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MC(1)			    GNU Midnight Commander			 MC(1)

NAME
       mc - Visual shell for Unix-like systems.

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

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

OPTIONS
       -a, --stickchars
	      Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing.

       -b, --nocolor
	      Force black and white display.

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

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

       -d, --nomouse
	      Disable mouse support.

       -e [file], --edit[=file]
	      Start the internal editor.  If the file is specified, open it on
	      startup.	See also mcedit (1).

       -f, --datadir
	      Display  the  compiled-in	 search	 paths	for Midnight Commander
	      files.

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

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

       -P file, --printwd=file
	      Print the last working directory to the  specified  file.	  This
	      option  is  not  meant  to be used directly.  Instead, it's used
	      from a special shell script that automatically changes the  cur‐
	      rent  directory  of the shell to the last directory the Midnight
	      Commander was in.	 Source the file /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.sh (bash
	      and  zsh users) or /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.csh (tcsh users) respec‐
	      tively to define mc as an alias to the appropriate shell script.

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

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

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

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

       -v file, --view=file
	      Start  the internal viewer to view the specified file.  See also
	      mcview (1).

       -V, --version
	      Display the version of the program.

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

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

Overview
       The  screen  of	the  Midnight  Commander  is  divided into four parts.
       Almost all of the screen space is taken up by two directory panels.  By
       default,	 the  second  line  from the bottom of the screen is the shell
       command line, and the bottom line shows the function key	 labels.   The
       topmost	line is the menu bar line.  The menu bar line may not be visi‐
       ble, 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,  ssh or rlogin connection to another machine from the xterm)
       or if you are running on a Linux console and have the gpm mouse	server
       running.

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

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

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

       If a mouse button is clicked on the top frame  line  of	the  directory
       panel,  it  is  scrolled	 one page up.  Likewise, a click on the bottom
       frame line will cause scrolling one page down.  This frame line	method
       works also in the Help 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 Midnight Commander with the mouse support, you
       can get the default mouse behavior (cutting and pasting text) by	 hold‐
       ing 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.

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

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

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

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

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

       Alt-!  executes	the  Filtered view command, described in the view com‐
	      mand.

       Alt-?  executes the Find file command.

       Alt-c  pops up the quick cd dialog.

       C-o    when the program is being run in the Linux or FreeBSD console or
	      under an xterm, it will show you the output of the previous com‐
	      mand.  When ran on the Linux  console,  the  Midnight  Commander
	      uses  an	external  program  (cons.saver)	 to  handle saving and
	      restoring of information on the screen.

       When the subshell support is compiled in, you can type C-o at any  time
       and  you	 will  be taken back to the Midnight Commander main screen, to
       return to your application just type C-o.  If you have  an  application
       suspended  by using this trick, you won't be able to execute other 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  terminfo
	      sequence)	 or the C-t (Control-t) sequence. To untag files, just
	      retag a tagged file.

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

       C-s, Alt-s
	      start  a	filename  search  in  the  directory listing. When the
	      search is active, the user input will be	added  to  the	search
	      string  instead  of  the	command	 line. If the Show mini-status
	      option is enabled the search string is shown on the  mini-status
	      line.  When typing, the selection bar will move to the next file
	      starting with the typed letters. The backspace or DEL  keys  can
	      be used to correct typing mistakes. If C-s is pressed again, the
	      next match is searched for.

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

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

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

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

       \ (backslash)
	      use the "\" key to unselect a group of files. This is the	 oppo‐
	      site of the Plus key.

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

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

       home, a1, Alt-<
	      move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.

       end, c1, Alt->
	      move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.

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

       prev-page, Alt-v
	      move the selection bar one page up.

       Alt-o  If  the currently selected file is a directory, load that direc‐
	      tory on the other panel and moves	 the  selection	 to  the  next
	      file.

       Alt-i  make the current directory of the current panel also the current
	      directory of the other panel.  Put the other panel to the	 list‐
	      ing  mode	 if  needed.   If  the current panel is panelized, the
	      other panel doesn't become panelized.

       C-PageUp, C-PageDown
	      only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and  to  the
	      currently selected directory respectively.

