mc/doc/mc.1.in

.TH mc 1 "20 October 1997"
.\"SKIP_SECTION"
.SH NAME
mc \- Visual shell for Unix-like systems.
.\"SKIP_SECTION"
.SH USAGE
.B mc
[\-abcCdfhPstuUVx?] [\-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [-v file]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.LP
The Midnight Commander is a directory browser/file manager for
Unix-like operating systems.  
.\".\"DONT_SPLIT"
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.I "\-a"
Disables the usage of graphic characters for line drawing.
.TP
.I "\-b"
Forces black and white display.
.TP
.I "\-c"
Force color mode, please check the section
.\"LINK2"
Colors
.\"Colors"
for more information.
.TP
.I "\-C arg"
Used to specify a different color set in the command line.  The format
of arg is documented in the
.\"LINK2"
Colors
.\"Colors"
section.
.TP
.I "\-d"
Disables mouse support.
.TP
.I "\-f"
Displays the compiled-in search paths for Midnight Commander files.
.TP
.I "\-k"
Reset softkeys to their default from the termcap/terminfo
database. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't work.
.TP
.I "-l file" 
Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
.TP
.I "\-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).
.nf

bash and zsh users:

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

tcsh users:
alias mc 'setenv MC `@prefix@/bin/mc -P \!*`; cd $MC; unsetenv MC'
.fi
.TP
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. 
.TP
.I "\-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.
.TP
.I "\-t"
Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it makes
the Midnight Commander use the value of the 
.B TERMCAP
variable for the terminal information instead of the information on
the system wide terminal database
.TP
.I "\-u"
Disables the use of a concurrent shell (only makes sense if the
Midnight Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
.TP
.I "\-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).
.TP
.I "\-v file"
Enters the internal viewer to view the file specified.
.TP
.I "\-V"
Displays the version of the program.
.TP
.I "\-x"
Forces xterm mode.  Used when running on xterm-capable terminals (two
screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "Overview"
The screen of the Midnight Commander is divided into four parts. Almost
all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels.  By default,
the second bottommost line of the screen is the shell command line, and
the bottom line shows the function key labels. The topmost line is the
.\"LINK2"
menu bar line.
.\"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.
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
Directory Panels,
.\"Directory Panels"
the
.\"LINK2"
Left and Right Menus
.\"Left and Right Menus"
and the
.\"LINK2"
File Menu.
.\"File Menu"
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
Shell Command Line
.\"Shell Command Line"
and
.\"LINK2"
Input Line Keys
.\"Input Line Keys"
sections to learn more about the command line.
.PP
.SH "Mouse Support"
The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support.  It is activated
whenever you are running on an
.B 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
.B gpm
mouse server running.
.PP
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).
.PP
Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is
an executable program; and if the
.\"LINK2"
extension file
.\"Extension File Edit"
has a program specified for the file's extension, the specified
program is executed.
.PP
Also, it is possible to execute the commands assigned to the function
key labels by clicking on them.
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
Help Viewer
.\"Help"
and the
.\"LINK2"
Directory Tree.
."Directory Tree"
.PP
The default auto repeat rate for the mouse buttons is 400
milliseconds. This may be changed to other values by editing the
.\"LINK2"
\&~/.mc/ini
.\"Save Setup"
file and changing the 
.I mouse_repeat_rate
parameter.
.PP
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.
.SH ""
.SH "Keys"
Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the
.I Control
(sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the 
.I Meta
(sometimes labeled ALT or even Compose) keys. In this manual we will
use the following abbreviations:
.PP
C-<chr> means hold the Control key while typing the character
<chr>. Thus C-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
.PP
M-<chr> means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>. If
there is no Meta or Alt key, type ESC, release it, then type the
character <chr>. 
.PP
All input lines in the Midnight Commander use an approximation to
the GNU Emacs editor's key bindings.
.PP
There are many sections which tell about the keys. The following are
the most important.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
File Menu
.\"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.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Directory Panels
.\"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).
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Shell Command Line
.\"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.
.PP
.\"LINK2"
Input Line Keys
.\"Input Line Keys"
are used for editing input lines. This means both the command line and
the input lines in the query dialogs.
.PP
.SH "  Miscellaneous Keys"
Here are some keys which don't fall into any of the other categories:
.PP
.B 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 
.B 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
.\"LINK2"
extensions file
.\"Extension File Edit"
then the corresponding command is executed.
.PP
.B C-l.
Repaint all the information in the Midnight Commander.
.PP
.B C-x c.
Run the
.\"LINK2"
Chmod
.\"Chmod"
command on a file or on the tagged files.
.PP
.B C-x o.
Run the
.\"LINK2"
Chown
.\"Chown"
command on the current file or on the tagged files.
.PP
.B C-x l.
Run the link command.
.PP
.B C-x s.
Run the symbolic link command.
.PP
.B C-x i.
Set the other panel display mode to information.
.PP
.B C-x q.
Set the other panel display mode to quick view.
.PP
.B C-x !.
Execute the 
.\"LINK2"
External panelize
.\"External panelize"
command.
.PP
.B C-x h
Run the 
.\"LINK2"
add directory to hotlist
.\"Hotlist"
command.
.PP
.B M-!,
Executes the Filtered view command, described in the
.\"LINK2"
view command.
.\"Internal File Viewer"
.PP
.B M-?,
Executes the 
.\"LINK2"
Find file
.\"Find File"
command.
.PP
.B M-c,
Pops up the
.\"LINK2"
quick cd
.\"Quick cd"
dialog.
.PP
.B 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
(cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of information on the
screen.
.PP
When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any time
and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
return to your application just type C-o.  If you have an application
suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other
programs from the Midnight Commander until you terminate the suspended
application. 
.PP
.SH "  Directory Panels"
This section lists the keys which operate on the directory panels. If
you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a
look at the section on
.\"LINK2"
Left and Right Menus.
.\"Left and Right Menus"
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B Insert, C-t.
To tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 terminfo sequence)
or the C-t (Control-t) sequence. To untag files, just retag a tagged
file.
.PP
.B 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. 
.PP
.B 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
.I "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
.I "backspace" or DEL 
keys can be used to correct typing mistakes. If C-s is pressed
again, the next match is searched for.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B C-\\\\ (control-backslash).
Show the 
.\"LINK2"
directory hotlist
.\"Hotlist"
and change to the selected directory.
.PP
.B + \ (plus).
This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
will prompt for a regular expression describing the group. When
.I 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
.I Shell Patterns
is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
expressions (see ed (1)).
.PP
If the expression starts or ends with a slash (/), then it will select
directories instead of files.
.PP
.B \\\\ (backslash).
Use the "\\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of
the Plus key.
.PP
.B up-key, C-p.
Move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
.PP
.B down-key, C-n.
Move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
.PP
.B home, a1, M-<.
Move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
.PP
.B end, c1, M->.
Move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
.PP
.B next-page, C-v.
Move the selection bar one page down.
.PP
.B prev-page, M-v.
