HOWTO brief mc howto

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Rava
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HOWTO brief mc howto

Post#1 by Rava » 29 May 2018, 07:01

mc ....... to start Midnight Commander (edit/copy/move/create/delete files)
As personal request a short HOWTO mc.

To me mc was always intuitive.
AFAIK its build after the old SM-DOS Norton Commander.

Just start it via mc or its editor as standalone with mcedit.
The editor is neat cause it is supporting the mouse for copy and paste, and I usually use it more than busybox vi. (In my old days of Linux I was a vim guy, not an emacs one.)

Sadly, there are in every new Porteus a few changes I have to make for mc and mcedit and save both in ~/.config/mc/ini

That is: exiting mc without its nagging about, and exiting mcedit and saving files with mcedit, also without nagging.
mcedit click menu / options (the menu pops out with either pressing F9, or when you mouse-click the top panel) / General
You then get the Editor options window.
[ ] Confirm before saving

In mc, go to menu / Options / Confirmations
[ ] Exit


Cave!
Please know that when you do these changes and want to save the mc ini file, that an already different started mc or mcedit on another VT (virtual terminal) or xterm will overwrite these settings.
This is true for all settings you might want to change into a rootcopy or local-settings.xzm.


You can also start mc by giving it two parameters that are the folders for both panels, e.g.
mc "~/.moonchild productions/pale moon/" "/where-ever/porteus/rootcopy/home/guest/.moonchild productions/pale moon/"
or
mc ~/.moonchild\ productions/pale\ moon/ /where-ever/porteus/rootcopy/home/guest/.moonchild\ productions/pale\ moon/


Sadly, the first given parameter is not alwayys used as the left panel, and the 2nd as the right.
I switch panels so that the left is always the source, and the right the target when it comes to copying.


Ctrl+o switches the mc window on and off, just try it out, switched off it looks like you have only a shell running, but its a shell started by mc.


At the bottom of mc you see this line
1Help 2Menu 3View 4Edit 5Copy 6RenMov 7Mkdir 8Delete 9PullDn10Quit

and in mcedit you see this one:
1Help 2Save 3Mark 4Replac 5Copy 6Move 7Search 8Delete 9PullDn10Quit

These are the main commands, and 1 stands for F1, 9 for F9, et cetera.


All other menu entries that have keyboard shortcuts are also listed, Compare directories e.g. uses Ctrl-x, d, meaning press first CTRL-x, release both keys, after that press "c" for "compare"

The line just above the F-keys line in mc, starting e.g. with "guest@porteus:~$ " is also a shell, you can easily rename files using that line like so:

Type "mv " and then select the file to be renamed in the right or left panel, and then just press Ctrl+Enter and the file name gets inserted into the one-line-CLI. Pressing once "space" and Ctrl+Enter again inserts the same name, and then you can easily edit the 2nd name by using the right or left cursor keys. When finished, press [enter] to execute the renaming.
You can use the Ctrl+Enter to add any file or folder name into that shell, and use any program to work on that file or folder, mv was just one simple example.


In mc's right and left file viwer panel / sub window you see at the top right of each panel the [^] area. Mouse-Click it and a history will pop up, showing you the last folders you visited in either the right or the left panel.


The ".n" at the left of the "Name │ Size │ Modify time" lines stand for "sort by name", just mouse-click ".n" and it switches to "'n", meaning "sort by name, reverse".
You can also click Name, Size or Modify time and its sorts accordingly, clicking the same field changes form normal to reverse, and back to normal.


Cave! Know that mc remembers this setting! When you change one or both panels to something else than ".n" aka "sort by name", and you exit mc, then all other started mc, on the very VT or xterm you are in, and on other VTs or xterms as well, all of these will display the panel in the previously selected sorting way.


To get even more options with sorting, Go to menu /
or
, depending on which panel you want to change / Sort Order

Code: Select all

┌─────────────── Sort order ────────────────┐
│ ( ) Unsorted         [ ] Executable first │
│ (*) Name             [x] Case sensitive   │
│ ( ) Version          [ ] Reverse          │
│ ( ) Extension                             │
│ ( ) Size                                  │
│ ( ) Modify time                           │
│ ( ) Access time                           │
│ ( ) Change time                           │
│ ( ) Inode                                 │
├───────────────────────────────────────────┤
Neat, eh?


Oh, and e.g. F17 stands for Shift-F7. In mcedit F17 is for "search again", e.g. repeat the recent search.

In mc menu Command / user command, these are predefined commands (one could add more, I never did add any, AFAIR), pressing "6" e.g. would "Compress the current subdirectory (tar.xz)"
Just look through the user command window and try out some of the options. (Best do it with files and folders you created in the union or any other area where changing and even deleting files is no issue, I recommend you create a folder and copy some files into that to try out stuff with mc and mcedit)

Also, check out the other menu entries in "
or
", in "File" and "Command"


There are non-literal millions of other options and tricks I could write about, but it should be a short intro only, so I stop for now. Others who think I missed more basic and neat options and functions, please post these in a reply.


Oh, and in Options/Layout I disable "[ ] Hintbar visible", but for folks that are new to mc, you should keep the hint bar open and look at the hints, cause there are indeed some neat gems hidden in these hints.

Update
All hints are available in /usr/share/mc/hints/

(thanks ncmprhnsbl for the heads up on the mc wiki) - the wiki URL: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Midnight_Commander

HTH!
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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Rava
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HOWTO brief mc howto

Post#2 by Rava » 29 May 2018, 07:02

Dunno why it switched to allign text right...
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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HOWTO brief mc howto

Post#3 by tome » 29 May 2018, 21:39

Nice in mc is that it opens/explores archives.
You have mind and feelings. Be wise and clever.

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Rava
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HOWTO brief mc howto

Post#4 by Rava » 29 May 2018, 22:54

tome wrote:
29 May 2018, 21:39
Nice in mc is that it opens/explores archives.
Indeed. We should add exploring xzm archives to that abbility list.
Cheers!
Yours Rava

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