       Alt-y  moves  to	 the  previous directory in the history, equivalent to
	      clicking the < with the mouse.

       Alt-u  moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to click‐
	      ing the > with the mouse.

       Alt-Shift-h, Alt-H
	      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.

       Alt-Enter
	      copy the currently selected file name to the command line.

       C-Enter
	      same  a Alt-Enter.  May not work on remote systems and some ter‐
	      minals.

       C-Shift-Enter
	      copy the full path name of the currently selected	 file  to  the
	      command  line.   May  not work on remote systems and some termi‐
	      nals.

       Alt-Tab
	      does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname com‐
	      pletion 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 com‐
	      mand 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 '+'  sym‐
	      bol)

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

       Alt-h  displays the history for the current input line.

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

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

       Up, C-p
	      moves one line backward.

       Down, C-n
	      moves one line forward.

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

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

       Home, A1
	      moves to the beginning.

       End, C1
	      move to the end.

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

       b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
	      moves one page up.

       Space bar
	      moves one page down.

       u, d   moves one half of a page up or down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Alt-f  moves one word forward.

       Alt-b  moves one word backward.

       C-h, backspace
	      delete the previous character.

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

       C-@    sets the mark for cutting.

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

       Alt-w  copies the text between the cursor and the mark to a  kill  buf‐
	      fer.

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

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

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

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

       Alt-Tab
	      does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname 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 (Above and Below) Menus
       The  outlook  of	 the directory panels can be changed from the Left and
       Right menus (they are named Above and Below when the  horizontal	 panel
       split is chosen from the Layout options dialog).

    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 wide type  field.   This	 character  is
	      similar to what is displayed by ls with the -F flag - * for exe‐
	      cutable files, / for directories, @ for links, = for sockets,  -
	      for  character  devices, + for block devices, | for pipes, ~ for
	      symbolic links to directories and !  for stale  symlinks	(links
	      that point nowhere).

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

       mtime  file's last modification time.

       atime  file's last access time.

       ctime  file's status change time.

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

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

       nlink  the number of links to the file.

       ngid   the GID (numeric).

       nuid   the UID (numeric).

       owner  the owner of the file.

       group  the group of the file.

       inode  the inode of the file.

       Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:

       space  a space in the display format.

       |      add a vertical line to the display format.

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

       For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:

       half type name | size | mtime

       And the Long display corresponds to this format:

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

       This is a nice user display format:

       half name | size:7 | type mode:3

       Panels may also be set to the following modes:

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

       Tree   The tree view is quite similar to the  directory	tree  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
       function keys are terminfo capabilities kf1 trough kf10.	 On  terminals
       without function key support, you can achieve the same functionality by
       pressing the ESC key and then a number in the range 1 through 9	and  0
       (corresponding to F1 to F9 and F10 respectively).

       The  File menu has the following commands (keyboard shortcuts in 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 VIEWER environment variable.  If
       VIEWER is undefined, the PAGER environment variable is tried.  If PAGER
       is  also undefined, the "view" command is invoked.  If you use Shift-F3
       instead, the viewer will be invoked without  doing  any	formatting  or
       preprocessing to the file.

       Filtered View (Alt-!)

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

       Edit (F4, F14)

       Press F4 to edit the highlighted file.  Press F14 (usually Shift-F4) to
       start the editor with a new, empty file.	 Currently they invoke the  vi
       editor,	or the editor specified in the EDITOR environment variable, or
       the Internal File Editor if the use_internal_edit option is on.

       Copy (F5, F15)

       Press F5 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected  file
       (or  the	 tagged	 files,	 if  there is at least one file tagged) to the
       directory/filename you specify in the input  dialog.   The  destination
       defaults	 to  the  directory  in	 the  non-selected  panel. During this
       process, you can press C-c or ESC to abort the operation.  For  details
       about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\(.*\)$ depending
       on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the	desti‐
       nation see Mask copy/rename.

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

       On  some	 systems,  it  is possible to do the copy in the background by
       clicking on the background button (or  pressing	Alt-b  in  the	dialog
       box).  The Background 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, F16)

       Press  F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file
       (or the tagged files, if there is at least  one	file  tagged)  to  the
       directory/filename  you	specify	 in the input dialog.  The destination
       defaults to the directory in the non-selected panel. For	 more  details
       look  at	 Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite simi‐
       lar.