Move the selection bar one page up.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B C-PageUp, C-PageDown
Only when ran on the Linux console: does a chdir to ".." and to the
currently selected directory respectively.
.PP
.SH "  Shell Command Line"
This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
entering shell commands.
.PP
.B M-Enter.
Copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
.PP
.B C-Enter.
Same a M-Enter, this one only works on the Linux console.
.PP
.B M-Tab.
Does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
.\"LINK2"
completion
.\"Completion"
for you.
.PP
.B C-x t, C-x C-t.
Copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the selected
file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of the other panel (C-x C-t) to
the command line.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B C-q.
The quote command can be used to insert characters that are otherwise
interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B M-h.
Displays the history for the current input line. 
.PP
.SH "  General Movement Keys"
The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common
code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same
keys. Each of them also accepts some keys of its own.
.PP
Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement
keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
.PP
.B Up, C-p.
Moves one line backward.
.PP
.B Down, C-n.
Moves one line forward.
.PP
.B Prev Page, Page Up, M-v.
Moves one pageful backward.
.PP
.B Next Page, Page Down, C-v.
Moves one pageful forward.
.PP
.B Home, A1.
Moves to the beginning.
.PP
.B End, C1.
Move to the end.
.PP
The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in
addition the to ones mentioned above:
.PP
.B b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete.
Moves one pageful backward.
.PP
.B Space bar.
Moves one pageful forward.
.PP
.B u, d.
Moves one half of a page backward or forward.
.PP
.B g, G.
Moves to the beginning or to the end.
.PP
.SH "  Input Line Keys"
The input lines (they are used for the
.\"LINK2"
command line
.\"Shell Command Line"
and for the query dialogs in the program) accept these keys:
.PP
.B C-a
puts the cursor at the beginning of line.
.PP
.B C-e
puts the cursor at the end of the line.
.PP
.B C-b, move-left
move the cursor one position left.
.PP
.B C-f, move-right
move the cursor one position right.
.PP
.B M-f
moves one word forward.
.PP
.B M-b
moves one word backward.
.PP
.B C-h, backspace
delete the previous character.
.PP
.B C-d, Delete
delete the character in the point (over the cursor).
.PP
.B C-@
sets the mark for cutting.
.PP
.B C-w
copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer and
removes the text from the input line.
.PP
.B M-w
copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer.
.PP
.B C-y
yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
.PP
.B C-k
kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B M-C-h, M-Backspace
delete one word backward.
.PP
.B M-Tab
does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname
.\"LINK2"
completion
.\"Completion"
for you.
.PP
.SH ""
.SH "Menu Bar"
The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse on the top
row of the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File",
"Command", "Options" and "Right".
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Left and Right Menus
.\"Left and Right Menus"
allow you to modify the appearance of the left and right directory
panels.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
File Menu
.\"File Menu"
lists the actions you can perform on the currently selected file or
the tagged files.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Command Menu
.\"Command Menu"
lists the actions which are more general and bear no relation to the
currently selected file or the tagged files.
.PP
.SH "  Left and Right Menus"
The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from the
.B "Left"
and
.B "Right"
menus.
.PP
.SH "    Listing Mode..."
The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are
four different listing modes available:
.B Full,
.B Brief,
.B Long,
and
.B User.
The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and
the modification time. 
.PP
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
.B "ls -l"
command. The long view takes the whole screen width.
.PP
If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify
the display format.
.PP
The user display format must start with a panel size specifier.  This
may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
full screen panel respectively.
.PP
After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the
panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format
string. 
.PP
After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size
specifier.  This are the available fields you may display:
.PP
.B name,
displays the file name.
.PP
.B size,
displays the file size.
.PP
.B bsize,
is an alternative form of the <bf/size/ format. It
displays the size of the files and for directories it just shows
SUB-DIR or UP--DIR.
.PP
.B type,
displays a one character field type.  This character is a superset of what
is displayed by ls with the -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).
.PP
.B mtime,
file's last modification time.
.PP
.B atime,
file's last access time.
.PP
.B ctime,
file's creation time.
.PP
.B perm,
a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
.PP
.B mode,
an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
.PP
.B nlink,
the number of links to the file.
.B ngid,
the GID (numeric).
.PP
.B nuid,
the UID (numeric).
.PP
.B owner,
the owner of the file.
.PP
.B group,
the group of the file.
.PP
.B inode,
the inode of the file.
.PP
Also you may use these field names for arranging the display:
.PP
.B space,
a space in the display format.
.PP
.B mark,
An asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
.PP
.B |,
This character is used to add a vertical line to the display format.
.PP
To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add
a ':' and then the number of characters you want the field to have, if
the number is followed by the symbol '+', 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.
.PP
For example, the 
.B Full
display corresponds to this format:
.PP
half type,name,|,size,|,mtime
.PP
And the 
.B Long
display corresponds to this format:
.PP
full perm,space,nlink,space,owner,space,group,space,size,space,
mtime,space,name
.PP
This is a nice user display format:
.PP
half name,|,size:7,|,type,mode:3
.PP
Panels may also be set to the following modes:
.TP
.B "Info"
The info view display information related to the currently
selected file and if possible information about the current file
system.
.TP
.B "Tree" 
The tree view is quite similar to the
.\"LINK2"
directory tree
.\"Directory Tree"
feature. See the section about it for more information.
.TP 
.B "Quick View"
In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced 
.\"LINK2"
viewer
.\"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.
.PP
.SH "    Sort Order..."
The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification time,
by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size,
by inode and unsorted.  In the Sort order dialog box you can choose
the sort order and you may also specify if you want to sort in reverse
order by checking the reverse box.
.PP
By default directories are sorted before files but this can be changed
from the
.\"LINK2"
Options menu
.\"Options Menu"
(option 
.B "Mix all files"
).
.PP
.SH "    Filter..."
The filter command allows you to specify a shell pattern (for example
.B "*.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.
.PP
.SH "    Reread"
The reread command reload the list of files in the directory. It is
useful if other processes have created or removed files.  If you
have panelized file names in a panel this will reload the directory
contents and remove the panelized information (See the section
.\"LINK2"
External panelize
.\"External panelize"
for more information).
.PP
.SH "  File Menu"
The Midnight Commander uses the F1 - F10 keys as keyboard shortcuts
for commands appearing in the file menu. The escape sequences for the
Fkeys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10.  On terminals without
function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9 and 0
(corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).
.PP
The File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in parentheses):
.PP
.B Help (F1)
.PP
Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the
.\"LINK2"
help viewer,
.\"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.
.PP
.B Menu (F2)
.PP
Invoke the
.\"LINK2"
user menu.
.\"Menu File Edit"
The user menu provides an easy way to provide users with a menu and
add extra features to the Midnight Commander.
.PP
.B View (F3, Shift-F3)
.PP
View the currently selected file. By default this invokes the
.\"LINK2"
Internal File Viewer
.\"Internal File Viewer"
but if the option "Use internal view" is off, it invokes an external
file viewer specified by the 
.B PAGER 
environment variable. If 
.B PAGER
is undefined, the "view" command is invoked.  If you use Shift-F3
instead, the viewer will be invoked without doing any formatting or
pre processing to the file.
