, C1 Move to the file end.
Internal File Viewer
The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII
and hex. To toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your
system or the file type to display the information. Some
character sequences, which appear most often in preformatted
manual pages, are displayed bold and underlined, thus making
a pretty display of your files.
When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes
and constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly
after removing the quotes. Each number matches one byte.
You can mix quoted text with constants like this:
"String" -1 0xBB 012 "more text"
Note that 012 is an octal number. -1 is converted to 0xFF.
Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key
that the Midnight Commander handles in the internal file
viewer.
F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
F2 Toggle the wrap mode.
F4 Toggle the hex mode.
F5 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and
will display that line.
F6, /. Regular expression search.
?, Reverse regular expression search.
F7 Normal search / hex mode search.
C-s, F17, n. Start normal search if there was no previous
search expression else find next match.
C-r. Start reverse search if there was no previous search
expression else find next match.
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F8 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found
on disk or if a processing filter has been specified in the
mc.ext file, then the output from the filter. Current mode
is always the other than written on the button label, since
on the button is the mode which you enter by that key.
F9 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on
the viewer will interpret some string sequences to show bold
and underline with different colors. Also, on button label
is the other mode than current.
F10, Esc. Exit the internal file viewer.
next-page, space, C-v. Scroll one page forward.
prev-page, Alt-v, C-b, Backspace. Scroll one page backward.
down-key Scroll one line forward.
up-key Scroll one line backward.
C-l Refresh the screen.
C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
[n] m Set the mark n.
[n] r Jump to the mark n.
C-f Jump to the next file.
C-b Jump to the previous file.
Alt-r Toggle the ruler.
Alt-e to change charset of displayed text may use M-e
(Alt-e). Recoding is made from selected codepage into sys-
tem codepage. To cancel the recoding you may select "<No
translation>" in charset selection dialog.
It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a
file, look at the Extension File Edit section
Internal File Editor
The internal file editor is a full-featured full screen edi-
tor. It can edit files up to 64 megabytes. It is possible
to edit binary files. The internal file editor is invoked
using F4 if the use_internal_edit option is set in the ini-
tialization file.
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The features it presently supports are: block copy, move,
delete, cut, paste; key for key undo; pull-down menus; file
insertion; macro commands; regular expression search and
replace; shift-arrow text highlighting (if supported by the
terminal); insert-overwrite toggle; word wrap; autoindent;
tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file
types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell com-
mands like indent and ispell.
Sections:
Options of editor in ini-file
The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring. To
see what keys do what, just consult the appropriate
pull-down menu. Other keys are: Shift movement keys do text
highlighting. Ctrl-Ins copies to the file mcedit.clip and
Shift-Ins pastes from mcedit.clip. Shift-Del cuts to
mcedit.clip, and Ctrl-Del deletes highlighted text. Mouse
highlighting also works, and you can override the mouse as
usual by holding down the shift key while dragging the mouse
to let normal terminal mouse highlighting work.
To define a macro, press Ctrl-R and then type out the key
strokes you want to be executed. Press Ctrl-R again when
finished. You can then assign the macro to any key you like
by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you press
Ctrl-A and then the assigned key. The macro is also executed
if you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, pro-
vided that the key is not used for any other function. Once
defined, the macro commands go into the file
~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.macros You can delete a
macro by deleting the appropriate line in this file.
To change charset of displayed text may use M-e (Alt-e).
Recoding is made from selected codepage into system code-
page. To cancel the recoding you may select "<No transla-
tion>" in charset selection dialog.
F19 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text
or C or C++ code or another). This is controlled by the file
/usr/share/mc/edit.indent.rc which is copied to
~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/edit.indent.rc in your home direc-
tory the first time you use it.
The editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When
editing binary files, you should set display bits to 7 bits
in the options menu to keep the spacing clean.
Options of editor in ini-file
Some editor options of ini-file are described in this
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section. Options are placed in [Midnight-Commander] section
editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or
just from begin of file to cursor position (0)
Screen selector
Midnight Commander supports running many internal modules
(such as editor, viewer and diff viewer) simultaneously and
switching between them without closing open files. Using
several file managers at a time, however, is not currently
supported.
