mc/doc/mc.sgml

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<!doctype linuxdoc system>

<article>

<mantitle title="mc" sectnum="1" date="20 October 1997" name="mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems">
<title>GNU Midnight Commander User's Guide
<author>Written by the Midnight Commander development team <tt/mc-devel@nuclecu.unam.mx/
<date>v 3.0, 16 September 1995
<abstract>
This document describes how to use the GNU Midnight Commander, Unix file manager.
</abstract>

<toc>

<sect>Usage<label id="Usage">

<p>
<tt/mc/ &lsqb;-abcCdfhkPstuUVx?&rsqb; &lsqb;-l log &rsqb; &lsqb;dir1 &lsqb;dir2&rsqb;&rsqb;
&lsqb;-v file&rsqb;  &lsqb;-l file&rsqb

<sect>Description<label id="Description">

<p>
The Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager
for Unix-like operating systems.

<sect>Options<label id="Options">

<p>
<descrip>
<tag/-a/ Disables the usage of graphisc characters for line drawing.
<tag/-b/ Forces black and white display.
<tag/-c/ Force color mode, please check the section <lnk name="Colors" id="Colors"> for
more information.
<tag/-C arg/ Used to specify a different color set in the
command line. The format of arg is documented in the
<lnk name="Colors" id="Colors"> section.
<tag/-d/ Disables mouse support.
<tag/-f/ Displays the compiled-in search paths for Midnight
Commander files.
<tag/-k/ Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo
database. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't work.
<tag/-l file/ Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
<tag/-P/ At program end, the Midnight Commander will print the
last working directory; this, along with the shell
function below, will allow you to browse through your
directories and automatically move to the last directory
you were in (thanks to Torben Fjerdingstad and Sergey for
contributing this function and the code which implements
this option).

<tscreen><verb>

bash and zsh users:

mc ()
{
        MC=/tmp/mc$$-"$RANDOM"
        @prefix@/bin/mc -P "$@" > "$MC"
        cd "`cat $MC`"
        rm "$MC"
        unset MC;
}

tcsh usres:
alias mc 'setenv MC `@prefix@/bin/mc -P \!*`; cd $MC; unsetenv MC'

</verb></tscreen>
I know the bash function could be shorter for zsh and bash but the
backquotes on bash won't accept your suspension the program with
C-z. 

<tag/-s/ Turns on the slow terminal mode, in this mode the
program will not draw expensive line drawing characters
and will toggle verbose mode off.
<tag/-t/ Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and
terminfo: it makes the Midnight Commander use the value of
the <tt/TERMCAP/ variable for the terminal information instead
of the information on the system wide terminal database
<tag/-u/ Disables the use of a concurrent shell (only makes
sense if the Midnight Commander has been built with
concurrent shell support).
<tag/-v file/Enters the internal viewer to view the file specified.
<tag/-e file/Enters the internal editor to edit the file specified.
<tag/-U/ Enables the use of the concurrent shell support (only
makes sense if the Midnight Commander was built with the
subshell support set as an optional feature).
<tag/-V/ Displays the version of the program.
<tag/-x/ Forces xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable
terminals (two screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
</descrip>
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.

<sect>Overview<label id="Overview">

<p>
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 bottommost line
of the screen is the shell command line, and the bottom
line shows the function key labels. The topmost line is
the <lnk name="menu bar line" id="Menu 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 <lnk name="Directory
Panels" id="Directory Panels">, the <lnk name="Left and Right Menus" id="Left and Right Menus"> and the <lnk name="File Menu" id="File Menu">.

You can execute system commands from the Midnight
Commander by simply typing them. Everything you type will
appear on the shell command line, and when you press Enter
the Midnight Commander will execute the command line you
typed; read the <lnk name="Shell Command Line" id="Shell Command Line"> and <lnk name="Input Line Keys" id="Input Line Keys">
sections to learn more about the command line.

<sect>Mouse Support<label id="Mouse Support">

<p>
The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support. It is
activated whenever you are running on an <bf/xterm(1)/ terminal
(it even works if you take a telnet or rlogin connection
to another machine from the xterm) or if you are running
on a Linux console and have the <bf/gpm(1)/ 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
<lnk name="extension file" id="Extension File Edit">
has 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 pageful backward.
Correspondingly, a click on the bottom frame line will
cause a scroll of one pageful forward. This frame line
method works also in the <lnk name="Help Viewer" id="How to use help"> and the
<lnk name="Directory Tree" id="Directory Tree">.

The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by
editing the <lnk name="~/.mc/ini" id="Save Setup"> file and changing the
<em/mouse_repeat_rate/ parameter.

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

<sect>Keys<label id="Keys">

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

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

M-<em/chr/ means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing
<em/chr/. If there is no Meta or Alt key, type ESC, release
it, then type the character <em/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 <lnk name="File Menu" id="File Menu"> section documents
the keyboard shortcuts for the commands appearing in the File menu.
This section
includes the function keys. Most of these commands perform
some action, usually on the selected file or the tagged
files.

The <lnk name="Directory Panels" id="Directory Panels">
section documents the keys which
select a file or tag files as a target for a later action
(the action is usually one from the file menu).

The <lnk name="Shell Command Line" id="Shell Command Line">
section list the keys which are
used for entering and editing command lines. Most of these
copy file names and such from the directory panels to the
command line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the
command line history.

<lnk name="Input Line Keys" id="Input Line Keys">
are used for editing input lines. This
means both the command line and the input lines in the
query dialogs.

<sect1>Miscellaneous Keys<label id="Miscellaneous Keys">

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

<descrip>
<tag/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 <bf/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 <lnk name="extensions file" id="Extension File Edit"> then the corresponding
command is executed.
<tag/C-l/ Repaint all the information in the Midnight
Commander.
<tag/C-x c/ Run the <lnk name="Chmod" id="Chmod"> command on a file or on the tagged
files.
<tag/C-x o/ Run the <lnk name="Chown" id="Chown"> command on the current file or on the
tagged files.
<tag/C-x l/ Run the link command.
<tag/C-x s/ Run the symbolic link command.
<tag/C-x C-l/ Create symbolic link to the selection in the current panel at
the place specified in the dialog (defaults to a symlink in the other
panel's directory), using a relative shortest possible symlink.
<tag/C-x i/ Set the other panel display mode to information.
<tag/C-x q/ Set the other panel display mode to quick view.
<tag/C-x !/ Execute the <lnk name="External panelize" id="External panelize"> command.
<tag/C-x h/ Run the <lnk name="add directory to hotlist" id="Hotlist"> command.
<tag/M-!/ Executes the Filtered view command, described in the
<lnk name="view command" id="Internal File Viewer">.
<tag/M-?/ Executes the <lnk name="Find file" id="Find File"> command.
<tag/M-c/ Pops up the <lnk name="quick cd" id="Quick cd"> dialog.
<tag/C-o/ When the program is being run in the Linux or SCO 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 (<bf/cons.saver/)
to handle saving and restoring of information on the
screen.
When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type <tt/C-o/
at any time and you will be taken back to the Midnight
Commander main screen, to return to your application just
type <tt/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.
</descrip>

<sect1>Directory Panels<label id="Directory Panels">

<p>
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 <lnk name="Left and Right
Menus" id="Left and Right Menus">.

