NAME¶
mcedit - Internal file editor of GNU Midnight Commander.
USAGE¶
mcedit [-bcCdfhstVx?] [+lineno] [file1] [file2] ...
mcedit [-bcCdfhstVx?] file1:lineno[:] file2:lineno[:] ...
DESCRIPTION¶
mcedit is a link to
mc, the main GNU Midnight Commander executable.
Executing GNU Midnight Commander under this name requests staring the internal
editor and opening files specified on the command line. The editor is based on
the terminal version of
cooledit - standalone editor for X Window
System.
OPTIONS¶
- +lineno
- Go to the line specified by number (do not put a space between the
+ sign and the number). Several line numbers are allowed but the
last one will be actual and it will be applied to the first file
only.
- -b
- Force black and white display.
- -c
- Force ANSI color mode on terminals that don't seem to have color
support.
- -C
<keyword>=<fgcolor>,<bgcolor>,<attributes>:<keyword>=
...
- Specify a different color set. See the Colors section in mc(1) for
more information.
- -d
- Disable mouse support.
- -f
- Display the compiled-in search path for GNU Midnight Commander data
files.
- -t
- Force using termcap database instead of terminfo. This option is only
applicable if GNU Midnight Commander was compiled with S-Lang library with
terminfo support.
- -V
- Display the version of the program.
- -x
- Force xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable terminals (two screen
modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
FEATURES¶
The internal file editor is a full-featured windowed editor. It can edit several
files at the same time. Maximim size of each file is 64 megabytes. It is
possible to edit binary files. The features it presently supports are: block
copy, move, delete, cut, paste; key for key undo; pull-down menus; file
insertion; macro commands; regular expression search and replace; shift-arrow
text highlighting (if supported by the terminal); insert-overwrite toggle;
autoindent; tunable tab size; syntax highlighting for various file types; and
an option to pipe text blocks through shell commands like indent and ispell.
Each file is opened in its own window in full-screen mode. Window control in
mcedit is similar to the window control in other multi-window program: double
click on window title maximizes the window to full-screen or restores window
size and position; left-click on window title and mouse drag moves the window
in editor area; left-click on low-right frame corner and mouse drag resizes
the window. These actions can be made using "Window" menu.
KEYS¶
The editor is easy to use and can be used without learning. The pull-down menu
is invoked by pressing F9. You can learn other keys from the menu and from the
button bar labels.
In addition to that, Shift combined with arrows does text highlighting (if
supported by the terminal):
Ctrl-Ins copies to the file
~/.cache/mc/mcedit/mcedit.clip,
Shift-Ins pastes from
~/.cache/mc/mcedit/mcedit.clip,
Shift-Del cuts to
~/.cache/mc/mcedit/mcedit.clip, and
Ctrl-Del deletes highlighted
text. Mouse highlighting also works on some terminals. To use the standard
mouse support provided by your terminal, hold the Shift key. Please note that
the mouse support in the terminal doesn't share the clipboard with
mcedit.
The completion key (usually
Meta-Tab or
Escape Tab) completes the
word under the cursor using the words used in the file.
MACRO¶
To define a macro, press
Ctrl-R and then type out the keys you want to be
executed. Press
Ctrl-R again when finished. The macro can be assigned
to any key by pressing that key. The macro is executed when you press the
assigned key.
The macro commands are stored in section
[editor] it the file
~/.local/share/mc/mc.macros.
External scripts (filters) can be assigned into the any hotkey by edit
mc.macros like following:
[editor]
ctrl-W=ExecuteScript:25;
This means that ctrl-W hotkey initiates the
ExecuteScript(25) action,
then editor handler translates this into execution of
~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/macros.d/macro.25.sh shell script.
External scripts are stored in
~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/macros.d/
directory and must be named as
macro.XXXX.sh where
XXXX is the
number from 0 to 9999. See
Edit Menu File for more detail about format
of the script.
Following macro definition and directives can be used:
- #silent
- If this directive is set, then script starts without interactive
subshell.
- %c
- The cursor column position number.
- %i
- The indent of blank space, equal the cursor column.
- %y
- The syntax type of current file.
- %b
- The block file name.
- %f
- The current file name.
- %n
- Only the current file name without extension.
- %x
- The extension of current file name.
- %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.