Let's call each of these modules a screen. There are three
ways to switch between screens, using one of these global
shortcuts:
Alt-}
switch to the next screen;
Alt-{
switch to the previous screen;
Alt-`
open a dialog window with the list of currently open
screens (or use the "Screen list" menu item).
Completion
Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
Attempt to perform completion on the text before current
position. MC attempts completion treating the text as vari-
able (if the text begins with $), username (if the text
begins with ~), hostname (if the text begins with @) or com-
mand (if you are on the command line in the position where
you might type a command, possible completions then include
shell reserved words and shell built-in commands as well) in
turn. If none of these matches, filename completion is
attempted.
Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works
on all input lines, command completion is command line spe-
cific. If the completion is ambiguous (there are more dif-
ferent possibilities), MC beeps and the following action
depends on the setting of the Complete: show all option in
the Configuration dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all
possibilities pops up next to the current position and you
can select with the arrow keys and Enter the correct entry.
You can also type the first letters in which the possibili-
ties differ to move to a subset of all possibilities and
complete as much as possible. If you press Alt-Tab again,
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only the subset will be shown in the listbox, otherwise the
first item which matches all the previous characters will be
highlighted. As soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog dis-
appears, but you can hide it by canceling keys Esc, F10 and
left and right arrow keys. If Complete: show all is dis-
abled, the dialog pops up only if you press Alt-Tab for the
second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
Apply escaping of ?, * and & symbols (as , " " " "," " " """
in filenames to disallow use them as metasymbols in regular
expressions when substitution is performed in the input
line.
Virtual File System
The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to
access the file system; this code layer is known as the vir-
tual file system switch. The virtual file system switch
allows the Midnight Commander to manipulate files not
located on the Unix file system.
Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some Vir-
tual File Systems (VFS): the local file system, used for
accessing the regular Unix file system; the ftpfs, used to
manipulate files on remote systems with the FTP protocol;
the tarfs, used to manipulate tar and compressed tar files;
the undelfs, used to recover deleted files on ext2 file sys-
tems (the default file system for Linux systems), fish (for
manipulating files over shell connections such as rsh and
ssh). If the code was compiled with sftpfs (for manipulat-
ing files over SFTP connections). If the code was compiled
with smbfs support, you can manipulate files on remote sys-
tems with the SMB (CIFS) protocol.
A generic extfs (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided
in order to easily expand VFS capabilities using scripts and
external software.
The VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names
used and will forward them to the correct file system, the
formats used for each one of the file systems is described
later in their own section.
FTP File System
The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate files
on remote machines. To actually use it, you can use the FTP
link item in the menu or directly change your current direc-
tory using the cd command to a path name that looks like
this:
ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
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The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If you
specify the user element, the Midnight Commander will login
to the remote machine as that user, otherwise it will use
anonymous login or the login name from the ~/.netrc file.
The optional pass element is the password used for the con-
nection. Using the password in the VFS directory name is
not recommended, because it can appear on the screen in
clear text and can be saved to the directory history.
To enable using FTP proxy, prepend ! (an exclamation sign)
to the hostname.
Examples:
ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
ftp://guest@remote-host.com:40/pub
ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
Please check the Virtual File System dialog box for ftpfs
options.
Tar File System
The tar file system provides you with read-only access to
your tar files and compressed tar files by using the chdir
command. To change your directory to a tar file, you change
your current directory to the tar file by using the follow-
ing syntax:
/filename.tar/utar://[dir-inside-tar]
The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files,
this means that usually you just point to a tar file and
press return to enter into the tar file, see the Extension
File Edit section for details on how this is done.
Examples:
mc-3.0.tar.gz/utar://mc-3.0/vfs
/ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar/utar://
The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
FIle transfer over SHell filesystem
The fish file system is a network based file system that
allows you to manipulate the files in a remote machine as if
they were local. To use this, the other side has to either
run fish server, or has to have bash-compatible shell.
To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into
a special directory which name is in the following format:
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sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
The user, options and remote-dir elements are optional. If
you specify the user element, the Midnight Commander will
try to login on the remote machine as that user, otherwise
it will use your login name.
