mini-commander

Mini Commander is very simplified clone of Midnight Commander for Linux. It even includes viewer and editor.

I would like to call myself an author, but that's not so easy. The majority of the code, including this text itself, was initially written by ChatGPT 4. Newer features were automatically proposed and implemented by GPT-6 Astra.

ChatGPT doesn't generate code with an explicit license attached to it. The code it provides is intended for educational and informational purposes, and users are free to use it as they see fit. So, the license of Mini Commander is GNU GPL v3.

Tomas M slax.org

Features

• Built-in viewer and editor: open files with F3 or edit them with F4, without launching an external program. Save in the editor with F2.
• Editor blocks: press F3, move to the other end, then press F3 again to finish marking. F5 copies the block to the cursor and keeps the original selected; F6 moves it and selects the moved block. F8 deletes the selection. Blocks can span multiple lines; another F3 starts a new selection. Copying or moving inside the selected block leaves the text unchanged. Drag with the left mouse button to select a block without scrolling the view; the cursor follows the drag, and releasing the button fixes the selection. A plain click moves the cursor and clears the existing selection.
• Contextual function keys: the bottom bar follows the active panel, viewer, or editor. F7 searches in the viewer and editor; Shift+F7 finds the next match. Click a labeled button in this bar to invoke the same action as its function key.
• UTF-8 support: view and edit multilingual text, including wide characters and combining accents, with correct cursor movement and deletion. Dialog text fields and the command line accept UTF-8, and panel prefix search supports international file and directory names.
• Syntax highlighting: basic highlighting for C source and headers (.c, .h) and shell scripts (.sh). Files starting with #!/ also receive shell highlighting, even without an extension.
• See invisible characters: by default, tabs appear as <---> in the editor, and trailing spaces appear as dots in the same color. F9 toggles HideTabs / ShowTabs; when hidden, tabs appear as five spaces and trailing spaces as ordinary spaces. Tabs always appear as five spaces in the viewer and remain single characters for editing. The editor marks control characters. Its status line shows the line, column, byte position, file size, and Unicode code point under the cursor.
• Editor save protection: prompts before closing unsaved changes, preserves file ownership and permissions, and edits through symbolic links while keeping the links intact.
• Editor undo: Ctrl+U restores the previous edit, cursor movement, selection, or viewport position. History is kept in memory without a fixed limit and is released when the editor closes. Movement stores only a small state record; edits retain the bytes they replace. Undoing a saved edit marks the file modified.
• Two independent panels: switch with Tab. Each panel has its own sorting options (F2): name, size, or modification time, in either direction, with directories first or mixed with files.
• Batch file operations: mark items with Insert, then copy (F5), move/rename (F6), or delete (F8). Copying and deleting directories includes their contents. With an empty command line, + selects a mask, - unselects a mask, and * inverts the selection. The default mask * selects or clears all items except .., including directories and dotfiles. Masks support only * and ?, where ? matches one displayed UTF-8 character. Matching is case-sensitive.
• File permissions: press Ctrl+X, release it, then press C to open a Midnight Commander-style chmod dialog. Its 12 checkboxes cover owner, group, and other permissions, plus setuid, setgid, and the sticky bit. Use arrows or Tab to move, Space or a mouse click to toggle, and Enter to apply. Framed Permission and File sections show the settings and file details; blue letters in permission names identify keyboard shortcuts. Enter applies Set by default. Dialogs use Mini Commander's original ASCII frames (+, -, |) and standard buttons, including their usual focus highlighting. The octal mode updates as you edit. Set changes the current file and proceeds to the next marked file; Set all applies the complete mode to all remaining marked files. A changed checkbox gains a *; Insert or T toggles this mark independently (Insert also advances to the next control). Marked all copies only these bits, while Set marked and Clear marked enable or disable them across the remaining marked files, preserving every other bit. Esc or Cancel leaves pending changes unapplied. Directories are changed without recursion; symbolic links change their targets.
• Moves across filesystems: F6 copies when a rename cannot cross a mount boundary, preserves ownership, permissions and timestamps, and removes the source only after the complete copy succeeds. Skipped, failed or aborted copies leave the source intact. Symbolic links and FIFOs are preserved; hard-linked files are copied independently.
• Stable panel positions: refreshing preserves the file under each panel's cursor and its scroll position. Sorting uses a stable merge sort for large lists.
• Create nested directories: F7 accepts a path such as projects/demo/src and creates missing parent directories too.
• Copy progress and controls: see progress for the current file and the whole operation, skip a file, or abort. Error dialogs offer retry and skip options; overwrite prompts can apply a choice to the remaining files.
• Symbolic links and file colors: link targets are displayed and broken links are marked. Executables, selected archive formats, and source files have distinct colors. Copying a symbolic link copies the link itself. Ctrl+X, then S creates a symlink, with editable target and link name; defaults point to the file under the cursor and place the link in the other panel's directory. A relative link name uses the active directory; a relative target is stored literally and resolves from the new link's directory. Existing entries are not overwritten. Ctrl+X, then Ctrl+S edits the target of the symlink under the cursor, including a broken link, and reports an error for other file types. The compact edit dialog has its title in the frame, one line identifying the link, a target field, and OK/Cancel buttons. Editing replaces the link atomically after preparing its replacement; canceling leaves it unchanged. These commands operate on the file under the cursor, regardless of marked files.
• Mouse navigation: select items, double-click to open directories or run executables, and scroll with the wheel in supported terminals. Left dragging moves the panel cursor; right clicking toggles a file's selection like Insert. Right dragging marks or unmarks all crossed rows according to the first item, keeping that choice for the whole drag. A drag stays in the panel where it began. Dialog buttons such as OK, Cancel, Save, or the sorting choices accept left clicks; clicking a text field focuses it and positions the cursor at the clicked character.
• Monochrome mode: run ./mc -b or ./mc --nocolor to disable colors.