<descrip>
<tag/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.
<tag/Insert, C-t/ To tag files you may use the Insert key (the
kich1 terminfo sequence) or the <tt/C-t/ (Control-t) sequence.
To untag files, just retag a tagged file.
<tag/M-g, M-h (or M-r), M-j/ Used to select the top file in a
panel, the middle file and the bottom one, respectively.
<tag/C-s, M-s/ Start a filename search in the directory
listing. When the search is active the keypresses will be
added to the search string instead of the command line. If
the <em/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 <tt/backspace/ or <tt/DEL/ keys can be used to
correct typing mistakes. If <tt/C-s/ is pressed again, the next
match is searched for.
<tag/M-t/Toggle the current display listing to show the next display listing
mode.  With this it is possible to quickly switch from long listing
to regular listing and the user defined listing mode.
<tag/C-&bslshd; (control-backslash)/ Show the
<lnk name="directory hotlist" id="Hotlist"> and change to the selected
directory.
<tag/+ (plus)/ This is used to select (tag) a group of files.
The Midnight Commander will prompt for a regular
expression describing the group. When <em/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 <em/Shell Patterns/ is off, then the tagging of files is done with
normal regular expressions (see <bf/ed (1)/).
If the expression starts or ends with a slash (<tt>/</tt>), then it
will select directories instead of files.
<tag/&bslshd; (backslash)/ Use the "&bslsh;" key to unselect a group of
files. This is the opposite of the Plus key.
<tag/up-key, C-p/ Move the selection bar to the previous entry
in the panel.
<tag/down-key, C-n/ Move the selection bar to the next entry in
the panel.
<tag/home, a1, M-&lt;/ Move the selection bar to the first entry
in the panel.
<tag/end, c1, M-&gt;/ Move the selection bar to the last entry in
the panel.
<tag/next-page, C-v/ Move the selection bar one page down.
<tag/prev-page, M-v/ Move the selection bar one page up.
<tag/M-o/ If the other panel is a listing panel and you are
standing on a directory in the current panel, then the
other panel contents are set to the contents of the
currently selected directory (like Emacs' dired C-o key)
otherwise the other panel contents are set to the parent
dir of the current dir.
<tag/C-PageUp, C-PageDown/ Only when ran on the Linux console:
does a chdir to &dquot;..&dquot; and to the currently selected
directory respectively.
</descrip>

<sect1>Shell Command Line<label id="Shell Command Line">

<p>
This section lists keys which are useful to avoid
excessive typing when entering shell commands.

<descrip>
<tag/M-Enter/ Copy the currently selected file name to the
command line.
<tag/C-Enter/ Same a M-Enter, this one only works on the Linux
console.
<tag/M-Tab/ Does the filename, command, variable, username and
hostname <lnk name="completion" id="Completion"> for you.
<tag/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 (<tt/C-x t/) 
or of the other panel (<tt/C-x C-t/) to the command line.
<tag/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.
<tag/C-x r, C-x C-r/ Copy value of current symlink (or current symlink
in the other panel) to the command line.
<tag/C-q/ The quote command can be used to insert characters
that are otherwise interpreted by the Midnight Commander
(like the <tt/+/ symbol).
<tag/M-p, M-n/ Use these keys to browse through the command
history. M-p takes you to the last entry, M-n takes you to
the next one.
<tag/M-h>  Displays the history for the current input line. 
</descrip>

<sect1>General Movement Keys<label id="General Movement Keys">

<p>
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.

<descrip>
<tag/Up, C-p/ Moves one line backward.
<tag/Down, C-n/ Moves one line forward.
<tag/Prev Page, Page Up, M-v/ Moves one pageful backward.
<tag/Next Page, Page Down, C-v/ Moves one pageful forward.
<tag/Home, A1/ Moves to the beginning.
<tag/End, C1/ Move to the end.
</descrip>

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

<descrip>
<tag/b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete/ Moves one pageful
backward.
<tag/Space bar/ Moves one pageful forward.
<tag/u, d/ Moves one half of a page backward or forward.
<tag/g, G/ Moves to the beginning or to the end.
</descrip>

<sect1>Input Line Keys<label id="Input Line Keys">

<p>
The input lines (they are used for the <lnk name="command line" id="Shell Command Line"> and
for the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:

<descrip>
<tag/C-a/ puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
<tag/C-e/ puts the cursor at the end of the line.
<tag/C-b, move-left/ move the cursor one position left.
<tag/C-f, move-right/ move the cursor one position right.
<tag/M-f/ moves one word forward.
<tag/M-b/ moves one word backward.
<tag/C-h, backspace/ delete the previous character.
<tag/C-d, Delete/ delete the character in the point (over the
cursor).
<tag/C-@/ sets the mark for cutting.
<tag/C-w/ copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a
kill buffer and removes the text from the input line.
<tag/M-w/ copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a
kill buffer.
<tag/C-y/ yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
<tag/C-k/ kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
<tag/M-p, M-n/ Use these keys to browse through the command
history. <tt/M-p/ takes you to the last entry, <tt/M-n/ takes you to
the next one.
<tag/M-C-h, M-Backspace/ delete one word backward.
<tag/M-Tab/ does the filename, command, variable, username and
hostname <lnk name="completion" id="Completion"> for you.
</descrip>

<sect>Menu Bar<label id="Menu Bar">

<p>
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:
<em/Left/, <em/File/, <em/Command/, <em/Options/ and <em/Right/.

The <lnk name="Left and Right Menus" id="Left and Right Menus"> allow you to modify the
appearance of the left and right directory panels.

The <lnk name="File Menu" id="File Menu"> lists the actions you can perform on the
currently selected file or the tagged files.

The <lnk name="Command Menu" id="Command Menu"> lists the actions which are more general
and bear no relation to the currently selected file or the
tagged files.

<sect1>Left and Right Menus<label id="Left and Right Menus">

<p>
The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from
the <bf/Left/ and <bf/Right/ menus.

<sect2>Listing Mode...<label id="Listing Mode...">

<p>
The listing mode view is used to display a listing of
files, there are four different listing modes available:
<bf/Full/, <bf/Brief/, <bf/Long/ and <bf/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 <tt/ls -l/
command. The long view takes the whole screen width.

If you choose the <bf/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 <tt/half/ or <tt/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 <tt/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:

<descrip>
<tag/name/ displays the file name.
<tag/size/ displays the file size.
<tag/bsize/ is an alternative form of the <bf>size</bf> format. It
displays the size of the files and for directories it just shows
<tt/SUB-DIR/ or <tt/UP--DIR/.
<tag/type/ displays a one character field type. This character
is a superset of what is displayed by ls with the <em/-F/ flag.
An asterisk for executable files, a slash for directories,
an at-sign for links, an equal sign for sockets, a hyphen
for character devices, a plus sign for block devices, a
pipe for fifos, a tilde for symbolic links to directories
and an exclamation mark for stalled symlinks (links that
point nowhere).
<tag/mtime/ file's last modification time.
<tag/atime/ file's last access time.
<tag/ctime/ file's creation time.
<tag/perm/ a string representing the current permission bits of
the file.
<tag/mode/ an octal value with the current permission bits of
the file.
<tag/nlink/ the number of links to the file.
<tag/ngid/ the GID (numeric).
<tag/nuid/ the UID (numeric).
<tag/owner/ the owner of the file.
<tag/group/ the group of the file.
<tag/inode/ the inode of the file.
</descrip>

Also you may use these field names for arranging the
display:

<descrip>
<tag/space/ a space in the display format.
<tag/dot/ a dot in the display format.
<tag/mark/ An asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
<tag/&verbar;/ This character is used to add a vertical line to the
display format.
</descrip>

To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you
just add a <tt/:/ and then the number of characters you want
the field to have, if the number is followed by the symbol
<tt/+/, then the size specifies the minimum field size, if
the program finds out that there is more space on the
screen, it will then expand this field.

For example, the <bf/Full/ display corresponds to this format:

<tscreen><verb>
half type,name,|,size,|,mtime
</verb></tscreen>

And the <bf/Long/ display corresponds to this format:

<tscreen><verb>
full perm,space,nlink,space,owner,space,group,space,
     size,space,mtime,space,name
</verb></tscreen>

This is a nice user display format:

<tscreen><verb>
half name,|,size:7,|,type,mode:3
</verb></tscreen>

Panels may also be set to the following modes:

<descrip>
<tag/Info/ The info view display information related to the
currently selected file and if possible information about
the current file system.
<tag/Tree/ The tree view is quite similar to the <lnk name="directory
tree" id="Directory Tree"> feature. See the section about it for more
information.
<tag/Quick View/ In this mode, the panel will switch to a
reduced <lnk name="viewer" id="Internal 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.
</descrip>

<sect2>Sort Order...<label id="Sort Order...">

<p>
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 <lnk name="Configuration" id="Configuration">
(option <em/"Mix all files"/).

<sect2>Filter...<label id="Filter...">

<p>
The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern
(for example <tt/*.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.

<sect2>Reread<label id="Reread">

<p>
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 <lnk name="External panelize" id="External panelize">
for more information).