The available options are:
'C' - use compression;
'r' - use rsh instead of ssh;
port - specify the port used by remote server.
If the remote-dir element is present, your current directory
on the remote machine will be set to this one.
Examples:
sh://onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
sh://joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
sh://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
sh://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) filesystem
The SFTP file system is a network based file system that
allows you to manipulate the files in a remote machine as if
they were local.
To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into
a special directory which name is in the following format:
sftp://[user@]machine:[port]/[remote-dir]
The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If you
specify the user element, the Midnight Commander will try to
login on the remote machine as that user, otherwise it will
use your login name. port - specify the port used by remote
server (22 by default). If the remote-dir element is
present, your current directory on the remote machine will
be set to this one.
Examples:
sftp://onlyrsh.mx/linux/local
sftp://joe:password@want.compression.edu/private
sftp://joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private
sftp://joe@somehost.ssh.edu:2222/private
Undelete File System
On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs
undelete facilities, you will have the undelete file system
available. Recovery of deleted files is only available on
ext2 file systems. The undelete file system is just an
interface to the ext2fs library to retrieve all of the
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deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and to extract
the selected files into a regular partition.
To use this file system, you have to chdir into the special
file name formed by the "undel://" prefix and the file name
where the actual file system resides.
For example, to recover deleted files on the second parti-
tion of the first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the fol-
lowing path name:
undel://sda2
It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required
information before you start browsing files there.
SMB File System
The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote machines
with SMB (or CIFS) protocol. These include Windows for
Workgroups, Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and
Samba. To actually use it, you may try to use the panel
command "SMB link..." (accessible from the menubar) or you
may directly change your current directory to it using the
cd command to a path name that looks like this:
smb://[user@]machine[/service][/remote-dir]
The user, service and remote-dir elements are optional. The
user, domain and password can be specified in an input dia-
log.
Examples:
smb://machine/Share
smb://other_machine
smb://guest@machine/Public/Irlex
EXTernal File System
extfs allows you to integrate numerous features and file
types into GNU Midnight Commander in an easy way, by writing
scripts.
Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:
1. Stand-alone filesystems, which are not associated with
any existing file. They represent certain system-wide data
as a directory tree. You can invoke them by typing 'cd
fsname://' where fsname is an extfs short name (see below).
Examples of such filesystems include audio (list audio
tracks on the CD) or apt (list of all Debian packages in the
system).
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For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive,
type
cd audio://
2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which
represent contents of a file as a directory tree. It can
consist of 'real' files compressed in an archive (urar, rpm)
or virtual files, like messages in a mailbox (mailfs) or
parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such filesystems
'fsname://' should be appended to the archive name. Note
that the archive itself can be on another vfs.
For example, to list contents of a zip archive documents.zip
type
cd documents.zip/uzip://
In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other direc-
tory. For instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change
to it from directory history. An important limitation is
that you cannot invoke shell commands inside extfs, just
like any other non-local VFS.
Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:
a access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette (cd a://).
apt front end to Debian's APT package management system (cd
apt://).
audio
audio CD ripping and playing (cd audio:// or cd
device/audio://).
bpp package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution (cd
file.bpp/bpp://).
deb package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution (cd
file.deb/deb://).
dpkg Debian GNU/Linux installed packages (cd deb://).
hp48 view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator (cd
hp48://).
lslR browsing of lslR listings as found on many FTPs (cd
filename/lslR://).
mailfs
mbox-style mailbox files support (cd mail-
box/mailfs://).
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patchfs
extfs to handle unified and context diffs (cd file-
name/patchfs://).
rpm RPM package (cd filename/rpm://).
rpms RPM database management (cd rpms://).
ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
archivers (cd archive/xxxx:// where xxxx is one of:
ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha).
You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as
described in the Extension File Edit section. Here is an
example entry for Debian packages:
regex/.deb$
Open=%cd %p/deb://
Colors
The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal
supports color using the terminal database and your terminal
name. Sometimes it gets confused, so you may force color
mode or disable color mode using the -c and -b flag respec-
tively.
