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mc(1)									 mc(1)

NAME
       mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems.

USAGE
       mc [-abcCdfhPstuUVx?] [-l log] [dir1 [dir2]] [-v file]

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

OPTIONS
       -a     Disables the usage of graphic characters for line drawing.

       -b     Forces black and white display.

       -c     Force color mode, please	check  the  section  Colors  for  more
	      information.

       -C arg Used  to specify a different color set in the command line.  The
	      format of arg is documented in the Colors section.

       -d     Disables mouse support.

       -f     Displays the compiled-in search  paths  for  Midnight  Commander
	      files.

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

       -l file
	      Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.

       -P     At program end, the Midnight Commander will print the last work‐
	      ing directory.  This  function  should  not  be  used  directly,
	      instead,	it  should  be used from a special shell function that
	      will automatically change the current directory of the shell  to
	      the last directory the Midnight Commander was in (thanks to Tor‐
	      ben Fjerdingstad and Sergey for contributing this	 function  and
	      the   code   implementing	  this	 option).   Source  the	 files
	      /usr/local/lib/mc/bin/mc.sh (bash and  zsh  users)  respectively
	      /usr/local/lib/mc/bin/mc.csh  (tcsh users) in order to have this
	      function defined.

       -s     Turns on the slow terminal mode, in this mode the	 program  will
	      not  draw expensive line drawing characters and will toggle ver‐
	      bose mode off.

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

       -u     Disables	the use of a concurrent shell (only makes sense if the
	      Midnight Commander has been built	 with  concurrent  shell  sup‐
	      port).

       -U     Enables  the  use	 of  the  concurrent shell support (only makes
	      sense if the Midnight Commander was built with the subshell sup‐
	      port set as an optional feature).

       -v file
	      Enters the internal viewer to view the file specified.

       -V     Displays the version of the program.

       -x     Forces xterm mode.  Used when running on xterm-capable terminals
	      (two screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).

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

Overview
       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 menu bar line.  The menu bar line may not be	 visible,  but
       appears	if  you	 click the topmost line with the mouse or press the F9
       key.

       The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at  the  same
       time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in the
       current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current	panel.
       Some  file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the directory
       of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they always  ask
       you  for confirmation first). For more information, see the sections on
       the Directory Panels, the Left and Right Menus and the File Menu.

       You can execute system commands from 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  com‐
       mand  line  you	typed; read the Shell Command Line and Input Line Keys
       sections to learn more about the command line.

Mouse Support
       The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support.	 It is activated when‐
       ever you are running on an 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 gpm mouse server run‐
       ning.

       When you left click on a file in the directory  panels,	that  file  is
       selected;  if  you  click with the right button, the file is marked (or
       unmarked, depending on the previous state).

       Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it	is  an
       executable  program;  and if the extension file has a program specified
       for the file's extension, the specified program is executed.

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

       If  a  mouse  button  is clicked on the top frame line of the directory
       panel, it is scrolled one pageful backward. Correspondingly, a click on
       the  bottom frame line will cause a scroll of one pageful forward. This
       frame line method works also in the Help Viewer and the Directory Tree.

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

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

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

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

       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 char‐
       acter <chr>.

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

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

       The File Menu section documents the keyboard shortcuts for the commands
       appearing  in  the  File menu. This section includes the function keys.
       Most of these commands perform some action,  usually  on	 the  selected
       file or the tagged files.

       The  Directory Panels section documents the keys which select a file or
       tag files as a target for a later action (the  action  is  usually  one
       from the file menu).

       The  Shell Command Line section list the keys which are used for enter‐
       ing and editing command lines. Most of these copy file names  and  such
       from  the directory panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typ‐
       ing) or access the command line history.

       Input Line Keys are used for editing input lines. This means  both  the
       command line and the input lines in the query dialogs.

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

       Enter.	If there is some text in the command line (the one at the bot‐
       tom of the panels), then that command is executed. If there is no  text
       in  the	command line then if the selection bar is over a directory the
       Midnight Commander does	a  chdir(2)  to	 the  selected	directory  and
       reloads the information on the panel; if the selection is an executable
       file then it is executed. Finally, if the  extension  of	 the  selected
       file name matches one of the extensions in the extensions file then the
       corresponding command is executed.

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

       C-x c.  Run the Chmod command on a file or on the tagged files.

       C-x o.  Run the Chown command on the current  file  or  on  the	tagged
       files.

       C-x l.  Run the link command.

       C-x s.  Run the symbolic link command.

       C-x i.  Set the other panel display mode to information.

       C-x q.  Set the other panel display mode to quick view.

       C-x !.  Execute the External panelize command.

       C-x h Run the add directory to hotlist command.

       M-!, Executes the Filtered view command, described in the view command.

       M-?, Executes the Find file command.

       M-c, Pops up the quick cd dialog.

       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 pro‐
       gram (cons.saver) to handle saving and restoring of information on  the
       screen.

       When  the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any time
       and you will be taken back to the Midnight Commander  main  screen,  to
       return  to  your application just type C-o.  If you have an application
       suspended by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other  pro‐
       grams  from  the	 Midnight  Commander until you terminate the suspended
       application.

  Directory Panels
       This section lists the keys which operate on the directory  panels.  If
       you want to know how to change the appearance of the panels take a look
       at the section on Left and Right Menus.

       Tab, C-i.  Change the current panel. The old other  panel  becomes  the
       new  current  panel  and	 the  old  current panel becomes the new other
       panel. The selection bar moves from the old current panel  to  the  new
       current panel.

       Insert,	C-t.   To tag files you may use the Insert key (the kich1 ter‐
       minfo sequence) or the C-t (Control-t) sequence. To untag  files,  just
       retag a tagged file.

       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.

       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 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  let‐
       ters. The backspace or DEL keys can be used to correct typing mistakes.
       If C-s is pressed again, the next match is searched for.

       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.

       C-\ (control-backslash).	 Show the directory hotlist and change to  the
       selected directory.

       +  (plus).  This is used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight
       Commander will prompt for a regular expression  describing  the	group.
       When  Shell  Patterns  are enabled, the regular expression is much like
       the regular expressions in the shell (* standing for zero or more char‐
       acters  and  ?	standing for one character). If Shell Patterns is off,
       then the tagging of files is done with normal regular expressions  (see
       ed (1)).

