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 database. Only useful on HP terminals when the function keys don't work.
-l file, --ftplog=file
Save the ftpfs dialog with the server in file.
-P file, --printwd=file
Print the last working directory to the specified file. This option is not meant to be used directly. Instead, it's used from a
special shell script that automatically changes the current directory of the shell to the last directory the Midnight Commander was
in. Source the file /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.sh (bash and zsh users) or /usr/share/mc/bin/mc.csh (tcsh users) respectively to define mc
as an alias to the appropriate shell script.
-s, --slow
Turn on the slow terminal mode, in this mode the program will not draw expensive line drawing characters and will toggle verbose
mode off.
-t, --termcap
Used only if the code was compiled with Slang and terminfo: it makes the Midnight Commander use the value of the TERMCAP variable
for the terminal information instead of the information on the system wide terminal database
-u, --nosubshell
Disable use of the concurrent shell (only makes sense if the Midnight Commander has been built with concurrent shell support).
-U, --subshell
Enable use of the concurrent shell support (only makes sense if the Midnight Commander was built with the subshell support set as an
optional feature).
-v file, --view=file
Start the internal viewer to view the specified file. See also mcview (1).
-V, --version
Display the version of the program.
-x, --xterm
Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable terminals (two screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
If specified, the first path name is the directory to show in the selected panel; the second path name is the directory to be shown in the
other panel.
Overview
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 visible, but appears if you click the topmost line with the mouse or press
the F9 key.
The Midnight Commander provides a view of two directories at the same time. One of the panels is the current panel (a selection bar is in
the current panel). Almost all operations take place on the current panel. Some file operations like Rename and Copy by default use the
directory of the unselected panel as a destination (don't worry, they always ask you for confirmation first). For more information, see the
sections on the Directory Panels, the Left and Right Menus and the File Menu.
You can execute system commands from the Midnight Commander by simply typing them. Everything you type will appear on the shell command
line, and when you press Enter the Midnight Commander will execute the command 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 whenever you are running on an xterm(1) terminal (it even works if you
take a telnet, ssh or rlogin connection to another machine from the xterm) or if you are running on a Linux console and have the gpm mouse
server running.
When you left click on a file in the directory panels, that file is selected; if you click with the right button, the file is marked (or
unmarked, depending on the previous state).
Double-clicking on a file will try to execute the command if it is an executable program; and if the extension 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
holding down the Shift key.
Keys
Some commands in the Midnight Commander involve the use of the Control (sometimes labeled CTRL or CTL) and the Meta (sometimes labeled ALT
or even Compose) keys. In this manual we will use the following abbreviations:
C-<chr>
means hold the Control key while typing the character <chr>. Thus C-f would be: hold the Control key and type f.
Alt-<chr>
means hold the Meta or Alt key down while typing <chr>. If there is no Meta or Alt key, type ESC, release it, then type the charac-
ter <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 entering and editing command lines. Most of these copy file names and such
from the directory panels to the command line (to avoid excessive typing) or access the command line history.
Input Line 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 command.
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
programs 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 typ-
ing, 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 list-
ing, 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 Commander will prompt for a regular expression describing the group.
When Shell Patterns are enabled, the regular expression is much like the regular expressions in the shell (* standing for zero or
more characters and ? standing for one character). If Shell Patterns is off, then the tagging of files is done with normal regular
expressions (see ed (1)).
If the expression starts or ends with a slash (/), then it will select directories instead of files.
(backslash)
use the "" key to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the Plus key.
up-key, C-p
move the selection bar to the previous entry in the panel.
down-key, C-n
move the selection bar to the next entry in the panel.
home, a1, Alt-<
move the selection bar to the first entry in the panel.
end, c1, Alt->
move the selection bar to the last entry in the panel.
next-page, C-v
move the selection bar one page down.
prev-page, Alt-v
move the selection bar one page up.
Alt-o If the currently selected file is a directory, load that directory on the other panel and moves the selection to the next file.
Alt-i make the current directory of the current panel also the current directory of the other panel. Put the other panel to the listing
mode if needed. If the current panel is panelized, the other panel doesn't become panelized.
C-PageUp, C-PageDown
only when supported by the terminal: change to ".." and to the currently selected directory respectively.
Alt-y moves to the previous directory in the history, equivalent to clicking the < with the mouse.