       F16 (usually Shift-F6) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the
       selected	 panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of
       any tagged files.

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

       Mkdir (F7)

       Pop up an input dialog and creates the directory specified.

       Delete (F8)

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

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

       Select group (+)

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

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

       Unselect group (\)

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

       Quit (F10, Shift-F10)

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

    Quick cd
       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 pan‐
       els.

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

       The  Compare  directories (C-x d) command compares the directory panels
       with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5)	command	 to  make  the
       panels  identical.  There  are  three compare methods. The quick method
       compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a full
       byte-by-byte  compare.  The  thorough  method  is  not available if the
       machine does not support the mmap(2) system call.  The  size-only  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 Alt-p or Alt-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, Alt-s.  Search the next directory matching the search  string.  If
       there is no such directory these keys will move one line down.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       The 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 CD-ROM or on a NFS directory that	is  mounted  across  a
       slow link).

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

       Directory components should be separated with a colon, here is an 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
       directory corresponding to the selected label.  From the	 hotlist  dia‐
       log,  you  can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new
       ones.  To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add  to  hotlist
       command	(C-x  h),  which adds the current directory into the directory
       hotlist, asking just for the label for the directory.

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

    Extension File Edit
       This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.mc/bindings.	 The format of
       this file following:

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

       Lines starting in the first column should have following format:

       keyword/expr, i.e. everything after the slash until new line is expr.

       keyword can be:

       shell  - expr is an extension (no wildcards).  File matches it its name
	      ends with expr.  Example: shell/.tar matches *.tar.

       regex  -	 expr  is  a  regular  expression.   File  matches if its name
	      matches the regular expression.

       directory
	      - expr is a regular expression.  File matches if it is a	direc‐
	      tory and its name matches the regular expression.

       type   -	 expr  is a regular expression.	 File matches if the output of
	      file %f without the initial  "filename:"	part  matches  regular
	      expression expr.

       default
	      - matches any file.  expr is ignored.

       include
	      - denotes a common section.  expr is the name of the section.

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

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

    Background Jobs
       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/share/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
	    I=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:-/tmp}/mail.XXXXXX` || exit 1
	    vi $I
	    mail -s "Midnight Commander bug" root < $I
	    rm -f $I

       M    Read mail
	    emacs -f rmail

       N    Read Usenet news
	    emacs -f gnus

       H    Call the info hypertext browser
	    info

       J    Copy current directory to other panel recursively
	    tar cf - . | (cd %D && tar xvpf -)

       K    Make a release of the current subdirectory
	    echo -n "Name of distribution file: "
	    read tar
	    ln -s %d `dirname %d`/$tar
	    cd ..
	    tar cvhf ${tar}.tar $tar

       = f *.tar.gz | f *.tgz & t n
       X       Extract the contents of a compressed tar file
	    tar xzvf %f

       Default Conditions

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

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

       Sub-condition is one of following:

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

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

       Type is one or more of the following characters:

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

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

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

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

       Here is a sample of the use of conditions:

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

       Addition Conditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Panel Options

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

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

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

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

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

       Fast directory reload.  If this option is enabled, the Midnight Comman‐
       der  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 command.
       If you are using the Linux or FreeBSD console or an xterm, you will  be
       able to see the output of the command by typing C-o.

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

       Always.	The program will pause after executing all of your commands.

       Other Options

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

       Compute totals.	If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander 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 only when you press
       Alt-Tab for the second time.  For the first time, it just completes  as
       much  as	 possible  and	beeps  in  the case of ambiguity.  Enable this
       option if you want to see all possible completions even after  pressing
       Alt-Tab the first time.

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

       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 and directory
       hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more  difficult.	  The  default
       selection  in  the confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes"
       to "No".	 This option is disabled by default.

