Less is More: The Orthodox File Manager (OFM) Paradigm

by Dr Nikolai Bezroukov

Content : Foreword : Ch01 : Ch02 : Ch03 : Ch04 : Ch05 : Ch06 : Ch07 : OFM1999 : OFM2004 : OFM2012

File Commander (FC)

File Commander is a 32-bit classic (text mode) OFM for OS/2, Win32 and Linux (version 2.4 supports all major Linux distributions) written by Brian Harvard. This is the only notable representative of OFMs from Australia.

Originally the product was for OS/2 only and if we count those versions as we should, it is considerably older then FAR. Here is the history (minor version and version before 1.0 deleted):

14/03/94 v1.00
25/05/94 v1.1
21/10/94 v1.2
06/05/95 v1.3
16/11/95 v1.4
25/03/97 v1.5
29/09/97 v1.51  First Win32 release
16/08/98 v2.00
08/11/98 v2.01
02/05/99 v2.10
26/07/99 v2.11
06/01/00 v2.12
20/04/02 v2.20
23/09/08 v2.30
03/03/11 v2.40  First Unix release

After OS/2 went into permanent decline, Win32 version was added. Since version 2.12 (released in June 2000) OS/2 and Win32 releases were simultaneous and are supported equally. Now probably the most popular platform for FC became Win32 and here it competes with FAR.  Development stopped for several years and resumed in 2009 with the release of version 2.3. In March 2011 version 2.4 was released that supports major Linux distributions and supports them well (please remember that the original codebase was for OS/2 which was designed to be better OS then Unix)

This very compact and very fast implementation. The current version 2.4 Win 32-bit exe file is just 470K (twice smaller then FAR).

Brian Harvard is the author of several OFM innovations that later found their way to other command line orthodox file managers such as FAR. Among them  usage of regular expression in file selections, more consistent set of macro symbols for user menu and command line, Shift-Enter for running the command in a separate session, etc

As historically FC was one of the first OFM for OS/2 it really dominated command line OFM area for this OS. It was the winner of Readers Choice award of OS/2 e-Zine magazine (1998). OS/2 version was a must for any serious OS/2 OFM user (it was available from  SimTel disk utilities)

Main features:

• Built in editor with undo/redo and cut/copy/paste ability using the global clipboard.
• Built in archive support including archives inside archives to any depth, with ZIP, ARJ, RAR, LZH and ACE types currently supported.
• Text mode for speed and other advantages
• Mouse support.
• Long file name support
• Full support for volumes larger than 4GB.
• Online help.
• Many configuration options.
• Colorization of file names by boolean expressions.
• Built in file viewer with hex view mode.
• Code page translation function in viewer and editor.
• File Find facility combining wildcard file name filters with file contents scanning.
• Calculation of the total disk usage of a directory tree.
• Tree views for quick and easy directory changes.
• Intelligent execution of the different types of executables supported by OS/2 or Windows 95/NT.
• User definable menu including powerful operators such as
  • Run a command once for every tagged file.
  • Automatically create a file containing a list of tagged files.
  • Get input value from the user.
  • List all tagged files in the parameter list, automatically running the command multiple times if the command line gets too long.
• Directory history for changing back to recently viewed directories.
• Easy creation of desktop objects.
• Enhanced wildcard handling including boolean operators (and, or, not, brackets) for combining multiple file name masks.
• Flexible file name filtering.
• Support for 4DOS/4OS2 descriptions
• 132 column mode support.
• Start DOS programs with session settings (OS/2 only)

File Commander 2.30 was a substantial update of the codebase and brought it into forefront of command line OFMs on all platforms. Among notable changes:

• Make tree views able to expand/collapse branches. Controlled with Grey +/- and Ctrl-Grey +/-. Default tree state can be configured with the ExpandedTrees switch in fc.ini.
• Add support for directory store/recall via the normal number keys as well as the numpad. (Win32 only).
• Option  "All Older"  was added to the overwrite confirmation dialog.
• Support environment variable references in stored directory paths.
• Change File Find to search directories in alphabetical order instead of the LIFO stack it was using.
• Add !tx operator, like !t but chops the extension. Handy for converting files where the program requires both input & output file names & you want to change the extension.
• Added support for sub-menus of user menus
• Allow user menu commands to be up to 4096 characters long, up from 259.
• Add initial support for UNC paths.
• Calculate Directory Size: Allow "Total Size" display more room.
• Fix retrieval of a stored path that's inside an archive via the Alt-F5 stored path dialog.
• TAR reading: take notice of unix directory mode flag as well as trailing slash when deciding if an entry is a directory or file.
• In File Find, enable F5/F6 to copy/move all files in the found list.
• In File Find, Delete key removes an item from the found list.
• Display "dirinfo" file in the lower section of the Info panel. Double click of same area or F4 edits the dirinfo file.
• Add / and ? keys to viewer as search forwards/backwards as in many unix tools (less, vi etc)
• Add built-in "set" command & [Environment] INI file section, allowing environment variables to be changed for executed commands. The set command allows temporary changes while the INI file section allows more permanent settings.
• Added Shift-TAB seek name completion