<sect1>File Menu<label id="File Menu">

<p>
The Midnight Commander uses the F1 - F10 keys as keyboard
shortcuts for commands appearing in the file menu. The
escape sequences for the Fkeys are terminfo capabilities
<tt/kf1/ trough <tt/kf10/. On terminals without function key
support, you can achieve the same functionality by
pressing the <tt/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):

<descrip>
<tag/Help (F1)/ Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the
<lnk name="help viewer" id="How to use help">, 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.
<tag/Menu (F2)/ Invoke the <lnk name="user menu" id="Menu File Edit">.
The user menu provides an easy way
to provide users with a menu and add extra features to the
Midnight Commander.
<tag/View (F3, Shift-F3)/ View the currently selected file.
By default this invokes
the <lnk name="Internal File Viewer" id="Internal File Viewer"> but if the option
<em/Use internal view/ is off, it invokes an external file viewer specified
by the <tt/PAGER/ environment variable. If <tt/PAGER/ is undefined,
the <bf/view/ command is invoked. If you use <tt/Shift-F3/
instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any
formatting or pre processing to the file.
<tag/Filtered View (M-!)/ this command prompts for a command and it's arguments (the
argument defaults to the currently selected file name),
the output from such command is shown in the internal file
viewer.
<tag/Edit (F4)/ Currently it invokes the <tt/vi/ editor, or the editor
specified in the <tt/EDITOR/ environment variable, or the
<lnk name="Internal File Editor" id="Internal File Editor">
if the use_internal_edit option is on.
<tag/Copy (F5)/ Pop up an input dialog with destination that defaults to
the directory in the non-selected panel and copies the
currently selected file (or the tagged files, if there is
at least one file tagged) to the directory specified by
the user in the input dialog. 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 ^&bslsh;(.*&bslsh;)&dollar;
depending on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible
wildcards in the destination see <lnk name="Mask copy/rename" id="Mask Copy/Rename">.
On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
clicking on the background button (or pressing M-b in the dialog
box). The <lnk name="Background Jobs" id="Background jobs"> command is
used to control the backgroun process.
<tag/Link (C-x l)/ Create a hard link to the current file.
<tag/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
<em/@/-sign in front of the file name if it is a symbolic
link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a
tilde (<em/&tilde;/)). The original file which the link points to is
shown on mini-status line if the <em/Show mini-status/ option
is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the
confusion that can be caused by hard links.
<tag/Edit sYmlink C-x C-s/ Lets you edit the value of the current symbolic
link (i.e. the absolute/relative path the symlink points to).
<tag>Rename/Move (F6)</tag> Pop up an input dialog that
defaults to the directory in
the non-selected panel and moves the currently selected
file (or the tagged files if there is at least one tagged
file) to the directory specified by the user in the input
dialog. During the process, you can press C-c or ESC to
abort the operation. For more details look at Copy
operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by
clicking on the background button (or pressing M-b in the dialog
box). The <lnk name="Background Jobs" id="Background jobs"> command is
used to control the backgroun process.
<tag/Mkdir (F7)/ Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory
specified.
<tag/Delete (F8)/ Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in
the currently selected panel. During the process, you can
press <tt/C-c/ or <tt/ESC/ to abort the operation.
<tag/Quick cd (M-c)/ Use the <lnk name="quick cd" id="Quick cd"> command if you have full
command line and want to cd somewhere.
<tag/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 <em/Shell Patterns/ are enabled,
the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
in the shell (<tt/*/ standing for zero or more characters and <tt/?/
standing for one character). If <em/Shell Patterns/ is off,
then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
expressions (see <bf/ed (1)/).
To mark directories instead of files, the expression must
start or end with a <tt>/</tt>.
<tag/Unselect group (&bslshd;)/ Used for unselecting a group of files.
This is the opposite of the <em/Select group/ command.
<tag/Quit (F10, Shift-F10)/ Terminate the Midnight Commander.
<tt/Shift-F10/ is used when you want to quit and you are using the shell wrapper.
<tt/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.
</descrip>

<sect2>Quick cd<label id="Quick cd">

<p>
This command is useful if you have a full command line and
want to <lnk name="cd" id="The 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 <tt/cd/ on
the command line and then you press enter. This features
all the things that are already in the <lnk name="internal cd
command" id="The cd internal command">.

<sect1>Command Menu<label id="Command Menu">

<p>
The <lnk name="Directory tree" id="Directory Tree"> command shows a tree figure of the
directories.

The <lnk name="Find file" id="Find File"> command allows you to search for a specific
file. The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the
two directory panels.

The <bf>Panels on/off</bf> command shows the output of the last
shell command. This works only on <bf/xterm/ and on Linux
and SCO console.

The <bf/Compare directories (C-x d)/ command compares the
directory panels with each other. You can then use the
<bf/Copy (F5)/ command to make the panels identical. There are
three comparison 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 <bf/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 <bf/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
<tt/M-p/ or <tt/M-n/.

The <lnk name="Directory hotlist" id="Hotlist"> (C-&bslsh;) command makes changing of the
current directory to often used directories faster.

The <lnk name="External panelize" id="External panelize"> allows you to execute an external
program, and make the output of that program the contents
of the current panel.

<lnk name="Extension file edit" id="Extension 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 <lnk name="Menu file edit" id="Menu File Edit">
command may be used for editing the user menu (which
appears by pressing <tt/F2/).

<sect2>Directory Tree<label id="Directory Tree">

<p>
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 <tt/C-r/ (or
<tt/F2/).

You can use the following keys:

<lnk name="General movement keys" id="General Movement Keys"> are accepted.

<descrip>
<tag/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.
<tag/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.
<tag/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 <tt/F2/ in its
parent directory.
<tag>F4 (Static/Dynamic)</tag> 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.
<tag/F5 (Copy)/ Copy the directory.
<tag/F6 (RenMov)/ Move the directory.
<tag/F7 (Mkdir)/ Make a new directory below this directory.
<tag/F8 (Delete)/ Delete this directory from the file system.
<tag/C-s, M-s/ Search the next directory matching the search
string. If there is no such directory these keys will move
one line down.
<tag/C-h, Backspace/ Delete the last character of the search
string.
<tag/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 <tt/C-s/. The search string is
shown in the mini status line.
</descrip>

The following actions are available only in the directory
tree. They aren't supported in the tree view.

<descrip>
<tag/F1 (Help)/ Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
<tag/Esc, F10/ Exit the directory tree. Do not change the
directory.
</descrip>

The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like <tt/Enter/.
See also the section on <lnk name="mouse support" id="Mouse Support">.

<sect2>Find File<label id="Find File">

<p>
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 <lnk name="directory tree" id="Directory 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
"&bslsh;", e.g. if you search for "strcmp (" you will have to input 
"strcmp &bslsh;(" (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 <em/Chdir/ button will change to the directory of the
currently selected file. The <em/Again/ button will ask for the
parameters for a new search. The <em/Quit/ button quits the
search operation. The <em/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 <tt/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 CDROM or on a NFS directory that is mounted across
a slow link).

Directories to be skipped should be set on the variable
<tt/find_ignore_dirs/ in the  <tt/Misc/ section of your <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> file.

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

<tscreen><verb>
[Misc]
find_ignore_dirs=/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
</verb></tscreen>

You may consider using the <lnk name="External panelize" id="External panelize"> command
instead. <bf/Find file command/ is for simple queries only,
while using <bf/External panelize/ you can do as mysterious
searches as you would like.

<sect2>External panelize<label id="External panelize">

<p>
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:

<tscreen><verb>
find . -type l -print
</verb></tscreen>

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:

<tscreen><verb>
awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /usr/adm/xferlog
</verb></tscreen>

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.

<sect2>Hotlist<label id="Hotlist">

<p>
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
one. For adding you may want to use a standalone Add to
hotlist command (<tt/C-x h/), which adds the current directory
into the directory hotlist, as well. The user is prompted
for a label for the directory.

This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may also
consider using the <tt/CDPATH/ variable as described in
<lnk name="internal cd command" id="The cd internal command"> description.

<sect2>Extension File Edit<label id="Extension File Edit">

<p>
This will invoke your editor on the file <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ext</tt>. The
format of this file is as follows (the format has changed
with version 3.0):

All lines starting with <tt/&num;/ or empty lines are thrown away.