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

       \ (backslash).  Use the "\" key to unselect a group of files.  This  is
       the opposite of the Plus key.

       up-key,	C-p.   Move  the  selection  bar  to the previous entry in the
       panel.

       down-key, C-n.  Move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.

       home, a1, M-<.  Move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.

       end, c1, M->.  Move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.

       next-page, C-v.	Move the selection bar one page down.

       prev-page, M-v.	Move the selection bar one page up.

       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.

       C-PageUp, C-PageDown Only when ran on the Linux console: does  a	 chdir
       to ".." and to the currently selected directory respectively.

       M-y  Moves  to  the  previous  directory	 in the history, equivalent to
       depressing the '<' with the mouse.

       M-u Moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to  depress‐
       ing the '>' with the mouse.  Displays the directory history, equivalent
       to depressing the 'v' with the mouse.

  Shell Command Line
       This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when
       entering shell commands.

       M-Enter.	 Copy the currently selected file name to the command line.

       C-Enter.	 Same a M-Enter, this one only works on the Linux console.

       M-Tab.	Does  the  filename,  command, variable, username and hostname
       completion for you.

       C-x t, C-x C-t.	Copy the tagged files  (or  if	there  are  no	tagged
       files,  the selected file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of the other
       panel (C-x C-t) to the command line.

       C-x p, C-x C-p.	The first key sequence copies the current path name to
       the command line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path
       name to the command line.

       C-q.  The quote command can be used to insert characters that are  oth‐
       erwise interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)

       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.

       M-h.  Displays the history for the current input line.

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

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

       Up, C-p.	 Moves one line backward.

       Down, C-n.  Moves one line forward.

       Prev Page, Page Up, M-v.	 Moves one pageful backward.

       Next Page, Page Down, C-v.  Moves one pageful forward.

       Home, A1.  Moves to the beginning.

       End, C1.	 Move to the end.

       The  help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in addi‐
       tion the to ones mentioned above:

       b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete.	Moves one pageful backward.

       Space bar.  Moves one pageful forward.

       u, d.  Moves one half of a page backward or forward.

       g, G.  Moves to the beginning or to the end.

  Input Line Keys
       The input lines (they are used for the command line and for  the	 query
       dialogs in the program) accept these keys:

       C-a puts the cursor at the beginning of line.

       C-e puts the cursor at the end of the line.

       C-b, move-left move the cursor one position left.

       C-f, move-right move the cursor one position right.

       M-f moves one word forward.

       M-b moves one word backward.

       C-h, backspace delete the previous character.

       C-d, Delete delete the character in the point (over the cursor).

       C-@ sets the mark for cutting.

       C-w  copies  the	 text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer
       and removes the text from the input line.

       M-w copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a kill buffer.

       C-y yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.

       C-k kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.

       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.

       M-C-h, M-Backspace delete one word backward.

       M-Tab  does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
       pletion for you.

Menu Bar
       The menu bar pops up when you press F9 or click the mouse  on  the  top
       row  of	the screen. The menu bar has five menus: "Left", "File", "Com‐
       mand", "Options" and "Right".

       The Left and Right Menus allow you to modify the appearance of the left
       and right directory panels.

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

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

       The  Options  Menu  lists  the actions which allow you to customize the
       Midnight Commander.

  Left and Right Menus
       The outlook of the directory panels can be changed from	the  Left  and
       Right menus.

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

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

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

       The user display format must start with a panel size  specifier.	  This
       may  be	"half"	or  "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
       full screen panel respectively.

       After the panel size, you may specify  the  two	columns	 mode  on  the
       panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format string.

       After  this you add the name of the fields with an optional size speci‐
       fier.  This are the available fields you may display:

       name, displays the file name.

       size, displays the file size.

       bsize, is an alternative form of the size format. It displays the  size
       of the files and for directories it just shows SUB-DIR or UP--DIR.

       type,  displays a one character field type.  This character is a super‐
       set of what is displayed by ls with the -F flag.	 An asterisk for  exe‐
       cutable	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).

       mtime, file's last modification time.

       atime, file's last access time.

       ctime, file's creation time.

       perm, a string representing the current permission bits of the file.

       mode, an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.

       nlink, the number of links to the file.

       ngid, the GID (numeric).

       nuid, the UID (numeric).

       owner, the owner of the file.

       group, the group of the file.

       inode, the inode of the file.

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

       space, a space in the display format.

       mark, An asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.

       |, This character is used to add a vertical line to the display format.

       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.

       For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:

       half type,name,|,size,|,mtime

       And the Long display corresponds to this format:

       full	    perm,space,nlink,space,owner,space,group,space,size,space,
       mtime,space,name

       This is a nice user display format:

       half name,|,size:7,|,type,mode:3

       Panels may also be set to the following modes:

       Info   The info view  display  information  related  to	the  currently
	      selected file and if possible information about the current file
	      system.

       Tree   The tree view is quite similar to the  directory	tree  feature.
	      See the section about it for more information.

       Quick View
	      In  this	mode,  the  panel will switch to a reduced viewer that
	      displays the contents of the currently  selected	file,  if  you
	      select  the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have
	      access to the usual viewer commands.

    Sort Order...
       The eight sort orders are by name, by extension, by modification	 time,
       by access time, and by inode information modification time, by size, by
       inode and unsorted.  In the Sort order dialog box you  can  choose  the
       sort  order  and	 you  may  also specify if you want to sort in reverse
       order by checking the reverse box.

       By default directories are sorted before files but this can be  changed
       from the Options menu (option Mix all files ).

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

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

  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	 func‐
       tion  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  (corre‐
       sponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).

       The  File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in paren‐
       theses):

       Help (F1)

       Invokes the built-in hypertext help viewer. Inside the help viewer, you
       can use the Tab key to select the next link and the Enter key to follow
       that link. The keys Space and Backspace are used to  move  forward  and
       backward	 in  a	help  page.  Press  F1	again  to get the full list of
       accepted keys.

       Menu (F2)

       Invoke the user menu.  The user menu provides an easy  way  to  provide
       users with a menu and add extra features to the Midnight Commander.