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

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

       You can specify whether permissions and	file  types  should  be	 high‐
       lighted	with  distinctive  Colors.   If the permission highlighting is
       enabled, the parts of the perm and mode display fields which  apply  to
       the  user  running  Midnight  Commander	are highlighted with the color
       defined by the selected keyword.	 If  the  file	type  highlighting  is
       enabled,	 files	are  colored according to their file type (e.g. direc‐
       tory, core file, executable, and so on).

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

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

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

    Display bits
       This is used to configure  the  range  of  visible  characters  on  the
       screen.	 This  setting	may be 7-bits if your terminal/curses supports
       only seven output bits, ISO-8859-1 displays all the characters  in  the
       ISO-8859-1  map and full 8 bits is for those terminals that can display
       full 8 bit characters.

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

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

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

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

       When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them.  The  definitions
       for  the	 keys  you  have  redefined  will  be written into the [termi‐
       nal:TERM] section of your ~/.mc/ini file (where TERM  is	 the  name  of
       your  current terminal).	 The definitions of the keys that were already
       working properly are not saved.

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

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

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

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

       Because of the format of the tar archives, the Tar filesystem needs  to
       read  the  whole	 file  just  to load the file entries.	Since most tar
       files are usually kept compressed  (plain  tar  files  are  species  in
       extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
       in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a reg‐
       ular tar file.

       Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk,
       it's common that you will leave a tar file and the re-enter  it	later.
       Since  decompression  is	 slow,	the  Midnight Commander will cache the
       information in memory for a limited time.  When	the  timeout  expires,
       all  the	 resources  associated with the file system are released.  The
       default timeout is set to one minute.

       The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on	remote
       FTP servers.  It has several options.

       ftp  anonymous  password is the password used when you login as "anony‐
       mous".  Some sites require a valid e-mail address.  On the other	 hand,
       you  probably  don't want to give your real e-mail address to untrusted
       sites, especially if you are not using spam filtering.

       ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a  FTP	 server	 in  a
       cache.	The cache expire time is configurable with the ftpfs directory
       cache timeout option.  A low value for this option may slow down	 every
       operation  on the ftpfs because every operation would require sending a
       request to the FTP server.

       You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP.	Note that most	modern
       firewalls  are  fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see below),
       so FTP proxies are considered obsolete.

       If Always use ftp proxy is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to
       enable proxy for certain hosts.	See FTP File System for examples.

       If  this	 option	 is  set,  the program will do two things: consult the
       /usr/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names  that  are
       local  (if  the	host  name  starts  with  a dot, it is assumed to be a
       domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots  in  their	 names
       are  directly accessible.  All other hosts will be accessed through the
       specified FTP proxy.

       You can enable using ~/.netrc file, which keeps login names  and	 pass‐
       words for ftp servers.  See netrc (5) for the description of the .netrc
       format.

       Use passive mode enables using FTP passive mode,	 when  the  connection
       for  data transfer is initiated by the client, not by the server.  This
       option is recommended and enabled by default.  If this option is turned
       off, the data connection is initiated by the server.  This may not work
       with some firewalls.

    Save Setup
       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/share/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 specified user.

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

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

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

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

  Macro Substitution
       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 and %p
	      The current file name.

       %x     The extension of current file name.

       %b     The current file name without extension.

       %d     The current directory name.

       %F     The current file in the unselected panel.

       %D     The directory name of the unselected panel.

       %t     The currently tagged files.

       %T     The tagged files in the unselected panel.

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

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

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

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

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

       %%     The % character

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

       %var{ENV:default}
	      If  environment  variable	 ENV  is unset, the default is substi‐
	      tuted.  Otherwise, the value of ENV is substituted.

  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.

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 them.  Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters on
       the buttons.

       To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.

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

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

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

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

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

       [Set] set the attributes of one file

       [Cancel] cancel the Chmod command

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

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

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

       There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog.  Pressing  the  Skip
       button  will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort 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
       button to skip the file, the All button to overwrite all the files, the
       None button to never overwrite and the Update button  to	 overwrite  if
       the source file is newer than the target file.  You can abort the whole
       operation by pressing the Abort button.

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

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

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

       There are other options which you can set:

       Follow links

       determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source direc‐
       tory  (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target directory
       or whether would you like to copy their content.