Lines starting in the first column should have following
format:

<tt>keyword/descNL</tt>, i.e. everything after <tt>keyword/</tt> until new
line is <tt/desc/

<tt/keyword/ can be:

<em/shell/ (desc is then any extension (no wildcards), i.e.
matches all the files *desc. Example: .tar matches *.tar)

<em/regex/ (desc is a regular expression)

<em/type/ (file matches this if `file &percnt;f` matches regular
expression desc (the filename: part from `file &percnt;f` islatex cur
removed))

<em/default/ (matches any file no matter what desc is)

Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be
of the format:

<tt/keyword=commandNL/ (with no spaces around =), where <tt/keyword/
should be:

<em/Open/ (if the user presses Enter or doubleclicks it), <em/View/
(F3), <em/Edit/ (F4), <em/Drop/ (user drops some files on it) or any
other user defined name (those will be listed in the
extension dependent pop-up menu). <em/Icon/ name is reserved
for future use by mc.

<tt/command/ is any one-line shell command, with the simple
<lnk name="macro substitution" id="Macro Substitution">.

Target are evaluated from top to bottom (order is thus
important). If some actions are missing, search continues
as if this target 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 catch all the
actions.

<sect2>Background jobs<label id="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. 

<sect2>Menu File Edit<label id="Menu File Edit">

<p>
The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be
customized by the user. When you access the user menu, the
file <tt>.mc.menu</tt> 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, <tt>&tilde;/.mc/menu</tt> is tried in the same way, 
and otherwise mc
uses the default system-wide menu <tt>@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.menu</tt>.

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 <tt>/usr/tmp</tt>) 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 <lnk name="macro substitution" id="Macro Substitution">.

Here is a sample mc.menu file:

<tscreen><verb>
A	Dump the currently selected file
	od -c %f

B	Edit a bug report and send it to root
	vi /tmp/mail.$$
	mail -s "Midnight Commander bug" root &lt; /tmp/mail.$$

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
</verb></tscreen>

<bf/Default Conditions/

Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The
condition must start from the first column with a <tt/=/
character. If the condition is true, the menu entry will
be the default entry.

<tscreen><verb>
Condition syntax:
  <cond>          = <sub-cond>
  or:		  = <cond> | <cond> ...
  or:		  = <cond> & <cond> ... 
</verb></tscreen>

Sub-condition is one of following:

<tscreen><verb>
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
! <sub-cond>	negate the result of sub-condition
</verb></tscreen>

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
<tt/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:

<itemize>
<item><tt/n/ not directory
<item><tt/r/ regular file
<item><tt/d/ directory
<item><tt/l/ link
<item><tt/c/ char special
<item><tt/b/ block special
<item><tt/f/ fifo
<item><tt/s/ socket
<item><tt/x/ executable
<item><tt/t/ tagged
</itemize>

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

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

The conditions are calculated from left to right. This
means

<tscreen><verb>
	= f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
</verb></tscreen>

is calculated as

<tscreen><verb>
	( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
</verb></tscreen>

Here is a sample of the use of conditions:

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

<bf/Addition Conditions/

If the condition begins with <tt/+/ (or <tt/+?/) instead of <tt/=/
(or <tt/=?/) 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 <tt/+=/ or <tt/=+/ (or <tt/+=?/ or <tt/=+?/ 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 <tt/+/ and another starting with <tt/=/.

Comments are started with <tt/&num;/. The additional comment
lines must start with <tt/&num;/, space or tab.

<sect1>Options Menu<label id="Options Menu">

<p>
The <lnk name="Configuration" id="Configuration"> command pops up a dialog from which you
can change most of settings of the Midnight Commander.

The <lnk name="Display bits" id="Display bits"> command pops up a dialog from which you
may select which characters is your terminal able to
display.

The <lnk name="Confirmation" id="Confirmation"> command pops up a dialog from which you
specify which actions you want to confirm.

The <lnk name="Learn keys" id="Learn keys"> command pops up a dialog from which you
test some keys which are not working on some terminals and
you may fix them.

The <lnk name="Virtual FS" id="Virtual FS"> command pops up a dialog from which you
specify some VFS related options.

The <lnk name="Layout" id="Layout"> command pops up a dialog from which you specify
a bunch of options how mc looks like on the screen.

The <lnk name="Save setup" id="Save Setup"> command saves the current settings of the
Left, Right and Options menus. A small number of other
settings is saved, too.

<sect2>Configuration<label id="Configuration">

<p>
The program has some options that may be toggled on and
off from the Configuration dialog. Options are enabled if
they have an asterisk or "x" in front of them. These
options are divided into three groups: Screen Colors,
Panel Options and Other Options.

<bf/Screen Colors/ You can select whether your display supports color or not.
Normally this information is in the terminfo database. If
you want to know how to change individual colors see the
section on <lnk name="Colors" id="Colors">.

<bf/Panel Options/

<descrip>
<tag/Show Backup Files/ By default the Midnight Commander
doesn't show files ending in '&tilde;' (like GNU's <tt/ls/ option
<tt/-B/).
<tag/Show Hidden Files/ By default the Midnight Commander will
show all files that start with a dot (like <tt/ls -a/).
<tag/Mark moves down/ By default when you mark a file (with
either <tt/C-t/ or the Insert key) the selection bar will move
down.
<tag/Show Mini-Status/ If enabled, show one line of status
information at the bottom of the panels about the
currently selected item.
<tag/Mix all files/ When 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 afterwards.
<tag/Fast directory reload/ This option is off by default. If
you activate the fast reload, 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
<tt/C-r/).
</descrip>

<bf/Other Options/

<descrip>
<tag/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.
<tag/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: <em/Never/ Means that you do not want to see
the output of your command. If you are using the Linux
console or an xterm, you will be able to see the output of
the command by typing <tt/C-o/. <em/"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 <bf/xterm/ or the Linux console).
<em/Always/ The program will pause after executing all of your
commands.
<tag/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 <bf/ed(1)/.
<tag/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 <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> file.
<tag/Auto menus/ If this option is enabled, the user menu will
be invoked at startup. Useful for building menus for
non-unixers.
<tag/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 <tt/EDITOR/ environment
variable is used. If no editor is specified, <bf/vi/
is used. See the section on the <lnk name="internal file
editor" id="Internal File Editor">.
<tag/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 <tt/PAGER/ environment
variable is used. If no pager is specified, the <bf/view/
command is used. See the section on the <lnk name="internal file
viewer" id="Internal File Viewer">.
<tag/Confirm Delete/ This option is toggled on by default, and
will cause the Midnight Commander to ask for confirmation
when deleting a single file.
<tag/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 <tt/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.
</descrip>

<sect2>Display bits<label id="Display bits">

<p>
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.

<sect2>Confirmation<label id="Confirmation">

<p>
In this menu you configure the confirmation options for
file deletion, overwriting, execution by pressing enter
and quitting the program.

<sect2>Learn keys<label id="Learn keys">

<p>
This dialog lets you test if your keys F1-F20, Home, End,
etc. work properly on your terminal. They often don't,
since many terminal databases are broken.

You can move around with the <bf/Tab/ key, with the <tt/vi/ moving
keys ('h' left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right) and after
you press any arrow key once (this will mark it OK), then
you can use that key as well.

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

If some keys do not work properly, then you won't see OK
after the key name after you have pressed that key. You
may then want to fix it. You do it by pressing the button
of that key (either by mouse or using Tab and Enter). Then
a red message will appear and you will be asked to type
that key. If you want to abort this, press just Esc and
wait until the message disappears. Otherwise type the key
you're asked to type and also wait until the dialog
disappears.

When you finish with all the keys, you may want either to
Save your key fixes into your <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> file into the
&lsqb;terminal:TERM&rsqb; section (where <tt/TERM/ is the name of your
current terminal) or to discard them. If all your keys
were working properly and you had not to fix any key, then
(of course) no saving will occur.

<sect2>Virtual FS<label id="Virtual FS">

<p>
This option gives you control over the settings of the
<lnk name="Virtual File System" id="Virtual File System"> information cache.

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. Since the
information that must be kept may be large (for example,
compressed tar files may be kept in RAM for faster
access), you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
information to decrease your memory usage or to maximize
the speed of access to frequently used file systems.