       View (F3, Shift-F3)

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

       Filtered View (M-!)

       this command prompts for a command and  it's  arguments	(the  argument
       defaults	 to  the  currently  selected file name), the output from such
       command is shown in the internal file viewer.

       Edit (F4)

       Currently it invokes the vi editor, or the editor specified in the EDI‐
       TOR environment variable, or the Internal File Editor if the use_inter‐
       nal_edit option is on.

       Copy (F5)

       Pop up an input dialog with destination that defaults to the  directory
       in  the	non-selected  panel and copies the currently selected file (or
       the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to  the	direc‐
       tory  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  destina‐
       tion see Mask copy/rename.

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

       Link (C-x l)

       Create a hard link to the current file.

       SymLink (C-x s)

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

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

       A symbolic link is a reference to the name of the original file. If the
       original file is deleted the symbolic link is useless. It is quite easy
       to notice that the files represent the same image. The Midnight Comman‐
       der  shows  an  "@"-sign	 in front of the file name if it is a symbolic
       link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows  a  tilde	 (~)).
       The original file which the link points to is shown on mini-status line
       if the Show mini-status option is enabled. Use symbolic links when  you
       want to avoid the confusion that can be caused by hard links.

       Rename/Move (F6)

       Pop  up	an  input  dialog  that	 defaults to the directory in the non-
       selected panel and moves the currently selected	file  (or  the	tagged
       files  if there is at least one tagged file) to the directory specified
       by the user in the input dialog. During the process, you can press  C-c
       or  ESC to abort the operation. For more details look at Copy operation
       above, most of the things are quite similar.

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

       Mkdir (F7)

       Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.

       Delete (F8)

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

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

       Select group (+)

       This  is	 used to select (tag) a group of files. The Midnight Commander
       will prompt for a regular expression describing the group.  When	 Shell
       Patterns	 are enabled, the regular expression is much like the filename
       globbing in the shell (* standing for zero or  more  characters	and  ?
       standing for one character). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging
       of files is done with normal regular expressions (see ed (1)).

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

       Unselect group (\)

       Used  for  unselecting  a  group	 of files. This is the opposite of the
       Select group command.

       Quit (F10, Shift-F10)

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

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

  Command Menu
       The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.

       The  Find  file	command	 allows you to search for a specific file. The
       "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.

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

       The  Compare  directories (C-x d) command compares the directory panels
       with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5)	command	 to  make  the
       panels  identical.  There  are  three compare methods. The quick method
       compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a full
       byte-by-byte  compare.  The  thorough  method  is  not available if the
       machine does not support the mmap(2) system call.  The  size-only  com‐
       pare  method  just  compares the file sizes and does not check the con‐
       tents or the date times, it just checks the file size.

       The Command history  command  shows  a  list  of	 typed	commands.  The
       selected command is copied to the command line. The command history can
       also be accessed by typing M-p or M-n.

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

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

       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  Menu  file  edit
       command	may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by press‐
       ing F2).

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

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

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

       You can use the following keys:

       General movement keys are accepted.

       Enter.	In the directory tree, exits the directory tree and changes to
       this directory in the current panel. In the tree view, changes to  this
       directory in the other panel and stays in tree view mode in the current
       panel.

       C-r, F2 (Rescan).  Rescan this directory. Use this when the tree figure
       is  out of date: it is missing subdirectories or shows some subdirecto‐
       ries which don't exist any more.

       F3 (Forget).  Delete this directory from the tree figure. Use  this  to
       remove  clutter	from the figure. If you want the directory back to the
       tree figure press F2 in its parent directory.

       F4  (Static/Dynamic).   Toggle  between	the  dynamic  navigation  mode
       (default) and the static navigation mode.

       In  the	static	navigation  mode  you  can use the Up and Down keys to
       select a directory. All known directories are shown.

       In the dynamic navigation mode you can use the  Up  and	Down  keys  to
       select  a  sibling directory, the Left key to move to the parent direc‐
       tory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the  parent,
       sibling	and  children  directories are shown, others are left out. The
       tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.

       F5 (Copy).  Copy the directory.

       F6 (RenMov).  Move the directory.

       F7 (Mkdir).  Make a new directory below this directory.

       F8 (Delete).  Delete this directory from the file system.

       C-s, M-s.  Search the next directory matching  the  search  string.  If
       there is no such directory these keys will move one line down.

       C-h, Backspace.	Delete the last character of the search string.

       Any  other  character.  Add the character to the search string and move
       to the next directory which starts with these characters. In  the  tree
       view  you  must	first  activate	 the  search mode by pressing C-s. The
       search string is shown in the mini status line.

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

       F1 (Help).  Invoke the help viewer and show this section.

       Esc, F10.  Exit the directory tree. Do not change the directory.

       The mouse is supported. A double-click behaves like Enter. See also the
       section on mouse support.

    Find File
       The Find File feature first asks for the start directory for the search
       and  the	 filename  to be searched for. By pressing the Tree button you
       can select the start directory from the directory tree figure.

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

       You  can start the search by pressing the Ok button.  During the search
       you can stop from the Stop button and continue from the Start button.

       You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The	 Chdir
       button will change to the directory of the currently selected file. The
       Again button will ask for the parameters for a  new  search.  The  Quit
       button  quits  the search operation. The Panelize button will place the
       found files to the current directory panel so that  you	can  do	 addi‐
       tional  operations  on them (view, copy, move, delete and so on). After
       panelizing you can press C-r to return to the normal file listing.

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

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

       Directory components should be separated with a colon, here is an exam‐
       ple:

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

       You  may	 consider  using the External panelize command for some opera‐
       tions. Find file command is for simple queries only, while using Exter‐
       nal panelize you can do as mysterious searches as you would like.

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

       For example, if you want to manipulate in one of	 the  panels  all  the
       symbolic links in the current directory, you can use external paneliza‐
       tion to run the following command:

       find . -type l -print
       Upon command completion, the directory contents of the  panel  will  no
       longer  be  the directory listing of the current directory, but all the
       files that are symbolic links.