Alt-u moves to the next directory in the history, equivalent to clicking the > with the mouse.
Alt-Shift-h, Alt-H
displays the directory history, equivalent to depressing the 'v' with the mouse.
Shell Command Line
This section lists keys which are useful to avoid excessive typing when entering shell commands.
Alt-Enter
copy the currently selected file name to the command line.
C-Enter
same a Alt-Enter. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
C-Shift-Enter
copy the full path name of the currently selected file to the command line. May not work on remote systems and some terminals.
Alt-Tab
does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname completion for you.
C-x t, C-x C-t
copy the tagged files (or if there are no tagged files, the selected file) of the current panel (C-x t) or of the other panel (C-x
C-t) to the command line.
C-x p, C-x C-p
the first key sequence copies the current path name to the command line, and the second one copies the unselected panel's path name
to the command line.
C-q the quote command can be used to insert characters that are otherwise interpreted by the Midnight Commander (like the '+' symbol)
Alt-p, Alt-n
use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt-p takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
Alt-h displays the history for the current input line.
General Movement Keys
The help viewer, the file viewer and the directory tree use common code to handle moving. Therefore they accept exactly the same keys. Each
of them also accepts some keys of its own.
Other parts of the Midnight Commander use some of the same movement keys, so this section may be of use for those parts too.
Up, C-p
moves one line backward.
Down, C-n
moves one line forward.
Prev Page, Page Up, Alt-v
moves one page up.
Next Page, Page Down, C-v
moves one page down.
Home, A1
moves to the beginning.
End, C1
move to the end.
The help viewer and the file viewer accept the following keys in addition the to ones mentioned above:
b, C-b, C-h, Backspace, Delete
moves one page up.
Space bar
moves one page down.
u, d moves one half of a page up or down.
g, G moves to the beginning or to the end.
Input Line Keys
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 buffer.
C-y yanks back the contents of the kill buffer.
C-k kills the text from the cursor to the end of the line.
Alt-p, Alt-n
Use these keys to browse through the command history. Alt-p takes you to the last entry, Alt-n takes you to the next one.
Alt-C-h, Alt-Backspace
delete one word backward.
Alt-Tab
does the filename, command, variable, username and hostname completion 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 (therefore showing twice as many files as other views). The long view is
similar to the output of ls -l command. The long view takes the whole screen width.
If you choose the "User" display format, then you have to specify the display format.
The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This may be "half" or "full", and they specify a half screen panel and a
full screen panel respectively.
After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the panel, this is done by adding the number "2" to the user format string.
After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size specifier. This are the available fields you may display:
name displays the file name.
size displays the file size.
bsize is an alternative form of the size format. It displays the size of the files and for directories it just shows SUB-DIR or UP--DIR.
type displays a one character wide type field. This character is similar to what is displayed by ls with the -F flag - * for executable
files, / for directories, @ for links, = for sockets, - for character devices, + for block devices, | for pipes, ~ for symbolic
links to directories and ! for stale symlinks (links that point nowhere).
mark an asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.
mtime file's last modification time.
atime file's last access time.
ctime file's status change time.
perm a string representing the current permission bits of the file.
mode an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.
nlink the number of links to the file.
ngid the GID (numeric).
nuid the UID (numeric).
owner the owner of the file.
group the group of the file.
inode the inode of the file.
Also you can use following keywords to define the panel layout:
space a space in the display format.
| add a vertical line to the display format.
To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add : followed by the number of characters you want the field to have. If
the number is followed by the symbol +, then the size specifies the minimal field size - if the program finds out that there is more space
on the screen, it will then expand that field.
For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:
half type name | size | mtime
And the Long display corresponds to this format:
full perm space nlink space owner space group space size space mtime space name
This is a nice user display format:
half name | size:7 | type mode:3
Panels may also be set to the following modes:
Info The info view display information related to the currently selected file and if possible information about the current file system.
Tree The tree view is quite similar to the directory 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 pan-
elize 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 parentheses):
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 format-
ting 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 com-
mand 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 ^(.*)$ depend-
ing on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the destination 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 Commander shows an "@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a sym-
bolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)). The original file which the link points to is shown on mini-
status line if the Show mini-status option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the confusion that can be caused by hard
links.
