Mac OS X and Midnight Commander: The Missing “Insert” Key

http://austringer.net/wp/index.php/2008/06/07/mac-os-x-and-midnight-commander-the-missing-insert-key/

I do a lot of work at a Unix command line interface on the MacBook Pro. One of the very handy things I use pretty much all the time is the GNU Midnight Commander (mc) application. This is a text-mode file manager interface that sets up two panels that can show two different directories, and provides most of the file operations one needs to get things done.

One thing that I’ve missed for some time is an “Insert” key, which I have under Windows, FreeBSD, or Linux, but the MacBook keyboard doesn’t have one. In mc, “Insert” tags individual entries for group operations. I had done some Googling before without success, but this morning hit paydirt: <ctrl>-T will tag an individual entry in mc. That made cleaning up after some of the automated processes I’ve been running much more pleasant.