       If you want to panelize all of the files that have been downloaded from
       your  ftp server, you can use this awk command to extract the file name
       from the transfer log files:

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

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

    Hotlist
       The Directory hotlist command shows the labels of  the  directories  in
       the directory hotlist. The Midnight Commander will change to the direc‐
       tory 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.

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

    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):

       All lines starting with # or empty lines are thrown away.

       Lines starting in the first column should have following format:

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

       keyword can be:

       shell

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

       regex

	      (desc is a regular expression)

       type

	      (file  matches this if `file %f` matches regular expression desc
	      (the filename: part from `file %f` is removed))

       default

	      (matches any file no matter what desc is)

       Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the  for‐
       mat:

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

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

       command is any one-line shell command, with the simple macro  substitu‐
       tion.

       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.

    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 back‐
       ground).	 You can stop, restart and kill a background job from here.

    Menu File Edit
       The user menu is a menu of useful actions that can be 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
       /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.menu.

       The  format of the menu file is very simple. Lines that start with any‐
       thing 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 let‐
       ter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are	 the  commands
       that will be executed when the entry is selected.

       When  an	 option	 is  selected  all the command lines of the option are
       copied  to  a  temporary	 file  in  the	temporary  directory  (usually
       /usr/tmp)  and  then that file is executed. This allows the user to put
       normal shell constructs in the menus. Also  simple  macro  substitution
       takes  place  before executing the menu code. For more information, see
       macro substitution.

       Here is a sample mc.menu file:

       A    Dump the currently selected file
	    od -c %f

       B    Edit a bug report and send it to root
	    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

       Default Conditions

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

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

       Sub-condition is one of following:

	 y <pattern>	   syntax of current file matching pattern?
			       for edit menu only.
	 f <pattern>	   current file matching pattern?
	 F <pattern>	   other file matching pattern?
	 d <pattern>	   current directory matching pattern?
	 D <pattern>	   other directory matching pattern?
	 t <type>	   current file of type?
	 T <type>	   other file of type?
	 x <filename>	   is it executable filename?
	 ! <sub-cond>	   negate the result of sub-condition

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

       Type is one or more of the following characters:

	 n  not directory
	 r  regular file
	 d  directory
	 l  link
	 c  char special
	 b  block special
	 f  fifo
	 s  socket
	 x  executable
	 t  tagged

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

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

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

       Here is a sample of the use of conditions:

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

       Addition Conditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       The Learn keys command pops up a dialog from which you test  some  keys
       which are not working on some terminals and you may fix them.

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

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

       The  Save  setup	 command saves the current settings of the Left, Right
       and Options menus. A small number of other settings is saved, too.

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

       Panel Options

       Show  Backup  Files.   By  default  the Midnight Commander doesn't show
       files ending in '~' (like GNU's ls option -B).

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

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

       Drop down menus.	 When this option is enabled, when you	press  the  F9
       key, the pull down menus will be activated, else, you will only be pre‐
       sented 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.

       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.

       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).

       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 possi‐
       ble settings for this variable:

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

	      On  dumb	terminals  You will get the pause message on terminals
	      that are not capable of showing the output of the	 last  command
	      executed	(any  terminal	that is not an xterm or the Linux con‐
	      sole).

	      Always The program will pause after executing all of  your  com‐
	      mands.

       Other Options

       Verbose	operation.   This  toggles  whether  the file Copy, Rename and
       Delete operations are verbose (i.e., display  a	dialog	box  for  each
       operation).  If	you  have a slow terminal, you may wish to disable the
       verbose operation. It is automatically turned off if the speed of  your
       terminal is less than 9600 bps.

       Compute totals.	If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander com‐
       putes total byte sizes and total number of files	 prior	to  any	 Copy,
       Rename  and  Delete operations. This will provide you with a more accu‐
       rate progress bar at the expense of some	 speed.	 This  option  has  no
       effect, if Verbose operation is disabled.

       Shell  Patterns.	  By  default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands
       will use shell-like regular expressions. The following conversions  are
       performed  to  achieve  this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more
       characters); the '?'  is replaced by '.' (exactly  one  character)  and
       '.'  by	the  literal  dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular
       expressions are the ones described in ed(1).

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

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

       Use internal editor.  If this option is enabled, the built-in file edi‐
       tor is used to edit files. If the option is disabled, the editor speci‐
       fied in the EDITOR environment variable is used.	 If no editor is spec‐
       ified, vi is used.  See the section on the internal file editor.

       Use internal viewer.  If this option  is	 enabled,  the	built-in  file
       viewer  is  used	 to  view  files. If the option is disabled, the pager
       specified in the PAGER environment variable is used.  If	 no  pager  is
       specified,  the	view command is used.  See the section on the internal
       file viewer.

       Complete: show all.  By default the Midnight Commander pops up all pos‐
       sible completions if the completion is ambiguous if you press M-Tab for
       the second time, for the first time it just completes as much as possi‐
       ble and in the case of ambiguity beeps. If you want to see all the pos‐
       sible completions already after the first M-Tab pressing,  enable  this
       option.

       Rotating dash.  If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander shows
       a rotating dash in the upper right corner as a work in progress indica‐
       tor.

       Lynx-like  motion.   If	this option is enabled, you may use the arrows
       keys to automatically chdir if the current selection is a  subdirectory
       and the shell command line is empty. By default, this setting is off.

       Advanced	 chown.	 If this option is enabled, the Advanced Chown command
       will be invoked if you run the Chmod
	or Chown command.

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

       Safe delete.  If this option is enabled, deleting files unintentionally
       will get more difficult. The default selection in the confirmation dia‐
       log changes from the "Yes" to the "No" button and deletion of non empty
       directories  has to be confirmed by entering the word yes .  By default
       this option is disabled.

    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.

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

    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	 data‐
       bases are broken.

       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.

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

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

       When you finish with all the keys, you may want either to Save your key
       fixes  into your ~/.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.

    Virtual FS
       This option gives you control over the settings	of  the	 Virtual  File
       System information cache.

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

       Moreover in order to access the contents of compressed files (for exam‐
       ple, compressed tar files) the Midnight Commander has to create a  tem‐
       porary uncompressed file on your disk.

       Since  both  the	 information in memory and the temporary files on disk
       take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters  of  the	cached
       information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of
       access to frequently used file systems.