If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager
instead of ncurses, it will also check the variable COL-
ORTERM, if it is set, it has the same effect as the -c flag.
You may specify terminals that always force color mode by
adding the color_terminals variable to the Colors section of
the initialization file. This will prevent the Midnight
Commander from trying to detect if your terminal supports
color. Example:
[Colors]
color_terminals=linux,xterm
color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang,
ncurses does not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses
uses just the information in the terminal database.
The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default
colors. Currently the colors are configured using the envi-
ronment variable MC_COLOR_TABLE or the Colors section in the
initialization file.
In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from
the base_color variable. You can specify an alternate color
map for a terminal by using the terminal name as the key in
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this section. Example:
[Colors]
base_color=
xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
The format for the color definition is:
<keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=...
The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal,
selected, disabled, marked, markselect, errors, input,
inputmark, inputunchanged, commandlinemark, reverse, gauge,
header, inputhistory, commandhistory. Button bar colors are:
bbarhotkey, bbarbutton. Status bar color: statusbar. Menu
colors are: menunormal, menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, men-
uinactive. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus, dhotnormal,
dhotfocus, dtitle. Error dialog colors are: errdfocus, errd-
hotnormal, errdhotfocus, errdtitle. Help colors are: help-
normal, helpitalic, helpbold, helplink, helpslink, helpti-
tle. Viewer color are: viewbold, viewunderline, viewse-
lected. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, edit-
marked, editwhitespace, editlinestate. Popup menu colors
are: pmenunormal, pmenusel, pmenutitle.
header determines the color of panel header, the line that
contains column titles and sort mode indicator.
input determines the color of input lines used in query
dialogs.
gauge determines the color of the filled part of the
progress bar (gauge), which is used to show the user the
progress of file operations, such as copying.
disabled determines the color of the widget that cannot be
selected.
The dialog boxes use the following colors: dnormal is used
for the normal text, dfocus is the color used for the cur-
rently selected component, dhotnormal is the color used to
differentiate the hotkey color in normal components, whereas
the dhotfocus color is used for the highlighted color in the
currently selected component.
Menus use the same scheme but uses the menunormal, menusel,
menuhot, menuhotsel and menuinactive tags instead.
Help uses the following colors: helpnormal is used for nor-
mal text, helpitalic is used for text which is emphasized in
italic in the manual page, helpbold is used for text which
is emphasized in bold in the manual page, helplink is used
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for not selected hyperlinks and helpslink is used for
selected hyperlink.
Popup menu uses following colors: pmenunormal is used for
non-selected menu items and as a main color of popup menu
window, pmenusel is used for selected menu item, pmenutitle
is used for popup menu title.
The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta,
brightmagenta, cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And
there is a special keyword for transparent background. It is
'default'. The 'default' can only be used for background
color. Another special keyword "base" means mc's main col-
ors. When 256 colors are available, they can be specified
either as color16 to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and
gray0 to gray23. Example:
[Colors]
base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
Attributes can be any of bold, underline, reverse and blink,
appended by a plus sign if more than one are desired. The
special word "none" means no attributes, without attempting
to fall back to base_color. Example:
menuhotsel=yellow;black;bold+underline
Skins
You can change the appearance of Midnight Commander. To do
this, you must specify a file that contain descriptions of
colors and lines to draw boxes. Redefining of the colors is
entirely compatible with the assignment of colors, as
described in Section Colors.
If your skin contains any of 256-color definitions, you
should define the '256colors' key set to TRUE value in
[skin] section.
A skin-file is searched on the following algorithm (to the
first one found):
1) command line option -S <skin> or --skin=<skin>
2) Environment variable MC_SKIN
3) Parameter skin in section [Midnight-Commander] in
config file.
4) File /usr/share/mc/skins/default.ini
5) File /usr/share/mc/skins/default.ini
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Command line option, environment variable and parameter in
config file may contain the absolute path to the skin-file
(with the extension .ini or without it). Search of skin-file
will occur in (to the first one found):
1) ~/.local/share/mc/skins/
2) @sysconfdir@/mc/skins/
3) /usr/share/mc/skins/
For getting extended info, refer to:
Description of section and parameters
Color pair definitions
Draw lines
Compatibility
Description of section and parameters
Section [skin] contain metainfo for skin-file. Parameter
description contain short text about skin.
