GNU Midnight Commander (also known as mc, the command used to start it, and as mouseless commander in older versions) is a free

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

orthodox file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...

. It was started by

Miguel de Icaza Miguel de Icaza (born November 23, 1972) is a Mexican programmer, best known for starting the GNOME, Mono, and Xamarin projects. Biography Early years De Icaza was born in Mexico City and studied Mathematics at the National Autonomous University ...

in 1994 as a clone of the then-popular

Norton Commander Norton Commander (NC) is a discontinued prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing (later acquired in 1990 by the Symantec corporation). NC provides a text-based user interface for ...

. GNU Midnight Commander is part of the

GNU project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborat ...

and is licensed under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

Design

Midnight Commander is a

console application A console application is a computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a text terminal, the command-line interface of some operating systems (Unix, DOS, etc.) or the text-based interface included with most gr ...

with a

text user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

. The main interface consists of two panels which display the file system. File selection is done using arrow keys, the insert key is used to select files and the

function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, function ...

s perform operations such as renaming, editing and copying files. Later versions of the Midnight Commander additionally have mouse support. Such versions are aware of GPM and X terminal emulators (such as

GNOME Terminal GNOME Terminal is a terminal emulator for the GNOME desktop environment written by Havoc Pennington and others. Terminal emulators allow users to access a UNIX shell while remaining on their graphical desktop. Features GNOME Terminal (gnome-term ...

xterm In computing, xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. It allows users to run programs which require a command-line interface. If no particular program is specified, xterm runs the user's shell. An X display can sho ...

) which support mouse reporting. When running inside an X terminal, these versions can update the name of the window in which Midnight Commander runs (if allowed by the terminal emulator). Midnight Commander's features include the ability to view the contents of

RPM Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

package files, to work with common archive formats as if they were simply another directory, and to function as an

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

FISH Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

client. Midnight Commander also includes an editor called mcedit, which can be executed as a standalone program or from Midnight Commander using the F4 key. mcedit's features include

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...

for many languages, macros, code snippets, simple integration with external tools, automatic indentation, mouse support, a clipboard and the ability to work in both

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

and hex modes. Users also have the option to replace mcedit with the editor of their choice (Options Menu>Configuration> on'tUse Internal Edit). Midnight Commander can also rename groups of files, unlike a number of other

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...

s that can only rename one file at a time. This is convenient for manipulating large collections of files, e.g. to make them conform to a new

naming convention A naming convention is a convention (generally agreed scheme) for naming things. Conventions differ in their intents, which may include to: * Allow useful information to be deduced from the names based on regularities. For instance, in Manhatta ...

. Midnight Commander can also move files to a different

directory Directory may refer to: * Directory (computing), or folder, a file system structure in which to store computer files * Directory (OpenVMS command) * Directory service, a software application for organizing information about a computer network's u ...

at the same time as it renames them. It lets the user specify the original and resulting file names using

wildcard character In software, a wildcard character is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character, such as an asterisk (), which can be interpreted as a number of literal characters or an empty string. It is often used in file searches so the full na ...

s. This makes the power of

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

s available for renaming files, with a convenient user interface. In addition, the user can select whether or not to use "

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

patterns" or " globs" (automatic grouping of wildcards). All of these features are available by using the File > Rename/Move menu selection. (Pressing F1 would then produce a brief explanation of the options, including examples of how to use wildcards.) Midnight Commander is based on versatile text interfaces, such as

Ncurses ncurses (new curses) is a programming library providing an application programming interface (API) that allows the programmer to write text-based user interfaces (TUI) in a terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing "GUI-like" ...

or S-Lang, which allow it to work on a regular console, inside an X terminal, over

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

connections, over an

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such ...

interface (for embedded devices) and all kinds of remote shells.

Unicode support

Native support for

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of ...

locales for

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

was added in 2009 to development versions of Midnight Commander. As of version 4.7.0, mc has had Unicode support.Wiederbelebt: Midnight Commander 4.7
By Marcel Hilzinger, 29.12.2009,Linux-Magazin

References

External links

*
Official page on GNU.org
* The Midnight Commander for win32
– Legacy distribution for Microsoft Windows
The Midnight Commander for Mac OS X
– Universal Binaries from the official sources--> {{GNU Free file managers Free FTP clients Files transferred over shell clients GNU Project software Orthodox file managers Software that uses S-Lang Software that uses ncurses Linux file system-related software Unix file system-related software File managers for Microsoft Windows Console applications

Design

Unicode support

See also

References

External links