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MC(1) GNU Midnight Commander MC(1)
NAME
mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems.
SYNOPSIS
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 Commander
files.
-F, --datadir-info
Display extended info about compiled-in paths for Midnight
Commander.
-g, --oldmouse
Force a "normal tracking" mouse mode. Used when running on
xterm-capable terminals (tmux/screen).
-k, --resetsoft
Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo
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 hard‐
coded 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 automatically
changes the current directory of the shell to the last
directory Midnight Commander was in. Source the file
/usr/libexec/mc/mc.sh (bash and zsh users) or
/usr/libexec/mc.csh (tcsh users) respectively to define mc
as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
-s, --slow
Turn on the slow terminal mode, in this mode the program
will not draw expensive line drawing characters and will
toggle verbose mode off.
-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 S-Lang and ter‐
minfo: it makes 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
Midnight Commander has been built with concurrent shell
support).
-U, --subshell
Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes
sense if the Midnight Commander was built with the subshell
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 ter‐
minals (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,
Shift
If both paths are specified, the first path name is the directory
to show in the active panel; the second path name is the directory
to be shown in the other panel.
If one path is specified, the path name is the directory to show
in the active panel; value of "other_dir" from panels.ini is the
directory to be shown in the passive panel.
If no paths are specified, current directory is shown in the
active panel; value of "other_dir" from panels.ini is the direc‐
tory to be shown in the passive panel.
Overview
The screen of Midnight Commander is divided into four parts.
Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory pan‐
els. By default, the second line from the bottom 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.
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 operations 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 Midnight Commander by simply
typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command
line, and when you press Enter, Midnight 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
Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is activated when‐
ever you are running on an xterm(1) terminal (it even works if you
take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to another machine from
the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux console and have the
gpm mouse server running.
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 exe‐
cuted.
Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the func‐
tion key labels by clicking on them.
The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400 mil‐
liseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the
~/.config/mc/ini file and changing the mouse_repeat_rate parame‐
ter.
If you are running 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 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 follow‐
ing 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 Midnight Commander use an approximation 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)
are relative to default behavior.
There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following
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 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, Midnight Commander creates key bindings using keymap
defined in the source code. Then, two files
/usr/share/mc/mc.keymap and /etc/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 con‐
fig 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) /etc/mc/
3) /usr/share/mc/
Miscellaneous Keys
Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other cate‐
gories:
Enter if there is some text in the command line (the one at the
bottom of the panels), then that command is executed. If
there is no text in the command line then if the selection
bar is over a directory the Midnight Commander does a
chdir(2) to the selected directory and reloads the informa‐
tion on the panel; if the selection is an executable file
then it is executed. Finally, if the extension of the
selected file name matches one of the extensions in the
extensions file then the corresponding command is executed.
C-l repaint all the information in 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 con‐
sole or under an xterm, it will show you the output of the
previous command. When ran on the Linux console, Midnight
Commander uses an external program (cons.saver) to handle
saving and restoring of information on the screen.
When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any
time and you will be taken back to Midnight Commander's 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 Midnight Commander until you terminate
the suspended application.
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 terminfo
sequence). To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
M-e to change charset of panel you may use M-e (Alt-e). Recod‐
ing is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To
cancel the recoding, 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 format. With this it is possible to quickly switch
to brief listing, long listing, user defined listing for‐
mat, 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. 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 charac‐
ter). 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.
\ (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 selection to the
next file. If the currently selected file is not a direc‐
tory, 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 current 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, 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 depressing
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 mistakes. If C-s is pressed again, the next
match is searched for.
If quick search is started with double pressing of C-s, the previ‐
ous quick search pattern will be used for current search.
Besides the filename characters, you can also use wildcard charac‐
ters '*' 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.
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 unselected
panel's path name to the command line.
C-q the quote command can be used to insert characters that are
otherwise interpreted by 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 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:
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 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 currently
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 customize
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 horizon‐
tal panel split is chosen from the Layout options dialog).
Listing Format...
The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there
are four different listing formats 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 from 1 up to 9
columns (therefore showing more files unlike 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 specifier.
This may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel
and a full screen panel respectively.