Rename/Move (F6, F16)
Press F6 to pop up an input dialog to copy the currently selected file (or the tagged files, if there is at least one file tagged) to the
directory/filename you specify in the input dialog. The destination defaults to the directory in the non-selected panel. For more details
look at Copy (F5) operation above, most of the things are quite similar.
F16 (usually Shift-F6) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless
of any tagged files.
On some systems, it is possible to do the copy in the background by clicking on the background button (or pressing Alt-b in the dialog
box). The Background 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
command pops up a small dialog, where you enter everything you would enter after cd on the command line and then you press enter. This fea-
tures all the things that are already in the internal cd command.
Command Menu
The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.
The Find file command allows you to search for a specific file.
The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.
The "Panels on/off" command shows the output of the last shell command. This works only on xterm and on Linux and FreeBSD console.
The Compare directories (C-x d) command compares the directory panels with each other. You can then use the Copy (F5) command to make the
panels identical. There are three compare methods. The quick method compares only file size and file date. The thorough method makes a full
byte-by-byte compare. The thorough method is not available if the machine does not support the mmap(2) system call. The size-only compare
method just compares the file sizes and does not check the contents or the date times, it just checks the file size.
The Command history command shows a list of typed commands. The selected command is copied to the command line. The command history can
also be accessed by typing Alt-p or Alt-n.
The Directory hotlist (C-) 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 figure by scanning only a small subset of all the directories. If the
directory which you want to see is missing, move to its parent directory and press C-r (or F2).
You can use the following keys:
General movement 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 subdi-
rectories 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 but-
ton.
You can browse the filelist with the up and down arrow keys. The Chdir button will change to the directory of the currently selected file.
The Again button will ask for the parameters for a new search. The Quit button quits the search operation. The Panelize button will place
the found files to the current directory panel so that you can do additional operations on them (view, copy, move, delete and so on). After
panelizing you can press C-r to return to the normal file listing.
It is possible to have a list of directories that the Find File command should skip during the search (for example, you may want to avoid
searches on a CD-ROM or on a NFS directory that is mounted across a slow link).
Directories to be skipped should be set on the variable find_ignore_dirs in the Misc section of your ~/.mc/ini file.
Directory components should be separated with a colon, here is an example:
[Misc]
find_ignore_dirs=/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
You may consider using the External panelize command for some operations. 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 dialog, you can remove already created label/directory pairs and add new
ones. To add new directories quickly, you can use the Add to hotlist command (C-x h), which adds the current directory into the directory
hotlist, asking just for the label for the directory.
This makes cd to often used directories faster. You may consider using the CDPATH variable as described in internal cd 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 directory and its name matches the regular expression.
type - expr is a regular expression. File matches if the output of file %f without the initial "filename:" part matches regular expres-
sion expr.
default
- matches any file. expr is ignored.
include
- denotes a common section. expr is the name of the section.
Other lines should start with a space or tab and should be of the format: keyword=command (with no spaces around =), where keyword should
be: Open (invoked on Enter or double click), View (F3), Edit (F4) or Include (to add rules from the common section). command is any one-
line shell command, with the simple macro 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 anything but space or tab are considered entries for the menu (in order
to be able to use it like a hot key, the first character should be a letter). All the lines that start with a space or a tab are the com-
mands 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 Commander will use a trick to determine if the directory contents have
changed. The trick is to reload the directory only if the i-node of the directory has changed; this means that reloads only happen when
files are created or deleted. If what changes is the i-node for a file in the directory (file size changes, mode or owner changes, etc)
the display is not updated. In these cases, if you have the option on, you have to rescan the directory manually (with C-r).
Pause after run
After executing your commands, the Midnight Commander can pause, so that you can examine the output of the command. There are three possi-
ble settings for this variable:
Never. Means that you do not want to see the output of your 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 oper-
ation). If you have a slow terminal, you may wish to disable the verbose operation. It is automatically turned off if the speed of your
terminal is less than 9600 bps.
Compute totals. If this option is enabled, the Midnight Commander computes total byte sizes and total number of files prior to any Copy,
Rename and Delete operations. This will provide you with a more accurate progress bar at the expense of some speed. This option has no
effect, if Verbose operation is disabled.
Shell Patterns. By default the Select, Unselect and Filter commands will use shell-like regular expressions. The following conversions are
performed to achieve this: the '*' is replaced by '.*' (zero or more characters); the '?' is replaced by '.' (exactly one character) and
'.' by the literal dot. If the option is disabled, then the regular expressions are the ones described in ed(1).