.PP
.B Filtered View (M-!)
.PP
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.
.PP
.B Edit (F4)
.PP
Currently it invokes the 
.B vi 
editor, or the editor specified in the
.B EDITOR
environment variable, or the 
.\"LINK2"
Internal File Editor
.\"Internal File Editor"
if the use_internal_edit option is on.
.PP
.B Copy (F5)
.PP
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 ^\\(.*\\)$ depending
on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the destination
see 
.\"LINK2"
Mask copy/rename.
.\"Mask Copy/Rename"
.PP
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 
.\"LINK2"
Background Jobs
.\"Background Jobs"
is used to control the background process.
.PP
.B Link (C-x l)
.PP
Create a hard link to the current file.
.PP
.B SymLink (C-x s)
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If
the original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite
easy to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight
Commander shows an "@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a
symbolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).
The original file which the link points to is shown on mini-status line if the
.I "Show mini-status"
option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the
confusion that can be caused by hard links.
.PP
.B Rename/Move (F6)
.PP
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.
.PP
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 
.\"LINK2"
Background Jobs
.\"Background Jobs"
is used to control the background process.
.PP
.B Mkdir (F7)
.PP
Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.
.PP
.B Delete (F8)
.PP
Delete the currently selected file or the tagged files in the
currently selected panel. During the process, you can press C-c or
ESC to abort the operation.
.PP
.B Quick cd (M-c)
Use the
.\"LINK2"
quick cd
.\"Quick cd"
command if you have full command line and want to cd somewhere.
.PP
.B Select group (+)
.PP
This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
will prompt for a regular expression describing the group. When
.I Shell Patterns 
are enabled, the regular expression is much like the filename globbing
in the shell (* standing for zero or more characters and ?  standing
for one character). If
.I Shell Patterns
is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
expressions (see ed (1)).
.PP
To mark directories instead of files, the expression must start or end
with a '/'.
.PP
.B Unselect group (\\\\)
.PP
Used for unselecting a group of files. This is the opposite of the
.I "Select group"
command.
.PP
.B Quit (F10, Shift-F10)
.PP
Terminate the Midnight Commander.  Shift-F10 is used when you want to
quit and you are using the shell wrapper.  Shift-F10 will not take you
to the last directory you visited with the Midnight Commander, instead
it will stay at the directory where you started the Midnight Commander.
.PP
.SH "    Quick cd"
This command is useful if you have a full command line and want to 
.\"LINK2"
cd
.\"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
.B cd 
on the command line and then you press enter. This features all the things
that are already in the 
.\"LINK2"
internal cd command.
.\"The cd internal command"
.PP
.SH "  Command Menu"
The
.\"LINK2"
Directory tree
.\"Directory Tree"
command shows a tree figure of the directories.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Find file
.\"Find File"
command allows you to search for a specific file. The "Swap panels"
command swaps the contents of the two directory panels. 
.PP
The "Panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell
command. This works only on xterm and on Linux and SCO console.
.PP
The Compare directories (C-x d) command compares the directory
panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make
the panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method
compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a
full byte-by-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the
machine does not support the mmap(2) system call.  The size-only
compare method just compares the file sizes and does not check the
contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
.PP
The Command history command shows a list of typed commands. The
selected command is copied to the command line. The command history
can also be accessed by typing M-p or M-n. 
.PP
The 
.\"LINK2"
Directory hotlist (C-\\)
.\"Hotlist"
command makes changing of the current directory to often used directories
faster.
.PP
The 
.\"LINK2"
External panelize
.\"External panelize"
allows you to execute an external program, and
make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
.PP
.\"LINK2"
Extension file edit
.\"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
.\"LINK2"
Menu file edit
.\"Menu File Edit"
command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by
pressing F2).
.PP
.SH "    Directory Tree"
The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You
can select a directory from the figure and the Midnight Commander will
change to that directory.
.PP
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.
.PP
To get rid of long delays the Midnight Commander creates the tree
figure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent
directory and press C-r (or F2).
.PP
You can use the following keys:
.PP
.\"LINK2"
General movement keys
.\"General Movement Keys"
are accepted.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B F3 (Forget).
Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use this to remove clutter
from the figure. If you want the directory back to the tree figure
press F2 in its parent directory. 
.PP
.B F4 (Static/Dynamic).
Toggle between the dynamic navigation mode (default) and the static
navigation mode.
.PP
In the static navigation mode you can use the Up and Down keys to
select a directory. All known directories are shown.
.PP
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.
.PP
.B F5 (Copy).
Copy the directory.
.PP
.B F6 (RenMov).
Move the directory.
.PP
.B F7 (Mkdir).
Make a new directory below this directory.
.PP
.B F8 (Delete).
Delete this directory from the file system.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B C-h, Backspace.
Delete the last character of the search string.
.PP
.B Any other character.
Add the character to the search string and move to the next directory
which starts with these characters. In the tree view you must first
activate the search mode by pressing C-s. The search string is shown
in the mini status line.
.PP
The following actions are available only in the directory tree. They
aren't supported in the tree view.
.PP
.B F1 (Help).
Invoke the help viewer and show this section.
.PP
.B Esc, F10.
Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.
.PP
The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter. See
also the section on
.\"LINK2"
mouse support.
.\"Mouse Support"
.PP
.SH "    Find File"
The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the
search and the filename to be searched for. By pressing the Tree
button you can select the start directory from the
.\"LINK2"
directory tree
.\"Directory Tree"
figure. 
.PP
The contents field accepts regular expressions similar to egrep(1). That
means you have to escape characters with a special meaning to egrep with "\\", 
e.g. if you search for "strcmp (" you will have to input "strcmp \\(" 
(without the double quotes).
.PP
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.
.PP
You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir
button will change to the directory of the currently selected
file. The Again button will ask for the parameters for a new
search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panelize
button will place the found files to the current directory panel so
that you can do additional operations on them (view, copy, move,
delete and so on). After panelizing you can press C-r to return to the
normal file listing.
.PP
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).
.PP
Directories to be skipped should be set on the variable
.B find_ignore_dirs 
in the 
.B Misc 
section of your ~/.mc/ini file.
.PP
Directory components should be separated with a colon, here is an
example: 
.PP
.nf
[Misc]
find_ignore_dirs=/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
.fi
.PP
You may consider using the
.\"LINK2"
External panelize
.\"External panelize"
command for some operations. Find file command is for simple queries
only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious searches
as you would like.  
.PP
.SH "    External panelize"
The External panelize allows you to execute an external program, and
make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
.PP
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:
.PP
.nf
find . -type l -print
.fi
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.
