neulab/tldr huggingface dataset:
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. Space for destination file may be preallocated relative to preallocate_space configure option.  During this process, you can press C-c or Esc to abort the operation.  For details about source mask (which will be usually either * or ^\(.*\)$ depending on setting of Use shell patterns) and possible wildcards in the destination see Mask copy/rename.
F15 (usually F15) 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.
Absolute symlink (C-x s)
Create a absolute symbolic link to the current file.
Relative symLink (C-x v)
Create a relative 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. Midnight Commander shows an "@"-sign in front of the file name if it is a symbolic link to somewhere (except to directory, where it shows a tilde (~)).  The original file which the link points to is shown on mini-status line if the Show mini-status option is enabled. Use symbolic links when you want to avoid the confusion that can be caused by hard links.
When you press "C-x s" Midnight Commander will automatically fill in the complete path+filename of the original file and suggest a name for the link.  You can change either one.
Sometimes you may want to change the absolute path of the original into a relative path. An absolute path starts from the root directory:
/home/frodo/mc/mc -> /home/frodo/new/mc
A relative link describes the original file's location starting from the location of the link itself:
/home/frodo/mc/mc -> ../new/mc
You can force Midnight Commander to suggest a relative path by pressing "C-x v" instead of "C-x s".
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 F16) is similar, but defaults to the directory in the selected panel. It always operates on the selected file, regardless of any tagged files.
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. Midnight Commander will prompt for a selection options. When Files only checkbox is on, only files will be selected.  If Files only is off, as files as directories will be selected.  When Shell Patterns checkbox is on, 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)). When Case sensitive checkbox is on, the selection will be case sensitive characters.  If Case sensitive is off, the case will be ignored.
Unselect group (\)
Used to unselect a group of files. This is the opposite of the Select group command.
Quit (F10, S-F10)
Terminate Midnight Commander. S-F10 is used when you want to quit and you are using the shell wrapper.  S-F10 will not take you to the last directory you visited with Midnight Commander, instead it will stay at the directory where you started 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 features all the things that are already in the internal cd command.
Command Menu The Directory tree command shows a tree figure of the directories.
The "Find file" command allows you to search for a specific file.
The "Swap panels" command swaps the contents of the two directory panels.
The "Switch 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" 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 "External panelize" allows you to execute an external program, and make the output of that program the contents of the current panel.
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" command makes changing of the current directory to often used directories faster.
The "Screen list" command shows a dialog window with the list of currently running internal editors, viewers and other MC modules that support this mode.
The "Edit extension file" 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 "Edit Menu File" command may be used for editing the user menu (which appears by pressing F2).
Directory Tree The Directory Tree command shows a tree figure of the directories. You can select a directory from the figure and 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, 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 subdirectories 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 directory, and the Right key to move to a child directory. Only the parent, sibling and children directories are shown, others are left out. The tree figure changes dynamically as you traverse.
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 "File name" input field contains a filename pattern to be searched for. It is interpreted as a shell pattern or as a regular expression depending on the state of the "Using shell patterns" checkbox. An empty value is valid and matches any file name.
The "Content" input field contains a string to search for within the files. Leave this field empty to disable searching file contents.
Option "Whole words" allows select only those files containing matches that form whole words. Like grep -w.
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 additional operations on them (view, copy, move, delete and so on). To return to the normal file listing, change directory to "..".
The 'Enable ignore directories' checkbox and input field below it allow one to set up the list of directories that should be skip during the search files (for example, you may want to avoid searches on a CD-ROM or on a NFS directory that is mounted across a slow link). List components must be separated with a colon, here is an example:
/cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs
Relative paths are supported also. The following example shows how to skip special directories of version control systems: /cdrom:/nfs/wuarchive:/afs:.svn:.git:CVS
Attention: input field can contain a dot (.), this means the current absolute path.
You may consider using the External panelize command for some operations. Find file command is for simple queries only, while using External panelize you can do as mysterious searches as you would like.
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 panelization 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 }' < /var/log/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. 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.
Edit Extension File This will invoke your editor on the file ~/.config/mc/mc.ext.  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 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 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 background).  You can stop, restart and kill a background job from here.
Edit Menu File 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, ~/.config/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 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 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 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 Panel options command pops up a dialog from which you specify options of file manager panels.
The Confirmation command pops up a dialog from which you specify which actions you want to confirm.
The Appearance command pops up a dialog from which you specify the skin.
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 several groups: "File operation options", "Esc key mode", "Pause after run" and "Other options".
