This is version 4 of the Midnight Commander, a free Norton Commander Clone with many useful features. The Midnight Commander comes with mouse support on xterms and optionally on the Linux console.

The Midnight Commander is a directory browsing tool which bears a certain remote resemblance to John Socha's Norton Commander for DOS.It is feature packed:

o Built in Virtual File System: manipulate remote files systems through the ftp protocol or Midnight Commander's own mcfs protocol. Browse tar, compressed tar files, rpm, zip, cpio, lha and rar files with a single click.
o All of the Midnight Commander operations work with the virtual file system, enabling you to do complex tasks.
o Mouse support on the Linux console and under X11's xterms.
o Learn Keys: The Midnight Commander may be configured at run time to support any kind of input keys for a given terminal, making its operation even on the most wierd terminals a breeze.
o Text and hex editors are available for you to use.
o Hotlist allows you to keep a list of common visited locations (including ftp sites).
o Command completion: By pressing Alt-Tab in any place where a filename or an executable are expected, the Midnight Commander will complete for you the name. If you quickly press Alt-Tab twice you can get a listbox with the possible completions available.
o Subshell support: Run your commands by a real shell interpreter. The Midnight Commander interacts with bash, tcsh and zsh to provide you with all of the facilities available in your shell.
o Find file command can now search inside the contents of files.
o Background operations allows you to copy or move files from any virtual file system while you do other tasks (ie, you can do background ftp copies).
o Proxy support with our ftpfs. o Linux file recovery: If you are using Linux system, you can recover deleted files from an ext2fs partition with the undelete file system. This is a low level file recovery function that will recover files deleted by any program in Linux. Please note that the undelete file system can only recover 12 file system blocks if the file was deleted with a kernel in the 2.0.x series. The 2.1.x series have fixed this and you can recover all of the file contents there.
o External panelization: You can run any arbitrary external command and the Midnight Commander will display the output generated as a file listing that can be manipulated as a regular directory.
o Emacs like key bindings in all of our widgets. o Powerfull context dependant actions are available.
o Powerfull built-in file viewer: The file viewer, together with the context dependant actions is used to format man pages on the fly, coloring mail messages and more.

Midnight Commander editions:
The Midnight Commander may be compiled into three different editions: the text mode edition, the Tk edition and the XView edition. Please note that currently the only supported edition is the text mode edition. The Tk and XView editions are included with the tar file but are not finished and thus not supported.

Where to get more information:
There is a mailing list for discussion on enhancing the program, future directions and announcements; if you want to subscribe, send mail to: majordomo@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx There is a WWW page for the Midnight Commander with the URL:.

The Midnight Commander:
The Midnight Commander is released under the GNU General Public License version 2.0 or any later version. A copy of the file is included with this distribution package. If you have comments, you can send them to me: miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx or if it would benefit more people, to the mailing list: mc@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx Help develop and enhance free software.

Mini-documentation:
o Use the F-Keys for invoking the commands in the function key bar. If your terminal doesn't support F-keys, you can use the sequence to invoke the corresponding F-digit key.
o Tab changes the current panel.
o All input lines have emacs-like key-bindings (command history is accessed through the M-p and M-n keys).
o The panels accept C-n, C-p for browsing the panel (like in emacs).
o M-Enter copies the currently selected file name to the input line.
o M-Tab completes the current word (or tries to).
o The Virtual File System is a cute addition to the project, you may browse in tar and compressed tar files as well as browsing remote machines with the mcfs file system.
o Please read the manual page. o Read the file src/TODO for the current projects. You can access the whole documentation online with the F1 key, although it's not as nice as the groff printed manual page :-)

Where you may obtain the Midnight Commander
The software should be available by anonymous ftp at sunsite.unc.edu in the directory /pub/Linux/utils/file and at ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in the directory /linux/local. The last alpha versions are available at ftp.nuclecu.unam.mx in the directory /linux/local/devel. European mirrors of both version 3.1 and alpha versions are available at sunsite.mff.cuni.cz in the directory /GNU/mc and at ftp.teuto.de in the directory /lmb/mc.

Reporting problems
Please, send a detailed description of your problem to the mc-bugs@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx address. Include the version of the program, the operating system that you are using, the compiler and compiler flags used to compile the program (if you know them), what kind of distribution you are using (if a GNU/Linux system). If the program crashed and produces a core dump, please provide a stack trace of the program. You can do this by running dbx or gdb like this: gdb mc core (gdb) where