Some colleagues believed I was some kind of Unix demigod when they were working with SunOS ksh command line and I had my own copy of mc (probably downloaded from Solaris Freeware site or something like that).
There's one powerful thing that mc does and almost any other dual file manager omits: it has the concept of "pop up menus" for commonly used commands --with the option of sending the selected file(s). Also, these menus can be global or local, configured for each specific folder or in my case working copies of some proprietary version control repositories (Subversion was too cool then).
Not only viewing files with F3 instead of using 'more' made you go significantly faster when there was no IDE to quickly grok a codebase, in ancient times where version control and diffing and merging was not exactly like today this was extremely powerful, only surpassed by Emacs.
Edit: to add that in macOS Forklift has something like this in a specific "Tools" section.
I've experimented a lot with making my own CLI programs to change how I interact with the terminal, for example wrapping things like cp and mv in a stateful way. I feel like I'd reached some form of enlightenment when I was able to do
> cp file
> z folder (which is deeply nested somewhere else)
> paste
instead of having to type everything out.
It feels to me like the possibilities of the CLI and how we interact with it have barely been explored.
> There's one powerful thing that mc does and almost any other dual file manager omits: it has the concept of "pop up menus" for commonly used commands
I never really used mc because once I switched to Linux I became an Emacs user but... I have fond memories of Norton Commander on my 386 PC (running DOS, before Windows 95 became a thing). I think Norton Commander was first and mc was a clone of Norton Commander (even copying the color scheme). And Norton Commander, IIRC, already had these "popup menus" (but my memory may be playing me tricks).
I always felt sort of embarassed that I use mc 24/7 for everything. I live in it. It might as well be my login shell. I even use mcedit for about 80% of text editing outside of geany or codeblocks.
I don't have any actual reason to be embarassed, since I'm actually perfectly comfortable in vi and and the command line on some old sco box without mc available, it's got to be just because I started among guys who themselves were even older unix guys who never touched anything like mc. Also it felt kind of like still using training wheels when I had been using xtree on dos before encountering unix. But hell I started on xenix myself and still miss some features from ksh93 vs the latest bash5. I haven't needed to live up to anyone else since forever.
But embarrassed or not, I used it all day every day since the late 90's at work and home. It just makes the most sense to be using essentially a browser for that.
For one thing I simply see more stuff.
In the past, every day at work I'd see random junk left all over the place by other employees who clearly didn't even know that they had created these junk files and directories all over the place from having flubbed the syntax of command lines, or botched quoting or escaping inside programs they were writing. Files with names that looked like various other bits of command syntax from quoting mistakes etc. And still sitting there because if you don't actively ls, then you don't see it. I was constantly cleaning up stuff like that back before we finally went to individual developer vms.
Don't feel bad. It's a much better way of poking around than typing ls, cd etc.
Also, a common usecase for me is having a folder full of files dumped together and I want to move some of them according to arbitrary criteria. Marking them with Insert in MC is so so much less work than typing everything.
Being good at something is also using the right tool for the job. CLIs shine at some things. TUIs and GUIs at others. They're complementary. It's not like one is better than the other.
As something of an old-timer here, there's some amusement, but mostly appreciation that people are discovering that these very old ways of doing things have a lot of potential (and a lot of untapped ideas)
Somewhat relatedly, recently I discovered the colorfully named fff. It's a solid file manager, but what I've used it for is a terminal based filespace navigator (by adding a function that just leaves you in the place you navigated to).
It's funny how it's hard to break the habit of "cd" to move around, despite this being way faster, especially if you're not sure where you're going.
I've been using Marta on the Mac (https://marta.sh) and I really enjoy having a dual-pane file manager with an integrated terminal where navigating the folder hierarchy is synchronised in both directions.
Marta doesn't seem to be actively developed anymore, so if anyone know of a good alternative I am all ears. fman (https:/fman.io) looks nice, but I don't think it has terminal integration.
It's not actively developed, but not abandoned either, if you judge by the closing of issues in the dedicated repository. It's also my file manager of choice (minimalist UI but reasonably featured).
I recently had to use Windows a bit and went back to Total Commander after years on a mac.
It felt amazing. "At last, my arm is complete again" level. I can't believe you could miss a file manager so much. It's one of the greatest tools you can't explain the usage of, you bust have to use it for a week.
Then I discovered that since I last checked a passable Mac clone has appeared.
Nimble Commander (https://magnumbytes.com/) is almost 1:1 in terms of UX and does support the Mac filesystem well. Just be sure to press ^3 Tab ^3 the first time you open it.