The Tar file system is quite clever about how it handles
tar files: it just loads the directory entries and when it
needs to use the information contained in the tar file, it
goes and grab it.

In the wild, tar files are usually kept compressed (plain
tar files are species in extinction), and because of the
nature of those files (the directory entries for the tar
files is not there waiting for us to be loaded), the tar
file system has two choices: load the complete,
uncompressed tar file into memory or uncompress the file
in the disk in a temporary location and then access the
uncompressed file as a regular tar file.

In this dialog box you tell the Midnight Commander which
sizes for compressed tar files you will tolerate to load
into your precious memory. The default setting is set to
one megabyte, this means that compressed tar files whose
size is at most one megabyte will be loaded into core,
otherwise a temporary uncompressed tar file will be
created to access the contents (all of this is transparent
to the user).

The program will let you add a suffix to specify the units
of the number you typed in, use 'k' for kilobyte and 'm'
for megabyte. Our routine does not accept floating point
numbers, so you can't use ".5 m" to specify 512 kilobytes,
you will have to use "512 k" instead.

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 uncompression is slow,
the Midnight Commander will cache the information in
memory for a limited amount of time, after you hit the
timeout, all of the memory resources associated with the
file system will be freed. The default timeout is set to
one minute.

<sect2>Layout<label id="Layout">

<p>
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 SCO 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.

<sect2>Save Setup<label id="Save Setup">

<p>
At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load
initialization information from the <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> file. If
this file doesn't exist, it will load the information from
the system-wide configuration file, located in
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ini. If the system-wide configuration
file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.

The <em/Save Setup/ command creates the <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> file by
saving the current settings of the <lnk name="Left, Right" id="Left and Right Menus"> and
<lnk name="Options" id="Options Menu"> menus.

If you activate the <em/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 <lnk name="Special
Settings" id="Special Settings"> for more information.

<sect>Executing operating system commands<label id="Executing operating system commands">

<p>
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 <tt/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 <lnk name="Extensions File" id="Extension File Edit">. If a
match is found then the code associated with that
extension is executed. A very simple <lnk name="macro expansion" id="Macro Substitution">
takes place before executing the command.

<sect1>The cd internal command<label id="The cd internal command">

<p>
The <em/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:

<em/Tilde substitution/ The (&tilde;) 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 the specified user.

For example, &tilde;guest is the home directory for the user
guest, while &tilde;/guest is the directory guest in your home
directory.

<em/Previous directory/ You can jump to the directory you were
previously by using the special directory name '-' like
this: <tt/cd -/

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

For example you could set your <tt/CDPATH/ variable to
&tilde;/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to
any of the directories inside the &tilde;/src and /usr/src
directories, from any place in the file system by using
it's relative name (for example cd linux could take you to
/usr/src/linux).

<sect1>Macro Substitution<label id="Macro Substitution">

<p>
When accessing a <lnk name="user menu" id="Menu File Edit"> or executing an
<lnk name="extension dependent command" id="Extension File Edit">
or running a command from the command
line input, a simple macro substitution takes place.

The macros are:

<em/"&percnt;f"/ The current file name.

<em/"&percnt;d"/ The current directory name.

<em/"&percnt;F"/ The current file in the unselected panel.

<em/"&percnt;D"/ The directory name of the unselected panel.

<em/"&percnt;t"/ The currently tagged files.

<em/"&percnt;T"/ The tagged files in the unselected panel.

<descrip>

<tag/"&percnt;u"/ and <em/"&percnt;U"/ Similar to the &percnt;t and &percnt;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.

<tag/"&percnt;s"/ and <em/"&percnt;S"/ The selected files: The tagged files if
there are any. Otherwise the current file.

<tag/"&percnt;q"/ Dropped files. In all places except in the Drop
action of the <lnk name="mc.ext file" id="Extension File Edit">, this will become a null
string, in the Drop action it will be replaced with a
space separated list of files that were dropped on the
file.

<tag/"&percnt;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 <lnk name="Virtual
File System" id="Virtual File System">.

<tag/"&percnt;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: <em/ascii/ to force the viewer
into ascii mode; <em/hex/ to force the viewer into hex mode;
<em/nroff/ to tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold
and underline sequences of nroff; <em/unformated/ to tell the
viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the text
bold or underlined.

<tag/"&percnt;&percnt;"/ The &percnt; character

<tag/"&percnt;{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.

</descrip>

<sect1>The subshell support<label id="The subshell support">

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

When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander
will spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one
defined in the <tt/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 <tt/bash/ you can specify startup
commands for the subshell in your <tt>&tilde;/.mc/bashrc</tt> file and
special keyboard maps in the <tt>&tilde;/.mc/inputrc</tt> file.
<tt/tcsh/ users may specify startup commands in the
<tt>&tilde;/.mc/tcshrc</tt> 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 <lnk name="Options" id="Options"> section has more
information on how you can control the subshell code.

<sect1>Controlling Midnight Commander<label id="Controlling Midnight Commander">

<p>
The Midnight Commander defines an environment variable
<tt/MC_CONTROL_FILE/. The commands executed by MC may give
instructions to MC by writing to the file specified by
this variable. This is only available if you compiled your
copy of the Midnight Commander with the <tt/WANT_PARSE/ option.

The following instructions are supported.

<descrip>
<tag/clear_tags/ Clear all tags.
<tag/tag &lt;filename&gt;/ Tag specified file.
<tag/untag &lt;filename&gt;/ Untag specified file.
<tag/select &lt;filename&gt;/ Move pointer to file.
<tag/change_panel/ Switch between panels.
<tag/cd &lt;path&gt;/ Change directory.
</descrip>

If the first letter of the instruction is in lower case it
operates on the current panel. If the letter is in upper
case the instruction operates on the other panel. The
additional letters must be in lower case. Instructions
must be separated by exactly one space, tab or newline.
The instructions don't work in the Info, Tree and Quick
views. The first error causes the rest to be ignored.

<sect>Chmod<label id="Chmod">

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

The Chmod window has two parts - <em/Permissions/ and <em/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 <tt/arrow keys/ or the <tt/Tab/ key. To change the state of
the check buttons or to select a button use <tt/Space/. You can
also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate
that selection (they are the highlit letters on the
buttons).

To set the attribute bits, use the <tt/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 <bf/&lsqb;Set all&rsqb;/ button, which will act on all
the tagged files.

<bf/&lsqb;Marked all&rsqb;/ set only marked attributes to all selected
files

<bf/&lsqb;Set marked&rsqb;/ set marked bits in attributes of all selected
files

<bf/&lsqb;Clean marked&rsqb;/ clear marked bits in attributes of all
selected files

<bf/&lsqb;Set&rsqb;/ set the attributes of one file

<bf/&lsqb;Cancel&rsqb;/ cancel the Chmod command

<sect>Chown<label id="Chown">

<p>
The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a
file. The hot key for this command is <tt/C-x o/.

<sect>File Operations<label id="File Operations">

<p>
When you copy, move or delete files the Midnight Commander
shows the file operations dialog. It shows the files
currently being operated on and there are at most three
progress bars. The file bar tells how big part of the
current file has been copied so far. The count bar tells
how many of tagged files have been handled so far. The
bytes bar tells how big part of total size of the tagged
files has been handled so far. If the <em/verbose/ option is
off the file and bytes bars are not shown.

There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog.
Pressing the <bf/Skip/ button will skip the rest of the current
file. Pressing the <bf/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 <bf/Skip/ button
to skip the file or the <bf/Abort/ button to abort the
operation altogether. You can also select the <bf/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 <bf/Yes/
button to overwrite the file, the <bf/No/ button to skip the
file, the <bf/alL/ button to overwrite all the files, the <bf/nonE/
button to never overwrite and the <bf/Update/ button to
overwrite if the source file is newer than the target
file. You can abort the whole operation by pressing the
<bf/Abort/ button.

The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to
delete a directory which is not empty. Press the <bf/Yes/
button to delete the directory recursively, the <bf/No/ button
to skip the directory, the <bf/alL/ button to delete all the
directories and the <bf/nonE/ button to skip all the non-empty
directories. You can abort the whole operation by pressing
the <bf/Abort/ button.

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.

