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[Contents]
Topics:

  
DESCRIPTIONDESCRIPTION
  
OPTIONSOPTIONS
  
OverviewOverview
  
Mouse SupportMouse Support

  
KeysKeys
    
Miscellaneous KeysMiscellaneous Keys
    
Directory PanelsDirectory Panels
    
Shell Command LineShell Command Line
    
General Movement KeysGeneral Movement Keys
    
Input Line KeysInput Line Keys

  
Menu BarMenu Bar
    
Left and Right (Above and Below) MenusLeft and Right Menus
      
Listing Mode...Listing Mode...
      
Sort Order...Sort Order...
      
Filter...Filter...
      
RereadReread
    
File MenuFile Menu
      
Quick cdQuick cd
    
Command MenuCommand Menu
      
Directory TreeDirectory Tree
      
Find FileFind File
      
External panelizeExternal panelize
      
HotlistHotlist
      
Extension File EditExtension File Edit
      
Background JobsBackground jobs
      
Menu File EditMenu File Edit
    
Options MenuOptions Menu
      
ConfigurationConfiguration
      
LayoutLayout
      
ConfirmationConfirmation
      
Display bitsDisplay bits
      
Learn keysLearn keys
      
Virtual FSVirtual FS
      
Save SetupSave Setup

  
Executing operating system commandsExecuting operating system commands
    
The cd internal commandThe cd internal command
    
Macro SubstitutionMacro Substitution
    
The subshell supportThe subshell support
  
ChmodChmod
  
ChownChown
  
Advanced ChownAdvanced Chown
  
File OperationsFile Operations
  
Mask Copy/RenameMask Copy/Rename
  
Internal File ViewerInternal File Viewer
  
Internal File EditorInternal File Editor
  
CompletionCompletion
  
Virtual File SystemVirtual File System
    
FTP File SystemFTP File System
    
Tar File SystemTar File System
    
FIle transfer over SHell filesystemFIle transfer over SHell filesystem
    
Network File SystemNetwork File System
    
Undelete File SystemUndelete File System
    
SMB File SystemSMB File System
    
EXTernal File SystemEXTernal File System
  
ColorsColors
  
Special SettingsSpecial Settings
  
Terminal databasesTerminal databases

  
FILESFILES
  
AVAILABILITYAVAILABILITY
  
SEE ALSOSEE ALSO
  
AUTHORSAUTHORS
  
BUGSBUGS
  
LicenseLicense
  
Query boxesQueryBox
  
How to use helpHow to use help
[DESCRIPTION]
DESCRIPTION

GNU Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager
for Unix-like operating systems.[OPTIONS]
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 
ColorsColors
        for more information.

-C arg, --colors=arg
        Specify a different color set in the command
        line. The format of arg is documented in the
        
ColorsColors section.

-d, --nomouse
        Disable mouse support.

-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.

-k, --resetsoft
        Reset softkeys to their default from the
        termcap/terminfo database. Only useful on HP
        terminals when the function keys don't work.

-l file, --ftplog=file
        Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.

-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 the
        Midnight Commander was in. Source the file
        /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.sh (bash and zsh users) or
        /usr/share/mc/bin/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.

-t, --termcap
        Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and
        terminfo: it makes the Midnight Commander use the
        value of the TERMCAP variable for the terminal
        information instead of the information on the
        system wide terminal database

-u, --nosubshell
        Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes
        sense if the Midnight Commander has been built
        with 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 terminals (two screen modes, and
        able to send mouse escape sequences).

If specified, the first path name is the directory to show
in the selected panel; the second path name is the
directory to be shown in the other panel.[Overview]
Overview

The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four
parts. Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two
directory panels. By default, the second line from the
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 lineMenu Bar. The menu bar line may not be
visible, but appears if you click the topmost line with
the mouse or press the F9 key.

The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories
at the same time. One of the panels is the current panel
(a selection bar is in the current panel). Almost all
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 PanelsDirectory
Panels, the 
Left and Right MenusLeft and Right Menus and the 
File MenuFile Menu.

You can execute system commands from the Midnight
Commander by simply typing them. Everything you type will
appear on the shell command line, and when you press Enter
the Midnight Commander will execute the command line you
typed; read the 
Shell Command LineShell Command Line and 
Input Line KeysInput Line Keys
sections to learn more about the command line.[Mouse Support]
Mouse Support

The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is
activated whenever you are running on an xterm(1) terminal
(it even works if you take a telnet, ssh or rlogin
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 fileExtension File
Edithas a program specified for the file's extension, the
specified program is executed.

Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to
the function key labels by clicking on them.

If a mouse button is clicked on the top frame line of the
directory panel, it is scrolled one page up. Likewise, a
click on the bottom frame line will cause scrolling one
page down. This frame line method works also in the 
Help
ViewerContents and the 
Directory TreeDirectory Tree.

The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by
editing the 
~/.mc/iniSave Setup file and changing the
mouse_repeat_rate parameter.

If you are running the Midnight Commander with the mouse
support, you can get the default mouse behavior (cutting
and pasting text) by holding down the Shift key.

[Keys]
Keys

Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of
the Control (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the Meta
(sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this
manual we will use the following abbreviations:

C-<chr> means hold the Control key while typing the
        character <chr>. Thus C-f would be: hold the
        Control key and type f.

Alt-<chr>
        means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing
        <chr>. If there is no Meta or Alt key, type ESC,
        release it, then type the character <chr>.

S-<chr> means hold the Shift key down while typing <chr>.

All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an
approximation to the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings.

There are many sections which tell about the keys. The
following are the most important.

The 
File MenuFile 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 PanelsDirectory 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 LineShell 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 KeysInput Line Keys are used for editing input lines. This
means both the command line and the input lines in the
query dialogs.[Miscellaneous Keys]
Miscellaneous Keys

Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other
categories:

Enter   if there is some text in the command line (the
        one at the bottom of the panels), then that
        command is 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
        information 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 fileExtension File Edit
        then the corresponding command is executed.

C-l     repaint all the information in the Midnight
        Commander.

C-x c   run the 
ChmodChmod command on a file or on the tagged
        files.

C-x o   run the 
ChownChown command on the current file or on
        the tagged files.

C-x l   run the link command.

C-x s   run the symbolic link command.

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 panelizeExternal panelize command.

C-x h   run the 
add directory to hotlistHotlist command.

Alt-!   executes the Filtered view command, described in
        the 
view commandInternal File Viewer.

Alt-?   executes the 
Find fileFind File command.

Alt-c   pops up the 
quick cdQuick cd dialog.

C-o     when the program is being run in the Linux or
        FreeBSD console or under an xterm, it will show
        you the output of the previous command. When ran
        on the Linux console, the 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 the Midnight
Commander main screen, to return to your application just
type C-o. If you have an application suspended by using
this trick, you won't be able to execute other programs
from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the
suspended application.[Directory Panels]
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
MenusLeft 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) or the C-t (Control-t)
        sequence. To untag files, just retag a tagged
        file.

Alt-g, Alt-r, Alt-j
        used to select the top file in a panel, the
        middle file and the bottom one, respectively.