       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 informa‐
       tion contained in the tar file, it goes and grab it.

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

       Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
       it's common that you will leave a tar file and the re-enter  it	later.
       Since  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 resources associated with the file system will be
       freed. The default timeout is set to one minute.

       The FTP File System keeps the directory listing it fetches from	a  ftp
       server  in  a  cache.   The  cache expire time is configurable with the
       ftpfs directory cache timeout option.  A low value for this option  may
       slow  down  every operation on the ftp file System because every opera‐
       tion is accompanied by a query of the ftp server.

       Moreover you can define a proxy host for doing ftp transfers  and  con‐
       figure  the  Midnight  Commander to always use the proxy host.  See the
       section on FTP File System for more information.

    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  con‐
       sole you can specify how many lines are shown in the output window.

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

       By default all contents of the directory panels are displayed with  the
       same  color, but you can specify whether permissions and file types are
       highlighted  with  special  Colors.   If	 permission  highlighting   is
       enabled,	 the parts of the perm and mode display fields which are valid
       for the user running Midnight Commander are highlighted with the	 color
       defined	with  the  selected  keyword.  If  file	 type  highlighting is
       enabled, files are colored according to their file  type	 (e.g.	direc‐
       tory, core file, executable, ...).

       If  the Show Mini-Status option is enabled, one line of status informa‐
       tion about the currently selected item is showed at the bottom  of  the
       panels.

    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 /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.ini. If the  system-wide	 configuration
       file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.

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

       If you activate the auto save setup option, MC  will  always  save  the
       current settings when exiting.

       There  also  exist  settings  which can't be changed from the menus. To
       change these settings you  have	to  edit  the  setup  file  with  your
       favorite	 editor. See the section on Special Settings for more informa‐
       tion.

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

       If you press Enter over a file that is  not  executable,	 the  Midnight
       Commander  checks the extension of the selected file against the exten‐
       sions in the Extensions File.  If a match is found then the code	 asso‐
       ciated  with  that extension is executed. A very simple macro expansion
       takes place before executing the command.

  The cd internal command
       The cd command is interpreted by the  Midnight  Commander,  it  is  not
       passed  to the command shell for execution.  Thus it may not handle all
       of the nice macro expansion and	substitution  that  your  shell	 does,
       although it does some of them:

       Tilde  substitution  The	 (~) will be substituted with your home direc‐
       tory, if you append a username after the tilde, then it will be substi‐
       tuted with the login directory of the the specified user.

       For  example,  ~guest  is  the home directory for the user guest, while
       ~/guest is the directory guest in your home directory.

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

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

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

  Macro Substitution
       When accessing a user menu, or executing an  extension  dependent  com‐
       mand,  or running a command from the command line input, a simple macro
       substitution takes place.

       The macros are:

       %i

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

       %y

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

       %k

	      The block file name.

       %e

	      The error file name.

       %m

	      The current menu name.

       %f

	      The current file name.

       %x

	      The extension of current file name.

       %b

	      The current file name without extension.

       %d

	      The current directory name.

       %F

	      The current file in the unselected panel.

       %D

	      The directory name of the unselected panel.

       %t

	      The currently tagged files.

       %T

	      The tagged files in the unselected panel.

       %u and %U

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

       %s and %S

	      The selected files: The tagged files if there are any. Otherwise
	      the current file.

       %q

	      Dropped  files.  In  all places except in the Drop action of the
	      mc.ext file, 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.

       %cd

	      This is a special macro that  is	used  to  change  the  current
	      directory	 to  the  directory specified in front of it.  This is
	      used primarily as an interface to the Virtual File System.

       %view

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

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

       %%

	      The % character

       %{some text}

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

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

       When the subshell code is activated the Midnight Commander will spawn a
       concurrent  copy	 of  your shell (the one defined in the SHELL variable
       and if it is not defined, then the one in the /etc/passwd file) and run
       it  in a pseudo terminal, instead of invoking a new shell each time you
       execute a command, the command will be passed to the subshell as if you
       had  typed  it.	 This  also allows you to change the environment vari‐
       ables, use shell functions and define aliases that are valid until  you
       quit the Midnight Commander.

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

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

       An  extra  added	 feature of using the subshell is that the prompt dis‐
       played by the Midnight Commander is the same prompt that you  are  cur‐
       rently using in your shell.

       The  OPTIONS  section  has  more information on how you can control the
       subshell code.

  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.

       The following instructions are supported.

       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.

       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 oper‐
       ates 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.

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  combina‐
       tion.

       The Chmod window has two parts - Permissions and File

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

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

       To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use  the	 arrow
       keys  or	 the  Tab key.	To change the state of the check buttons or to
       select a button use Space.  You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons
       to quickly activate that selection (they are the highlit letters on the
       buttons).

       To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.

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

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

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

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

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

       [Set] set the attributes of one file

       [Cancel] cancel the Chmod command

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

Advanced Chown
       The Advanced Chown command is the Chmod and Chown command combined into
       one window. You can change the permissions and owner/group of files  at
       once.

File Operations
       When  you  copy,	 move or delete files 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.

       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  but‐
       ton will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are skipped.

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

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

       The  replace dialog is shown when you attempt to copy or move a file on
       the top of an existing file. The dialog shows the dates	and  sizes  of
       the both files. Press the Yes button to overwrite the file, the No but‐
       ton to skip the file, the alL button to overwrite all  the  files,  the
       nonE  button  to	 never overwrite and the Update button to overwrite if
       the source file is newer than the target file. You can abort the	 whole
       operation by pressing the Abort button.

       The recursive delete dialog is shown when you try to delete a directory
       which is not empty. Press the Yes button to delete the directory recur‐
       sively,	the  No button to skip the directory, the alL button to delete
       all the directories and the nonE	 button	 to  skip  all	the  non-empty
       directories.  You  can  abort the whole operation by pressing the Abort
       button. If you selected the Yes or alL button you will be asked	for  a
       confirmation. Type "yes" only if you are really sure you want to do the
       recursive delete.

       If you have tagged files and perform an	operation  on  them  only  the
       files on which the operation succeeded are untagged. Failed and skipped
       files are left tagged.