.PP
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:
.PP
.nf
awk '$9 ~! /incoming/ { print $9 }' < /usr/adm/xferlog
.fi
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "    Hotlist"
The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of the directories in the 
directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the directory
corresponding to the selected label. From the hotlist dialog, you can remove
already created label/directory pairs and add new one. For adding you may
want to use a standalone Add to hotlist command (C-x h), which adds the 
current directory into the directory hotlist, as well. The user is prompted 
for a label for the directory. 
.PP
This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using the
CDPATH variable as described in
.\"LINK2"
internal cd command
.\"The cd internal command"
description.
.PP
.SH "    Extension File Edit"
This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.mc/ext. The format of this
file is as follows (the format has changed with version 3.0):
.PP
All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.
.PP
Lines starting in the first column should have following format:
.PP
.I keyword/descNL,
i.e. everything after 
.I keyword/
until new line is 
.I desc
.PP
keyword can be: 
.PP
.I shell
.IP
(desc is then any extension (no wildcards), i.e. matches all the files 
*desc . Example: .tar matches *.tar)
.PP
.I regex
.IP
(desc is a regular expression)
.PP
.I type
.IP
(file matches this if `file %f` matches regular expression desc
(the filename: part from `file %f` is removed))
.PP
.I default
.IP
(matches any file no matter what desc is)
.PP
Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the format:
.PP
.I keyword=commandNL
(with no spaces around =), where 
.I keyword
should be: 
.PP
.I Open
(if the user presses Enter or doubleclicks it), 
.I View
(F3), 
.I Edit
(F4), 
.I Drop
(user drops some files on it) or any other
user defined name (those will be listed in the extension dependent pop-up
menu). 
.I Icon
name is reserved for future use by mc.
.PP
.I command
is any one-line shell command, with the simple 
.\"LINK2"
macro substitution.
.\"Macro Substitution"
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "    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. 
.PP
.SH "    Menu File Edit"
The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be customized by
the user. When you access the user menu, the
file .mc.menu from the current directory is used if it exists,
but only if it is owned by user or root and is not world-writable.
If no such file found, ~/.mc/menu is tried in the same way, 
and otherwise mc uses the default system-wide menu
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.menu.
.PP
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.
.PP
When an option is selected all the command lines of the option are
copied to a temporary file in the temporary directory (usually
/usr/tmp) and then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
normal shell constructs in the menus. Also simple macro substitution
takes place before executing the menu code. For more information, see
.\"LINK2"
macro substitution.
.\"Macro Substitution"
.PP
Here is a sample mc.menu file:
.PP
.nf
A	Dump the currently selected file
	od -c %f

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

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
.fi
.PP
.B Default Conditions
.PP
Each menu entry may be preceded by a condition. The condition must
start from the first column with a '=' character. If the condition is
true, the menu entry will be the default entry.
.PP
.nf
Condition syntax: 	= <sub-cond>
  or:			= <sub-cond> | <sub-cond> ...
  or:			= <sub-cond> & <sub-cond> ... 

Sub-condition is one of following:

  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
.fi
.PP
Pattern is a normal shell pattern or a regular expression, according
to the shell patterns option. You can override the global value of
the shell patterns option by writing "shell_patterns=x" on the first
line of the menu file (where "x" is either 0 or 1).
.PP
.nf
Type is one or more of the following characters:

  n	not directory
  r	regular file
  d	directory
  l	link
  c	char special
  b	block special
  f	fifo
  s	socket
  x	executable
  t	tagged
.fi
.PP
For example 'rlf' means either regular file, link or fifo. The 't'
type is a little special because it acts on the panel instead of the
file. The condition '=t t' is true if there are tagged files in the
current panel and false if not.
.PP
If the condition starts with '=?' instead of '=' a debug trace will be
shown whenever the value of the condition is calculated.
.PP
The conditions are calculated from left to right. This means
.nf
	= f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
.fi
is calculated as
.nf
	( (f *.tar.gz) | (f *.tgz) ) & (t n)
.fi
.PP
Here is a sample of the use of conditions:
.PP
.nf
= f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
L	List the contents of a compressed tar-archive
	gzip -cd %f | tar xvf -
.fi
.PP
.B Addition Conditions
.PP
If the condition begins with '+' (or '+?') instead of '=' (or '=?') it
is an addition condition. If the condition is true the menu entry will
be included in the menu. If the condition is false the menu entry will
not be included in the menu.
.PP
You can combine default and addition conditions by starting condition
with '+=' or '=+' (or '+=?' or '=+?' if you want debug trace). If you
want to use two different conditions, one for adding and another for
defaulting, you can precede a menu entry with two condition lines, one
starting with '+' and another starting with '='.
.PP
Comments are started with '#'. The additional comment lines must start
with '#', space or tab.
.PP
.SH "  Options Menu"
The
.\"LINK2"
Configuration
.\"Configuration"
command pops up a dialog from which you can change most of settings of
the Midnight Commander.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Display bits
.\"Display bits"
command pops up a dialog from which you may select which characters is your
terminal able to display.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Confirmation
.\"Confirmation"
command pops up a dialog from which you specify which actions you want to
confirm.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Learn keys
.\"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.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Virtual FS
.\"Virtual FS"
command pops up a dialog from which you specify some VFS related options.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Layout
.\"Layout"
command pops up a dialog from which you specify a bunch of options how mc
looks like on the screen.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2"
Save setup
.\"Save Setup"
command saves the current settings of the Left, Right and Options
menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.
.PP
.SH "    Configuration"
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.
.PP
.B Screen Colors
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
Colors.
.\"Colors"
.PP
.B Panel Options
.PP
.I Show Backup Files.
By default the Midnight Commander doesn't show files ending in '~'
(like GNU's ls option -B).
.PP
.I Show Hidden Files.
By default the Midnight Commander will show all files that start with
a dot (like ls -a).
.PP
.I Mark moves down.
By default when you mark a file (with either C-t or the Insert key)
the selection bar will move down.
.PP
.I Show Mini-Status.
If enabled, show one line of status information at the bottom of
the panels about the currently selected item.
.PP
.I 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.
.PP
.I 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 C-r).
.PP
.B Other Options
.PP
.I 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.
.PP
.I 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:
.IP
.I Never
Means that you do not want to see the output of your command.  If you
are using the Linux or SCO console or an xterm, you will be able to see the
output of the command by typing C-o.
.IP
.I "On dumb terminals"
You will get the pause message on terminals that are not capable of
showing the output of the last command executed (any terminal that is
not an xterm or the Linux console).
.IP
.I Always
The program will pause after executing all of your commands.
.PP
.I Shell Patterns.
By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands will use shell-like
regular expressions. The following conversions are performed to achieve
this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?'
is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and '.' by the literal
dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular expressions are the
ones described in ed(1).
.PP
.I Auto Save Setup.
If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the
configurable options of the Midnight Commander are saved in the
~/.mc/ini file.
.PP
.I Auto menus.
If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup.
Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
.PP
.I 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
.B EDITOR
environment variable is used.
If no editor is specified, 
.B vi
is used.  See the section on the
.\"LINK2"
internal file editor.