Section [filehighlight] contain descriptions of color pairs
for filenames highlighting. Name of parameters must be
equal to names of sections into filehighlight.ini file. See
Filenames Highlight for getting more info.
Section [core] describes the elements that are used every-
where.
_default_
Default color pair. Used in all other sections if they
not contain color definitions
selected
cursor
marked
selected data
markselect
cursor on selected data
gauge
color of the filled part of the progress bar
input
color of input lines used in query dialogs
inputmark
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color of input selected text
inputunhanged
color of input text before first modification or cursor
movement
commandlinemark
color of selected text in command line
reverse
reverse color
Section [dialog] describes the elements that are placed on
dialog windows (except error dialogs).
_default_
Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_
if not specified
dfocus
Color of active element (in focus)
dhotnormal
Color of hotkeys
dhotfocus
Color of hotkeys in focused element
Section [error] describes the elements that are placed on
error dialog windows
_default_
Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_
if not specified
errdhotnormal
Color of hotkeys
errdhotfocus
Color of hotkeys in focused element
Section [menu] describes the elements that are placed in
menu. This section describes system menu (called by F9) and
user-defined menus (called by F2 in panels and by F11 in
editor).
_default_
Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_
if not specified
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entry
Color of menu items
menuhot
Color of menu hotkeys
menusel
Color of active menu item (in focus)
menuhotsel
Color of menu hotkeys in focused menu item
menuinactive
Color of inactive menu
Section [help] describes the elements that are placed on
help window.
_default_
Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_
if not specified
helpitalic
Color pair for element with italic attribute
helpbold
Color pair for element with bold attribute
helplink
Color of links
helpslink
Color of active link (on focus)
Section [editor] describes the colors of elements placed in
editor.
_default_
Default color for this section. Used [core]._default_
if not specified
editbold
Color pair for element with bold attribute
editmarked
Color of selected text
editwhitespace
Color of tabs and trailing spaces highlighting
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editlinestate
Color for line state area
Section [viewer] describes the colors of elements placed in
viewer.
viewunderline
Color pair for element with underline attribute
Color pair definitions
Any parameter in skin-file contain definition of color pair.
Color pairs described as two colors and the optional
attributes separated by ';'. First field sets the foreground
color, second field sets background color, third field sets
the attributes. Any of the fields may be omitted, in this
case value will be taken from default color pair (global
color pair or from default color pair of this section).
Example:
[core]
# green on black
_default_=green;black
# green (default) on blue
selected=;blue
# yellow on black (default)
# underlined yellow on black (default)
marked=yellow;;underline
Possible colors (names) and attributes are described in Col-
ors. section.
Draw lines
Lines sets in section [Lines] into skin-file. By default
single lines are used, but you may redefine to usage of any
utf-8 symbols (like to lines, for example).
WARNING!!! When you build Midnight Commander with the
Ncurses screen library usage of drawing lines is limited!
Possible only drawing a single lines. For all questions and
comments please contact the developers of Ncurses.
Descriptions of parameters [Lines]:
lefttop
left-top line fragment.
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righttop
right-top line fragment.
centertop
down branch of horizontal line
centerbottom
up branch of horizontal line
leftbottom
left-bottom line fragment
rightbottom
right-bottom line fragment
leftmiddle
right branch of vertical line
rightmiddle
left branch of vertical line
centermiddle
cross of lines
horiz
horizontal line
vert vertical line
thinhoriz
thin horizontal line
thinvert
thin vertical line
Compatibility
Appointment of color by skin-files fully compatible with
the appointment of the colors described in Colors. section.
In this case, reassignment of colors has priority over the
skin file and is complementary.
Filenames Highlight
Section [filehighlight] in current skin-file contains key
names as highlight groups and values as color pairs. Color
pairs is documented in Skins section.
Rules of filenames highlight are placed in
/usr/share/mc/filehighlight.ini file
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(~/.config/mc/filehighlight.ini). Name of section in this
file must be equal to parameters names in [filehighlight]
section (in current skin-file).