<sect>Mask Copy/Rename<label id="Mask Copy/Rename">

<p>
The copy/move operations lets 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 option which you can set:

<descrip>
<tag/Follow links/ tells 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.

<tag/Stable symlinks/ commands Midnight Commander, that it should
change symlinks in the target, so that they'll point to the same
location as it did before. With absolute symbolic links this does
nothing, but if you have a relative one, it will recompute its
value, adding necessary ../ and other directory parts and
making the value as short as possible (most modern filesystems
keep short symlinks inside inodes and thus don't waste much disk space).

<tag/Dive into subdirs/ tells what to do if in the target
directory exists a directory with the same name as the
file/directory being copied. The default action is to copy
it into that directory, by disabling this you can copy a
directory's content into that directory. Perhaps an
example will help:

You want to copy content of a directory foo to /bla/foo,
which is an already existing directory. Normally (when
Dive is set), mc would copy the content into /bla/foo/foo,
because the directory already exists. By disabling this
option you will copy it exactly into /bla/foo.

<tag/Preserve attributes/ tells whether to preserve the 
original files' permissions, timestamps and if you are
root whether to preserve the original files' UID and GID. 
If this option is not set the current value of the umask 
will be respected.

<tag/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
'&bslsh;&lt;digit&gt;' 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 '&bslsh;1' wildcard corresponds to the
first wildcard group in the source mask, the '&bslsh;2' wildcard
corresponds to the second group and so on all the way up
to '&bslsh;9'. The '&bslsh;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".

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 "&bslsh;2.&bslsh;1".

<tag/Use shell patterns off/

When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do
automatic grouping anymore. You must use '&bslsh;(...&bslsh;)'
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 "^&bslsh;(.*&bslsh;)&bslsh;.tar&bslsh;.gz&dollar;", 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 "^&bslsh;(.*&bslsh;)&bslsh;.&bslsh;(.*&bslsh;)&dollar;" and the destination is
"&bslsh;2.&bslsh;1".

<tag/Case Conversions/

You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use
'&bslsh;u' or '&bslsh;l' in the target mask the next character will be
converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.

If you use '&bslsh;U' or '&bslsh;L' in the target mask the next
characters will be converted to uppercase or lowercase
correspondingly up to the next '&bslsh;E' or next '&bslsh;U', '&bslsh;L' or
the end of the file name.

The '&bslsh;u' and '&bslsh;l' are stronger than '&bslsh;U' and '&bslsh;L'.

For example, if the source mask is '*' (shell patterns on)
or '^&bslsh;(.*&bslsh;)&dollar;' (shell patterns off) and the target mask is
'&bslsh;L&bslsh;u*' the file names will be converted to have initial
upper case and otherwise lower case.

</descrip>

You can also use '&bslsh;' as a quote character. For example,
'&bslsh;&bslsh;' is a backslash and '&bslsh;*' is an asterisk.

<sect>Internal File Viewer<label id="Internal File Viewer">

<p>
The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII
and hex. To toggle between modes, use the F4 key. If you
have the GNU gzip program installed, it will be used to
automatically decompress the files on demand.

The viewer will try to use the best method provided by
your system or the file type to display the information.
The internal file viewer will interpret some string
sequences to set the bold and underline attributes, thus
making a pretty display of your files.

When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in
quotes as well as hexadecimal constants.

You can mix quoted text with constants like this: <tt/"String"
0xFE 0xBB "more text"/. Text between constants and quoted
text is just ignored.

Some internal details about the viewer: On systems that
provide the <bf/mmap(2)/ system call, the program maps the file
instead of loading it; if the system does not provide the
<bf/mmap(2)/ system call or the file matches an action that
requires a filter, then the viewer will use it's growing
buffers, thus loading only those parts of the file that
you actually access (this includes compressed files).

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

<descrip>
<tag/F1/ Invoke the builtin hypertext help viewer.
<tag/F2/ Toggle the wrap mode.
<tag/F4/ Toggle the hex mode.
<tag/F5/ Goto line.  This will prompt you for a line and will display
that line.
<tag>F6, /</tag> Regular expression search.
<tag/?/ Reverse regular expression search.
<tag/F7/ Normal search / hex mode search.
<tag/C-s/ Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else
find next match.
<tag/C-r/ Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else
find next match.
<tag/n/ Find next match.
<tag/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.
<tag/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.
<tag/F10, Esc/ Exit the internal file viewer.
<tag/next-page, space, C-v/ Scroll one page forward.
<tag/prev-page, M-v, C-b, backspace/ Scroll one page backward.
<tag/down-key/ Scroll one line forward.
<tag/up-key/ Scroll one line backward.
<tag/C-l/ Refresh the screen.
<tag/!/ Spawn a shell in the currently working directory.
<tag/&lsqb;n&rsqb m/ Set the mark n.
<tag/&lsqb;n&rsqb r/ Jump to the mark n.
<tag/C-f/ Jump to the next file.
<tag/C-b/ Jump to the previous file.
<tag/M-r/ Toggle the ruler.
</descrip>

It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a
file, look at the <lnk name="Extension File Edit section" id="Extension File Edit">

<sect>Internal File Editor<label id="Internal File Editor">

<p>
The internal file editor provides most of the features of
common full screen editors. It is invoked using <bf>F4</bf> provided
the <bf>use_internal_edit</bf> option is set in the initialization file. It has an
extensible file size limit of sixteen megabytes and edits binary files
flawlessly. The features it presently supports are: Block
copy, move, delete, cut, paste; <bf>key for key undo</bf>; pull-down
menus; file insertion; <bf>macro definition</bf>; <bf>regular expression</bf>
search and replace (and our own scanf-printf search and
replace); <bf>shift-arrow MSW-MAC text highlighting</bf> (for the
linux console only); insert-overwrite toggle; word-wrap; a variety of
tabbing options; and an option
to pipe text blocks through shell commands like indent and ispell.

<p>
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. <bf>Ctrl-Ins</bf> copies to the file
<bf>cedit/cooledit.clip</bf> and <bf>Shift-Ins</bf>
pastes from <bf>cedit/cooledit.clip</bf>.
<bf>Shift-Del</bf> cuts to <bf>cedit/cooledit.clip</bf>, and
<bf>Ctrl-Del</bf> deletes highlighted text (all Linux console only).
The completion key also does a Return
without an automatic indent. 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.

<p>
You can also enable rudimentary Emacs key binding support
by adding the line
<tscreen><verb>
    edit_key_emulation=1
</verb></tscreen>
in your <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> file. A zero value is for normal
keys.

<p>
To define a macro, press <bf/Ctrl-R/ and then type out the key
strokes you want to be executed. Press <bf/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 <bf>Ctrl-A</bf> 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 <bf>cedit/cooledit.macros</bf> in your home directory.
You can delete a macro by deleting the appropriate line in
this file.

<p>
<bf>F19</bf> will format C code when it is highlighted
and <bf>C-p</bf> will do spell checks. M-t will also
run the <bf>sort</bf> shell command. To see how
to set this up, look at the <bf>mcedit.1</bf>
man page.

<p>
You can use scanf search and replace to search and replace 
a C <bf>format string</bf>. First take a look at the <bf>sscanf</bf> 
and <bf>sprintf</bf> man pages to see what a <bf>format string</bf> 
is and how it works. An example is as follows: Suppose I want 
to replace all occurences of say, an open bracket, three 
comma seperated numbers, and a close bracket, with the 
word &dquot;apples&dquot;, the third number, the word 
&dquot;oranges&dquot; and then the second number, I would 
fill in the <bf>Replace</bf> dialog 
box as follows:

<p>
<tscreen><verb>
 Enter search string
(%d,%d,%d)
 Enter replace string
apples %d oranges %d
 Enter replacement argument order
3,2
</verb></tscreen>

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

<p>
It is advisable to use this feature with <bf/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 <bf>&percnt;&lsqb;</bf> is very useful for
scanning strings, and whitespace.

<p>
The editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When editing
binary files, you should set <bf>display bits</bf> to 7 bits in the
options menu to keep the spacing clean.

<p>
See also the <bf>mcedit.1</bf> man page for lots more information.
A variety of tabbing and indenting options are available which
are described in this man page.