After the panel size, you may specify how many listings to fit in
the panel, side-by-side (in other words: how many times to repeat
the fields horizontally). This defaults to 1. You may change this
by adding a number from 1 to 9 to the format string.
After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size
specifier. This are the available fields you may display:
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 character
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.
group the group of the file.
inode the inode of the file.
Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
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 program 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 currently
selected file and if possible information about the current
file system.
Tree The tree view is quite similar to the directory tree fea‐
ture. 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 commands.
Sort Order...
The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by 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. Regard‐
less 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 directory. It
is useful if other processes have created or removed files.
File Menu
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 capabilities 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 respec‐
tively).
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 pro‐
vide users with a menu and add extra features to Midnight Comman‐
der.
View (F3, F13)
View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the
Internal File Viewer but if the option "Use internal view" is off,
it invokes an external file viewer specified by the VIEWER envi‐
ronment 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 formatting or preprocessing to the file.
See parameters for external viewer for explain how you may specify
an extended command line options for external viewers.
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 editors.
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 preal‐
locate_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, regard‐
less of any tagged files.
On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background
by clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt-b in the
dialog box). The Background Jobs is used to control the back‐
ground process.
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 file‐
name 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.
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-status line if the Show mini-status option is
enabled. Use symbolic 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 direc‐
tory:
/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
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, regard‐
less of any tagged files.
On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background
by clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt-b in the
dialog box). The Background Jobs is used to control the back‐
ground 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 cur‐
rently 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. 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 sensitive checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensi‐
tive characters. If Case sensitive is off, the case will be
ignored.
Unselect group (\)
Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the
Select group command.
Quit (F10, Shift-F10)
Terminate 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 visited with Midnight Commander,
instead it will stay at the directory where you started 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 inter‐
nal cd command.
Command Menu
The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.
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) command 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 commands. The
selected command is copied to the command line. The command his‐
tory can also be accessed by typing Alt-p or Alt-n.
The "Directory hotlist" command makes changing of the current
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 programs
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 directories.
You can select a directory from the figure and 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, 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 missing, 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.
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 characters. 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 directory.
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.
The "File name" input field contains a filename pattern to be
searched for. It is interpreted as a shell pattern or as a regular
expression depending on the state of the "Using shell patterns"
checkbox. An empty value is valid and matches any file name.
The "Content" input field contains a string to search for within
the files. Leave this field empty to disable searching file con‐
tents.
Option "Whole words" allows select only those files containing
matches that 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.
You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The
Chdir button will change to the directory of the currently
selected file. The Again button will ask for the parameters for a
new search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panel‐
ize 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). To return to the normal file list‐
ing, change directory to "..".
The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it
allow one 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 separated 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 cur‐
rent 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 program,
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 command to extract the
file name from the transfer log files:
awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /var/log/xferlog
You may want to save often used panelize commands under a descrip‐
tive 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 directories
in the directory hotlist. Midnight Commander will change to the
directory corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist
dialog, you can remove already created 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 direc‐
tory.
This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider
using the CDPATH variable as described in internal cd command
description.
Edit Extension File
This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.config/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 expression.
type - expr is a regular expression. File matches if the 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 sec‐
tion.
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). com‐
mand is any one-line shell command, with the simple macro substi‐
tution.
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 missing in the first one, then on press‐
ing 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 Comman‐
der process (only copy and move files operations can be done in
the background). You can stop, restart and kill a background job
from here.
Edit Menu File
The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized
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 sub‐
stitution takes place before 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 condition 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)
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, accord‐
ing 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
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 condi‐
tion 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 start‐
ing with '='.
Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must
start with '#', space or tab.
Options Menu
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 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 Appearance command pops up a dialog from which you specify the
skin.
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 specify
some VFS related options.
The Save setup command saves the current settings of the Left,
Right and Options menus. A small number of other settings 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".
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 automatically turned off if the speed
of your terminal is less than 9600 bps.
Compute totals. If this option is enabled, 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 progressbar
of Copy/Move/Delete operations is always grown form left to right.
If disabled, the growing direction of progressbar 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, 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 cancel key (ESC
ESC).
Timeout. This options is used to setup the time interval (in
microseconds) for single press of ESC key. By default, this inter‐
val 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.
Pause after run
After executing your commands, 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 com‐
mand. 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.