Version 2.4 was released in March 2011. It is the first release that supports Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD, As author explained to me (private letter) he wrote his own console implementation as part of FC for Linux because Linux terminal doesn't support many key combinations that he needed. Writing own console provides full control over the keyboard and the screen/window. The downside though is that it you need VC of X11 to run it, as it won't run via ssh/telnet. Among new features:

• Support includes in user menu files.
• Unix port (Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris).
• Win64 port.
• Use Unicode for all file names on Windows & Unix.
• Syntax highlighting in the viewer.
• Viewer and editor support for Unicode text files.
• Symbolic link support in Unix & Windows.
  • Panels display a link's target.
  • Ctrl-Shift-F5 creates a link.
  • F8-Delete knows not to recurse into a link to a directory.
  • Links to files require Windows Vista or later. Directory links require Windows 2000 or later and NTFS
• Support for 7zip archives.
• Support for bzip2 files.
• Scroll back viewer to browse previous program output (Only enabled for unix by default).
• File Information display (Ctrl-I) shows complete file metadata.
• OS/2 & Windows: Ctrl-Shift-E to eject removable media & Ctrl-Shift-L to load.
• Unix: Ctrl-M displays mount point selection list with eject function

FC contributions

FC is an interesting product that introduced several innovations that later have found its way to other OFMs.  He also was probably the most aware of Unix developments (especially MC) implementer of Win32 OFM and that provides FC with some distinct advantages over FAR. For example recently he added "/" and "?" keys to viewer as search forwards/backwards as in many unix   tools (less, vi etc) I am not a regular FC user and probably I underestimated the innovation that FC introduced. Among the innovations that I would like to mention:

• FC was one of the early adopters of regular expressions in selection and file operations.
• FC was probably the first OFM that implemented case conversions in files. From FC this feature get to other OFMs (FAR). 
• FC was the first to implement copy/paste operations on the command line. Shift-Insert paste from clipboard into command line and Ctrl-Insert - copy command line to clipboard.
• FC first introduced the uniform support of Ctrl-X/C/V as Cut/Copy/Paste in editor & dialogs.
• FC also introduced a very useful command for moving to the prev/next tagged line Alt-Up, Alt-Dn. .
• FC was probably the first to implement a Unix-style hotkey for going to the prev. directory (Ctrl-minus).
• FC uses more correct macrosymbols scheme  that most other OFM managers(including FAR, but excluding MC):
  • ! - Name of current file.
  • !x - Name of current file without its extension.
  • !p - Path of current panel.
  • !P - Path of opposite panel.
  • !f - Name of current file with full path.
  • !s - Path of current panel with trailing '\'
  • !S - Path of opposite panel with trailing '\'
  • !n - Nothing, but prevents automatic appending of current file name
  • !! - A literal, single !

All macrosymbols  can be used in command line. The macrosymbol !t permit execution of the command for each tagged file. It has correct semantic in case no files was tagged; in this case it is equivalent to the current file.  In addition a separate macrosymbol !l(!L for the passive panel) provides for a space separated list of all tagged files. Macrosymbol !@ - Substitutes for the name of a temporary file that contains a list of tagged files, one per line.

FC also provide an interesting and very useful enhancement for starting a program: Shift-Enter will run command in a separate session.

FC has very reasonable built-in viewer and editor that have good compromise between being too complex and does not providing enough features to be useful.

FC deviations

FC is reasonably compliant with the part 1 of the OFM1999 standard. The main problem is that FC does not have quick view. Also changing of timestamp was implemented as a separate command, not as a part of the attribute command.

Rescanning of the hard drive in the quick tree view is implemented with non-standard key Ctrl-R  (that's acceptable, but the standard key for rescanning is F2).

Ctrl-Enter does not work on quick search. The author decided against this behavior as he thought that it would be more useful to be able to paste the current file to the command line without switching off the quick search mode with Esc. To move to the next/previous quick search match the user should use non-standard keys Alt-Down,Alt-Up. BTW the same keys move to the next/previous tagged file in the regular panel (they are listed among FC contributions, see above).

Recommended Links

File Commander

File Commander - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

File Commander for Windows (FCW) script and utilities. - reboot.pro

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

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History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

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Last modified: March, 12, 2019