<sect>Completion<label id="Completion">

<p>
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 <bf/&dollar;/ ), username (if the
text begins with <bf/&tilde;/ ), hostname (if the text begins with <bf/@/)
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
builtin commands as well) in turn. If none of these
produces a match, 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 <em/show_all_if_ambiguous/
<lnk name="variable" id="Special Settings">
in the Initialization file. If it is nonzero, a
list of all possibilities pops up next to the current
position and you can select with the arrow keys and <tt/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 <tt/M-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 <tt/Esc,/ <tt/F10/ and left and right arrow keys. If
<em/show_all_if_ambiguous/
<lnk name="variable" id="Special Settings"> is set to zero, the dialog pops up
only if you press <tt/M-Tab/ for the second time, for the first
time MC just beeps.

<sect>Virtual File System<label id="Virtual File System">

<p>
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 five Virtual File
Systems (VFS): the <em/local/ file system, used for accessing the
regular Unix file system; the <em/ftpfs/, used to manipulate files on
remote systems with the FTP protocol; the <em/tarfs/, used to
manipulate tar and compressed tar files; the <em/undelfs/, used to
recover deleted files on et2 file systems (the default file system for
Linux systems) and finally the <em/mcfs/ (Midnight Commander file
system), a network based file system.

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.

<sect1>FTP File System<label id="FTP File System">

<p>
The ftpfs allows you to manipulate files on remote
machines, to actually use it, you may try to use the panel
command FTP 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:

<em>ftp://&lsqb;!&rsqb&lsqb;user@&rsqb;machine&lsqb;:port&rsqb&lsqb;remote-dir&rsqb;</em>

The, <em/user, port/ and <em/remote-dir/ elements are optional. If
you specify the <em/user/ element, then the Midnight Commander
will try to logon on the mremote machine as that user,
otherwise it will use your login name. The optional <em/pass/ element,
if present is the password used for the connection.  This use
is not recomented (nor keeping this in your hotlist, unless you set
the appropiate permissions there, and then, it may not be entirely
safe anyways).

Examples:

<tscreen><verb>
    ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
    ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages
    ftp://!behind.firewall.edu/pub
    ftp://guest@remote-host.com:40/pub
    ftp://miguel:xxx@server/pub
</verb></tscreen>

To connect to sites behind a firewall, you will need to use the prefix
ftp://! (ie, with a bang character after the double slash) to make the
Midnight Commander use a proxy host for doing the ftp transfer.  You
can define the proxy host in the <lnk name="Virtual FS" id="Virtual FS">
Virtual File System dialog box.

Another option is to set the <em/ftpfs_always_use_proxy/
parameter in the initialization file.  This will configure the program
to always use the proxy host.  If this variable is set, the program
will do two things: consult the <tt>@prefix@/lib/mc.no_proxy</tt> 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.

If you are using the ftpfs code with a filtering packet router that
does not allow you to use the regular mode of opening files, you may
want to force the program to use the passive-open mode.  To use this,
set the <em/ftpfs_use_passive_connections/ option.

The Midnight Commander keeps the directory listing in a cache.  The cache
expire time is configurable in the <lnk name="Virtual FS" id="Virtual FS">
dialog box.  This has the funny behavior that even if you make changes to a
directory, they will not be reflected in the directory listing until you
force a cache reload with the C-r key.  This is a feature (when you think
it's a bug, think about manipulating files on the other side of the Atlantic
with ftpfs).

<sect1>Tar File System<label id="Tar File System">

<p>
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:

<em/tar:filename.tar&lsqb;dir-inside-tar&rsqb;/

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 <lnk name="Extension
File Edit" id="Extension File Edit"> section for details on how this is done.

Examples:

<tscreen><verb>
    tar:mc-3.0.tar.gz/mc-3.0/vfs
    tar:/ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar
</verb></tscreen>

The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.

<sect1>Network File System<label id="Network File System">

<p>
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:

<em/mc:&lsqb;user@&rsqb;machine&lsqb;:port&rsqb;&lsqb;remote-dir&rsqb;/

The, <em/user/, <em/port/ and <em/remote-dir/ elements are optional. If
you specify the <em/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 <em/port/ element is used when the remote machine running
on a special port (see the mcserv(8) manual page for more
information about ports); finally, if the <em/remote-dir/
element is present, your current directory on the remote
machine will be set to this one.

Examples:

<tscreen><verb>
    mc:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
    mc:joe@foo.edu:11321/private
</verb></tscreen>

<sect1>Undelete File System<label id="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:

<tscreen><verb>
    undel:/dev/sda2
</verb></tscreen>

It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
before you start browsing files there. 

<sect1>Colors<label id="Colors">

<p>
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 <tt/-c/ and <tt/-b/
flag respectively.

If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager
instead of ncurses, it will also check the variable
<tt/COLORTERM/, if it is set, it has the same effect as the <tt/-c/
flag.

You may specify terminals that always force color mode
by adding the <em/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:

<tscreen><verb>
[Colors]
color_terminals=linux,xterm
</verb></tscreen>

The format is:

<tscreen><verb>
color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
</verb></tscreen>

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 <tt/MC_COLOR_TABLE/ or the Colors
section in the initialization file.

In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded
from the <em/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:

<tscreen><verb>
[Colors]
base_color=
xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
</verb></tscreen>

The format for the color definition is:

<tscreen><verb>
  <keyword>=<foregroundcolor>,<backgroundcolor>:<keyword>= ...
</verb></tscreen>

The colors are optional, and the keywords are: normal,
selected, marked, markselect, errors, input, reverse menu,
menusel, menuhot, menuhotsel, gauge; the dialog colors
are: dnormal, dfocus, dhotnormal, dhotfocus;  Help colors
are: helpnormal, helpitalic, helpbold, helplink,
helpslink;  Viewer color is: viewunderline; Special highlighting mode: 
executable, directory, link, device, special.

The dialog boxes use the following colors: <em/dnormal/ is
used for the normal text, <em/dfocus/ is the color used for the
currently selected component, <em/dhotnormal/ is the color used
to differentiate the hotkey color in normal components,
whereas the <em/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: <em/helpnormal/ is used for
normal text, <em/helpitalic/ is used for text which is
emphasized in italic in the manual page, <em/helpbold/ is used
for text which is emphasized in bold in the manual page,
<em/helplink/ is used for not selected hyperlinks and <em/helpslink/
is used for selected hyperlink.

<em/gauge/ determines color of filled part of the progress bar
(gauge), which shows how many percent of files were copied
etc. in a graphical way.

For file type highlighting mode <em/directory/ specifies the color in
which directories are shown; <em/executable/ for executable files;
<em/link/ is used to represent links; <em/device/ - for character and
block devices; <em/special/ is for special files, such as FIFO and IPC
sockets; <em/core/ is for core files (see also the option <tt/highlight_mode/
at the section on <lnk name="special settings" id="Special Settings">).

The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta,
brightmagenta, cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white.

<sect>Special Settings<label id="Special Settings">

<p>
Most of the settings of the Midnight Commander can be
changed from the menus. However, there is a small number
of settings which can only be changed by editing the setup
file.

These variables may be set in your <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> file:

<descrip>
<tag/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 &tilde;/mc.ini file and change the value
of the field clear_before_exec to 0.
<tag/confirm_view_dir/ If you press <tt/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.
<tag/drop_menus/ If this variable is set, when you press the <tt/F9/
key, the pull down menus will be activated, else, you will
only be presented with the menu title, and you will have
to select the entry with the arrow keys or the first
letter and from there select your option in the menu.

<tag/ftpfs_retry_seconds/
This value is the number of seconds the Midnight Commander will wait
before attempting a reconnection to an ftp server that has denied the
login.  If the value is zero, the the program will not retry the login.

<tag/ftpfs_use_passive_connections/
This option is by off default.  This makes the ftpfs code use the
passive open mode for transfering files.  This is used by people that
are behind a filtering packet router.  This option just works if you
are not using an ftp proxy.

