find and rename

Jump to a directory, filter a panel, find files, rename many files at once and compare two directories.

Go to a directory (Ctrl+D)

Ctrl+D opens "Go to directory": a filter line over two lists.

1. Bookmarks, marked *, in the order you added them.
2. Frequent directories, the ones you visit often and recently, best first. The active panel's own directory is left out.

Enter loads the selected directory into the active panel. Insert bookmarks the active panel's directory, and Delete removes the selected bookmark or forgets the selected frequent directory. Paths under your home directory show as ~/....

Type keywords separated by spaces to filter both lists. Every keyword must occur in the path, in the order typed, and the last one must occur in the last component. ASCII letters match either case. do rep matches ~/Documents/reports, but not ~/reports/docs.

Frecency

manycommander records a visit each time you go to a directory: with Enter, the parent keys, the history, cd, this dialog or z. Starting, restoring the last session and refreshing do not count. A directory's score is its visit count, weighted by the time since the last visit:

When the visit counts add up to more than 10000, they all shrink, and directories that fall below one visit drop out. This is zoxide's model, so the ranking feels familiar.

A frequent directory that no longer exists fails to load like any other directory: the panel stays where it was, and the directory drops out of the list. A bookmark never drops out on its own.

zoxide

When zoxide is on PATH, the first Ctrl+D or z of a session reads its ranking with zoxide query --list --score, for at most one second, and merges it in: a directory's score is the larger of the two. manycommander never writes to zoxide's database. Delete on a directory that only zoxide knows hides it for the rest of the session. To turn the import off, set zoxide = "off" in the configuration.

Where they are kept

z on the command line

z KEYWORDS on the command line loads the best-scoring frequent directory into the active panel, with the dialog's matching rules and zoxide's ranking. When no frequent directory matches, it takes the first matching bookmark; when nothing matches, it says "z: no match". z alone opens the dialog. The line never reaches the shell.

Quick filter (Ctrl+F)

Ctrl+F opens the filter line on the status row. Each keystroke narrows the active panel at once.

• Text without *, ? or [ matches any part of the name. With one of them, it is a glob over the whole name, such as *.jpg. ASCII letters match either case.
• Directories are filtered like files; .. stays.
• Enter or Ctrl+F closes the line and keeps the filter. Esc clears the filter and closes the line.
• While the line is open, Up, Down, PgUp and PgDn move the cursor. Any other key closes the line, keeps the filter, and then does what it always does.
• The cursor moves to the first match.
• The filter survives a refresh, and a change of directory clears it.
• The footer shows the count, such as 12 of 340 entries (filter: jpg).

The verbs act only on the entries you see. A mark on an entry the filter hides is kept, but it does not count and nothing acts on it until the filter goes away.

Find files (Alt+F7)

Alt+F7 opens the find form:

Enter starts the search in a new tab on the active side, titled like find: *.pdf "invoice", and the tab fills as results arrive. Its footer counts the results and the directories that could not be read, and says (searching) until the search is done.

• Symbolic links are never followed. A symlink to a directory can match by its name, but the search does not descend into it.
• Directories, symlinks and special files match by name too. Content search opens regular files only, never a FIFO or a device.
• Content search treats binary files like text.
• Content search does not read the holes of sparse files. A hole holds only NUL bytes, so text that needs NUL bytes from a hole is not found there.
• A directory reached a second time, through a bind mount, is searched once.
• A directory that cannot be opened or read counts as an error, and the search goes on.
• A search stops at 1,000,000 results and says "result limit reached".
• Starting another search, or leaving the results of the tab that is searching, stops the search. The tab keeps what it found and says (cancelled).

The results tab

The entries of a results tab are paths relative to the search root. Sorting, marks, the quick filter (it matches the relative path) and the verbs work as in a directory panel: F5 copies results from many directories into the other panel, and F8 trashes them. Keys lists what each key does there. Enter on a file goes to the file's directory with the cursor on it, and Alt+Left returns to the results; F3 and F4 open the file.

A results tab has no .. row and does not refresh on its own. Ctrl+R, and the end of every job, re-read the results and drop the ones that are gone. A result counts as hidden when any component of its path starts with .. When the search included hidden entries, the tab shows them; Alt+. toggles them as usual.

A panel's history keeps its three most recent results, and Alt+Left goes back to them. On exit, manycommander saves a results tab as a tab on its search root.

Multi-rename (Ctrl+M)

Ctrl+M opens the multi-rename tool for the marked entries, or for the entry under the cursor. In a results tab, each result is renamed in its own directory. The tool fills the panel area, with the form at the top and a preview of every old -> new below it.

The masks apply first, then search and replace, then the case. The case applies to the name and the extension separately. Title case capitalises the first character of each word of the name, where a word starts at the beginning and after a space, _, - or ., and lowercases the rest and the extension: my photo.JPG becomes My Photo.jpg.

Masks

Characters count from 1. A character is a Unicode character, or one byte where a name is not valid UTF-8, so such a name survives byte for byte. A range past the end is clamped: [N2-5] of ab is b, and [N4] of ab is empty. An unknown placeholder is an error.

Examples

Preview and errors

Each row of the preview says unchanged, ok, or what is wrong. These are errors:

• an unknown or malformed placeholder;
• a regular expression that does not compile, or is too large;
• an empty name, ., .., a name with /, or a name longer than 255 bytes;
• two entries of one directory with the same new name;
• a new name that another entry of the panel already has.

Enter renames only when no row has an error; otherwise it shows the first error. The rename never overwrites anything, and swaps and cycles such as a -> b, b -> a work. Ctrl+Z in the dialog undoes the last multi-rename of the session. How the rename keeps every file reachable is on the file operations page.

Compare directories (Shift+F2)

Shift+F2 compares the two panels and marks the entries that differ, so that F5 can copy them across next. It needs two directory panels, not a results tab. Only visible entries take part, and the new marks replace every existing mark in both panels. The form offers by date and size (the default) or by content, and include directories (on).

By date and size reads no file:

The status row sums it up:

left: 3 newer, 5 only here; right: 1 newer, 2 only here; 1 differ in size

By content marks the names on one side only as above, then compares every pair of same-named files. A pair of different sizes differs without being read. A pair of equal sizes is read and compared byte by byte, and a differing pair is marked on both sides. Content compare opens regular files only, never a FIFO or a device. The status row shows the progress, and Esc cancels. The summary counts only here, differ in size, differ in content and could not be read; a pair that could not be read is not marked.

Compare runs in the background. When a panel changes before the compare finishes, manycommander drops the result and says "the directories changed; compare again".