Keys in these groups are:
type file type. If present, all other options are ignored.
regexp
regular expression. If present, 'extensions' option is
ignored.
extensions
list of extensions of files. Separated by ';' sign.
extensions_case
(make sense only with 'extensions' parameter) make
'extensions' rule case sentitive (true) or not (false).
`type' key may have values:
- FILE (all files)
- FILE_EXE
- DIR (all directories)
- LINK_DIR
- LINK (all links except stale link)
- HARDLINK
- SYMLINK
- STALE_LINK
- DEVICE (all device files)
- DEVICE_BLOCK
- DEVICE_CHAR
- SPECIAL (all special files)
- SPECIAL_SOCKET
- SPECIAL_FIFO
- SPECIAL_DOOR
Special Settings
Most of the Midnight Commander settings can be changed from
the menus. However, there are a small number of settings
which can only be changed by editing the setup file.
These variables may be set in your ~/.config/mc/ini file:
clear_before_exec
By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen
before executing a command. If you would prefer to see
the output of the command at the bottom of the screen,
edit your ~/.config/mc/ini file and change the value of
the field clear_before_exec to 0.
confirm_view_dir
If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that
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directory. If this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask
for confirmation before changing the directory if you
have files tagged.
ftpfs_retry_seconds
This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Com-
mander will wait before attempting to reconnect to an
FTP server that has denied the login. If the value is
zero, the login will no be retried.
max_dirt_limit
Specifies how many screen updates can be skipped at
most in the internal file viewer. Normally this value
is not significant, because the code automatically
adjusts the number of updates to skip according to the
rate of incoming keystrokes. However, on very slow
machines or terminals with a fast keyboard auto repeat,
a big value can make screen updates too jumpy.
It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the
best behavior, and that is the default value.
mouse_move_pages_viewer
Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages
or line by line on the internal file viewer.
only_leading_plus_minus
Allow special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in the com-
mand line (select, unselect, reverse selection) only if
the command line is empty. You don't need to quote
those characters in the middle of the command line. On
the other hand, you cannot use them to change selection
when the command line is not empty.
show_output_starts_shell
This variable only works if you are not using the sub-
shell support. When you use the C-o keystroke to go
back to the user screen, if this one is set, you will
get a fresh shell. Otherwise, pressing any key will
bring you back to the Midnight Commander.
timeformat_recent
Change the time format used to display dates less than
6 months from now. See strftime or date man page for
the format specification. If this option is absent,
default timeformat is used.
timeformat_old
Change the time format used to display dates older
than 6 months from now or for dates in the future. See
strftime or date man page for the format specification.
If this option is absent, default timeformat is used.
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torben_fj_mode
If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will
work slightly different on the panels, instead of mov-
ing the selection to the first and last files in the
panels, they will act as follows:
The home key will: Go up to the middle line, if below
it; else go to the top line unless it is already on the
top line, in this case it will go to the first file in
the panel.
The end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the mid-
dle line, if over it; else go to the bottom line unless
you already are at the bottom line, in such case it
will move the selection to the last file name in the
panel.
use_file_to_guess_type
If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the
file command to match the file types listed on the
mc.ext file.
xtree_mode
If this variable is on (default is off) when you browse
the file system on a Tree panel, it will automatically
reload the other panel with the contents of the
selected directory.
fish_directory_timeout
This variable holds the lifetime of a directory cache
entry in seconds. The default value is 900 seconds.
clipboard_store
This variable contains path (with options) to the
external clipboard utility like 'xclip' to read text
into X selection from file. For example:
clipboard_store=xclip -i
clipboard_paste
This variable contains path (with options) to the
external clipboard utility like 'xclip' to print the
selection to standard out. For example:
clipboard_pastee=xclip -o
autodetect_codeset
This option allows use the `enca' command to autodetect
codeset of text files in internal viewer and editor.
List of valid values can be obtain by the `enca --list
languages | cut -d : -f1' command. Option must be
located in the [Misc] section.