C-s, Alt-s
        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.

Alt-t   toggle the current display listing to show the
        next display listing mode. With this it is
        possible to quickly switch to brief listing, long
        listing, user defined listing mode, and back to
        the default.

C-\ (control-backslash)
        show the 
directory hotlistHotlist and change to the
        selected directory.

+ (plus)
        this is used to select (tag) a group of files.
        The Midnight Commander will prompt for a regular
        expression describing the group. When Shell
        Patterns are enabled, the regular expression is
        much like the regular expressions 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)).

If the expression starts or ends with a slash (/), then it
will select directories instead of files.

\ (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.

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.[Shell Command Line]
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 
completionCompletion 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 the
        Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)

Alt-p, Alt-n
        use these keys to browse through the command
        history. Alt-p takes you to the last entry, Alt-n
        takes you to the next one.

Alt-h   displays the history for the current input line.[General Movement Keys]
General Movement Keys

The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree
use common code to handle moving. Therefore they accept
exactly the same keys. Each of them also accepts some keys
of its own.

Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same
movement keys, so this section may be of use for those
parts too.

Up, C-p moves one line backward.

Down, C-n
        moves one line forward.

Prev Page, Page Up, Alt-v
        moves one page up.

Next Page, Page Down, C-v
        moves one page down.

Home, A1
        moves to the beginning.

End, C1 move to the end.

The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following
keys in addition the to ones mentioned above:

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]
Input Line Keys

The input lines (they are used for the 
command lineShell 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 
completionCompletion for you.

[Menu Bar]
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 MenusLeft and Right Menus allow you to modify the
appearance of the left and right directory panels.

The 
File MenuFile Menu lists the actions you can perform on the
currently selected file or the tagged files.

The 
Command MenuCommand Menu lists the actions which are more general
and bear no relation to the currently selected file or the
tagged files.

The 
Options MenuOptions Menu lists the actions which allow you to
customize the Midnight Commander.[Left and Right Menus]
Left and Right (Above and Below) Menus

The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from
the Left and Right menus (they are named Above and Below
when the horizontal panel split is chosen from the 
LayoutLayout
options dialog).[Listing Mode...]
Listing Mode...

The listing mode view is used to display a listing of
files, there are four different listing modes available:
Full, Brief, Long and User. The full directory view shows
the file name, the size of the file and the modification
time.

The brief view shows only the file name and it has two
columns (therefore showing twice as many files as other
views). The long view is similar to the output of "ls -l"
command. The long view takes the whole screen width.

If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to
specify the display format.

The user display format must start with a panel size
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 the two columns mode
on the panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the
user format string.

After this you add the name of the fields with an optional
size specifier. This are the available fields you may
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
        treeDirectory Tree feature. See the section about it for more
        information.

"Quick View"
        In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced
        
viewerInternal File 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...]
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 
Options menuOptions Menu (option Mix all
files).[Filter...]
Filter...

The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern
(for example *.tar.gz) which the files must match to be
shown. Regardless of the filter pattern, the directories
and the links to directories are always shown in the
directory panel.[Reread]
Reread

The reread command reload the list of files in the
directory. It is useful if other processes have created or
removed files. If you have panelized file names in a panel
this will reload the directory contents and remove the
panelized information (See the section 
External panelizeExternal panelize
for more information).[File Menu]
File Menu

The Midnight Commander uses the F1 - F10 keys as keyboard
shortcuts for commands appearing in the file menu. The
escape sequences for the function keys are terminfo
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 respectively).

The File menu has the following commands (keyboard
shortcuts in parentheses):

Help (F1)

Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the

help viewerContents, 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 menuMenu File Edit. The user menu provides an easy way
to provide users with a menu and add extra features to the
Midnight Commander.

View (F3, Shift-F3)

View the currently selected file. By default this invokes
the 
Internal File ViewerInternal File Viewer but if the option "Use internal
view" is off, it invokes an external file viewer specified
by the VIEWER environment variable. If VIEWER is
undefined, the PAGER environment variable is tried. If
PAGER is also undefined, the "view" command is invoked. If
you use Shift-F3 instead, the viewer will be invoked
without doing any formatting or preprocessing to the file.

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
Shift-F4) 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 EditorInternal File Editor if the use_internal_edit option is
on.

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. 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/renameMask Copy/Rename.

F15 (usually Shift-F5) is similar, but defaults to the
directory in the selected panel. It always operates on the
selected file, regardless of any tagged files.

On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the
background by clicking on the background button (or
pressing Alt-b in the dialog box). The 
Background JobsBackground jobs is
used to control the background process.

Link (C-x l)

Create a hard link to the current file.

SymLink (C-x s)

Create a symbolic link to the current file. To those of
you who don't know what links are: creating a link to a
file is a bit like copying the file, but both the source
filename and the destination filename represent the same
file image. For example, if you edit one of these files,
all changes you make will appear in both files. Some
people call links aliases or shortcuts.

A hard link appears as a real file. After making it, there
is no way of telling which one is the original and which
is the link. If you delete either one of them the other
one is still intact. It is very difficult to notice that
the files represent the same image. Use hard links when
you don't even want to know.

A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original
file. If the original file is deleted the symbolic link is
useless. It is quite easy to notice that the files
represent the same image. The Midnight Commander shows an
"@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a symbolic
link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a
tilde (~)). The original file which the link points to is
shown on mini-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.

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 Shift-F6) is similar, but defaults to the
directory in the selected panel. It always operates on the
selected file, regardless of any tagged files.

On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the
background by clicking on the background button (or
pressing Alt-b in the dialog box). The 
Background JobsBackground jobs is
used to control the background process.

Mkdir (F7)

Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory
specified.

Delete (F8)

Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in
the currently selected panel. During the process, you can
press C-c or ESC to abort the operation.

Quick cd (Alt-c) Use the 
quick cdQuick cd command if you have
full command line and want to cd somewhere.

Select group (+)

This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The
Midnight Commander will prompt for a regular expression
describing the group. When Shell Patterns are enabled, 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)).

To mark directories instead of files, the expression must
start or end with a '/'.

Unselect group (\)

Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
the "Select group" command.

Quit (F10, Shift-F10)

Terminate the Midnight Commander. Shift-F10 is used when
you want to quit and you are using the shell wrapper.
Shift-F10 will not take you to the last directory you
visited with the Midnight Commander, instead it will stay
at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.[Quick cd]
Quick cd

This command is useful if you have a full command line and
want to 
cdThe cd internal command somewhere without having to yank and paste
the command line. This command pops up a small dialog,
where you enter everything you would enter after cd on the
command line and then you press enter. This features all
the things that are already in the 
internal cd commandThe cd internal command.[Command Menu]
Command Menu

The 
Directory treeDirectory Tree command shows a tree figure of the
directories.

The 
Find fileFind File command allows you to search for a specific
file.

The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two
directory panels.

The "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 (C-x d) 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 Command history command shows a list of typed
commands. The selected command is copied to the command
line. The command history can also be accessed by typing
Alt-p or Alt-n.