Mask Copy/Rename
       The copy/move operations lets you translate the names of	 files	in  an
       easy  way.  To  do  it, you have to specify the correct source mask and
       usually in the trailing part of the destination specify some wildcards.
       All  the files matching the source mask are copied/renamed according to
       the target mask. If there are  tagged  files,  only  the	 tagged	 files
       matching the source mask are renamed.

       There are other option which you can set:

       Follow  links  tells  whether  make  the	 symlinks and hardlinks in the
       source directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the  tar‐
       get directory or whether would you like to copy their content.

       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's content into that directory, by enabling
       this you can copy the source directory into that directory.  Perhaps an
       example will help:

       You  want  to  copy content of a directory foo to /bla/foo, which is an
       already existing directory. Normally (when Dive is not set),  mc	 would
       copy  it	 exactly into /bla/foo.	 By enabling this option you will copy
       the content into /bla/foo/foo, because the directory already exists.

       Preserve attributes tells whether to preserve the original files'  per‐
       missions, timestamps and if you are root whether to preserve the origi‐
       nal files' UID and GID. If this option is not set the current value  of
       the umask will be respected.

       Use shell patterns on

       When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*' and '?'	 wild‐
       cards in the source mask. They work like they do in the shell.  In  the
       target  mask  only  the	'*'  and '\<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The
       first '*' wildcard in the target mask corresponds to the first wildcard
       group  in  the  source  mask,  the second '*' corresponds to the second
       group and so on. The '\1' wildcard corresponds to  the  first  wildcard
       group  in  the source mask, the '\2' wildcard corresponds to the second
       group and so on all the way up to '\9'. The '\0' wildcard is the	 whole
       filename of the source file.

       Two examples:

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

       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".

       Use shell patterns off

       When  the  shell	 patterns  option  is  off the MC doesn't do automatic
       grouping anymore. You must use '\(...\)' expressions in the source mask
       to  specify  meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This is more
       flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks are sim‐
       ilar to the situation when the shell patterns option is on.

       Two examples:

       If   the	  source  mask	is  "^\(.*\)\.tar\.gz$",  the  destination  is
       "/bla/*.tgz" and the file to be copied is "foo.tar.gz", the  copy  will
       be "/bla/foo.tgz".

       Let's  suppose you want to swap basename and extension so that "file.c"
       will  become  "c.file"  and  so	on.  The  source  mask	for  this   is
       "^\(.*\)\.\(.*\)$" and the destination is "\2.\1".

       Case Conversions

       You  can	 also  change  the  case  of the filenames. If you use '\u' or
       uppercase or lowercase correspondingly.

       If you use '\U' or '\L' in the target mask the next characters will  be
       converted to uppercase or lowercase correspondingly up to the next

       The '\u' and '\l' are stronger than '\U' and '\L'.

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

       You can also use '\' as a quote character. For example, '\\' is a back‐
       slash and '\*' is an asterisk.

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.

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

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

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

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

       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).

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

       F1 Invoke the builtin hypertext help viewer.

       F2 Toggle the wrap mode.

       F4 Toggle the hex mode.

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

       F6, /.  Regular expression search.

       ?, Reverse regular expression search.

       F7 Normal search / hex mode search.

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

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

       F8  Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or
       if a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then  the
       output  from  the filter. Current mode is always the other than written
       on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter by
       that key.

       F9  Toggle  the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer
       will interpret some string sequences to show bold  and  underline  with
       different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.

       F10, Esc.  Exit the internal file viewer.

       next-page, space, C-v.  Scroll one page forward.

       prev-page, M-v, C-b, backspace.	Scroll one page backward.

       down-key Scroll one line forward.

       up-key Scroll one line backward.

       C-l Refresh the screen.

       C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.

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

       [n] m Set the mark n.

       [n] r Jump to the mark n.

       C-f Jump to the next file.

       C-b Jump to the previous file.

       M-r Toggle the ruler.

       It's  possible  to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look
       at the Extension File Edit section

Internal File Editor
       The internal file editor provides most of the features of  common  full
       screen  editors.	 It is invoked using F4 provided the 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.

       The  features it presently supports are: Block copy, move, delete, cut,
       paste; key for key undo ; pull-down menus; file insertion; macro	 defi‐
       nition; 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.

       The editor is very easy to use and requires no tutoring.	 To  see  what
       keys  do	 what, just consult the appropriate pull-down menu. Other keys
       are: Shift movement keys do text highlighting.  Ctrl-Ins copies to  the
       file  cooledit.clip and Shift-Ins pastes from cooledit.clip.  Shift-Del
       cuts to cooledit.clip, and Ctrl-Del deletes highlighted text. The  com‐
       pletion	key  also  does a Return with an automatic indent. Mouse high‐
       lighting also works, and you can override the mouse as usual by holding
       down  the  shift	 key  while  dragging the mouse to let normal terminal
       mouse highlighting work.

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

       F19 will format the currently highlighted block (plain text or C or C++
       code   or    another).	 This	 is    controlled    by	   the	  file
       /usr/local/lib/mc/edit.indent.rc	     which	is	copied	    to
       .cedit/edit.indent.rc in your home directory the first time you use it.

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

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

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

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

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

       See also the file README.edit in the source tree for some more info.

Completion
       Let the Midnight Commander type for you.

       Attempt	to  perform completion on the text before current position. MC
       attempts completion treating the text as variable (if the  text	begins
       with  $ ), username (if the text begins with ~ ), hostname (if the text
       begins with @ ) or command (if you are on the command line in the posi‐
       tion  where you might type a command, possible completions then include
       shell reserved words and shell builtin commands as well)	 in  turn.  If
       none of these produces a match, filename completion is attempted.

       Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
       lines, command completion is command line specific.  If the  completion
       is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
       following action depends on the	setting	 of  the  Complete:  show  all
       option  in  the	Configuration  dialog. If it is enabled, a list of all
       possibilities pops up next to the current position and you  can	select
       with  the arrow keys and Enter the correct entry. You can also type the
       first letters in which the possibilities differ to move to a subset  of
       all  possibilities and complete as much as possible. If you press M-Tab
       again, only the subset will be shown  in	 the  listbox,	otherwise  the
       first  item  which  matches  all	 the previous characters will be high‐
       lighted. As soon as there is no ambiguity, dialog disappears,  but  you
       can  hide  it by canceling keys Esc, F10 and left and right arrow keys.
       If Complete: show all is disabled, the dialog pops up only if you press
       M-Tab for the second time, for the first time MC just beeps.