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For example:
autodetect_codeset=russian
Parameters for external editor or viewer
The Midnight Commander provides a way for specify an options
for external editors and viewers. The Midnight Commander
tries to search the "[External editor or viewer parameters]"
section in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file
located in the Midnight Commander library directory) and
then in the ~/.config/mc/ini file. The option name should be
equal to the name (full pathname) of external editor or
viewer. The option value can contain following variables:
%filename
The filename to edit/view.
%lineno
The start line in the opening file.
For example:
[External editor or viewer parameters]
vi=%filename +%lineno
joe=%filename +%lineno
more=%filename +%lineno
Terminal databases
The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system
terminal database without requiring root privileges. The
Midnight Commander searches in the system initialization
file (the mc.lib file located in the Midnight Commander
library directory) and in the ~/.config/mc/ini file for the
section "terminal:your-terminal-name" and then for the sec-
tion "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a
key symbol that you want to define, followed by an equal
sign and the definition for the key. You can use the spe-
cial \e form to represent the escape character and the ^x to
represent the control-x character.
The possible key symbols are:
f0 to f20 Function keys f0-f20
bs backspace
home home key
end end key
up up arrow key
down down arrow key
left left arrow key
right right arrow key
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pgdn page down key
pgup page up key
insert the insert character
delete the delete character
complete to do completion
For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ +
O + p, you set this in the ini file:
insert=\e[Op
Also now you can use extended learn keys. For example:
ctrl-alt-right=\e[[1;6C
ctrl-alt-left=\e[[1;6D
This means that ctrl+alt+left sends a \e[[1;6D escape
sequence and therefore Midnight Commander interprets
"\e[[1;6D" as Ctrl-Alt-Left.
The complete key symbol represents the escape sequences used
to invoke the completion process, this is invoked with
Alt-tab, but you can define other keys to do the same work
(on those keyboard with tons of nice and unused keys every-
where).
FILES
Full paths below may vary between installations. They are
also affected by the MC_DATADIR environment variable. If
it's set, its value is used instead of /usr/share/mc in the
paths below.
/usr/share/mc/mc.hlp
The help file for the program.
/usr/share/mc/mc.ext
The default system-wide extensions file.
~/.config/mc/mc.ext
User's own extension, view configuration and edit con-
figuration file. They override the contents of the
system wide files if present.
/usr/share/mc/mc.ini
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The default system-wide setup for the Midnight Comman-
der, used only if the user doesn't have his own ~/.con-
fig/mc/ini file.
/usr/share/mc/mc.lib
Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings
in this file affect all users, whether they have
~/.config/mc/ini or not. Currently, only terminal set-
tings are loaded from mc.lib.
~/.config/mc/ini
User's own setup. If this file is present then the set-
up is loaded from here instead of the system-wide
startup file.
/usr/share/mc/mc.hint
This file contains the hints displayed by the program.
/usr/share/mc/mc.menu
This file contains the default system-wide applications
menu.
~/.config/mc/menu
User's own application menu. If this file is present it
is used instead of the system-wide applications menu.
~/.cache/mc/Tree
The directory list for the directory tree and tree view
features.
~/.local/share/mc.menu
Local user-defined menu. If this file is present, it is
used instead of the home or system-wide applications
menu.
To change default root directory of MC, you can use MC_HOME
environment variable. The value of MC_HOME must be an abso-
lute path. If MC_HOME is unset or empty, HOME variable is
used. If HOME is unset or empty, MC directories are get from
GLib library.
LICENSE
This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU Gen-
eral Public License as published by the Free Software Foun-
dation. See the built-in help for details on the License and
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the lack of warranty.
AVAILABILITY
The latest version of this program can be found at
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mc/.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | file/mc |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
tcsh(1), zsh(1).
The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
http://www.midnight-commander.org/
AUTHORS
Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in
the source distribution.
BUGS
See the file TODO in the distribution for information on
what remains to be done.
If you want to report a problem with the program, please
send mail to this address: mc-devel@gnome.org.
Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of
the program you are running (mc -V displays this informa-
tion), the operating system you are running the program on.
If the program crashes, we would appreciate a stack trace.
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://www.midnight-
commander.org/downloads/mc-4.8.8.tar.bz2
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.midnight-comman-
der.org/.
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