       Dive into subdirs

       determines the behavior when  the  source  directory  is	 about	to  be
       copied, but the target directory already exists.	 The default action is
       to copy the contents of the source directory into the target directory.
       Enabling	 this  option  causes copying the source directory itself into
       the target directory.

       For example, you want to copy directory /foo  containing	 file  bar  to
       /bla/foo,  which is an already existing directory.  Normally (when Dive
       into subdirs is not set), mc would copy file  /foo/bar  into  the  file
       /bla/foo/bar.   By enabling this option the /bla/foo/foo directory will
       be created, and /foo/bar will be copied into /bla/foo/foo/bar.

       Preserve attributes

       determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if  you
       are  root)  the ownership of the original files.	 If this option is not
       set, the current value of the umask will be respected.

       Use shell patterns on

       When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*' and '?'	 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".

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

       Use shell patterns off

       When the shell patterns option is  off  the  MC	doesn't	 do  automatic
       grouping anymore. You must use '\(...\)' expressions in the source mask
       to specify meaning for the wildcards in the target mask. This  is  more
       flexible but also requires more typing. Otherwise target masks are 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 '\l'
       in  the	target mask, the next character will be converted to uppercase
       or lowercase correspondingly.

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

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

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

       You can also use '\' as a quote character. For example, '\\' is a 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.

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

       When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes  and  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.

       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 built-in hypertext help viewer.

       F2 Toggle the wrap mode.

       F4 Toggle the hex mode.

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

       F6, /.  Regular expression search.

       ?, Reverse regular expression search.

       F7 Normal search / hex mode search.

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

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

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

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

       F10, Esc.  Exit the internal file viewer.

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

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

       down-key Scroll one line forward.

       up-key Scroll one line backward.

       C-l Refresh the screen.

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

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

       [n] m Set the mark n.

       [n] r Jump to the mark n.

       C-f Jump to the next file.

       C-b Jump to the previous file.

       Alt-r Toggle the ruler.

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

Internal File Editor
       The internal file editor is a full-featured full screen editor.	It can
       edit  files  up	to 64 megabytes.  It is possible to edit binary files.
       The internal file editor is invoked using F4 if	the  use_internal_edit
       option is set in the initialization file.

       The  features it presently supports are: block copy, move, delete, cut,
       paste; key for key undo; pull-down menus; file  insertion;  macro  com‐
       mands;  regular expression search and replace (and our own scanf-printf
       search and replace); shift-arrow text highlighting (if supported by the
       terminal);  insert-overwrite toggle; word wrap; autoindent; tunable tab
       size; syntax highlighting for various file types; and an option to pipe
       text blocks through shell commands like indent and ispell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Completion
       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 built-in commands as well) in turn.   If
       none of these matches, filename completion is attempted.

       Filename, username, variable and hostname completion works on all input
       lines, command completion is command line specific.  If the  completion
       is ambiguous (there are more different possibilities), MC beeps and the
       following action depends on the	setting	 of  the  Complete:  show  all
       option  in  the	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 Alt-
       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
       Alt-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.  If
       the code was compiled with smbfs support, you can manipulate  files  on
       remote systems with the SMB (CIFS) protocol.

       A  generic extfs (EXTernal virtual File System) is provided in order to
       easily expand VFS capabilities using scripts and external software.

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

  FTP File System
       The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to manipulate  files  on	remote
       machines.   To  actually	 use  it, you can use the FTP link item in the
       menu or directly change your current directory using the cd command  to
       a path name that looks like this:

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

       The  user,  port	 and remote-dir elements are optional.	If you specify
       the user element, the Midnight  Commander  will	login  to  the	remote
       machine	as  that  user,	 otherwise  it will use anonymous login or the
       login name from the ~/.netrc file.  The optional pass  element  is  the
       password used for the connection.  Using the password in the VFS direc‐
       tory name is not recommended, because it can appear on  the  screen  in
       clear text and can be saved to the directory history.

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

       Examples:

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

       Please check the Virtual File System dialog box for ftpfs options.