Feel free to edit this files, if you need. Here is a sample external script:
l comment selection
TMPFILE=`mktemp ${MC_TMPDIR:-/tmp}/up.XXXXXX` || exit 1
echo #if 0 > $TMPFILE
cat %b >> $TMPFILE
echo #endif >> $TMPFILE
cat $TMPFILE > %b
rm -f $TMPFILE
If some keys don't work, you can use
Learn Keys in the
Options
menu.
CODE NAVIGATION¶
mcedit can be used to navigation through code with tags files created by
etags or ctags commands. If there is no file TAGS code navigation would not
work. In example, in case of exuberant-ctags for C language command will be:
ctags -e --language-force=C -R ./
Meta-Enter show list box to select item under cursor (cusor should stand
at end of word).
Meta-Minus where minus is symbol "-" go to previous function in
navigation list (like a browser Back).
Meta-Equal where equal is symbol "=" go to next function in
navigation list (like a browser Forward).
SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING¶
mcedit supports syntax highlighting. This means that keywords and
contexts (like C comments, string constants, etc) are highlighted in different
colors. The following section explains the format of the file
~/.config/mc/mcedit/Syntax. If this file is missing, system-wide
/usr/share/mc/syntax/Syntax is used. The file
~/.config/mc/mcedit/Syntax is rescanned on opening of a any new editor
file. The file contains rules for highlighting, each of which is given on a
separate line, and define which keywords will be highlighted to what color.
The file is divided into sections, each beginning with a line with the
file command. The sections are normally put into separate files using
the
include command.
The
file command has three arguments. The first argument is a regular
expression that is applied to the file name to determine if the following
section applies to the file. The second argument is the description of the
file type. It is used in
cooledit; future versions of
mcedit may
use it as well. The third optional argument is a regular expression to match
the first line of text of the file. The rules in the following section apply
if either the file name or the first line of text matches.
A section ends with the start of another section. Each section is divided into
contexts, and each context contains rules. A context is a scope within the
text that a particular set of rules belongs to. For instance, the text within
a C style comment (i.e. between
/* and
*/) has its own color.
This is a context, although it has no further rules inside it because there is
probably nothing that we want highlighted within a C comment.
A trivial C programming section might look like this:
file .\*\\.c C\sProgram\sFile (#include|/\\\*)
wholechars abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ_
# default colors
define comment brown
context default
keyword whole if yellow
keyword whole else yellow
keyword whole for yellow
keyword whole while yellow
keyword whole do yellow
keyword whole switch yellow
keyword whole case yellow
keyword whole static yellow
keyword whole extern yellow
keyword { brightcyan
keyword } brightcyan
keyword '*' green
# C comments
context /\* \*/ comment
# C preprocessor directives
context linestart # \n red
keyword \\\n brightred
# C string constants
context " " green
keyword %d brightgreen
keyword %s brightgreen
keyword %c brightgreen
keyword \\" brightgreen
Each context starts with a line of the form:
context [
exclusive]
[
whole|
wholeright|
wholeleft] [
linestart]
delim [
linestart]
delim [
foreground]
[
background] [
attributes]
The first context is an exception. It must start with the command
context default [
foreground] [
background]
[
attributes]
otherwise
mcedit will report an error. The
linestart option
specifies that
delim must start at the beginning of a line. The
whole option tells that
delim must be a whole word. To specify
that a word must begin on the word boundary only on the left side, you can use
the
wholeleft option, and similarly a word that must end on the word
boundary is specified by
wholeright.
The set of characters that constitute a whole word can be changed at any point
in the file with the
wholechars command. The left and right set of
characters can be set separately with
wholechars [
left|
right]
characters
The
exclusive option causes the text between the delimiters to be
highlighted, but not the delimiters themselves.
Each rule is a line of the form:
keyword [
whole|
wholeright|
wholeleft]
[
linestart]
string foreground [
background]
[
attributes]
Context or keyword strings are interpreted, so that you can include tabs and
spaces with the sequences \t and \s. Newlines and backslashes are specified
with \n and \\ respectively. Since whitespace is used as a separator, it may
not be used as is. Also, \* must be used to specify an asterisk. The * itself
is a wildcard that matches any length of characters. For example,
keyword '*' green
colors all C single character constants green. You also could use
keyword "*" green
to color string constants, but the matched string would not be allowed to span
across multiple newlines. The wildcard may be used within context delimiters
as well, but you cannot have a wildcard as the last or first character.