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 manipu‐
       late files not located on the Unix file system.

       Currently the Midnight Commander is packaged  with  some	 Virtual  File
       Systems	(VFS):	the  local file system, used for accessing the regular
       Unix file system; the ftpfs, used to manipulate files on remote systems
       with the FTP protocol; the tarfs, used to manipulate tar and compressed
       tar files; the undelfs, used to recover deleted files on ext2 file sys‐
       tems  (the default file system for Linux systems), fish (for manipulat‐
       ing files over shell connections such as rsh and ssh) and  finally  the
       mcfs (Midnight Commander file system), a network based file system.

       The  VFS switch code will interpret all of the path names used and will
       forward them to the correct file system, the formats used for each  one
       of the file systems is described later in their own section.

  FTP File System
       The  ftpfs  allows you to manipulate files on remote machines, to actu‐
       ally 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:

       /#ftp:[!][user[:pass]@]machine[:port][remote-dir]

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

       Examples:

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

       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 Virtual File System dialog box.

       Another option to set is the Always use ftp proxy option in the Virtual
       File System dialog box.	This will configure the program to always  use
       the  proxy  host.   If  this  variable  is set, the program will do two
       things: consult the /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for  lines  con‐
       taining	host names that are local (if the host name starts with a dot,
       it is assumed to be a domain) and to assume that any hostnames  without
       dots in their names are directly accessible.

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

       The  Midnight  Commander	 keeps	the directory listing in a cache.  The
       cache expire time is configurable in the	 Virtual  File	System	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).

  Tar File System
       The  tar	 file  system  provides	 you with read-only access to your tar
       files and compressed tar files by using the chdir command.   To	change
       your  directory to a tar file, you change your current directory to the
       tar file by using the following syntax:

       /filename.tar:utar/[dir-inside-tar]

       The mc.ext file already provides a shortcut for tar files,  this	 means
       that  usually  you  just	 point to a tar file and press return to enter
       into the tar file, see the Extension File Edit section for  details  on
       how this is done.

       Examples:

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

       The latter specifies the full path of the tar archive.

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

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

       /#sh:[user@]machine[:options]/[remote-dir]
       The, user, options and remote-dir
	elements  are  optional. If you specify the user element then the Mid‐
       night Commander will try to logon on the remote machine as  that	 user,
       otherwise it will use your login name.

       The options are 'C' - use compression and 'rsh' use rsh instead of ssh.
       If the remote-dir element is present, your  current  directory  on  the
       remote machine will be set to this one.

       Examples:

	   /#sh:onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
	   /#sh:joe@want.compression.edu:C/private
	   /#sh:joe@noncompressed.ssh.edu/private

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

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

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

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

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

       Examples:

	   /#mc:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
	   /#mc:joe@foo.edu:11321/private

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

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

       For  example,  to  recover deleted files on the second partition of the
       first scsi disk on Linux, you would use the following path name:

	   /#undel:sda2

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

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

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

       You may specify terminals that always force color mode  by  adding  the
       color_terminals	variable  to  the Colors section of the initialization
       file. This will prevent the Midnight Commander from trying to detect if
       your terminal supports color. Example:
       [Colors]
       color_terminals=linux,xterm
       color_terminals=terminal-name1,terminal-name2...

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

       The  Midnight  Commander	 provides  a way to change the default colors.
       Currently the colors are	 configured  using  the	 environment  variable
       MC_COLOR_TABLE or the Colors section in the initialization file.

       In  the	Colors	section,  the  default	color  map  is loaded from the
       base_color variable.  You can specify an alternate color map for a ter‐
       minal by using the terminal name as the key in this section.  Example:

       [Colors]
       base_color=
       xterm=menu=magenta:marked=,magenta:markselect=,red

       The format for the color definition is:

	 <keyword>=<foregroundcolor>,<backgroundcolor>:<keyword>= ...

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

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

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

       The dialog boxes use the following colors: dnormal is used for the nor‐
       mal text, dfocus is the color used for the  currently  selected	compo‐
       nent, dhotnormal is the color used to differentiate the hotkey color in
       normal components, whereas the dhotfocus color is used  for  the	 high‐
       lighted color in the currently selected component.

       Menus  use  the	same  scheme  but  uses the menu, menusel, menuhot and
       menuhotsel tags instead.

       Help uses the following colors: helpnormal is  used  for	 normal	 text,
       helpitalic is used for text which is emphasized in italic in the manual
       page, helpbold is used for text which is emphasized in bold in the man‐
       ual page, helplink is used for not selected hyperlinks and helpslink is
       used for selected hyperlink.

       Special highlight colors determine how files are	 displayed  when  file
       highlighting is enabled (see the section on Layout).  directory is used
       for directories or symbolic links to directories; executable  for  exe‐
       cutable	files;	link  is  used	for  symbolic  links which are neither
       stalled nor linked to a directory; stalledlink is used for stalled sym‐
       bolic  links; device - character and block devices; special is used for
       special files, such as FIFOs and IPC sockets; core is for core files.

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

Special Settings
       Most of the settings of the Midnight Commander can be changed from  the
       menus.  However, there are a small number of settings which can only be
       changed by editing the setup file.

       These variables may be set in your ~/.mc/ini file:

       clear_before_exec.

	      By default the Midnight Commander clears the screen before  exe‐
	      cuting  a	 command. If you would prefer to see the output of the
	      command at the bottom of the screen, edit your ~/mc.ini file and
	      change the value of the field clear_before_exec to 0.

       confirm_view_dir.

	      If  you  press F3 on a directory, normally MC enters that direc‐
	      tory. If this flag is set to 1, then MC will ask	for  confirma‐
	      tion before changing the directory if you have files tagged.

       ftpfs_retry_seconds.

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

       ftpfs_use_passive_connections.

	      This option is by off default.  This makes the  ftpfs  code  use
	      the  passive  open mode for transferring 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.

       max_dirt_limit.