.\"Internal File Editor"
.PP
.I 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
.B PAGER
environment variable is used.
If no pager is specified, the 
.B view
command is used.  See the section on the
.\"LINK2"
internal file viewer.
.\"Internal File Viewer"
.PP
.I Confirm Delete.
This option is toggled on by default, and will cause the Midnight
Commander to ask for confirmation when deleting a single file. 
.PP
.I Cd follows links.
This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander to follow the
logical chain of directories when changing current directory
either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default
behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows the
real directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory
through a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
and not to the directory where the link was present.
.PP
.SH "    Display bits"
This is used to configure the range of visible characters on the
screen.  This setting may be 7-bits if your terminal/curses supports
only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 displays all the characters in the
ISO-8859-1 map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
full 8 bit characters.
.PP
.SH "    Confirmation"
In this menu you configure the confirmation options for file deletion,
overwriting, execution by pressing enter and quitting the program.
.PP
.SH "    Learn keys"
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.
.PP
You can move around with the Tab key, with the 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.
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
When you finish with all the keys, you may want either to Save your key fixes
into your ~/.mc/ini file into the [terminal:TERM] section (where 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.
.PP
.SH "    Virtual FS"
This option gives you control over the settings of the 
.\"LINK2"
Virtual File System 
.\"Virtual File System"
information cache.  
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
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).
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "    Layout"
The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout
of screen. You can specify whether the menubar, the command prompt,
the hintbar and the function keybar are visible. On the Linux or SCO console
you can specify how many lines are shown in the output window.
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "    Save Setup"
At startup the Midnight Commander will try to load initialization
information from the ~/.mc/ini file. If this file doesn't exist,
it will load the information from the system-wide configuration file,
located in @prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ini. If the system-wide configuration
file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
.PP
The
.I Save Setup
command creates the ~/.mc/ini file by saving the current settings
of the
.\"LINK2"
Left, Right
.\"Left and Right Menus"
and
.\"LINK2"
Options
.\"Options Menu"
menus.
.PP
If you activate the
.I auto save setup
option, MC will always save the current settings when exiting.
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
Special Settings
.\"Special Settings"
for more information.
.PP
.SH ""
.SH "Executing operating system commands"
You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight
Commander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to
execute with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
Extensions File.
.\"Extension File Edit"
If a match is found then the code associated with that extension is
executed. A very simple
.\"LINK2"
macro expansion
.\"Macro Substitution"
takes place before executing the command.
.PP
.SH "  The cd internal command"
The 
.I 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:
.PP
.I Tilde substitution
The (~) will be substituted with your home directory, if you append a
username after the tilde, then it will be substituted with the login
directory of the the specified user.
.PP
For example, ~guest is the home directory for the user guest, while
~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.
.PP
.I Previous directory
You can jump to the directory you were previously by using the special
directory name '-' like this:
.B cd -
.PP
.I CDPATH directories
If the directory specified to the 
.B cd 
command is not in the current directory, then The Midnight Commander
uses the value in the environment variable 
.B CDPATH
to search for the directory in any of the named directories.
.PP
For example you could set your
.B CDPATH
variable to ~/src:/usr/src, allowing you to change your directory to
any of the directories inside the ~/src and /usr/src directories, from
any place in the file system by using it's relative name (for example
cd linux could take you to /usr/src/linux).
.PP
.SH "  Macro Substitution"
.PP
When accessing a
.\"LINK2"
user menu, 
.\"Menu File Edit"
or executing an
.\"LINK2"
extension dependent command,
.\"Extension File Edit"
or running a command from the command line input,
a simple macro substitution takes place.
.PP
The macros are:
.PP
.I "%f"
.IP
The current file name.
.PP
.I "%d"
.IP
The current directory name.
.PP
.I "%F"
.IP
The current file in the unselected panel.
.PP
.I "%D"
.IP
The directory name of the unselected panel.
.PP
.I "%t"
.IP
The currently tagged files.
.PP
.I "%T"
.IP
The tagged files in the unselected panel.
.PP
.I "%u"
and
.I "%U"
.IP
Similar to the %t and %T macros, but in addition the files are
untagged. You can use this macro only once per menu file entry or
extension file entry, because next time there will be no tagged
files.
.PP
.I "%s"
and
.I "%S"
.IP
The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise the
current file.
.PP
.I "%q"
.IP
Dropped files. In all places except in the Drop action of the
.\"LINK2"
mc.ext file,
.\"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.
.PP
.I "%cd"
.IP
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
.\"LINK2"
Virtual File System.
.\"Virtual File System"
.PP
.I "%view"
.IP
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.
.IP
The arguments are: 
.I ascii
to force the viewer into ascii mode;
.I hex
to force the viewer into hex mode;
.I nroff
to tell the viewer that it should interpret the bold and underline
sequences of nroff; 
.I unformated
to tell the viewer to not interpret nroff commands for making the text
bold or underlined.
.PP
.I "%%"
.IP
The % character
.PP
.I "%{some text}"
.IP
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.
.PP
.SH "  The subshell support"
The subshell support is a compile time option, that works with the
shells: bash, tcsh and zsh.  
.PP
When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander will
spawn a concurrent copy of your shell (the one defined in the 
.B 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.
.PP
If you are using 
.B bash
you can specify startup
commands for the subshell in your ~/.mc/bashrc file and
special keyboard maps in the ~/.mc/inputrc file.
.B tcsh 
users may specify startup commands in the ~/.mc/tcshrc file.
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
The
.\"LINK2
OPTIONS
.\"OPTIONS"
section has more information on how you can control the subshell code.
.PP
.SH "  Controlling Midnight Commander"
The Midnight Commander defines an environment variable
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
WANT_PARSE option.
.PP
The following instructions are supported.
.PP
.nf
clear_tags		Clear all tags.
tag <filename>		Tag specified file.
untag <filename>	Untag specified file.
select <filename>	Move pointer to file.
change_panel		Switch between panels.
cd <path>		Change directory.
.fi
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "Chmod"
The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of
files and directories.  It can be invoked with the C-x c key combination.
.PP
The Chmod window has two parts -
.I Permissions
and 
.I File
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the
.I arrow keys
or the
.I Tab
key.  To change the state of the check buttons or to select a button
use
.I Space.
You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate that
selection (they are the highlit letters on the buttons).  
.PP
To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
.PP
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).
.PP
Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use
the
.B [Set all]
button, which will act on all the tagged files.
.PP
.B [Marked all]
set only marked attributes to all selected files
.PP
.B [Set marked]
set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
.PP
.B [Clean marked]
clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
.PP
.B [Set]
set the attributes of one file
.PP
.B [Cancel]
cancel the Chmod command
.PP
.SH "Chown"
The Chown command is used to change the owner/group of a file. The hot
key for this command is C-x o.
.PP
.SH "File Operations"
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 verbose option is off the file and bytes bars are not
shown.
.PP
There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip
button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort
button will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are
skipped.
.PP
There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file
operations.