On dumb terminals. You will get the pause message on terminals
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 com‐
mands.
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 edi‐
tor 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 variable 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 recom‐
mended if you are using hotkeys.
Shell Patterns. By default the Select, Unselect and Filter com‐
mands will use shell-like regular expressions. The following con‐
versions are performed to achieve this: the '*' is replaced by
'.*' (zero or more characters); the '?' is replaced by '.'
(exactly one character) and '.' by the literal dot. If the option
is disabled, then the regular expressions are the ones described
in ed(1).
Complete: show all. By default, 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 Commander
shows a rotating dash in the upper right corner as a work in
progress indicator.
Cd follows links. This option, if set, causes 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, Midnight Commander fol‐
lows 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 direc‐
tory hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more difficult. The
default selection in the confirmation dialogs for deletion changes
from Yes to No. This option is disabled by default.
Safe overwrite. If this option is enabled, overwriting files
unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default selection in
the overwrite confirmation dialog changes from Yes to No. This
option is disabled by default.
Auto save setup. If this option is enabled, when you exit Mid‐
night Commander, the configurable options of Midnight Commander
are saved in the ~/.config/mc/ini file.
Layout
The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general
layout of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into sev‐
eral 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 Verti‐
cal 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
On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are
shown in the output window. This option is available if Midnight
Commander runs on native console only.
Other options
Menu bar visible. If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is
always visible on the top row of screen above panels. Enabled by
default.
Command prompt. If enabled, command line is available. Enabled by
default.
Keybar visible. If enabled, 10 labels 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, Mid‐
night 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 incorrect output on startup
and directory change, turn off this option. Enabled by default.
Show free space. If enabled, free space and total space of cur‐
rent 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 information
about the currently selected item is shown at the bottom of the
panels. Enabled by default.
Use SI size units. If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander
will use SI prefixes (base 10) when displaying any byte sizes. If
disabled (default), Midnight Commander will use IEC prefixes (base
2).
Mix all files. If this option is enabled, all files and directo‐
ries are shown mixed together. If the option is disabled
(default), directories (and links to directories) are shown at the
beginning of the listing, and other files below.
Show backup files. If enabled, 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, 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, Midnight Com‐
mander will use a trick to determine if the directory 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 manu‐
ally (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 list‐
ing 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
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 selection 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.
Center scrolling. If set, panel will scroll when the cursor
reaches the middle of the panel column, only hitting the top or
bottom of the panel when actually on the first or last file. This
behavior applies when scrolling one file at a time, and does not
apply to the page up/down keys.
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 high‐
lighted with distinctive Colors. If the permission highlighting
is enabled, the parts of the perm and mode display fields which
apply to the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with
the color defined by the selected keyword. If the file type high‐
lighting is enabled, file names are colored according to rules
described in /etc/mc/filehighlight.ini file. See Filenames High‐
light for more info.
Quick search
You can specify how the Quick search mode should work: case insen‐
sitively, case sensitively or be matched to 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 deletion and history
cleanup.
Appearance
In this dialog you can select the skin to be used.
See the Skins section for technical details about the skin defini‐
tion files.
Display bits
This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
screen. This setting may be 7-bits if your terminal/curses sup‐
ports only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 displays all the charac‐
ters 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, cur‐
sor 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 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 defini‐
tions 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 Virtual
File System.
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, directory listings fetched from FTP
servers).
Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files (for
example, compressed tar files), 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 parameters 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 filesystem
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, 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 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 obsolete.
If Always use ftp proxy is not set, you can use the exclamation
sign to enable proxy for certain hosts. See FTP File System for
examples.
If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult 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 accessible. 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 connec‐
tion 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, Midnight Commander tries to load initialization infor‐
mation from the ~/.config/mc/ini file. If this file doesn't
exist, the system-wide file /etc/mc/mc.ini is used. If this file
doesn't exist, the system-wide file /usr/share/mc/mc.ini is used.
If this file 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 Midnight Com‐
mander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to exe‐
cute with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting
Enter.
If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, 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 Midnight Commander, it is not
passed to the command shell for execution. Thus it may not handle
all of the nice macro expansion and substitution 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 previ‐
ously 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 Midnight Commander uses the
value in the environment variable CDPATH to search for the direc‐
tory in any of the named directories.