	      Specifies	 how many screen updates can be skipped at most in the
	      internal file viewer.  Normally this value is  not  significant,
	      because  the code automatically adjusts the number of updates to
	      skip according to the rate of incoming keypresses.  However,  on
	      very  slow  machines  or	terminals  with	 a  fast keyboard auto
	      repeat, a big value can make screen updates too jumpy.

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

       mouse_move_pages.

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

       mouse_move_pages_viewer.

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

       old_esc_mode

	      By  default  the	Midnight Commander treats the ESC key as a key
	      prefix   (old_esc_mode=0),    if	  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).

       only_leading_plus_minus

	      set special treatment for '+', '-', '*' in command line (select,
	      unselect, reverse selection) only if command line is  empty.  No
	      need to quote this characters in the middle of the command line.
	      But we can not change selection when command line is not	empty.
	      panel_scroll_pages

	      If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when
	      the cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, other‐
	      wise it will just scroll a file at a time.

       preserve_uidgid

	      If  this option is set (the default), when logged in as root the
	      default will be to preserve the UID and the GID of files.	  Some
	      users  prefer to disable this option, so that's why it's config‐
	      urable.

       show_output_starts_shell

	      This variable only works if you are not using the subshell  sup‐
	      port.   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.	Other‐
	      wise,  pressing any key will bring you back to the Midnight Com‐
	      mander.

       torben_fj_mode

	      If this flag is set, then	 the  home  and	 end  keys  will  work
	      slightly	different  on the panels, instead of moving the selec‐
	      tion to the first and last files in the panels, they will act as
	      follows:

	      The  home	 key will: Go up to the middle line, if below it; else
	      go to the top line unless it is already on the top line, in this
	      case it will go to the first file in the panel.

	      The  end key has a similar behavior: Go down to the middle line,
	      if over it; else go to the bottom line unless you already are at
	      the  bottom line, in such case it will move the selection to the
	      last file name in the panel.

       use_file_to_guess_type

	      If this variable is on (the default) it will spawn the file com‐
	      mand to match the file types listed on the mc.ext file.

       xterm_mode

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

Terminal databases
       The Midnight Commander provides a way to fix your system terminal data‐
       base  without  requiring	 root  privileges.   The  Midnight   Commander
       searches	 in the system initialization file (the mc.lib file located in
       the Midnight Commander library directory) and in the ~/.mc/ini file for
       the  section  "terminal:your-terminal-name"  and	 then  for the section
       "terminal:general", each line of the section contains a key symbol that
       you  want  to  define, followed by an equal sign and the definition for
       the key.	 You can use the special \e form to represent the escape char‐
       acter and the ^x to represent the control-x character.

       The possible key symbols are:

       f0 to f20     Function keys f0-f20
       bs	  backspace
       home	     home key
       end	     end key
       up	     up arrow key
       down	     down arrow key
       left	     left arrow key
       right	     right arrow key
       pgdn	     page down key
       pgup	     page up key
       insert	     the insert character
       delete	     the delete character
       complete	     to do completion

       For example, to define the key insert to be the Escape + [ + O + p, you
       set this in the ini file:

       insert=\e[Op

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

FILES
       The program will retrieve all of its information relative to the MCHOME
       environment variable, if this variable is not set, then	it  will  fall
       back to the /usr/local directory.

       /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.hlp

	      The help file for the program.

       /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.ext

	      The default system-wide extensions file.

       ~/.mc/ext

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

       /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.ini

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

       /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.lib

	      Global settings for the Midnight Commander.   Settings  in  this
	      file  affect  all	 users, whether they have ~/.mc/ini or not, as
	      long as ~/.mc/ini doesn't override them.	Currently, only termi‐
	      nal settings are loaded from mc.lib.

       ~/.mc/ini

	      User's  own  setup.  If  this  file is present then the setup is
	      loaded from here instead of the system-wide startup file.

       /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.hint

	      This file contains the hints (cookies) displayed by the program.

       /usr/local/lib/mc/mc.menu

	      This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.

       ~/.mc/menu

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

       ~/.mc/Tree

	      The  directory  list  for	 the directory tree and tree view fea‐
	      tures.

       ./.mc.menu

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

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.

AVAILABILITY
       The    latest	version	   of	this   program	 can   be   found   at
       ftp://ftp.gnome.org/mirror/gnome.org/stable/sources/mc/ and on the mir‐
       rors listed on the GNOME site http://www.gnome.org/.

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

       The Midnight Commander page on the World Wide Web:
	    http://www.gnome.org/mc/

AUTHORS
       Miguel  de  Icaza   (miguel@ximian.com),	  Janne	  Kukonlehto   (jtkle‐
       hto@paju.oulu.fi),    Radek   Doulik   (rodo@ucw.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 (nwarmuth@pri‐
       vat.circular.de),  Mauricio  Plaza  (mok@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx), Paul
       Sheer (psheer@icon.co.za), Pavel Machek (pavel@ucw.cz) and Pavel Roskin
       (proski@gnu.org) 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):

       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@dol‐
       phin.csudh.edu),	 Juan	Francisco   Grigera,   Win32   port   (j-grig‐
       era@usa.net),  Juan  Jose  Ciarlante  (jjciarla@raiz.uncu.edu.ar), Ilya
       Rybkin	(rybkin@rouge.phys.lsu.edu),   Marcelo	 Roccasalva    (mfroc‐
       cas@raiz.uncu.edu.ar),  Massimo	Fontanelli  (MC8737@mclink.it), Sergey
       Ya. Korshunoff (root@seyko.msk.su), Thomas Pundt (pundtt@math.uni-muen‐
       ster.de),  Timur	 Bakeyev  (timur@goff.comtat.kazan.su), Tomasz Cholewo
       (tjchol01@mecca.spd.louisville.edu), Torben Fjerdingstad (torben.fjerd‐
       ingstad@uni-c.dk), Vadim Sinolitis (vvs@nsrd.npi.msu.su) and Wim Oster‐
       holt (wim@djo.wtm.tudelft.nl).

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

       If  you	want to report a problem with the program, please send mail to
       this address: mc-devel@gnome.org.

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

				30 October 1998				 mc(1)
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