pilot(1)

💖 pilot(1) — the file browser that ate 💖

okay bestie, welcome to pilot(1) from the General Commands Manual, aka the cutest little file system browser you're ever gonna meet. she's giving main character energy and she wants you to know it. 🦋

✨ Name ✨

pilot — a simple file system browser in the style of the Alpine Composer 🎀

✨ Syntax ✨

pilot [ options ] [ directory ]

✨ Description ✨

So like, Pilot is a simple, display-oriented file system browser, right? And she's based on the Alpine message system composer. Which means — just like Alpine — your commands are sitting right there at the bottom of the screen, and you get context-sensitive help whenever you need it. iconic behavior, honestly. 💅

Pilot shows your current working directory up at the top of the screen. The contents of that directory get displayed in columns of file name, file size pairs. Names that are directories are marked with the name (dir) instead of a file size — that's how you know. The parent of the current working directory shows up as the file name .. with a size of (parent dir). And file names that are symbolic links to other files? They display with a file size of --. no cap. ✨

She comes with several basic file manipulation commands, and they are: Delete, Rename, Copy, View, Launch, and Edit. Note that the View and Edit commands only work on text files. By default, View displays files using alpine -F, but it will respect the environment variable PAGER if you've set it. Edit just invokes pico, simple as that. And Launch is the convenient lil way to either execute the selected file or run an application on it. obsessed. 🫶

More specific help is available in pilot's online help — go look, she wrote it herself. 💜

✨ Options ✨

• -a — Display all files, including the ones that start with a period (.). yes, even the sneaky ones. 👀
• -f — Use function keys for commands. heads up bestie, this option is supported only in conjunction with UW Enhanced NCSA telnet.
• -g — Enable "Show Cursor" mode. This causes the cursor to be positioned before the current selection instead of being placed at the lower left of the display.
• -j — Enable the "Goto" command. This enables the command that lets you explicitly tell pilot which directory to visit. so you can just. go there. 💫
• -m — Enable mouse functionality. This only works when pilot is run from within an X Window System xterm window. 🖱️
• -nn — The -nn option enables new mail notification. The n argument is optional, and it specifies how often, in seconds, your mailbox gets checked for new mail. For example, -n60 causes pilot to check for new mail once every minute. The default interval is 180 seconds, while the minimum allowed is 30. (Note: no space between "n" and the number!) 📬
• -o dir — Sets the operating directory. Only files within the specified directory are accessible, and browsing is limited to that specified directory subtree. it's giving ✨containment✨.
• -v — Enable single vertical column display. one column, one vibe. 🌈
• -x — Disable the keymenu at the bottom of the screen. bye keymenu 💀
• -z — Enable ^Z suspension of pilot.
• -q — Termcap or terminfo definition for input escape sequences are used in preference to sequences defined by default. This option is only available if pilot was compiled with the TERMCAP_WINS define turned on.
• -setlocale_ctype — Do setlocale(LC_CTYPE) if available. Default is to not do this setlocale.
• -no_setlocale_collate — Do not do setlocale(LC_COLLATE). Default is to do this setlocale.

lowkey a lot of options but she's worth it, fr fr 😭💖

✨ Authors ✨

Michael Seibel <mikes@cac.washington.edu> 🫶

Copyright 1994-2007 by the University of Washington.

✨ See Also ✨

• alpine(1)
• Source distribution (part of the Alpine Message System):

$Date: 2005/01/14 20:40:14 $

and that's the whole page bestie 🎀 — this was Version 1.1 of pilot(1), with a footer date of 2005/01/14 20:40:14, and honestly? she ate. periodt. 👑💅