<tag/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 keypresses. 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.
<tag/mouse_move_pages/ Controls whenever scrolling with the
mouse is done by pages or line by line on the panels.
<tag/mouse_move_pages_viewer/ Controls if scrolling with the
mouse is done by pages or line by line on the internal
file viewer.
<tag/navigate_with_arrows/ If this setting is turned on, then
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.
<tag/nice_rotating_dash/ When on, this flag causes the commander
to show a rotating dash as a work in progress indicator.
<tag/old_esc_mode/ By default the Midnight Commander treats the
<tt/ESC/ key as a key prefix (old_esc_mode=0), if you set this
option (old_esc_mode=1), then the <tt/ESC/ key will act as a
prefix key for one second, and if no extra keys have
arrived, then the <tt/ESC/ key is interpreted as a cancel key
(<tt/ESC ESC/).
<tag/only_leading_plus_minus/
set special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in command line (select,
unselect, reverse selection) only if command line is empty. No need to
quote this characters in the middle of the command line. But we can not
change selection when command line is not empty.
<tag/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.
<tag/preserve_uidgid/
If this option is set (the default), when logged in as root the
default will be to preserve the UID and the GID of files.  Some users
prefer to disable this option, so that's why it's configurable.
<tag/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.
<tag/show_all_if_ambiguous/ By default the Midnight Commander
pops up all possible <lnk name="completions" id="Completion"> if the completion is
ambiguous if you press <tt/M-Tab/ for the second time, for the
first time it just completes as much as possible and in
the case of ambiguity beeps. If you want to see all the
possible completions already after the first <tt/M-Tab/
pressing, set this option to 1.
<tag/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.
<tag/highlight_mode/ By default all information on panels displayed with 
the same color. If this variable is set to 1, then <em/perm/ or 
<em/mode/ tokens in display format get ability to show access rights of the user
to the shown file. Appropriate triplet of reading, writing and execution rights 
highlighted with the yellow (<tt/selected/) color. In addition, if the variable 
is equal to <tt/2/, then all lines are displaying by the color according to 
their type (see <lnk name="Colors" id="Colors">). Permissions highlighting
also works in this mode.
<tag/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 <lnk name="mc.ext file" id="Extension File Edit">.
<tag/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.
</descrip>

<sect>Terminal databases<label id="Terminal databases">

<p>
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) or in the <tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt> 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 &bslsh;E form to represent the escape character and
the ^x to represent the control-x character.

The possible key symbols are:

<tscreen><verb>
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
</verb></tscreen>

For example, to define the key insert to be the
<tt/Escape + &lsqb; + O + p/, you set this in the ini file:

<tscreen><verb>
insert=&bslshv;E[Op
</verb></tscreen>

The <em/complete/ key symbol represents the escape sequences
used to invoke the completion process, this is invoked
with <tt/M-tab/, but you can define other keys to do the same
work (on those keyboard with tons of nice and unused keys
everywhere).

<sect>How to use help<label id="How to use help">

<p>
You can use the cursor keys or mouse to navigate in the
internal 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 <tt/space bar/ to scroll forward and the <tt/b/ key scroll
back. Use the <tt/TAB/ key to move to the next item and press
<tt/ENTER/ to follow the current link. The <tt/l/ (last) key may
be used to go back in the history of nodes that you have
visited. Press <tt/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:

<lnk name="General movement keys" id="General Movement Keys"> are accepted.

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

<sect>FILES<label id="FILES">

<p>
<descrip>
<tag>@prefix@/lib/mc.hlp</tag> The help file for the program.
<tag>@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ext</tag> The default system-wide extensions
file.
<tag><tt>&tilde;/.mc/ext</tt></tag> User's own extension, view configuration and
edit configuration file. They override the contents of the
system wide files if present.
<tag>@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ini</tag> The default system-wide setup for
the Midnight Commander, used only if the user lacks his
own &tilde;/.mc/ini file.
<tag>@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.lib</tag> Global settings for the Midnight
Commander. Settings in this file are global to any
Midnight Commander, it is useful to define site-global
terminal settings.
<tag><tt>&tilde;/.mc/ini</tt></tag> User's own setup. If this file is present
then the setup is loaded from here instead of the
system-wide startup file.
<tag>@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.hint</tag> This file contains the hints
(cookies) displayed by the program.
<tag>@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.menu</tag> This file contains the default
system-wide applications menu.
<tag><tt>&tilde;/.mc/menu</tt></tag> User's own application menu. If this file
is present it is used instead of the system-wide
applications menu.
<tag><tt>&tilde;/.mc/tree</tt></tag> The directory list for the directory tree
and tree view features. Each line is one entry. The lines
starting with a slash are full directory names. The lines
starting with a number have that many characters equal to
the previous directory. If you want you may create this
file by giving the command

<tscreen><verb> 
find / -type d -print | sort < ~/.mc/tree
</verb></tscreen>

Normally there is no sense in doing it
because the Midnight Commander automatically updates this
file for you.
<tag>./.mc.menu</tag> Local user-defined menu. If this file
is present it is used instead of the home or system-wide
applications menu.
</descrip>

<sect>AVAILABILITY<label id="AVAILABILITY">

<p>
The latest version of this program can be found at
<url url="ftp://ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local/"> and in
Europe from <url url="ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/GNU/mc"> and
<url url="ftp://ftp.teuto.de/lmb/mc">.

<sect>SEE ALSO<label id="SEE ALSO">

<p>
<bf/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:
<url url="http://mc.blackdown.org/mc/">

<sect>AUTHORS<label id="AUTHORS">

<p>
<itemize>
<item>Miguel de Icaza (<tt/miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx/)
<item>Janne Kukonlehto (<tt/jtklehto@paju.oulu.fi/)
<item>Radek Doulik (<tt/rodo@earn.cvut.cz/)
<item>Fred Leeflang (<tt/fredl@nebula.ow.org/)
<item>Dugan Porter (<tt/dugan@b011.eunet.es/)
<item>Jakub Jelinek (<tt/jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/)
<item>Ching Hui (<tt/mr854307@cs.nthu.edu.tw/)
<item>Andrej Borsenkow (<tt/borsenkow.msk@sni.de/)
<item>Norbert Warmuth (<tt/k3190@fh-sw.de/)
<item>Mauricio Plaza (<tt/mok@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx/)
<item>Paul Sheer (<tt/psheer@icon.co.za/)
</itemize>

Alessandro Rubini (<tt/rubini@ipvvis.unipv.it/) has been especially helpful
debugging and enhancing the program's mouse support, John
Davis (<tt/davis@space.mit.edu/) made his S-Lang library
available to us under the GPL and answered my questions
about it, and the following people have contributed code
and many bug fixes (in alphabetical order):

<itemize>
<item>Adam Tla/lka (<tt/atlka@sunrise.pg.gda.pl/)
<item>Alex I. Tkachenko (<tt/alex@bcs.zp.ua/)
<item>Antonio Palama, DOS port (<tt/palama@posso.dm.unipi.it/)
<item>Gerd Knorr (<tt/kraxel@cs.tu-berlin.de/)
<item>Erwin van Eijk (<tt/wabbit@corner.iaf.nl/)
<item>Jean-Daniel Luiset (<tt/luiset@cih.hcuge.ch/)
<item>Jon Stevens (<tt/root@dolphin.csudh.edu/)
<item>Juan Francisco Grigera, Win32 port (<tt/j-grigera@usa.net/)
<item>Juan Jose Ciarlante (<tt/jjciarla@raiz.uncu.edu.ar/)
<item>Ilya Rybkin (<tt/rybkin@rouge.phys.lsu.edu/)
<item>Marcelo Roccasalva (<tt/mfroccas@raiz.uncu.edu.ar/)
<item>Massimo Fontanelli (<tt/MC8737@mclink.it/)
<item>Pavel Roskin (<tt/pavel@absolute.spb.su/)
<item>Sergey Ya. Korshunoff (<tt/root@seyko.msk.su/)
<item>Thomas Pundt (<tt/pundtt@math.uni-muenster.de/)
<item>Timur Bakeyev (<tt/timur@goff.comtat.kazan.su/)
<item>Tomasz Cholewo (<tt/tjchol01@mecca.spd.louisville.edu/)
<item>Torben Fjerdingstad (<tt/torben.fjerdingstad@uni-c.dk/)
<item>Vadim Sinolitis (<tt/vvs@nsrd.npi.msu.su/)
<item>Wim Osterholt (<tt/wim@djo.wtm.tudelft.nl/)
</itemize>

<sect>BUGS<label id="BUGS">

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

If you want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
this address: mc-bugs@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx.

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

</article>