MCVIEW(1)

📦
version 4.8.33 · 8 versions
, in alpine 3.22, alpine 3.23, alpine 3.24, arch rolling, debian trixie, fedora 43, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

MCVIEW(1) — the internal file viewer of GNU Midnight Commander 👑

okay bestie, so this one lives in the GNU Midnight Commander family (that's the mc crew, and mcview is literally a link to the main mc executable). Run it under this name and you're basically telling Midnight Commander: "don't open the file browser, open the internal viewer and show me the file I just handed you." Main character energy only. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mcview [-bcCdfhstVx?] file

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

mcview is a link to mc, the main GNU Midnight Commander executable. Executing GNU Midnight Commander under this name requests starting the internal viewer and opening the file specified on the command line.

So yeah — same binary, different vibe check. 🦋

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -b — Force black and white display. No color, just vibes.
  • -c — Force color mode on terminals where mcview defaults to black and white.
  • -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. (Mouse girlies, look away 😭)
  • -f — Display the compiled-in search paths for Midnight Commander files.
  • -t — Used only if the code was compiled with S-Lang and terminfo: it makes Midnight Commander use the value of the TERMCAP variable for the terminal information instead of the information on the system wide terminal database.
  • -V — Displays the version of the program.
  • -x — Forces xterm mode. Used when running on xterm-capable terminals (two screen modes, and able to send mouse escape sequences).
Heads up bestie: the synopsis also lists -h, -s and -? in the flag bundle, but they don't get their own little write-up down here. Just so you're not out here thinking you missed a paragraph. 🫶

🌈 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:\
normal=lightgray,black:\
selected=black,green"

Look at that colon-splicing, it's giving custom palette icon 💅✨

🦋 FILES 🦋

  • /usr/share/mc/help/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 Midnight Commander. Settings in this file affect all users, whether they have ~/.config/mc/ini or not.
  • ~/.config/mc/ini — User's own setup. If this file is present, the setup is loaded from here instead of the system-wide startup file.

👑 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 Midnight Commander for details on the License and the lack of warranty.

"lack of warranty" — she said it, not me. fr fr. 💀

⭐ AVAILABILITY ⭐

The latest version of this program can be found at http://ftp.midnight-commander.org/.

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

mc(1), mcedit(1)

🙈 BUGS 🙈

Bugs should be reported to https://www.midnight-commander.org/.

and that's the whole page, bestie — no cap, every flag, every file path, every env var, all of it preserved and slaying.

signing off with love from MC Version 4.8.33, dated January 2025 — this is MCVIEW(1), and she ate. 💖✨🎀🦋

📦 where this page comes from