Auto Save Setup. If this option is enabled, when you exit the Midnight Commander the configurable options of the Midnight Commander are
saved in the ~/.mc/ini file.
Auto menus. If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup. Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
Use internal editor. If this option is enabled, the built-in file editor is used to edit files. If the option is disabled, the editor
specified in the EDITOR environment variable is used. If no editor is specified, vi is used. See the section on the internal file 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 spec-
ified 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 possible 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
indicator.
Lynx-like motion. If this option is enabled, you may use the arrows keys to automatically chdir if the current selection is a subdirectory
and the shell command line is empty. By default, this setting is off.
Cd follows links. This option, if set, causes the Midnight Commander to follow the logical chain of directories when changing current
directory either in the panels, or using the cd command. This is the default behavior of bash. When unset, the Midnight Commander follows
the real directory structure, so cd .. if you've entered that directory through a link will move you to the current directory's real parent
and not to the directory where the link was present.
Safe delete. If this option is enabled, deleting files and directory hotlist entries unintentionally becomes more difficult. The default
selection in the confirmation dialogs for deletion changes from "Yes" to "No". This option is disabled by default.
Layout
The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout of screen. You can specify whether the menubar, the command prompt,
the hintbar and the function keybar are visible. On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are shown in the output
window.
The rest of the screen area is used for the two directory panels. You can specify whether the area is split to the panels in vertical or
horizontal direction. The split can be equal or you can specify an unequal split.
You can specify whether permissions and file types should be highlighted with distinctive 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. directory,
core file, executable, and so on).
If the Show Mini-Status option is enabled, one line of status information about the currently selected item is shown at the bottom of the
panels.
When run in a terminal emulator for X11, Midnight Commander sets the terminal window title to the current working directory and updates it
when necessary. If your terminal emulator is broken and you see some incorrect output on startup and directory change, turn off the Xterm
Window Title option.
Confirmation
In this menu you configure the confirmation options for file deletion, directory hotlist entries deletion, overwriting, execution by press-
ing 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 broken.
You can move around with the Tab key and with the vi moving keys ('h' left, 'j' down, 'k' up and 'l' right). Once you press any cursor
movement key and it is recognized, you can use that key as well.
You can test keys just by pressing each of them. When you press a key and it is recognized properly, OK should appear next to the name of
that key. Once a key is marked OK it starts working as usually, e.g. F1 pressed the first time will just check that the F1 key works, but
after that it will show help. The same applies to the arrow keys. The Tab key should be working always.
If some keys do not work properly then you won't see OK appear after pressing one of these. Then you may want to redefine it. Do it by
pressing the button with the name of that key (either by the mouse or by Enter or Space after selecting the button with Tab or arrows).
Then a message box will appear asking you to press that key. Do it and wait until the message box disappears. If you want to abort, just
press Escape once and wait.
When you finish with all the keys, you can Save them. The definitions for the keys you have redefined will be written into the [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 tempo-
rary uncompressed files on your disk.
Since both the information in memory and the temporary files on disk take up resources, you may want to tune the parameters of the cached
information to decrease your resource usage or to maximize the speed of access to frequently used file systems.
Because of the format of the tar archives, the Tar filesystem needs to read the whole file just to load the file entries. Since most tar
files are usually kept compressed (plain tar files are species in extinction), the tar file system has to uncompress the file on the disk
in a temporary location and then access the uncompressed file as a regular tar file.
Now, since we all love to browse files and tar files all over the disk, it's common that you will leave a tar file and the re-enter it
later. Since decompression is slow, the Midnight Commander will cache the information in memory for a limited time. When the timeout
expires, all the resources associated with the file system are released. The default timeout is set to one minute.
The FTP File System (ftpfs) allows you to browse directories on remote FTP servers. It has several options.
ftp anonymous password is the password used when you login as "anonymous". Some sites require a valid e-mail address. On the other hand,
you probably don't want to give your real e-mail address to untrusted sites, especially if you are not using spam filtering.
ftpfs keeps the directory listing it fetches from a FTP server in a cache. The cache expire time is configurable with the ftpfs directory
cache timeout option. A low value for this option may slow down every operation on the ftpfs because every operation would require sending
a request to the FTP server.
You can define an FTP proxy host for doing FTP. Note that most modern firewalls are fully transparent at least for passive FTP (see
below), so FTP proxies are considered obsolete.