.PP
The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three
choices. Normally you select either the Skip button to skip the file
or the Abort button to abort the operation altogether. You can also
select the Retry button if you fixed the problem from another
terminal.
.PP
The replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates and sizes of
the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No
button to skip the file, the alL button to overwrite all the files,
the nonE button to never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite
if the source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the
whole operation by pressing the Abort button.
.PP
The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a
directory which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the
directory recursively, the No button to skip the directory, the alL
button to delete all the directories and the nonE button to skip all
the non-empty directories. You can abort the whole operation by
pressing the Abort button. If you selected the Yes or alL button you
will be asked for a confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really
sure you want to do the recursive delete.
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "Mask Copy/Rename"
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.
.PP
There are other option which you can set: 
.PP
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.
.PP
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:
.PP
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, 'cause the directory already exists. By disabling this
option you will copy it exactly into /bla/foo.
.PP
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.
.PP
.B "Use shell patterns on"
.PP
When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*' and '?'
wildcards in the source mask. They work like they do in the shell. In
the target mask only the '*' and '\\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The
first '*' wildcard in the target mask corresponds to the first
wildcard group in the source mask, the second '*' corresponds to the
second group and so on. The '\\1' wildcard corresponds to the first
wildcard group in the source mask, the '\\2' wildcard corresponds to
the second group and so on all the way up to '\\9'. The '\\0' wildcard
is the whole filename of the source file.
.PP
Two examples:
.PP
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".
.PP
Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is "*.*" and
the destination is "\\2.\\1".
.PP
.B "Use shell patterns off"
.PP
When the shell patterns option is off the MC doesn't do automatic
grouping anymore. You must use '\\(...\\)' expressions in the source
mask to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is
more flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks
are similar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.
.PP
Two examples:
.PP
If the source mask is "^\\(.*\\)\\.tar\\.gz$", the destination is
"/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the copy
will be "/bla/foo.tgz".
.PP
Let's suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
will become "c.file" and so on. The source mask for this is
"^\\(.*\\)\\.\\(.*\\)$" and the destination is "\\2.\\1".
.PP
.B "Case Conversions"
.PP
You can also change the case of the filenames. If you use '\\u' or
'\\l' in the target mask the next character will be converted to
uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.
.PP
If you use '\\U' or '\\L' in the target mask the next characters will
be converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the next
'\\E' or next '\\U', '\\L' or the end of the file name.
.PP
The '\\u' and '\\l' are stronger than '\\U' and '\\L'.
.PP
For example, if the source mask is '*' (shell patterns on) or '^\\(.*\\)$'
(shell patterns off) and the target mask is '\\L\\u*' the file names
will be converted to have initial upper case and otherwise lower case.
.PP
You can also use '\\' as a quote character. For example, '\\\\' is 
a backslash and '\\*' is an asterisk.
.PP
.SH "Internal File Viewer"
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.
.PP
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.  
.PP
When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes as well
as hexadecimal constants.
.PP
You can mix quoted text with constants like this: "String" 0xFE 0xBB
"more text".  Text between constants and quoted text is just ignored. 
.PP
Some internal details about the viewer: On systems that provide the
mmap(2) system call, the program maps the file instead of loading it;
if the system does not provide the 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).
.PP
Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the
Midnight Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
.PP
.B F1
Invoke the builtin hypertext help viewer.
.PP
.B F2
Toggle the wrap mode.
.PP
.B F4
Toggle the hex mode.
.PP
.B F5
Goto line.  This will prompt you for a line number and will display
that line.
.PP
.B F6, /. 
Regular expression search.
.PP
.B ?,
Reverse regular expression search.
.PP
.B F7
Normal search / hex mode search.
.PP
.B C-s.
Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else
find next match.
.PP
.B C-r.
Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else
find next match.
.PP
.B n.
Find next match.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B 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.
.PP
.B F10, Esc.
Exit the internal file viewer.
.PP
.B next-page, space, C-v.
Scroll one page forward.
.PP
.B prev-page, M-v, C-b, backspace.
Scroll one page backward.
.PP
.B down-key
Scroll one line forward.
.PP
.B up-key
Scroll one line backward.
.PP
.B C-l
Refresh the screen.
.PP
.B !
Spawn a shell in the currently working directory.
.PP
.B "[n] m"
Set the mark n.
.PP
.B "[n] r"
Jump to the mark n.
.PP
.B C-f
Jump to the next file.
.PP
.B C-b 
Jump to the previous file.
.PP
.B M-r 
Toggle the ruler.
.PP
It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
at the 
.\"LINK2"
Extension File Edit section
.\"Extension File Edit"
.SH "Internal File Editor"
The internal file editor provides most of the features of
common full screen editors. It is invoked using 
.B F4
provided
the 
.I use_internal_edit
option is set in the initialization file. It has an
extensible file size limit of sixteen megabytes and edits binary files
flawlessly. 
.PP
The features it presently supports are: Block
copy, move, delete, cut, paste; 
.I "key for key undo"; 
pull-down
menus; file insertion; macro definition; regular expression
search and replace (and our own scanf-printf search and
replace); shift-arrow MSW-MAC text highlighting (for the
linux console only); insert-overwrite toggle; and an option
to pipe text blocks through shell commands like indent.
.PP
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. 
.B Ctrl-Ins
copies to the file
.B cooledit.clip and 
.B Shift-Ins
pastes from cooledit.clip.
.B Shift-Del 
cuts to 
.B cooledit.clip, 
and 
.B Ctrl-Del
deletes highlighted text. The completion key also does a Return
with 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.
.PP
To define a macro, press 
.B Ctrl-R
 and then type out the key
strokes you want to be executed. Press 
.B 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
.B Ctrl-A and then the assigned key. The macro is also executed if
you press Meta, Ctrl, or Esc and the assigned key, provided that the
key is not used for any other function. Once defined, the macro
commands go into the file 
.B cedit/cooledit.macros
 in your home directory. You can delete a macro by deleting the
appropriate line in this file.
.PP
.B F19 will format C code when it is highlighted. For this
to work, make an executable file called 
.B cedit/edit.indent.rc
in your home directory containing the following:
.PP
.nf
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/indent -kr -pcs ~/cedit/cooledit.block >& /dev/null
cat /dev/null > ~/cedit/cooledit.error
.fi
.PP
You can use scanf search and replace to search and replace
a C format string. First take a look at the 
.B sscanf
and 
.B sprintf man pages to see what a format string
is and how it works. An example is as follows: Suppose you want
to replace all occurences of say, an open bracket, three
comma seperated numbers, and a close bracket, with the
word 
.I apples, 
the third number, the word 
.I oranges
and then the second number, I would fill in the Replace dialog
box as follows:
.PP
.nf
 Enter search string
(%d,%d,%d)
 Enter replace string
apples %d oranges %d
 Enter replacement argument order
3,2
.fi
.PP
The last line specifies that the third and then the second
number are to be used in place of the first and second.