Important to note is the line
keyword \\\n brightgreen
This line defines a keyword containing the backslash and newline characters.
Since the keywords are matched before the context delimiters, this keyword
prevents the context from ending at the end of the lines that end in a
backslash, thus allowing C preprocessor directive to continue across multiple
lines.
The possible colors are: black, gray, red, brightred, green, brightgreen, brown,
yellow, blue, brightblue, magenta, brightmagenta, cyan, brightcyan, lightgray
and white. The special keyword "default" means the terminal's
default. Another special keyword "base" means mc's main colors, it
is useful as a placeholder if you want to specify attributes without modifying
the background color. When 256 colors are available, they can be specified
either as color16 to color255, or as rgb000 to rgb555 and gray0 to gray23.
If the syntax file is shared with
cooledit, it is possible to specify
different colors for
mcedit and
cooledit by separating them with
a slash, e.g.
keyword #include red/Orange
mcedit uses the color before the slash. See cooledit(1) for supported
cooledit colors.
Attributes can be any of bold, underline, reverse and blink, appended by a plus
sign if more than one are desired.
Comments may be put on a separate line starting with the hash sign (#).
If you are describing case insensitive language you need to use
caseinsensitive directive. It should be specified at the beginning of
syntax file.
Because of the simplicity of the implementation, there are a few intricacies
that will not be dealt with correctly but these are a minor irritation. On the
whole, a broad spectrum of quite complicated situations are handled with these
simple rules. It is a good idea to take a look at the syntax file to see some
of the nifty tricks you can do with a little imagination. If you cannot get by
with the rules I have coded, and you think you have a rule that would be
useful, please email me with your request. However, do not ask for regular
expression support, because this is flatly impossible.
A useful hint is to work with as much as possible with the things you can do
rather than try to do things that this implementation cannot deal with. Also
remember that the aim of syntax highlighting is to make programming less prone
to error, not to make code look pretty.
The syntax highlighting can be toggled using Ctrl-s shortcut.
COLORS¶
The default colors may be changed by appending to the
MC_COLOR_TABLE
environment variable. Foreground and background colors pairs may be specified
for example with:
MC_COLOR_TABLE="$MC_COLOR_TABLE:\
editnormal=lightgray,black:\
editbold=yellow,black:\
editmarked=black,cyan"
OPTIONS¶
Most options can now be set from the editors options dialog box. See the
Options menu. The following options are defined in
~/.config/mc/ini and have obvious counterparts in the dialog box. You
can modify them to change the editor behavior, by editing the file. Unless
specified, a 1 sets the option to on, and a 0 sets it to off, as is usual.
- use_internal_edit
- This option is ignored when invoking mcedit.
- editor_tab_spacing
- Interpret the tab character as being of this length. Default is 8. You
should avoid using other than 8 since most other editors and text viewers
assume a tab spacing of 8. Use editor_fake_half_tabs to simulate a
smaller tab spacing.
- editor_fill_tabs_with_spaces
- Never insert a tab space. Rather insert spaces (ascii 20h) to fill to the
desired tab size.
- editor_return_does_auto_indent
- Pressing return will tab across to match the indentation of the first line
above that has text on it.
- editor_backspace_through_tabs
- Make a single backspace delete all the space to the left margin if there
is no text between the cursor and the left margin.
- editor_fake_half_tabs
- This will emulate a half tab for those who want to program with a tab
spacing of 4, but do not want the tab size changed from 8 (so that the
code will be formatted the same when displayed by other programs). When
editing between text and the left margin, moving and tabbing will be as
though a tab space were 4, while actually using spaces and normal tabs for
an optimal fill. When editing anywhere else, a normal tab is
inserted.
- editor_option_save_mode
- Possible values 0, 1 and 2. The save mode (see the options menu also)
allows you to change the method of saving a file. Quick save (0) saves the
file by immediately, truncating the disk file to zero length (i.e. erasing
it) and the writing the editor contents to the file. This method is fast,
but dangerous, since a system error during a file save will leave the file
only partially written, possibly rendering the data irretrievable. When
saving, the safe save (1) option enables creation of a temporary file into
which the file contents are first written. In the event of an problem, the
original file is untouched. When the temporary file is successfully
written, it is renamed to the name of the original file, thus replacing
it. The safest method is create backups (2). Where a backup file is
created before any changes are made. You can specify your own backup file
extension in the dialog. Note that saving twice will replace your backup
as well as your original file.