The 
Directory hotlist (C-\)Hotlist command makes changing of the
current directory to often used directories faster.

The 
External panelizeExternal panelize allows you to execute an external
program, and make the output of that program the contents
of the current panel.


Extension file editExtension File Edit 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 
Menu file editMenu File Edit
command may be used for editing the user menu (which
appears by pressing F2).[Directory Tree]
Directory Tree

The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the
directories. You can select a directory from the figure
and the Midnight Commander will change to that directory.

There are two ways to invoke the tree. The real directory
tree command is available from Commands menu. The other
way is to select tree view from the Left or Right menu.

To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates
the tree figure by scanning only a small subset of all the
directories. If the directory which you want to see is
missing, move to its parent directory and press C-r (or
F2).

You can use the following keys:


General movement keysGeneral 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 supportMouse Support.[Find File]
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 treeDirectory Tree figure.

The contents field accepts regular expressions similar to
egrep(1). That means you have to escape characters with a
special meaning to egrep with "\", e.g. if you search for
"strcmp (" you will have to input "strcmp \(" (without the
double quotes).

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 Panelize button will place the found
files to the current directory panel so that you can do
additional operations on them (view, copy, move, delete
and so on). After panelizing you can press C-r to return
to the normal file listing.

It is possible to have a list of directories that the Find
File command should skip during the search (for example,
you may want to avoid searches on a CD-ROM or on a NFS
directory that is mounted across a slow link).

Directories to be skipped should be set on the variable
find_ignore_dirs in the Misc section of your ~/.mc/ini
file.

Directory components should be separated with a colon,
here is an example:

[Misc]
find_ignore_dirs=/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs

You may consider using the 
External panelizeExternal 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]
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 }' < /usr/adm/xferlog

You may want to save often used panelize commands under a
descriptive name, so that you can recall them quickly. You
do this by typing the command on the input line and
pressing Add new button. Then you enter a name under which
you want the command to be saved. Next time, you just
choose that command from the list and do not have to type
it again.[Hotlist]
Hotlist

The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the
directories in the directory hotlist. The Midnight
Commander will change to the directory corresponding to
the selected label. From the hotlist dialog, you can
remove already 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 directory.

This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may
consider using the CDPATH variable as described in

internal cd commandThe cd internal command description.[Extension File Edit]
Extension File Edit

This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.mc/bindings.
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 section.

Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be
of the format: keyword=command (with no spaces around =),
where keyword should be: Open (invoked on Enter or double
click), View (F3), Edit (F4) or Include (to add rules from
the common section). command is any one-line shell
command, with the simple 
macro substitutionMacro Substitution.

Rules are matched from top to bottom, thus the order is
important. If the appropriate action is missing, search
continues as if this rule didn't match (i.e. if a file
matches the first and second entry and View action is
missing in the first one, then on pressing F3 the View
action from the second entry will be used). default should
match all the actions.[Background jobs]
Background Jobs

This lets you control the state of any background Midnight
Commander process (only copy and move files operations can
be done in the background). You can stop, restart and kill
a background job from here.[Menu File Edit]
Menu File Edit

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, ~/.mc/menu is tried
in the same way, and otherwise mc uses the default
system-wide menu /etc/mc/mc.menu.

The format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that
start with anything but space or tab are considered
entries for the menu (in order to be able to use it like a
hot key, the first character should be a letter). All the
lines that start with a space or a tab are the commands
that will be executed when the entry is selected.

When an option is selected all the command lines of the
option are copied to a temporary file in the temporary
directory (usually /usr/tmp) and then that file is
executed. This allows the user to put normal shell
constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
takes place before executing the menu code. For more
information, see 
macro substitutionMacro 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,
according to the shell patterns option. You can override
the global value of the shell patterns option by writing
"shell_patterns=x" on the first line of the menu file
(where "x" is either 0 or 1).

Type is one or more of the following characters:

  n    not a directory
  r    regular file
  d    directory
  l    link
  c    character device
  b    block device
  f    FIFO (pipe)
  s    socket
  x    executable file
  t    tagged

For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo.
The 't' type is a little special because it acts on the
panel instead of the file. The condition '=t t' is true if
there are tagged files in the current panel and false if
not.

If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug
trace will be shown whenever the value of the condition is
calculated.

The conditions are calculated from left to right. This
means
    = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
is calculated as
    ( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)

Here is a sample of the use of conditions:

= f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
L    List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
    gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -

Addition Conditions

If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '='
(or '=?') it is an addition condition. If the condition is
true the menu entry will be included in the menu. If the
condition is false the menu entry will not be included in
the menu.

You can combine default and addition conditions by
starting condition with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if
you want debug trace). If you want to use two different
conditions, one for adding and another for defaulting, you
can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
starting with '+' and another starting with '='.

Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment
lines must start with '#', space or tab.[Options Menu]
Options Menu

The Midnight Commander has some options that may be
toggled on and off in several dialogs which are accessible
from this menu. Options are enabled if they have an
asterisk or "x" in front of them.

The 
ConfigurationConfiguration command pops up a dialog from which you
can change most of settings of the Midnight Commander.

The 
LayoutLayout command pops up a dialog from which you specify
a bunch of options how mc looks like on the screen.

The 
ConfirmationConfirmation command pops up a dialog from which you
specify which actions you want to confirm.

The 
Display bitsDisplay bits command pops up a dialog from which you
may select which characters is your terminal able to
display.

The 
Learn keysLearn 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 FSVirtual FS command pops up a dialog from which you
specify some VFS related options.

The 
Save setupSave Setup command saves the current settings of the
Left, Right and Options menus. A small number of other
settings is saved, too.[Configuration]
Configuration

The options in this dialog are divided into three groups:
Panel Options, Pause after run and Other Options.

Panel Options

Show Backup Files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will
show files ending with a tilde. Otherwise, they won't be
shown (like GNU's ls option -B).

Show Hidden Files. If enabled, the Midnight Commander will
show all files that start with a dot (like ls -a).

Mark moves down. If enabled, the selection bar will move
down when you mark a file (with either C-t or the Insert
key).

Drop down menus. When this option is enabled, the pull
down menus will be activated as soon as you press the F9
key. Otherwise, you will only get the menu title, and you
will have to activate the menu either with the arrow keys
or with the hotkeys. It is recommended if you are using
hotkeys.

Mix all files. If this option is enabled, all files and
directories are shown mixed together. If the option is
off, directories (and links to directories) are shown at
the beginning of the listing, and other files below.

Fast directory reload. If this option is enabled, the
Midnight Commander 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 manually (with C-r).

Pause after run

After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can
pause, so that you can examine the output of the command.
There are three possible settings for this variable:

Never. Means that you do not want to see the output of
your command. If you are using the Linux or FreeBSD
console or an xterm, you will be able to see the output of
the command by typing C-o.

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
commands.

Other 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, the Midnight
Commander computes total byte sizes and total number of
files prior to any Copy, Rename and Delete operations.
This will provide you with a more accurate progress bar at
the expense of some speed. This option has no effect, if
Verbose operation is disabled.

Shell Patterns. By default the Select, Unselect and Filter
commands will use shell-like regular expressions. The
following conversions 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).