I don't often use a file manager, but when I do, I use ranger. It's mostly for use cases like "delete everything in this directory but these 3 files" and navigating deep directory structures with many files. However, recently I've also begun to use a mix of "z" and the "cd" feature/bash-binding of fzf.
I like that ranger allows me to use vim key bindings, which matches nicely the rest of my system which is centered around i3 and vimium.
Ranger is my daily driver, too. It integreates well with the shell as well as Vim usages, as ranger can be used as a file/directory picker.
One thing I regret of it, though, is that it's a Python application. Had it been a light weight, single-binary, application, I could have quickly scp'ed and used it on a remote ssh hosts. Likewise, had it been using async/await, it could have been snappier on directories with a ton of files.
Readit News
There's one powerful thing that mc does and almost any other dual file manager omits: it has the concept of "pop up menus" for commonly used commands --with the option of sending the selected file(s). Also, these menus can be global or local, configured for each specific folder or in my case working copies of some proprietary version control repositories (Subversion was too cool then).
Not only viewing files with F3 instead of using 'more' made you go significantly faster when there was no IDE to quickly grok a codebase, in ancient times where version control and diffing and merging was not exactly like today this was extremely powerful, only surpassed by Emacs.
Edit: to add that in macOS Forklift has something like this in a specific "Tools" section.
> cp file
> z folder (which is deeply nested somewhere else)
> paste
instead of having to type everything out.
It feels to me like the possibilities of the CLI and how we interact with it have barely been explored.
I never really used mc because once I switched to Linux I became an Emacs user but... I have fond memories of Norton Commander on my 386 PC (running DOS, before Windows 95 became a thing). I think Norton Commander was first and mc was a clone of Norton Commander (even copying the color scheme). And Norton Commander, IIRC, already had these "popup menus" (but my memory may be playing me tricks).
I don't have any actual reason to be embarassed, since I'm actually perfectly comfortable in vi and and the command line on some old sco box without mc available, it's got to be just because I started among guys who themselves were even older unix guys who never touched anything like mc. Also it felt kind of like still using training wheels when I had been using xtree on dos before encountering unix. But hell I started on xenix myself and still miss some features from ksh93 vs the latest bash5. I haven't needed to live up to anyone else since forever.
But embarrassed or not, I used it all day every day since the late 90's at work and home. It just makes the most sense to be using essentially a browser for that.
For one thing I simply see more stuff.
In the past, every day at work I'd see random junk left all over the place by other employees who clearly didn't even know that they had created these junk files and directories all over the place from having flubbed the syntax of command lines, or botched quoting or escaping inside programs they were writing. Files with names that looked like various other bits of command syntax from quoting mistakes etc. And still sitting there because if you don't actively ls, then you don't see it. I was constantly cleaning up stuff like that back before we finally went to individual developer vms.
Also, a common usecase for me is having a folder full of files dumped together and I want to move some of them according to arbitrary criteria. Marking them with Insert in MC is so so much less work than typing everything.
Being good at something is also using the right tool for the job. CLIs shine at some things. TUIs and GUIs at others. They're complementary. It's not like one is better than the other.
Somewhat relatedly, recently I discovered the colorfully named fff. It's a solid file manager, but what I've used it for is a terminal based filespace navigator (by adding a function that just leaves you in the place you navigated to).
It's funny how it's hard to break the habit of "cd" to move around, despite this being way faster, especially if you're not sure where you're going.
https://github.com/dylanaraps/fff
Marta doesn't seem to be actively developed anymore, so if anyone know of a good alternative I am all ears. fman (https:/fman.io) looks nice, but I don't think it has terminal integration.
Use Midnight Commander like a pro - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27086555 - May 2021 (1 comment)
Use Midnight Commander like a pro - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9472409 - May 2015 (11 comments)
It felt amazing. "At last, my arm is complete again" level. I can't believe you could miss a file manager so much. It's one of the greatest tools you can't explain the usage of, you bust have to use it for a week.
Then I discovered that since I last checked a passable Mac clone has appeared. Nimble Commander (https://magnumbytes.com/) is almost 1:1 in terms of UX and does support the Mac filesystem well. Just be sure to press ^3 Tab ^3 the first time you open it.
I like that ranger allows me to use vim key bindings, which matches nicely the rest of my system which is centered around i3 and vimium.
One thing I regret of it, though, is that it's a Python application. Had it been a light weight, single-binary, application, I could have quickly scp'ed and used it on a remote ssh hosts. Likewise, had it been using async/await, it could have been snappier on directories with a ton of files.
It's now available on macOS and Linux.
https://doublecommander.com/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/doublecmd/files/latest/down...