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

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

       The  mc.ext  file already provides a shortcut for tar files, this means
       that usually you just point to a tar file and  press  return  to	 enter
       into  the  tar file, see the 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,  the	 Midnight  Commander  will try to login on the
       remote machine as that user, otherwise it will use your login name.

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

       Examples:

	   /#sh:onlyrsh.mx:r/linux/local
	   /#sh: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 server is running on a special
       port  (see the mcserv(8) manual page for more information about ports);
       finally, if the remote-dir element is present, your  current  directory
       on the remote machine will be set to this one.

       Examples:

	   /#mc:ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx/linux/local
	   /#mc: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.

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

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

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

       Examples:

	   /#smb:machine/Share
	   /#smb:other_machine
	   /#smb:guest@machine/Public/Irlex

  EXTernal File System
       extfs allows to integrate numerous features and	file  types  into  GNU
       Midnight Commander in an easy way, by writing scripts.

       Extfs filesystems can be divided into two categories:

       1.  Stand-alone filesystems, which are not associated with any existing
       file.  They represent certain system-wide data  as  a  directory	 tree.
       You  can	 invoke	 them  by typing 'cd #fsname' where fsname is an extfs
       short name (see below).	Examples of  such  filesystems	include	 audio
       (list  audio  tracks  on the CD) or apt (list of all Debian packages in
       the system).

       For example, to list CD-Audio tracks on your CD-ROM drive, type

	 cd #audio

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

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

	 cd documents.zip#uzip

       In  many	 aspects, you could treat extfs like any other directory.  For
       instance, you can add it to the hotlist or change to it from  directory
       history.	  An important limitation is that you cannot invoke shell com‐
       mands inside extfs, just like any other non-local VFS.

       Common extfs scripts included with Midnight Commander are:

       a      access 'A:' DOS/Windows diskette (cd #a).

       apt    front end to Debian's APT package management system (cd #apt).

       audio  audio CD ripping and playing (cd #audio or cd device#audio).

       bpp    package of Bad Penguin GNU/Linux distribution (cd file.bpp#bpp).

       deb    package of Debian GNU/Linux distribution (cd file.deb#deb).

       dpkg   Debian GNU/Linux installed packages (cd #deb).

       hp48   view and copy files to/from a HP48 calculator (cd #hp48).

       lslR   browsing of lslR listings	 as  found  on	many  FTPs  (cd	 file‐
	      name#lslR).

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

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

       rpm    RPM package (cd filename#rpm).

       rpms   RPM database management (cd #rpms).

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

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

	 regex/.deb$
		 Open=%cd %p#deb

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.	  Spe‐
       cial  highlighting  colors are: executable, directory, link, stalelink,
       device, special, core.  Editor colors are: editnormal, editbold,	 edit‐
       marked.

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

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

       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 stale
       nor linked to a directory; stalelink is used for stale symbolic	links;
       device  -  character  and  block	 devices;  special is used for special
       files, such as pipes and sockets; core is for core files.

       The possible colors are: black, gray, red,  brightred,  green,  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 to reconnect to an FTP  server  that  has
	      denied  the  login.   If the value is zero, the login will no be
	      retried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       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.

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

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  Alt-tab,	 but  you  can
       define  other  keys to do the same work (on those keyboard with tons of
       nice and unused keys everywhere).

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

       /usr/share/mc/mc.hlp

	      The help file for the program.

       /usr/share/mc/mc.ext

	      The default system-wide extensions file.

       ~/.mc/bindings

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

       /usr/share/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/share/mc/mc.lib

	      Global  settings	for  the Midnight Commander.  Settings in this
	      file affect all users, whether they have ~/.mc/ini or not.  Cur‐
	      rently, only terminal 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/share/mc/mc.hint

	      This file contains the hints displayed by the program.

       /usr/share/mc/mc.menu

	      This file contains the default system-wide applications menu.

       ~/.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.ibib‐
       lio.org/pub/Linux/utils/file/managers/mc/.

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.ibiblio.org/mc/

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

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

       If  you	want to report a problem with the program, please 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 displays this information), the operating system
       you are running the program on.	 If  the  program  crashes,  we	 would
       appreciate a stack trace.

MC Version 4.6.2-pre1		September 2007				 MC(1)
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