Auto Save Setup. If this option is enabled, when you exit
the Midnight Commander the configurable options of the
Midnight Commander are saved in the ~/.mc/ini file.

Auto menus. If this option is enabled, the user menu will
be invoked at startup. Useful for building menus for
non-unixers.

Use internal editor. If this option is enabled, the
built-in file editor is used to edit files. If the option
is disabled, the editor specified in the EDITOR
environment variable is used. If no editor is specified,
vi is used. See the section on the 
internal file editorInternal 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
viewerInternal File Viewer.

Complete: show all. By default the Midnight Commander pops
up all possible 
completionsCompletion 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.

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.

Cd follows links. This option, if set, causes the Midnight
Commander to follow the logical chain of directories when
changing current directory either in the panels, or using
the cd command. This is the default behavior of bash. When
unset, the Midnight Commander follows the real directory
structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory
through a link will move you to the current directory's
real parent and not to the directory where the link was
present.

Safe delete. If this option is enabled, deleting files and
directory hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more
difficult. The default selection in the confirmation
dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes" to "No". This
option is disabled by default.[Layout]
Layout

The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the
general layout of screen. You can specify whether the
menubar, the command prompt, the hintbar and the function
keybar are visible. On the Linux or FreeBSD console you
can specify how many lines are shown in the output window.

The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory
panels. You can specify whether the area is split to the
panels in vertical or horizontal direction. The split can
be equal or you can specify an unequal split.

You can specify whether permissions and file types should
be highlighted with distinctive 
ColorsColors. If the permission
highlighting is enabled, the parts of the perm and mode

display fieldsListing Mode... which apply to the user running Midnight
Commander are highlighted with the color defined by the
selected keyword. If the file type highlighting is
enabled, files are colored according to their file type
(e.g. directory, core file, executable, and so on).

If the Show Mini-Status option is enabled, one line of
status information about the currently selected item is
shown at the bottom of the panels.

When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight
Commander sets the terminal window title to the current
working directory and updates it when necessary. If your
terminal emulator is broken and you see some incorrect
output on startup and directory change, turn off the Xterm
Window Title option.[Confirmation]
Confirmation

In this menu you configure the confirmation options for
file deletion, directory hotlist entries deletion,
overwriting, execution by pressing enter and quitting the
program.[Display bits]
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 supports only seven output bits,
ISO-8859-1 displays all the characters in the ISO-8859-1
map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can
display full 8 bit characters.[Learn keys]
Learn keys

This dialog allows you to test and redefine functional
keys, cursor arrows and some other keys to make them work
properly on your terminal. They often don't, since many
terminal databases are incomplete or broken.

You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi
moving keys ('h' left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right).
Once you press any cursor movement key and it is
recognized, you can use that key as well.

You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you
press a key and it is recognized properly, OK should
appear next to the name of that key. Once a key is marked
OK it starts working as usually, e.g. F1 pressed the first
time will just check that the F1 key works, but after that
it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys. The
Tab key should be working always.

If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK
appear after pressing one of these. Then you may want to
redefine it. Do it by pressing the button with the name of
that key (either by the mouse or by Enter or Space after
selecting the button with Tab or arrows). Then a message
box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and
wait until the message box disappears. If you want to
abort, just press Escape once and wait.

When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The
definitions for the keys you have redefined will be
written into the [terminal:TERM] section of your ~/.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]
Virtual FS

This option gives you control over the settings of the

Virtual File SystemVirtual File System.

The Midnight Commander keeps in memory the information
related to some of the virtual file systems to speed up
the access to the files in the file system (for example,
directory listings fetched from FTP servers).

Also, in order to access the contents of compressed files
(for example, compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander
needs to create temporary uncompressed files on your disk.

Since both the information in memory and the temporary
files on disk take up resources, you may want to tune the
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 the re-enter it later. Since decompression is slow,
the Midnight Commander will cache the information in
memory for a limited time. When the timeout expires, all
the resources associated with the file system are
released. The default timeout is set to one minute.

The 
FTP File SystemFTP 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 SystemFTP 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
connection for data transfer is initiated by the client,
not by the server. This option is recommended and enabled
by default. If this option is turned off, the data
connection is initiated by the server. This may not work
with some firewalls.[Save Setup]
Save Setup

At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load
initialization information from the ~/.mc/ini file. If
this file doesn't exist, it will load the information from
the system-wide configuration file, located in
/etc/mc/mc.ini. If the system-wide configuration file
doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.

The Save Setup command creates the ~/.mc/ini file by
saving the current settings of the 
Left, RightLeft and Right Menus and

OptionsOptions Menu 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
SettingsSpecial Settings for more information.

[Executing operating system commands]
Executing operating system commands

You may execute commands by typing them directly in the
Midnight Commander's input line, or by selecting the
program you want to execute with the selection bar in one
of the panels and hitting Enter.

If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the
Midnight Commander checks the extension of the selected
file against the extensions in the 
Extensions FileExtension File Edit. If a
match is found then the code associated with that
extension is executed. A very simple 
macro expansionMacro Substitution
takes place before executing the command.[The cd internal command]
The cd internal command

The cd command is interpreted by the Midnight Commander,
it is not passed to the command shell for execution. Thus
it may not handle all of the nice macro expansion and
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
previously by using the special directory name '-' like
this: cd -

CDPATH directories. If the directory specified to the cd
command is not in the current directory, then The Midnight
Commander uses the value in the environment variable
CDPATH to search for the directory in any of the named
directories.

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]
Macro Substitution

When accessing a 
user menuMenu File Edit, or executing an 
extension
dependent commandExtension File Edit, or running a command from the command
line input, a simple macro substitution takes place.

The macros are:

%i      The indent of blank space, equal the cursor
        column position. For edit menu only.

%y      The syntax type of current file. For edit menu
        only.

%k      The block file name.

%e      The error file name.

%m      The current menu name.

%f and %p
        The current file name.

%x      The extension of current file name.

%b      The current file name without extension.

%d      The current directory name.

%F      The current file in the unselected panel.

%D      The directory name of the unselected panel.

%t      The currently tagged files.

%T      The tagged files in the unselected panel.

%u and %U
        Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition
        the files are untagged. You can use this macro
        only once per menu file entry or extension file
        entry, because next time there will be no tagged
        files.

%s and %S
        The selected files: The tagged files if there are
        any. Otherwise the current file.

%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 SystemVirtual File System.

%view   This macro is used to invoke the internal viewer.
        This macro can be used alone, or with arguments.
        If you pass any arguments to this macro, they
        should be enclosed in brackets.

        The arguments are: ascii to force the viewer into
        ascii mode; hex to force the viewer into hex
        mode; nroff to tell the viewer that it should
        interpret the bold and underline sequences of
        nroff; unformatted to tell the viewer to not
        interpret nroff commands for making the text bold
        or underlined.

%%      The % character

%{some text}
        Prompt for the substitution. An input box is
        shown and the text inside the braces is used as a
        prompt. The macro is substituted by the text
        typed by the user. The user can press ESC or F10
        to cancel. This macro doesn't work on the command
        line yet.