File operation 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, 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.
Classic progressbar.  If this option is enabled, the progressbar of Copy/Move/Delete operations is always grown form left to right. If disabled, the growing direction of progressbar follows to direction of Copy/Move/Delete operation: from left panel to right one and vice versa. Enabled by default.
Mkdir autoname.  When you press F7 to create a new directory, the input line in popup dialog will be filled by name of current file or directory in active panel.  Disabled by default.
Preallocate space.  Preallocate space for whole target file, if possible, before copy operation.  Disabled by default.
Esc key mode.
By default, Midnight Commander treats the Esc key as a key prefix. Therefore, you should press Esc code twice to exit a dialog. But there is a possibility to use a single press of Esc key for that action.
Single press.  By default this option is disabled. If you'll enable it, the Esc key will act as a prefix key for set up time interval (see Timeout option below), and if no extra keys have arrived, then the Esc key is interpreted as a cancel key (Esc Esc).
Timeout.  This options is used to setup the time interval (in microseconds) for single press of Esc key. By default, this interval is one second (1000000 microseconds). Also the timeout can be set via KEYBOARD_KEY_TIMEOUT_US environment variable (also in microseconds), which has higher priority than Timeout option value.
Pause after run
After executing your commands, Midnight Commander can pause, so that you can examine the output of the command.  There are three possible 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.
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 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.
Ask new file name.  If this option is enabled, file name is asked before open new file in editor.
Auto menus.  If this option is enabled, the user menu will be invoked at startup.  Useful for building menus for non-unixers.
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.
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).
Complete: show all.  By default, 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.
Cd follows links.  This option, if set, causes 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, 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.
Safe overwrite.  If this option is enabled, overwriting files unintentionally becomes more difficult.  The default selection in the overwrite confirmation dialog changes from Yes to No.  This option is disabled by default.
Auto save setup.  If this option is enabled, when you exit Midnight Commander, the configurable options of Midnight Commander are saved in the ~/.config/mc/ini file.
Layout The layout dialog gives you a possibility to change the general layout of screen. The options in this dialog are divided into several groups: "Panel split", "Console output" and "Other options".
Panel split
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. Panel layout can be changed using Alt-, (Alt-comma) shortcut.
Equal split.  By default, panels have equal sizes. Using this option you can specify an unequal split.
On the Linux or FreeBSD console you can specify how many lines are shown in the output window. This option is available if Midnight Commander runs on native console only.
Menu bar visible.  If enabled, main menu of Midnight Commander is always visible on the top row of screen above panels. Enabled by default.
Command prompt.  If enabled, command line is available. Enabled by default.
Keybar visible.  If enabled, 10 labels associated with F1-F10 keys are located at the bottom row of screen. Enabled by default.
Hintbar visible.  If enabled, the one-line hints are visible below panels. Enabled by default.
XTerm window title.  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 this option.  Enabled by default.
Show free space.  If enabled, free space and total space of current file system is shown at the bottom frame of panel. Enabled by default.
Panel options Main panel options
Show mini-status.  If enabled, one line of status information about the currently selected item is shown at the bottom of the panels. Enabled by default.
Use SI size units.  If this option is enabled, Midnight Commander will use SI prefixes (base 10) when displaying any byte sizes. If disabled (default), Midnight Commander will use IEC prefixes (base 2).
Mix all files.  If this option is enabled, all files and directories are shown mixed together.  If the option is disabled (default), directories (and links to directories) are shown at the beginning of the listing, and other files below.
Show backup files.  If enabled, Midnight Commander will show files ending with a tilde.  Otherwise, they won't be shown (like GNU's ls option -B). Enabled by default.
Show hidden files.  If enabled, Midnight Commander will show all files that start with a dot (like ls -a). Disabled by default.
Fast directory reload.  If this option is enabled, 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). Disabled by default.
Mark moves down.  If enabled, the selection bar will move down when you mark a file (with Insert key). Enabled by default.
Reverse files only.  Allow revert selection of files only. Enabled by default.  If enabled, the reverse selection is applied to files only, not to directories.  The selection of directories is untouched. If off, the reverse selection is applied to files as well to directories: all unselected items become selected, and vice versa.
Simple swap.  If both panels contain file listing, simple swap means that panels exchange its screen positions: left panel become right one, and vice versa. If this option is unchecked, file listing panels exchange its content keeping listing format and sort options. Unchecked by default.