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 directories, from any place in the
file system by using its relative name (for example cd linux could
take you to /usr/src/linux).
Macro Substitution
When accessing a user menu, or executing an extension dependent
command, or running a command from the command line input, a sim‐
ple macro substitution takes place.
The macros are:
%i The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column posi‐
tion. 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
In file manager user menu: the current file name in
selected panel. In mcedit user menu: the name of opened
file.
%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. Oth‐
erwise the current file.
%cd This is a special macro that is used to change the current
directory to the directory specified in front of it. This
is used primarily as an interface to the Virtual File Sys‐
tem.
%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 under‐
lined.
%% 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 sub‐
stituted. Otherwise, the value of ENV is substituted.
The subshell support
The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
shells: bash, ash (BusyBox and Debian), tcsh, zsh and fish.
When the subshell support is active, 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 command, the command will be passed
to the subshell as if you had typed it. This also allows you to
change the environment variables, use shell functions and define
aliases that are valid until you quit Midnight Commander.
bash users may specify startup commands in
~/.local/share/mc/bashrc (fallback ~/.bashrc) and special keyboard
maps in ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc (fallback ~/.inputrc).
ash/dash users (BusyBox or Debian) may specify startup commands in
~/.local/share/mc/ashrc (fallback ~/.profile).
tcsh, zsh, fish users cannot specify mc-specific startup commands
at present. They have to rely on shell-specific startup files.
The following paragraphs are relevant only when the subshell sup‐
port is active:
You can suspend applications at any time with the sequence C-o and
jump back to Midnight Commander, if you interrupt an application,
you will not be able to run other external commands until you quit
the application you interrupted.
The basic prompt displayed by Midnight Commander is of the form
"user@host:current_path$ ". When using a capable shell, like Bash,
the prompt displayed by Midnight Commander will be the same prompt
that you are currently using in your shell.
(There's a known problem when using fish: the prompt is displayed
only in full screen mode (Ctrl-o), not when the panels are visi‐
ble.)
The OPTIONS section has more information on how you can control
subshell usage (-U/-u). Furthermore, to set a specific subshell
different from your current SHELL variable or login shell defined
in /etc/passwd, you may call MC like this: SHELL=/bin/myshell mc
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 direc‐
tory 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 but‐
tons 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
[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, Midnight Commander shows the
file operations dialog. It shows the files currently being pro‐
cessed 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 han‐
dled. 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 over‐
write 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 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 oper‐
ation 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 directory into the
target directory. Enabling this option causes copying the source
directory itself into the target directory.
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.
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 tar‐
get mask only the '*' and '\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The
first '*' wildcard in the target mask corresponds 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 corre‐
sponds 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 '\(...\)' expressions in the source
mask to specify meaning for the wildcards 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 characters
will be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to
the next '\E' or next '\U', '\L' or the end of 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 nothing, 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 filesystems 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 uselec‐
tion. The input line allow enter the regular expression of file‐
names 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 control systems (GIT,
Subversion, etc).
Following shortcuts are available in internal diff viewer of Mid‐
night Commander.
F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
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.
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 remov‐
ing the quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted
text with constants like this:
"String" 34 0xBB 012 "more text"
Numbers are always interpreted in hex. In the example above, "34"
is interpreted as 0x34. The prefix "0x" isn't really needed: we
could type "BB" instead of "0xBB". And "012" is interpreted as
0x12, not as an octal number.
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. You can specify a line number, offset or percentage of
file size of position that you want to view.
F7, /, ? Start search. These keys call the dialog window that
allows you to set up the search options. If key is ? the "Back‐
wards" option is on.
C-s Continue forward search.
C-r Continue reverse search.
F17, n Continue search in the chosen direction.
N Temporary change the search direction: backwards if forward
search is chosen, and vice versa.
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 system 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 Edit Extension File section
Internal File Editor
The internal file editor is a full-featured full screen editor.
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 initialization file.
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 highlight‐
ing for various file types; and an option to pipe text blocks
through shell commands 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 over‐
ride the mouse as usual by holding down the shift key while drag‐
ging 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, provided 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 codepage. To cancel the
recoding you may select "<No translation>" 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 directory 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 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 man‐
agers 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 Midnight Commander type for you.
Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position.
MC attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text
begins with $), username (if the text begins with ~), hostname (if
the text begins with @) or command (if you are on the command line
in the position where you might type a command, possible comple‐
tions then include shell reserved words and shell built-in com‐
mands as well) in turn. If none of these matches, filename com‐
pletion is attempted.
Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all
input lines, command completion is command line specific. If the
completion is ambiguous (there are more different 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 cor‐
rect entry. You can also type the first letters in which the pos‐
sibilities differ to move to a subset of all possibilities and
complete as much as possible. If you press Alt-Tab again, 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 disappears, but you can hide
it by canceling keys Esc, F10 and left and right arrow keys. If
Complete: show all is disabled, 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
Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the
file system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system
switch. The virtual file system switch allows Midnight Commander
to manipulate files not located on the Unix file system.
Currently, Midnight Commander is packaged with some Virtual File
Systems (VFS): the local file system, used for accessing the regu‐
lar Unix file system; the ftpfs, used to manipulate files on
remote systems with the FTP protocol; the tarfs, used to manipu‐
late tar and compressed tar files; the undelfs, used to recover
deleted files on ext2 file systems (the default file system for
Linux systems), fish (for manipulating files over shell connec‐
tions such as rsh and ssh). If the code was compiled with sftpfs
(for manipulating files over SFTP connections). If the code was
compiled with smbfs support, you can manipulate files on remote
systems 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 sec‐
tion.
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 directory using
the cd command to a path name that looks like this:
ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If you spec‐
ify the user element, 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 connection. 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 his‐
tory.
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 following 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 Edit Extension File 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 spe‐
cial directory which name is in the following format:
sh://[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
The user, options and remote-dir elements are optional. If you
specify the user element, 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 spe‐
cial 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 spec‐
ify the user element, 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 avail‐
able. 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 deleted files names on an
ext2fs and provides and to extract the selected files into a regu‐
lar 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 partition of
the first SCSI disk on Linux, you would use the following path
name:
undel://sda2
It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required informa‐
tion 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 cur‐
rent 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 dialog.
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).
For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive, type
cd audio://
2. 'Archive' filesystems (like rpm, patchfs and more), which rep‐
resent 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 directory.
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 file‐
name/lslR://).
mailfs mbox-style mailbox files support (cd mailbox/mailfs://).
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 Edit Extension File section. Here is an example entry for
Debian packages:
regex/.deb$
Open=%cd %p/deb://
Colors
Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
color using the terminal database and your terminal name. Some‐
times it gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable
color mode using the -c and -b flag respectively.
If the program is compiled with the S-Lang screen manager instead
of ncurses, it will also check the variable COLORTERM, 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 initial‐
ization file. This will prevent 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 S-Lang, ncurses
does not provide a way to force color mode: ncurses uses just the
information in the terminal database.
Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
Currently the colors are configured using the environment 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 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, inputun‐
changed, commandlinemark, reverse, gauge, header, inputhistory,
commandhistory. Button bar colors are: bbarhotkey, bbarbutton.
Status bar color: statusbar. Menu colors are: menunormal, menusel,
menuhot, menuhotsel, menuinactive. Dialog colors are: dnormal,
dfocus, dhotnormal, dhotfocus, dtitle. Error dialog colors are:
errdfocus, errdhotnormal, errdhotfocus, errdtitle. Help colors
are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold, helplink, helpslink, help‐
title. Viewer colors are: viewnormal, viewbold, viewunderline,
viewselected. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked,
editwhitespace, editlinestate. Popup menu colors are: pmenunormal,
pmenusel, pmenutitle.
header determines the color of panel header, the line that con‐
tains 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 oper‐
ations, 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 currently 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 compo‐
nent.
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 normal
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 for not selected hyper‐
links 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, brightma‐
genta, cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white. And there is a spe‐
cial keyword for transparent background. It is 'default'. The
'default' can only be used for background color. Another special
keyword "base" means mc's main colors. When 256 colors are avail‐
able, 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, italic, 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 compati‐
ble with the assignment of colors, as described in Section Colors.
If your skin contains any true-color definitions, you should
define the 'truecolors' key set to TRUE value in [skin] section.