%var{ENV:default}
        If environment variable ENV is unset, the default
        is substituted. Otherwise, the value of ENV is
        substituted.[The subshell support]
The subshell support

The subshell support is a compile time option, that works
with the shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.

When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander
will spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one
defined in the SHELL variable and if it is not defined,
then the one in the /etc/passwd file) and run it in a
pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell each time
you execute a 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 the Midnight
Commander.

If you are using bash you can specify startup commands for
the subshell in your ~/.mc/bashrc file and special
keyboard maps in the ~/.mc/inputrc file. tcsh users may
specify startup commands in the ~/.mc/tcshrc file.

When the subshell code is used, you can suspend
applications at any time with the sequence C-o and jump
back to the Midnight Commander, if you interrupt an
application, you will not be able to run other external
commands until you quit the application you interrupted.

An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the
prompt displayed by the Midnight Commander is the same
prompt that you are currently using in your shell.

The 
OPTIONSOPTIONS section has more information on how you can
control the subshell code.[Chmod]
Chmod

The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a
group of files and directories. It can be invoked with the
C-x c key combination.

The Chmod window has two parts - Permissions and File.

In the File section are displayed the name of the file or
directory and its permissions in octal form, as well as
its owner and group.

In the Permissions section there is a set of check buttons
which correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change
the attribute bits, you can see the octal value change in
the File section.

To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons)
use the arrow keys or the Tab key. To change the state of
the check buttons or to select a button use Space. You can
also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate
them. Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on the
buttons.

To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.

When working with a group of files or directories, you
just click on the bits you want to set or clear. Once you
have selected the bits you want to change, you select one
of the action buttons (Set marked or Clear marked).

Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified,
you can use the [Set all] button, which will act on all
the tagged files.

[Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected
files

[Set marked] set marked bits in attributes of all selected
files

[Clean marked] clear marked bits in attributes of all
selected files

[Set] set the attributes of one file

[Cancel] cancel the Chmod command[Chown]
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]
Advanced Chown

The Advanced Chown command is the 
ChmodChmod and 
ChownChown command
combined into one window. You can change the permissions
and owner/group of files at once.[File Operations]
File Operations

When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander
shows the file operations dialog. It shows the files
currently being processed and uses up to three progress
bars. The file bar indicates the percentage of the current
file that has been processed so far. The count bar shows
how many of the tagged files have been handled. The bytes
bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the
tagged files that has been handled. If the verbose option
is off, the file and bytes bars are not shown.

There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog.
Pressing the Skip button will skip the rest of the current
file. Pressing the Abort button will abort the whole
operation, the rest of the files are skipped.

There are three other dialogs which you can run into
during the file operations.

The error dialog informs about error conditions and has
three choices. Normally you select either the Skip button
to skip the file or the Abort button to abort the
operation altogether. You can also select the Retry button
if you fixed the problem from another terminal.

The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or
move a file on the top of an existing file. The dialog
shows the dates and sizes of the both files. Press the Yes
button to overwrite the file, the No button to skip the
file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the None
button to never overwrite and the Update button to
overwrite if the source file is newer than the target
file. You can abort the whole operation by pressing the
Abort button.

The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to
delete a directory which is not empty. Press the Yes
button to delete the directory recursively, the No button
to skip the directory, the All button to delete all the
directories and the None button to skip all the non-empty
directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing
the Abort button. If you selected the Yes or All button
you will be asked for a confirmation. Type "yes" only if
you are really sure you want to do the recursive delete.

If you have tagged files and perform an operation on them
only the files on which the operation succeeded are
untagged. Failed and skipped files are left tagged.[Mask Copy/Rename]
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 on

When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*'
and '?' wildcards in the source mask. They work like they
do in the shell. In the target mask only the '*' and
'\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The first '*' wildcard
in the target mask 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 corresponds to the second group and so on all the
way up to '\9'. The '\0' wildcard is the whole filename of
the source file.

Two examples:

If the source mask is "*.tar.gz", the destination is
"/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz",
the copy will be "foo.tgz" in "/bla".

Suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that
"file.c" would become "c.file" and so on. The source mask
for this is "*.*" and the destination is "\2.\1".

Use shell patterns off

When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do
automatic grouping anymore. You must use '\(...\)'
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 '*' (shell patterns on)
or '^\(.*\)$' (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.[Internal File Viewer]
Internal File Viewer

The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII
and hex. To toggle between modes, use the F4 key.

The viewer will try to use the best method provided by
your system or the file type to display the information.
Some character sequences, which appear most often in
preformatted manual pages, are displayed bold and
underlined, thus making a pretty display of your files.

When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in
quotes and constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched
exactly after removing the quotes. Each number matches one
byte. You can mix quoted text with constants like this:

"String" -1 0xBB 012 "more text"

Note that 012 is an octal number. -1 is converted to 0xFF.

Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key
that the Midnight Commander handles in the internal file
viewer.

F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.

F2 Toggle the wrap mode.

F4 Toggle the hex mode.

F5 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and
will display that line.

F6, /. Regular expression search.

?, Reverse regular expression search.

F7 Normal search / hex mode search.

C-s, F17, n. Start normal search if there was no previous
search expression else find next match.

C-r. Start reverse search if there was no previous search
expression else find next match.

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.

! Like C-o, but run a new shell if the subshell is not
running.

"[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.

It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a
file, look at the 
Extension File Edit sectionExtension File Edit[Internal File Editor]
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 (and our own scanf-printf search and replace);
shift-arrow text highlighting (if supported by the
terminal); insert-overwrite toggle; word wrap; autoindent;
tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file
types; and an option to pipe text blocks through shell
commands like indent and ispell.

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
cooledit.clip and Shift-Ins pastes from cooledit.clip.
Shift-Del cuts to cooledit.clip, and Ctrl-Del deletes
highlighted text. Mouse highlighting also works, and you
can override the mouse as usual by holding down the shift
key while dragging the mouse to let normal terminal mouse
highlighting work.

To define a macro, press Ctrl-R and then type out the key
strokes you want to be executed. Press Ctrl-R again when
finished. You can then assign the macro to any key you
like by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you
press Ctrl-A and then the assigned key. The macro is also
executed if you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned
key, provided that the key is not used for any other
function. Once defined, the macro commands go into the
file .mc/cedit/cooledit.macros in your home directory. You
can delete a macro by deleting the appropriate line in
this file.

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
.mc/cedit/edit.indent.rc in your home directory the first
time you use it.

You can use scanf search and replace to search and replace
a C format string. First take a look at the sscanf and
sprintf man pages to see what a format string is and how
it works. Consider following example. Suppose you want to
replace all occurrences of an open bracket, three comma
separated numbers, and a close bracket, with the word
apples, the third number, the word oranges and then the
second number. Then fill in the Replace dialog box as
follows:

 Enter search string:
  (%d,%d,%d)
 Enter replacement string:
  apples %d oranges %d
 Enter replacement argument order:
  3,2

The last line specifies that the third and then the second
number are to be used in place of the first and second.