- editor_word_wrap_line_length
- line length to wrap. 72 default.
- editor_backup_extension
- symbol for add extension to name of backup files. Default
"~".
- editor_line_state
- show state line of editor now it show number of file line (in future it
can show things like folding, breakpoints, etc.). M-n toglle this
option.
- editor_visible_spaces
- Toggle show visible trailing spaces (TWS), if editor_visible_spaces=1 TWS
showed as '.'
- editor_visible_tabs
- Toggle show visible tabs, if editor_visible_tabs=1 tabs showed as
'<---->'
- editor_persistent_selections
- Do not remove block selection after moving the cursor.
- editor_drop_selection_on_copy
- Reset selection after copy to clipboard.
- editor_cursor_beyond_eol
- Allow moving cursor beyond the end of line.
- editor_cursor_after_inserted_block
- Allow moving cursor after inserted block.
- editor_syntax_highlighting
- enable syntax highlighting.
- editor_edit_confirm_save
- show confirm dialog on save.
- editor_option_typewriter_wrap
- to be described
- editor_option_auto_para_formatting
- to be described
- editor_option_save_position
- save file position on exit.
- source_codepage
- symbol representation of codepage name for file (i.e. CP1251, ~ -
default).
- editor_group_undo
- do UNDO for several of the same type of action (inserting/overwriting,
deleting, navigating, typing)
- editor_wordcompletion_collect_entire_file
- Search autocomplete candidates in entire of file or just from begin of
file to cursor position (0)
- spell_language
- Spelling language (en, en-variant_0, ru, etc) installed with aspell
package (a full list can be get using 'aspell' utility). Use
spell_language = NONE to disable aspell support. Default value is
'en'. Option must located in the [Misc] section.
- editor_stop_format_chars
- Set of characters to stop paragraph formatting. If one of those characters
is found in the begin of line, that line and all following lines of
paragraph will be untouched. Default value is "
-+*
\,.;:&
>".
MISCELLANEOUS¶
You can use scanf search and replace to search and replace a C format string.
First take a look at the
sscanf and
sprintf man pages to see
what a format string is and how it works. Here's an example: suppose that you
want to replace all occurrences of an open bracket, three comma separated
numbers, and a close bracket, with the word
apples, the third number,
the word
oranges and then the second number. You would fill in the
Replace dialog box as follows:
Enter search string
(%d,%d,%d)
Enter replace string
apples %d oranges %d
Enter replacement argument order
3,2
The last line specifies that the third and then the second number are to be used
in place of the first and second.
It is advisable to use this feature with Prompt On Replace on, because a match
is thought to be found whenever the number of arguments found matches the
number given, which is not always a real match. Scanf also treats whitespace
as being elastic. Note that the scanf format %[ is very useful for scanning
strings, and whitespace.
The editor also displays non-us characters (160+). When editing binary files,
you should set
display bits to 7 bits in the Midnight Commander options
menu to keep the spacing clean.
FILES¶
/usr/share/mc/mc.hlp
- The help file for the program.
/usr/share/mc/mc.ini
- The default system-wide setup for GNU Midnight Commander, used only if the
user's own ~/.config/mc/ini file is missing.
/usr/share/mc/mc.lib
- Global settings for the Midnight Commander. Settings in this file affect
all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini or not.
/usr/share/mc/syntax/*
- The default system-wide syntax files for mcedit, used only if the
corresponding user's own ~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/ file is missing.
~/.config/mc/ini
- User's own setup. If this file is present then the setup is loaded from
here instead of the system-wide setup file.
~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/
- User's own directory where block commands are processed and saved and
user's own syntax files are located.
LICENSE¶
This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation. See the built-in help of the
Midnight Commander for details on the License and the lack of warranty.
AVAILABILITY¶
The latest version of this program can be found at
http://ftp.midnight-commander.org/.
SEE ALSO¶
cooledit(1),
mc(1),
gpm(1), terminfo(1),
scanf(3).
AUTHORS¶
Paul Sheer (psheer@obsidian.co.za) is the original author of the Midnight
Commander's internal editor.
BUGS¶
Bugs should be reported to
http://www.midnight-commander.org/.