The internal file viewer provides two display modes: ASCII and hex. To toggle between modes, use the F4 key.
The viewer will try to use the best method provided by your system or the file type to display the information. Some character sequences, which appear most often in preformatted manual pages, are displayed bold and underlined, thus making a pretty display of your files.
When in hex mode, the search function accepts text in quotes and constant numbers. Text in quotes is matched exactly after removing the quotes. Each number matches one byte. You can mix quoted text with constants like this:
"String" -1 0xBB 012 "more text"Note that 012 is an octal number. -1 is converted to 0xFF.
Here is a listing of the actions associated with each key that the Midnight Commander handles in the internal file viewer.
F1 Invoke the built-in hypertext help viewer.
F2 Toggle the wrap mode.
F4 Toggle the hex mode.
F5 Goto line. This will prompt you for a line number and will display that line.
F6, /. Regular expression search.
?, Reverse regular expression search.
F7 Normal search / hex mode search.
C-s, F17, n. Start normal search if there was no previous search expression else find next match.
C-r. Start reverse search if there was no previous search expression else find next match.
F8 Toggle Raw/Parsed mode: This will show the file as found on disk or if a processing filter has been specified in the mc.ext file, then the output from the filter. Current mode is always the other than written on the button label, since on the button is the mode which you enter by that key.
F9 Toggle the format/unformat mode: when format mode is on the viewer will interpret some string sequences to show bold and underline with different colors. Also, on button label is the other mode than current.
F10, Esc. Exit the internal file viewer.
next-page, space, C-v. Scroll one page forward.
prev-page, Alt-v, C-b, backspace. Scroll one page backward.
down-key Scroll one line forward.
up-key Scroll one line backward.
C-l Refresh the screen.
C-o Switch to the subshell and show the command screen.
! Like C-o, but run a new shell if the subshell is not running.
[n] m Set the mark n.
[n] r Jump to the mark n.
C-f Jump to the next file.
C-b Jump to the previous file.
Alt-r Toggle the ruler.
Alt-e to change charset of displayed text may use M-e (Alt-e). Recoding is made from selected codepage into system codepage. To cancel the recoding you may select "<No translation>" in charset selection dialog.
It's possible to instruct the file viewer how to display a file, look at the Extension File Edit section