Auto save panels setup.  If this option is enabled, when you exit Midnight Commander, the current settings of panels are saved in the ~/.config/mc/panels.ini file.  Disabled by default.
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.
Page scrolling.  If set (the default), panel will scroll by half the display when the cursor reaches the end or the beginning of the panel, otherwise it will just scroll a file at a time.
Center scrolling.  If set, panel will scroll when the cursor reaches the middle of the panel column, only hitting the top or bottom of the panel when actually on the first or last file. This behavior applies when scrolling one file at a time, and does not apply to the page up/down keys.
Mouse page scrolling.  Controls whenever scrolling with the mouse wheel is done by pages or line by line on the panels.
File highlight
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, file names are colored according to rules described in /etc/mc/filehighlight.ini file. See Filenames Highlight for more info.
You can specify how the Quick search mode should work: case insensitively, case sensitively or be matched to the panel sort order: case sensitive or not.
Confirmation In this dialog you configure the confirmation options for file deletion, overwriting files, execution by pressing enter, quitting the program, directory hotlist entries deletion and history cleanup.
Appearance In this dialog you can select the skin to be used and enable shadow for dialogs and drop down menus.
See the Skins section for technical details about the skin definition files.
Shadows.  If this option is enabled, all dialogs and drop down menus will have a shadow.
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 [terminal:TERM] section of your ~/.config/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.
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), 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 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 then re-enter it later. Since decompression is slow, 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, Midnight Commander tries to load initialization information from the ~/.config/mc/ini file.  If this file doesn't exist, the system-wide file /etc/mc/mc.ini is used. If this file doesn't exist, the system-wide file /usr/share/mc/mc.ini is used. If this file doesn't exist, MC uses the default settings.
The Save Setup command creates the ~/.config/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 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, Midnight Commander checks the extension of the selected file against the extensions 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 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 substituted 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 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 In file manager user menu: the current file name in selected panel.  In mcedit user menu: the name of opened file.
%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 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, ash (BusyBox and Debian), tcsh, zsh and fish.
When the subshell support is active, 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 variables, use shell functions and define aliases that are valid until you quit Midnight Commander.
bash users may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/bashrc (fallback ~/.bashrc) and special keyboard maps in ~/.local/share/mc/inputrc (fallback ~/.inputrc).
ash/dash users (BusyBox or Debian) may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/ashrc (fallback ~/.profile).
zsh users may specify startup commands in ~/.local/share/mc/.zshrc (fallback ~/.zshrc).
tcsh, fish users cannot specify mc-specific startup commands at present. They have to rely on shell-specific startup files.
The following paragraphs are relevant only when the subshell support is active:
You can suspend applications at any time with the sequence C-o and jump back to Midnight Commander, if you interrupt an application, you will not be able to run other external commands until you quit the application you interrupted.
The basic prompt displayed by Midnight Commander is of the form "user@host:current_path$ ". When using a capable shell, like Bash, the prompt displayed by Midnight Commander will be the same prompt that you are currently using in your shell.
(There's a known problem when using fish: the prompt is displayed only in full screen mode (Ctrl-o), not when the panels are visible.)
The OPTIONS section has more information on how you can control subshell usage (-U/-u).  Furthermore, to set a specific subshell different from your current SHELL variable or login shell defined in /etc/passwd, you may call MC like this: SHELL=/bin/myshell mc
Chmod The Chmod window is used to change the attribute bits in a group of files and directories.  It can be invoked with the C-x c key combination.
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.
Chattr The Chattr window is used to change the attributes of a group of files and directories on a Linux file system. It can be invoked with the C-x e key combination.
Not all attributes are supported or utilized by all filesystems.  List of available attribute flags is represented as a set of check buttons which correspond to the attribute flags (see chattr(1) for details). As you change the attribute flags, you can see the symbolic value change below file name.
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.
To set the attributes, use the Enter key.
When working with a group of files or directories, you just click on the flags you want to set or clear. Once you have selected the flags you want to change, you select one of the action buttons (Set marked or Clear marked).
[Marked all] set only marked attributes to all selected files.
[Set marked] set marked flags in attributes of all selected files.
[Clean marked] clear marked flags in attributes of all selected files.
[Set] set the attributes of one file.
[Cancel] cancel the Chattr command.
File Operations When you copy, move or delete files, 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 button will abort the whole operation, the rest of the files are skipped.
There are three other dialogs which you can run into during the file operations.
The error dialog informs about error conditions and has three choices. Normally you select either the 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.