If true-color is not used but 256-color is, you should define
'256colors' instead.
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 /etc/mc/skins/default.ini
5) File /usr/share/mc/skins/default.ini
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) /etc/mc/skins/
3) /usr/share/mc/skins/
For getting extended info, refer to:
Description of section and parameters
Color pair definitions
Color and attribute aliases
Draw lines
Compatibility
Description of section and parameters
Section [skin] contain metainfo for skin-file. Parameter descrip‐
tion 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 everywhere.
_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
color of input selected text
inputunchanged
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
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 win‐
dow.
_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 edi‐
tor.
_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
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 Colors.
section.
Color and attribute aliases
This optional section might define aliases for single colors (not
color pairs) as well as combination of attributes; in other words,
for semicolon-separated fragments of parameters. Aliases can refer
to other aliases as long as they don't form a loop.
Example:
[aliases]
myfavfg=green
myfavbg=black
myfavattr=bold+italic
[core]
_default_=myfavfg;myfavbg;myfavattr
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.
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 docu‐
mented in Skins section.
Rules of filenames highlight are placed in /usr/share/mc/filehigh‐
light.ini file (~/.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 'exten‐
sions' rule case sensitive (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 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, 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
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 Midnight Commander 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 sig‐
nificant, because the code automatically adjusts the number
of updates to skip according to the rate of incoming key‐
strokes. 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 command
line (select, unselect, reverse selection) only if the com‐
mand line is empty. You don't need to quote those charac‐
ters 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.
alternate_plus_minus
If true, use '+', '-', '\' and '*' keys normally. For
select/unselect, use 'M-+', 'M--' and 'M-*'.
show_output_starts_shell
This variable only works if you are not using the subshell
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
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.
torben_fj_mode
If this flag is set, then the home and end keys will work
slightly different on the panels, instead of moving 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 middle
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 direc‐
tory.
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 selec‐
tion 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_paste=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.
For example:
autodetect_codeset=russian
Parameters for external editor or viewer
Midnight Commander provides a way for specify an options for
external editors and viewers. Midnight Commander tries to search
the "[External editor or viewer parameters]" section in the system
initialization file (the mc.lib file located in Midnight Comman‐
der's 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
Start line is passed to the external editor/viewer only if it is
called from the Find file results window.
If external editor/viewer is launched via F4/F3 keys, MC hopes
that program (at least "joe", but probably others too) has an own
feature that by default opens the file where it was last open. MC
doesn't prevent external editor/viewer to save and restore posi‐
tion in opened files.
Terminal databases
Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal
database without requiring root privileges. Midnight Commander
searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file
located in Midnight Commander's library directory) and in the
~/.config/mc/ini file for the section "terminal:your-termi‐
nal-name" and then for the section "terminal:general", each line
of the section contains a key symbol that you want to define, fol‐
lowed by an equal sign and the definition for the key. You can
use the special \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
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 everywhere).
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/help/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 configu‐
ration file. They override the contents of the system wide
files if present.
/etc/mc/mc.ini
/usr/share/mc/mc.ini
System-wide setup files for Midnight Commander, used only
if the user doesn't have his own ~/.config/mc/ini file. If
/etc/mc/mc.ini exists, /usr/share/mc/mc.ini isn't used.
/usr/share/mc/mc.lib
Global settings for Midnight Commander. Settings in this
file affect all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini
or not. Currently, only terminal settings are loaded from
mc.lib.
~/.config/mc/ini
User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is
loaded from here instead of the system-wide startup file.
/usr/share/mc/hints/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_PRO‐
FILE_ROOT environment variable. The value of MC_PROFILE_ROOT must
be an absolute path. If MC_PROFILE_ROOT 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 General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See
the built-in help for details on the License and the lack of war‐
ranty.
AVAILABILITY
The latest version of this program can be found at http://ftp.mid‐
night-commander.org/.
SEE ALSO
ed(1), gpm(1), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1), tcsh(1),
zsh(1).
Midnight Commander's 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 create
bugreport at http://www.midnight-commander.org/.
Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of the pro‐
gram you are running (mc -V displays this information), the oper‐
ating system you are running the program on. If the program
crashes, we would appreciate a stack trace.
MC Version 4.8.24 January 2020 MC(1)