.PP
It is advisable to use this feature with Prompt on replace on, because
a match is thought to be found whenever the number of arguments found
matches the number given, which is not always a real match. Scanf also
treats whitespace as being elastic.  Note that the scanf format % is
very useful for scanning strings, and whitespace.
.PP
The editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When editing
binary files, you should set 
.B display bits
to 7 bits in the options menu to keep the spacing clean.
.PP
See also the file 
.B README.edit
in the source tree for some more info.
.PP
.SH Completion
.PP
Let the Midnight Commander type for you.
.PP
Attempt to perform completion on the text before current position. MC
attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the text begins with
.B $
), username (if the text begins with 
.B ~
), hostname (if the text
begins with 
.B @
) 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.
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
show_all_if_ambiguous
.\"Special Settings"
variable 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
.B 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
.B 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 
.B Esc,
.B F10
and left and right arrow keys. If
.\"LINK2"
show_all_if_ambiguous
.\"Special Settings"
is set to zero, the dialog pops up only if you press
.B M-Tab
for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.
.PP
.SH "Virtual File System"
The Midnight Commander is provided with a code layer to access the
file system; this code layer is known as the virtual file system
switch.  The virtual file system switch allows the Midnight Commander
to manipulate files not located on the Unix file system.
.PP
Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged with five Virtual File
Systems (VFS): the local file system, used for accessing the regular
Unix file system; the ftpfs, used to manipulate files on remote
systems with the FTP protocol; the tarfs, used to manipulate tar and
compressed tar files; the undelfs, used to recover deleted files on
ext2 file systems (the default file system for Linux systems) and
finally the mcfs (Midnight Commander file system), a network based
file system.
.PP
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.
.PP
.SH "  FTP File System"
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:
.PP
.I ftp://[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
.PP
The,
.I user, port
and
.I remote-dir
elements are optional.  If you specify the
.I 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
optional 
.I 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).
.PP
Examples:
.PP
.nf
    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
.fi
.PP
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
.\"LINK2"
Virtual File System
.\"Virtual FS"
dialog box.  
.PP
Another option is to set the 
.I 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 @prefix@/lib/mc.no_proxy file for
lines containing host names that are local (if the host name starts
with a dot, it is assumed to be a domain) and to assume that any
hostnames without dots in their names are directly accessible.
.PP
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 ftpfs_use_passive_connections option.
.PP
The Midnight Commander keeps the directory listing in a cache.  The cache
expire time is configurable in the
.\"LINK2"
Virtual File System 
.\"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).
.PP
.SH "  Tar File System"
The tar file system provides you with read-only access to your tar
files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command.  To change
your directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
tar file by using the following syntax:
.PP
.I tar:filename.tar[dir-inside-tar]
.PP
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 
.\"LINK2"
Extension File Edit 
.\"Extension File Edit"
section for details on how this is done.
.PP
Examples:
.PP
.nf
    tar:mc-3.0.tar.gz/mc-3.0/vfs
    tar:/ftp/GCC/gcc-2.7.0.tar
.fi
.PP
The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.
.PP
.SH "  Network File System"
The Midnight Commander file system is a network base file system that
allows you to manipulate the files in a remote machine as if they
were local.  To use this, the remote machine must be running the
mcserv(8) server program.
.PP
To connect to a remote machine, you just need to chdir into a special
directory which name is in the following format:
.PP
.I mc:[user@]machine[:port][remote-dir]
.PP
The,
.I user, port
and
.I remote-dir
elements are optional.  If you specify the 
.I user
element then the Midnight Commander will try to logon on the remote
machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.
.PP
The 
.I 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
.I remote-dir
element is present, your current directory on the remote machine will
be set to this one.
.PP
Examples:
.PP
.nf
    mc:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
    mc:joe@foo.edu:11321/private
.fi
.PP
.SH "  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.
.PP
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.
.PP
For example, to recover deleted files on the second partition of the
first scsi disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:
.PP
.nf
    undel:/dev/sda2
.fi
.PP
It may take a while for the undelfs to load the required information
before you start browsing files there. 
.PP
.SH Colors
The Midnight Commander will try to detect if your terminal supports
color using the terminal database and your terminal name.  Sometimes
it gets confused, so you may force color mode or disable color mode
using the -c and -b flag respectively.  
.PP
If the program is compiled with the Slang screen manager instead of
ncurses, it will also check the variable 
.B COLORTERM,
if it is set, it has the same effect as the -c flag.
.PP
You may specify terminals that always force color mode
by adding the 
.I 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:
.nf
[Colors]
color_terminals=linux,xterm
.fi
.nf
<tscreen><verb>
color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...
.fi
.PP
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.
.PP
The Midnight Commander provides a way to change the default colors.
Currently the colors are configured using the environment variable
.B MC_COLOR_TABLE 
or the Colors section in the initialization file.
.PP
In the Colors section, the default color map is loaded from the 
.I 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:
.PP
.nf
[Colors]
base_color=
xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red
.fi
.PP
The format for the color definition is:
.PP
.nf
  <keyword>=<foregroundcolor>,<backgroundcolor>:<keyword>= ...
.fi
.PP
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.
.PP
The dialog boxes use the following colors:
.I dnormal 
is used for the normal text,
.I dfocus
is the color used for the currently selected component,
.I dhotnormal
is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in normal
components, whereas the
.I dhotfocus
color is used for the highlighted color in the currently selected
component.
.PP
Menus use the same scheme but uses the menu, menusel, menuhot and
menuhotsel tags instead.
.PP
Help uses the following colors:
.I helpnormal
is used for normal text,
.I helpitalic
is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual page,
.I helpbold
is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the manual page,
.I helplink
is used for not selected hyperlinks and
.I helpslink
is used for selected hyperlink.
.PP
.I 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.
.PP
For file type highlighting mode 
.I directory
specifies the color in which directories are shown; 
.I executable
for executable files;
.I link 
is used to represent links; 
.I device 
for character and block devices;
.I special
is for special files, such as FIFO and IPC sockets;
.I core
is for core files (see also the option 
.B highlight_mode
at the section on
.\"LINK2"
Special Settings).
.\"Special Settings"

.PP
The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green,
brightgreen, brown, yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta,
cyan, brightcyan, lightgray and white.
.PP
.SH "Special Settings"
Most of the settings of the Midnight Commander can be changed from the
menus. However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
changed by editing the setup file.
.PP
These variables may be set in your ~/.mc/ini file:
.PP
.I clear_before_exec.
.IP
By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before executing a
command. If you would prefer to see the output of the command at the
bottom of the screen, edit your ~/mc.ini file and change the value of
the field clear_before_exec to 0.
.PP
.I confirm_view_dir.
.IP
If you press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that directory. If
this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask for confirmation before
changing the directory if you have files tagged.
.PP
.I drop_menus.
.IP
If this variable is set, when you press the 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.
.PP
.I ftpfs_retry_seconds.
.IP
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.
.PP
.I ftpfs_use_passive_connections.
.IP
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.
.PP
.I max_dirt_limit.