It is advisable to use this feature with Prompt on replace
on, because a match is thought to be found whenever the
number of arguments found matches the number given, which
is not always a real match. Scanf also treats whitespace
as being elastic. Note that the scanf format %[ is very
useful for scanning strings, and whitespace.

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.[Completion]
Completion

Let the Midnight Commander type for you.

Attempt to perform completion on the text before current
position. MC attempts completion treating the text as
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 completions then
include shell reserved words and shell built-in commands
as well) in turn. If none of these matches, filename
completion is attempted.

Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works
on all input lines, command completion is command line
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 
ConfigurationConfiguration dialog. If it is enabled, a
list of all possibilities pops up next to the current
position and you can select with the arrow keys and Enter
the correct entry. You can also type the first letters in
which the possibilities 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 allConfiguration is disabled, the dialog pops up only if
you press Alt-Tab for the second time, for the first time
MC just beeps.[Virtual File System]
Virtual File System

The 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 the Midnight Commander to manipulate files not
located on the Unix file system.

Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with some
Virtual File Systems (VFS): the local file system, used
for accessing the regular Unix file system; the ftpfs,
used to manipulate files on remote systems with the FTP
protocol; the tarfs, used to manipulate tar and compressed
tar files; the undelfs, used to recover deleted files on
ext2 file systems (the default file system for Linux
systems), fish (for manipulating files over shell
connections such as rsh and ssh) and finally the mcfs
(Midnight Commander file system), a network based file
system. 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 section.[FTP File System]
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 specify the user element, the Midnight Commander will
login to the remote machine as that user, otherwise it
will use anonymous login or the login name from the
~/.netrc file. The optional pass element is the password
used for the 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 history.

To enable using FTP proxy, prepend ! (an exclamation sign)
to the hostname.

Examples:

    /#ftp:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
    /#ftp:tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
    /#ftp:!behind.firewall.edu/pub
    /#ftp:[e-mail]:40/pub
    /#ftp:miguel:xxx@server/pub

Please check the 
Virtual File SystemVirtual FS dialog box for ftpfs
options.[Tar File System]
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 
Extension
File EditExtension File Edit section for details on how this is done.

Examples:

    mc-3.0.tar.gz#utar/mc-3.0/vfs
    /ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar#utar

The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.[FIle transfer over SHell filesystem]
FIle transfer over SHell filesystem

The fish file system is a network based file system that
allows you to manipulate the files in a remote machine as
if they were local. To use this, the other side has to
either run fish server, or has to have bash-compatible
shell.

To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
into a special directory which name is in the following
format:

/#sh:[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]

The user, options and remote-dir elements are optional. If
you specify the user element, the Midnight Commander will
try to login on the remote machine as that user, otherwise
it will use your login name.

The options are 'C' - use compression and 'rsh' use rsh
instead of ssh. 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:[e-mail]:C/private
    /#sh:[e-mail]/private
[Network File System]
Network File System

The Midnight Commander file system is a network base file
system that allows you to manipulate the files in a remote
machine as if they were local. To use this, the remote
machine must be running the mcserv(8) server program.

To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir
into a special directory which name is in the following
format:

/#mc:[user@]machine[:port][remote-dir]

The user, port and remote-dir elements are optional. If
you specify the user element then the Midnight Commander
will try to logon on the remote machine as that user,
otherwise it will use your login name.

The port element is used when the remote server is running
on a special port (see the mcserv(8) manual page for more
information about ports); finally, if the remote-dir
element is present, your current directory on the remote
machine will be set to this one.

Examples:

    /#mc:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
    /#mc:[e-mail]:11321/private
[Undelete File System]
Undelete File System

On Linux systems, if you asked configure to use the ext2fs
undelete facilities, you will have the undelete file
system available. Recovery of deleted files is only
available on ext2 file systems. The undelete file system
is just an interface to the ext2fs library to retrieve all
of the deleted files names on an ext2fs and provides and
to extract the selected files into a regular partition.

To use this file system, you have to chdir into the
special file name formed by the "/#undel" prefix and the
file name where the actual file system resides.

For example, to recover deleted files on the second
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
information before you start browsing files there.[SMB File System]
SMB File System

The smbfs allows you to manipulate files on remote
machines with SMB (or CIFS) protocol. These include
Windows for Workgroups, Windows 9x/ME/XP, Windows NT,
Windows 2000 and Samba. To actually use it, you may try to
use the panel command "SMB link..." (accessible from the
menubar) or you may directly change your current directory
to it using the cd command to a path name that looks like
this:

/#smb:[user@]machine[/service][/remote-dir]

The user, service and remote-dir elements are optional.
The user, domain and password can be specified in an input
dialog.

Examples:

    /#smb:machine/Share
    /#smb:other_machine
    /#smb:guest@machine/Public/Irlex
[EXTernal File System]
EXTernal File System

extfs allows 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 represent contents of a file as a directory tree. It
can consist of 'real' files compressed in an archive
(urar, rpm) or virtual files, like messages in a mailbox
(mailfs) or parts of a patch (patchfs). To access such
filesystems '#fsname' should be appended to the archive
name. Note that the archive itself can be on another vfs.

For example, to list contents of a zip archive
documents.zip type

  cd documents.zip#uzip

In many aspects, you could treat extfs like any other
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 filename#lslR).

mailfs  mbox-style mailbox files support (cd
        mailbox#mailfs).

patchfs extfs to handle unified and context diffs (cd
        filename#patchfs).

rpm     RPM package (cd filename#rpm).

rpms    RPM database management (cd #rpms).

ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha
        archivers (cd archive#xxxx where xxxx is one of:
        ulha, urar, uzip, uzoo, uar, uha).

You could bind file type/extension to specified extfs as
described in the 
Extension File EditExtension File Edit section. Here is an
example entry for Debian packages:

  regex/.deb$
          Open=%cd %p#deb
[Colors]
Colors

The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal
supports color using the terminal database and your
terminal name. Sometimes it gets confused, so you may
force color mode or disable color mode using the -c and -b
flag respectively.

If the program is compiled with the Slang 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 initialization file. This will prevent the Midnight
Commander from trying to detect if your terminal supports
color. Example:

[Colors]
color_terminals=linux,xterm
color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...

The program can be compiled with both ncurses and slang,
ncurses does not provide a way to force color mode:
ncurses uses just the information in the terminal
database.

The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the
default colors. Currently the colors are configured using
the 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>=<foregroundcolor>,<backgroundcolor>:<keyword>= ...

The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal,
selected, marked, markselect, errors, input, reverse,
gauge. Menu colors are: menu, menusel, menuhot,
menuhotsel. Dialog colors are: dnormal, dfocus,
dhotnormal, dhotfocus. Help colors are: helpnormal,
helpitalic, helpbold, helplink, helpslink. Viewer color
is: viewunderline. Special highlighting colors are:
executable, directory, link, stalelink, device, special,
core. Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold, editmarked.

input determines the color of input lines used in query
dialogs.

gauge determines the color of the filled part of the
progress bar (gauge), which is used to show the user the
progress of file operations, such as copying.