If Always use ftp proxy is not set, you can use the exclamation sign to enable proxy for certain hosts. See FTP File System for examples.
If this option is set, the program will do two things: consult the /usr/lib/mc/mc.no_proxy file for lines containing host names that are
local (if the host name starts with a dot, it is assumed to be a domain) and to assume that any hostnames without dots in their names are
directly accessible. All other hosts will be accessed through the specified FTP proxy.
You can enable using ~/.netrc file, which keeps login names and passwords for ftp servers. See netrc (5) for the description of the .netrc
format.
Use passive mode enables using FTP passive mode, when the connection for data transfer is initiated by the client, not by the server. This
option is recommended and enabled by default. If this option is turned off, the data connection is initiated by the server. This may not
work with some firewalls.
Save Setup
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 information.
Executing operating system commands
You may execute commands by typing them directly in the Midnight Commander's input line, or by selecting the program you want to execute
with the selection bar in one of the panels and hitting Enter.
If you press Enter over a file that is not executable, the Midnight Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the exten-
sions in the Extensions File. If a match is found then the code associated 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 directory, if you append a username after the tilde, then it will be sub-
stituted 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 command, 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 pri-
marily 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 substituted. 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 vari-
able 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 environ-
ment variables, use shell functions and define aliases that are valid until you quit the Midnight Commander.
If you are using bash you can specify startup commands for the subshell in your ~/.mc/bashrc file and special keyboard maps in the
~/.mc/inputrc file. tcsh users may specify startup commands in the ~/.mc/tcshrc file.
When the subshell code is used, you can suspend applications at any time with the sequence C-o and jump back to the Midnight Commander, if
you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other external commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
An extra added feature of using the subshell is that the prompt displayed by the Midnight Commander is the same prompt that you are 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 correspond to the file attribute bits. As you change the attribute bits,
you can see the octal value change in the File section.
To move between the widgets (buttons and check buttons) use the arrow keys or the Tab key. To change the state of the check buttons or to
select a button use Space. You can also use the hotkeys on the buttons to quickly activate them. Hotkeys are shown as highlighted letters
on the buttons.
To set the attribute bits, use the Enter key.
When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on the bits you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the bits
you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked or Clear marked).
Finally, to set the attributes exactly to those specified, you can use the [Set all] button, which will act on all the tagged files.
[Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files
[Set marked] set marked bits in attributes of all selected files
[Clean marked] clear marked bits in attributes of all selected files
[Set] set the attributes of one file
[Cancel] cancel the Chmod command
Chown
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 percentage of the current file that has been processed so far. The count
bar shows how many of the tagged files have been handled. The bytes bar indicates the percentage of the total size of the tagged files
that has been handled. If the verbose option is off, the file and bytes bars are not shown.
There are two buttons at the bottom of the dialog. Pressing the Skip button will skip the rest of the current file. Pressing the Abort 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 accord-
ing to the target mask. If there are tagged files, only the tagged files matching the source mask are renamed.
There are other options which you can set:
Follow links
determines whether make the symlinks and hardlinks in the source directory (recursively in subdirectories) new links in the target direc-
tory or whether would you like to copy their content.
Dive into subdirs
determines the behavior when the source directory is about to be copied, but the target directory already exists. The default action is to
copy the contents of the source directory into the target directory. Enabling this option causes copying the source directory itself into
the target directory.
For example, you want to copy directory /foo containing file bar to /bla/foo, which is an already existing directory. Normally (when Dive
into subdirs is not set), mc would copy file /foo/bar into the file /bla/foo/bar. By enabling this option the /bla/foo/foo directory will
be created, and /foo/bar will be copied into /bla/foo/foo/bar.
Preserve attributes
determines whether to preserve the permissions, timestamps and (if you are root) the ownership of the original files. If this option is
not set, the current value of the umask will be respected.
Use shell patterns on
When the shell patterns option is on you can use the '*' and '?' wildcards in the source mask. They work like they do in the shell. In
the target mask only the '*' and '<digit>' wildcards are allowed. The first '*' wildcard in the target mask corresponds to the first
wildcard group in the source mask, the second '*' corresponds to the second group and so on. The '1' wildcard corresponds to the first
wildcard group in the source mask, the '2' wildcard corresponds to the second group and so on all the way up to '9'. The '