.IP
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.
.IP
It seems that setting max_dirt_limit to 10 causes the best behavior,
and that is the default value.
.PP
.I mouse_move_pages.
.IP
Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by
line on the panels.
.PP
.I mouse_move_pages_viewer.
.IP
Controls if scrolling with the mouse is done by pages or line by line
on the internal file viewer.
.PP
.I navigate_with_arrows.
.IP
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.
.PP
.I nice_rotating_dash
.IP
When on, this flag causes the commander to show a rotating dash as a
work in progress indicator.
.PP
.I old_esc_mode
.IP
By default the Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key prefix
(old_esc_mode=0), if you set this option (old_esc_mode=1), then the
ESC key will act as a prefix key for one second, and if no extra keys
have arrived, then the ESC key is interpreted as a cancel key (ESC
ESC).
.PP
.PP
.I only_leading_plus_minus
.IP
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.
.I panel_scroll_pages
.IP
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.
.PP
.I preserve_uidgid
.IP
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.
.PP
.I show_output_starts_shell
.IP
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.
.PP
.I show_all_if_ambiguous.
.IP
By default the Midnight Commander pops up all possible
.\"LINK2"
completions
.\"Completion"
if the completion is ambiguous if you press
.B 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
.B M-Tab
pressing, set this option to 1.
.PP
.I torben_fj_mode
.IP
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:
.IP
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.
.IP
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.
.PP
.I highlight_mode 
By default all information on panels displayed with 
the same color. If this variable is set to 1, then 
.I perm
or 
.I 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 (
.I selected
) color. In addition, if the variable 
is equal to 2, then all lines are displaying by the color according to 
their type (see 
.\"LINK2"
Colors).
.\"Colors"
Permissions highlighting also works in this mode.
.PP
.I use_file_to_guess_type
.IP
If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file command to
match the file types listed on the
.\"LINK2"
mc.ext file.
.\"Extension File Edit"
.PP
.I xterm_mode
.IP
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.
.PP
.SH Terminal databases
The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal
database without requiring root privileges.  The Midnight Commander
searches in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
the Midnight Commander library directory) or in the ~/.mc/ini file
for the section "terminal:your-terminal-name" and then for the section
"terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol
that you want to define, followed by an equal sign and the definition
for the key.  You can use the special \\E form to represent the escape
character and the ^x to represent the control-x character.
.PP
The possible key symbols are:
.PP
.nf
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
.fi
.PP
For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
set this in the ini file:
.PP
.nf
insert=\\E[Op
.fi
.PP
The 
.I complete
key symbol represents the escape sequences used to invoke the
completion process, this is invoked with M-tab, but you can define
other keys to do the same work (on those keyboard with tons of nice
and unused keys everywhere).
.PP
.SH ""
.SH FILES
@prefix@/lib/mc.hlp
.IP
The help file for the program.
.PP
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ext
.IP
The default system-wide extensions file.
.PP
~/.mc/ext
.IP
User's own extension, view configuration and edit configuration
file.  They override the contents of the system wide files if present.
.PP
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.ini
.IP
The default system-wide setup for the Midnight Commander, used only if
the user lacks his own ~/.mc/ini file.
.PP
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.lib
.IP
Global settings for the Midnight Commander.  Settings in this file are
global to any Midnight Commander, it is useful to define site-global
.\"LINK2
terminal settings.
.\"Terminal databases"
.PP
~/.mc/ini
.IP
User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded
from here instead of the system-wide startup file.
.PP
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.hint
.IP
This file contains the hints (cookies) displayed by the program.
.PP
@prefix@/lib/mc/mc.menu
.IP
This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.
.PP
~/.mc/menu
.IP
User's own application menu. If this file is present it is used
instead of the system-wide applications menu.
.PP
~/.mc/tree
.IP
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 "find / -type d -print | sort >
~/.mc.tree". Normally there is no sense in doing it because the
Midnight Commander automatically updates this file for you.
.PP
\&./.mc.menu
.IP
Local user-defined menu. If this file
is present it is used instead of the home or system-wide
applications menu.
.PP
.\"SKIP_SECTION"
.SH LICENSE
This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built-in
help for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
.SH AVAILABILITY
The latest version of this program can be found at ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx
in the directory /linux/local and from Europe at sunsite.mff.cuni.cz in the
directory /GNU/mc and at ftp.teuto.de in the directory /lmb/mc. 
.SH SEE ALSO
ed(1), gpm(1), mcserv(8), terminfo(1), view(1), sh(1), bash(1),
tcsh(1), zsh(1).
.PP
.nf
The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
	http://mc.blackdown.org/mc
.fi
.PP
.SH AUTHORS
Miguel de Icaza (miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx), Janne Kukonlehto
(jtklehto@paju.oulu.fi), Radek Doulik (rodo@earn.cvut.cz), Fred
Leeflang (fredl@nebula.ow.org), Dugan Porter (dugan@b011.eunet.es),
Jakub Jelinek (jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz), Ching Hui
(mr854307@cs.nthu.edu.tw), Andrej Borsenkow (borsenkow.msk@sni.de),
Norbert Warmuth (k3190@fh-sw.de), 
Mauricio Plaza (mok@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx) and Paul Sheer
(psheer@icon.co.za) are the developers of this package;
Alessandro Rubini (rubini@ipvvis.unipv.it) has been especially helpful
debugging and enhancing the program's mouse support, John Davis
(davis@space.mit.edu) also 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):
.PP
Adam Tla/lka (atlka@sunrise.pg.gda.pl),
alex@bcs.zp.ua (Alex I. Tkachenko), Antonio Palama,
DOS port (palama@posso.dm.unipi.it), Erwin van Eijk
(wabbit@corner.iaf.nl), Gerd Knorr (kraxel@cs.tu-berlin.de),
Jean-Daniel Luiset (luiset@cih.hcuge.ch), Jon Stevens
(root@dolphin.csudh.edu), Juan Francisco Grigera, Win32 port
(j-grigera@usa.net), Juan Jose Ciarlante (jjciarla@raiz.uncu.edu.ar),
Ilya Rybkin (rybkin@rouge.phys.lsu.edu), Marcelo Roccasalva
(mfroccas@raiz.uncu.edu.ar), Massimo Fontanelli (MC8737@mclink.it),
Pavel Roskin (pavel@absolute.spb.su),
Sergey Ya. Korshunoff (root@seyko.msk.su), Thomas Pundt
(pundtt@math.uni-muenster.de), Timur Bakeyev
(timur@goff.comtat.kazan.su), Tomasz Cholewo
(tjchol01@mecca.spd.louisville.edu), Torben Fjerdingstad
(torben.fjerdingstad@uni-c.dk), Vadim Sinolitis (vvs@nsrd.npi.msu.su)
and Wim Osterholt (wim@djo.wtm.tudelft.nl).
.PP
.SH BUGS
See the file TODO in the distribution for information on what
remains to be done.
.PP
If you want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
this address: mc-bugs@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx.
.PP
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.