Less obvious shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Alt+S, then type	Jump to a filename by its prefix; press Alt+S again while searching for the next match.
Ctrl+Space	Calculate the size of the directory under the cursor, including its contents (with no other items selected).
Alt+Enter	Insert the filename under the cursor literally, followed by a space.
Alt+A	Insert the active panel's directory path literally, with a trailing slash so a filename can be appended.
Alt+P / Alt+N	Previous/next command in the in-memory history; returning past the newest entry restores the unfinished command.
Ctrl+U	Swap the panels, including paths, sorting, selections, cursors and scroll positions; focus follows the original active panel. In the editor, undo.
Ctrl+X, then C	Edit permissions of the marked files, or the file under the cursor, using checkboxes.
Ctrl+X, then S	Create a symbolic link to the file under the cursor; edit its target and name in a dialog.
Ctrl+X, then Ctrl+S	Edit the target of the symlink under the cursor.
Alt+G	Go to a directory entered in a dialog; supports relative paths and ~.
Shift+F5 / Shift+F6 / Shift+F7	Copy, move/rename, or create a directory with the name under the cursor prefilled, without its path. Typing appends to the name; relative targets use the active directory.
Enter	Execute a typed shell command in the active directory; with an empty command line, open a directory or run an executable.
Ctrl+O	Temporarily reveal terminal output; press any key to return to the panels.
Ctrl+R or F9	Refresh both panels.
Ctrl+L	Redraw the screen.

Press Alt+A, then Alt+Enter to insert the full path of the file under the cursor. These shortcuts do not add quotes or escapes; add them manually when needed.

The command line handles a simple cd itself: cd, cd ~, cd .., and quoted or escaped paths change the active panel. Compound shell commands such as cd /tmp && ls execute in a child shell. Start with ./mc /source /destination to open independent initial paths; a single path initializes the left panel.

Usage:

# Debian/Ubuntu build dependencies:
sudo apt-get install build-essential libncursesw5-dev

make
./mc

# Result of compilation is standalone 'mc' binary, it does not need anything else.
# There is no make install because 'mc' would interfere with midnight commander.
# So install it manually, for example copy ./mc to your path if you like

Use a UTF-8 terminal and locale to display international file and directory names correctly, for example LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 ./mc. Both builds use Unicode-capable ncurses (ncursesw), and panel labels are shortened without splitting UTF-8 characters. The viewer, editor, dialog text fields, command line, and panel prefix search support UTF-8, including wide characters and combining accents. Command-line navigation and deletion operate on complete display characters, and horizontal scrolling uses terminal columns. Editor search ignores letter case using the active locale. Files keep their original bytes unless edited; other text encodings are not converted automatically. Complex joined emoji sequences are not treated as a single character. Panel prefix search remains case-sensitive.

For a small, fully static 32-bit x86 binary built with musl and ncurses, run sh static/build.sh. The script uses the source archives in static/sources, downloads any missing dependencies, builds and packs static/mc, and saves linking and size reports. Temporary build files are cleaned up afterwards. See static build instructions.