Changing the Listing Format in MC

Listing Mode allows you to change how your directory is displayed. Brief: shows contents in two columns on that pane. Full: gives a standard view. Long: shows permissions, ownership and long file names in full, but removes the other pane to make space. You can also cycle through these views by using Alt - t.
 

In Listing Mode, tick "User Mini Status" which will handily display the permissions of the presently highlighted file or directory within the separate line at the bottom of the panel.

Changing the Listing Format

The directory listing can be displayed in several different formats. Pressing Alt-t cycles through them. There is a dual column format, a format resembling the output of ls -l called full (single column on the screen)  and custom, where you can define fields to be displayed (press F1 to see proper name when you at this tab).

There is also an "information mode." This will display detailed file system information in the other panel about the selected item in the current panel. To invoke this mode, type Ctrl-x i. To return the other panel to its normal state, type Ctrl-x i again.

Listing Mode

The listing mode view is used to display a listing of files, there are four different listing modes available: Full, Brief, Long and User. The full directory view shows the file name, the size of the file and the modification time.

The brief view shows only the file name and it has two columns (therefore showing twice as many files as other views). The long view is similar to the output of ls -l command. The long view takes the whole screen width.

If you choose the User display format, then you have to specify the display format.

The user display format must start with a panel size specifier. This may be half or full, and they specify a half screen panel and a full screen panel respectively.

After the panel size, you may specify the two columns mode on the panel, this is done by adding the number 2 to the user format string.

After this you add the name of the fields with an optional size specifier. This are the available fields you may display:

name

displays the file name.

size

displays the file size.

type

displays a one character field type. This character is a superset of what is displayed by ls with the -F flag. An asterisk for executable files, a slash for directories, an at-sign for links, an equal sign for sockets, a hyphen for character devices, a plus sign for block devices, a pipe for fifos, a tilde for symbolic links to directories and an exclamation mark for stalled symlinks (links that point nowhere).

mtime

file's last modification time.

atime

file's last access time.

ctime

file's creation time.

perm

a string representing the current permission bits of the file.

mode

an octal value with the current permission bits of the file.

nlink

the number of links to the file.

ngid

the GID (numeric).

nuid

the UID (numeric).

owner

the owner of the file.

group

the group of the file.

inode

the inode of the file.

Also you may use these field names for arranging the display:

space

a space in the display format.

mark

An asterisk if the file is tagged, a space if it's not.

|

This character is used to add a vertical line to the display format.

To force one field to a fixed size (a size specifier), you just add a : and then the number of characters you want the field to have, if the number is followed by the symbol +, then the size specifies the minimum field size, if the program finds out that there is more space on the screen, it will then expand this field.

For example, the Full display corresponds to this format:

half type,name,|,size,|,mtime

And the Long display corresponds to this format:

full perm,space,nlink,space,owner,space,group,space,
     size,space,mtime,space,name

This is a nice user display format:

half name,|,size:7,|,type,mode:3

Panels may also be set to the following modes:

Info

The info view display information related to the currently selected file and if possible information about the current file system.

Tree

The tree view is quite similar to the directory tree feature. See the section about it for more information.

Quick View

In this mode, the panel will switch to a reduced viewer that displays the contents of the currently selected file, if you select the panel (with the tab key or the mouse), you will have access to the usual viewer commands.

NEWS CONTENTS

• 190728 : How can I set the default (user defined) listing mode in Midnight Commander? ( How can I set the default (user defined) listing mode in Midnight Commander?, )
• 190728 : mc - Midnight Commander file size format ( Unix & Linux Stack Exchange )

Old News ;-)

How can I set the default (user defined) listing mode in Midnight Commander?

I defined my own listing mode and I'd like to make it permanent so that on the next mc start my defined listing mode will be set. I found no configuration file for mc.

mc

share|improve this question

asked Jul 14 '16 at 11:51 papaiatis 1262

1 Answer 1

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You have probably Auto save setup turned off in Options->Configuration menu. You can save the configuration manually by Options->Save setup. Panels setup is saved to ~/.config/mc/panels.ini

mc - Midnight Commander file size format

Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

You can adjust the displayed digits with the column size option, see the "Listing mode" section in the manual. The file to edit is ~/.config/mc/panels.ini.

To list the file sizes as K, M or G use a narrow size column using the user_format key:

[New Left Panel]
user_format=half type name mark size:4 space mtime

If you want the size without abbreviation, reserve enough space for it:

[New Right Panel]
user_format=half type name mark size:16 space mtime

May 23 '13 at 16:55

Marco

21.8k56897 but this will not display the filesize as: 123,456,789 – user1968963 May 23 '13 at 17:01

You didn't exactly specify what you want, you said "nicely formatted". What is wrong with this, is it the missing comma? – Marco May 23 '13 at 17:23

Yes, 123,456,789 is what I would like to have – user1968963 May 23 '13 at 17:43

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