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 component.

Menus use the same scheme but uses the menu, menusel,
menuhot and menuhotsel 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 hyperlinks and helpslink
is used for selected hyperlink.

Special highlight colors determine how files are displayed
when file highlighting is enabled (see the section on

LayoutLayout). directory is used for directories or symbolic
links to directories; executable for executable files;
link is used for symbolic links which are neither stale
nor linked to a directory; stalelink is used for stale
symbolic links; device - character and block devices;
special is used for special files, such as pipes and
sockets; core is for core files.

The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred,
green, brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue,
magenta, brightmagenta, cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and
white. And there is a special keyword for transparent
background. It is 'default'. The 'default' can only be
used for background color. Example:

[Colors]
base_color=normal=white,default:marked=magenta,default
[Special Settings]
Special Settings

Most of the settings of the Midnight Commander 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 ~/.mc/ini file:

clear_before_exec
        By default the Midnight Commander clears the
        screen before executing a command. If you would
        prefer to see the output of the command at the
        bottom of the screen, edit your ~/.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 the 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 significant, because the code
        automatically adjusts the number of updates to
        skip according to the rate of incoming
        keystrokes. However, on very slow machines or
        terminals with a fast keyboard auto repeat, a big
        value can make screen updates too jumpy.

        It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes
        the best behavior, and that is the default value.

mouse_move_pages
        Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse is
        done by pages or line by line on the panels.

mouse_move_pages_viewer
        Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by
        pages or line by line on the internal file
        viewer.

old_esc_mode
        By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC
        key as a key prefix (old_esc_mode=0). If this
        option is set (old_esc_mode=1), the ESC key will
        act as a prefix key for one second, and if no
        extra keys have arrived, then the ESC key is
        interpreted as a cancel key (ESC ESC).

only_leading_plus_minus
        Allow special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in the
        command line (select, unselect, reverse
        selection) only if the command line is empty. You
        don't need to quote those characters in the
        middle of the command line. On the other hand,
        you cannot use them to change selection when the
        command line is not empty.

panel_scroll_pages
        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.

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 the
        Midnight Commander.

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 fileExtension File Edit.

xterm_mode
        If this variable is on (default is off) when you
        browse the file system on a Tree panel, it will
        automatically reload the other panel with the
        contents of the selected directory.

fish_directory_timeout
        This variable holds the lifetime of a directory
        cache entry in seconds. The default value is 900
        seconds.[Terminal databases]
Terminal databases

The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system
terminal database without requiring root privileges. The
Midnight Commander searches in the system initialization
file (the mc.lib file located in the Midnight Commander
library directory) and in the ~/.mc/ini file for the
section "terminal:your-terminal-name" and then for the
section "terminal:general", each line of the section
contains a key symbol that you want to define, followed by
an equal sign and the definition for the key. You can use
the 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

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]
FILES

Full paths below may vary between installations. They are
also affected by the MC_DATADIR environment variable. If
it's set, its value is used instead of /usr/share/mc in
the paths below.

/usr/share/mc/mc.hlp

        The help file for the program.

/etc/mc/mc.ext

        The default system-wide extensions file.

~/.mc/bindings

        User's own extension, view configuration and edit
        configuration file. They override the contents of
        the system wide files if present.

/etc/mc/mc.ini

        The default system-wide setup for the Midnight
        Commander, used only if the user doesn't have his
        own ~/.mc/ini file.

/etc/mc/mc.lib

        Global settings for the Midnight Commander.
        Settings in this file affect all users, whether
        they have ~/.mc/ini or not. Currently, only
        
terminal settingsTerminal databases are loaded from mc.lib.

~/.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/mc.hint

        This file contains the hints displayed by the
        program.

/etc/mc/mc.menu

        This file contains the default system-wide
        applications menu.

~/.mc/menu

        User's own application menu. If this file is
        present it is used instead of the system-wide
        applications menu.

~/.mc/Tree

        The directory list for the directory tree and
        tree view features.

./.mc.menu

        Local user-defined menu. If this file is present,
        it is used instead of the home or system-wide
        applications menu.[AVAILABILITY]
AVAILABILITY

The latest version of this program can be found at
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mc/.[SEE ALSO]
SEE ALSO

ed(1), gpm(1), mcserv(8), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1),
bash(1), tcsh(1), zsh(1).

The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
    http://www.midnight-commander.org/
[AUTHORS]
AUTHORS

Authors and contributors are listed in the AUTHORS file in
the source distribution.[BUGS]
BUGS

See the file TODO in the distribution for information on
what remains to be done.

If you want to report a problem with the program, please
send mail to this address: [e-mail].

Provide a detailed description of the bug, the version of
the program you are running (mc -V displays this
information), the operating system you are running the
program on. If the program crashes, we would appreciate a
stack trace.

[main]
 lqwqk     k           k     
 x x x .   x     .     x     
 x x x k lqu wqk k lqw tqk n 
 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 
 v   v v mqv v v v mqu v v mj
     qqqqqqCommanderqj 

This is the main help screen for GNU Midnight Commander.

To learn more on how to use the interactive help facility
just press 
EnterHow to use help.  You may want to go directly to the help

contentsContents.

GNU Midnight Commander is written by its 
authorsAUTHORS.

GNU Midnight Commander comes with ABSOLUTELY NO 
WARRANTYWarranty.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute
it under terms of 
GNU General Public LicenseLicense.[License]

                GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                   Version 2, June 1991

 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA

 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim
copies of this license document, but changing it is not
allowed.

                         Preamble

  The licenses for most software are designed to take away
your freedom to share and change it.  By contrast, the GNU
General Public License is intended to guarantee your
freedom to share and change free software--to make sure
the software is free for all its users.  This General
Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation's software and to any other program whose
authors commit to using it.  (Some other Free Software
Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General
Public License instead.)  You can apply it to your
programs, too.

  When we speak of free software, we are referring to
freedom, not price.  Our General Public Licenses are
designed to make sure that you have the freedom to
distribute copies of free software (and charge for this
service if you wish), that you receive source code or can
get it if you want it, that you can change the software or
use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know
you can do these things.

  To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions
that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you
to surrender the rights.  These restrictions translate to
certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies
of the software, or if you modify it.

  For example, if you distribute copies of such a program,
whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients
all the rights that you have.  You must make sure that
they, too, receive or can get the source code.  And you
must show them these terms so they know their rights.

  We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the
software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you
legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the
software.

  Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to
make certain that everyone understands that there is no
warranty for this free software.  If the software is
modified by someone else and passed on, we want its
recipients to know that what they have is not the
original, so that any problems introduced by others will
not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

  Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by
software patents.  We wish to avoid the danger that
redistributors of a free program will individually obtain
patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary.
To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent
must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed
at all.

  The precise terms and conditions for copying,
distribution and modification follow.

                GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
            TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING,
              DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

  0. This License applies to any program or other work
which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder
saying it may be distributed under the terms of this
General Public License.  The "Program", below, refers to
any such program or work, and a "work based on the
Program" means either the Program or any derivative work
under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the
Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with
modifications and/or translated into another language.
(Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation
in the term "modification".)  Each licensee is addressed
as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and
modification are not covered by this License; they are
outside its scope.  The act of running the Program is not
restricted, and the output from the Program is covered
only if its contents constitute a work based on the
Program (independent of having been made by running the
Program).  Whether that is true depends on what the
Program does.

  1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the
Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium,
provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish
on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that
refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of
this License along with the Program.

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring
a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty
protection in exchange for a fee.

  2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or
any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the
Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or
work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you
also meet all of these conditions:

    a) You must cause the modified files to carry
prominent notices stating that you changed the files and
the date of any change.

    b) You must cause any work that you distribute or
publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived
from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a
whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of
this License.

    c) If the modified program normally reads commands
interactively when run, you must cause it, when started
running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way,
to print or display an announcement including an
appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no
warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and
that users may redistribute the program under these
conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of
this License.  (Exception: if the Program itself is
interactive but does not normally print such an
announcement, your work based on the Program is not
required to print an announcement.)

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.
If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from
the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent
and separate works in themselves, then this License, and
its terms, do not apply to those sections when you
distribute them as separate works.  But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a
work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole
must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions
for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus
to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights
or contest your rights to work written entirely by you;
rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the
distribution of derivative or collective works based on
the Program.

In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on
the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the
Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium
does not bring the other work under the scope of this
License.

  3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work
based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable
form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided
that you also do one of the following:

    a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding
machine-readable source code, which must be distributed
under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,

    b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at
least three years, to give any third party, for a charge
no more than your cost of physically performing source
distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the
corresponding source code, to be distributed under the
terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily
used for software interchange; or,

    c) Accompany it with the information you received as
to the offer to distribute corresponding source code.
(This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial
distribution and only if you received the program in
object code or executable form with such an offer, in
accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the
work for making modifications to it.  For an executable
work, complete source code means all the source code for
all modules it contains, plus any associated interface
definition files, plus the scripts used to control
compilation and installation of the executable.  However,
as a special exception, the source code distributed need
not include anything that is normally distributed (in
either source or binary form) with the major components
(compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on
which the executable runs, unless that component itself
accompanies the executable.

If distribution of executable or object code is made by
offering access to copy from a designated place, then
offering equivalent access to copy the source code from
the same place counts as distribution of the source code,
even though third parties are not compelled to copy the
source along with the object code.

  4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute
the Program except as expressly provided under this
License.  Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will
automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from
you under this License will not have their licenses
terminated so long as such parties remain in full
compliance.

  5. You are not required to accept this License, since
you have not signed it.  However, nothing else grants you
permission to modify or distribute the Program or its
derivative works.  These actions are prohibited by law if
you do not accept this License.  Therefore, by modifying
or distributing the Program (or any work based on the
Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to
do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying,
distributing or modifying the Program or works based on
it.

  6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work
based on the Program), the recipient automatically
receives a license from the original licensor to copy,
distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms
and conditions.  You may not impose any further
restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights
granted herein.  You are not responsible for enforcing
compliance by third parties to this License.

  7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or
allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason
(not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on
you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that
contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License.  If you
cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your
obligations under this License and any other pertinent
obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute
the Program at all.  For example, if a patent license
would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the
Program by all those who receive copies directly or
indirectly through you, then the only way you could
satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain
entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or
unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the
balance of the section is intended to apply and the
section as a whole is intended to apply in other
circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to
infringe any patents or other property right claims or to
contest validity of any such claims; this section has the
sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free
software distribution system, which is implemented by
public license practices.  Many people have made generous
contributions to the wide range of software distributed
through that system in reliance on consistent application
of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if
he or she is willing to distribute software through any
other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is
believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

  8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is
restricted in certain countries either by patents or by
copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who
places the Program under this License may add an explicit
geographical distribution limitation excluding those
countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or
among countries not thus excluded.  In such case, this
License incorporates the limitation as if written in the
body of this License.

  9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised
and/or new versions of the General Public License from
time to time.  Such new versions will be similar in spirit
to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number.  If
the Program specifies a version number of this License
which applies to it and "any later version", you have the
option of following the terms and conditions either of
that version or of any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation.  If the Program does not specify a
version number of this License, you may choose any version
ever published by the Free Software Foundation.

  10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into
other free programs whose distribution conditions are
different, write to the author to ask for permission.  For
software which is copyrighted by the Free Software
Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we
sometimes make exceptions for this.  Our decision will be
guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of
all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the
sharing and reuse of software generally.

[Warranty]
                       NO WARRANTY

  11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE,
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT
PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.  EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED
IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE
QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.
SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF
ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

  12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR
AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY
OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM
AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY
TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF
DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED
BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO
OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR
OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGES.

               END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

      How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

  If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of
the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to
achieve this is to make it free software which everyone
can redistribute and change under these terms.

  To do so, attach the following notices to the program.
It is safest to attach them to the start of each source
file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty;
and each file should have at least the "copyright" line
and a pointer to where the full notice is found.

<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of
what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will
be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License
for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General
Public License along with this program; if not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street,
Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic
and paper mail.

If the program is interactive, make it output a short
notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:

Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w'.  This is free software, and you are welcome
to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c'
for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should
show the appropriate parts of the General Public License.
Of course, the commands you use may be called something
other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be
mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a
programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright
disclaimer" for the program, if necessary.  Here is a
sample; alter the names:

  Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest
in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at
compilers) written by James Hacker.

  <signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
  Ty Coon, President of Vice

This General Public License does not permit incorporating
your program into proprietary programs.  If your program
is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful
to permit linking proprietary applications with the
library.  If this is what you want to do, use the GNU
Library General Public License instead of this License.

[QueryBox]
Query boxes

In the query dialog box you can use the arrow keys or the
first letter to select an item or click with the mouse on
the button.

[How to use help]
How to use help

You can use the cursor keys or mouse to navigate in the
help viewer.  Press down arrow to move to the next item or
scroll down.  Press up arrow to move to the previous item
or scroll up.  Press right arrow to follow the current
link.  Press left arrow to go back in the history of nodes
that you have visited.

If you terminal doesn't support the cursor keys you can
use the space bar to scroll forward and the b (back) key
scroll back.  Use the TAB key to move to the next item and
press ENTER to follow the current link.  The l (last) key
can be used to go back in the history of nodes you have
visited.  Press ESC to exit the help viewer.

The left mouse button will follow the link or scroll.  The
right mouse button can be used to go back in the history
of nodes.

The full key list of the help viewer:


General movement keysGeneral Movement Keys are accepted.

tab           Move to the next item.
M-tab         Move to the previous item.
down          Move to the next item or scroll a line down.
up            Move to the previous item or scroll a line up.
right, enter  Follow the current link.
left, l       Go back in the history of visited nodes.
F1            Show the help for the help viewer.
n             Go to the next node.
p             Go to the previous node.
c             Go to the Contents node.
F10, esc      Exit the help viewer.

Local variables:
fill-column: 58
end: