Configure Midnight Commander to open files with custom application

Problem

You use Midnight Commander (mc) for all your file operations. So far it’s not a problem :) However, when you hit Enter on a file, you would like to set what application mc should use for opening the given file.

For instance, you want to open an .avi file with VLC instead of X player, etc.

Solution

Steps to follow:

cd ~/.mc
cp /etc/mc/mc.ext .
ln -s mc.ext bindings

That is, copy the global mc.ext to your local .mc directory and put a symbolic link on it called bindings. Now you can start customizing your local mc.ext file.

Don’t forget to restart mc after editing mc.ext!

Examples:

(1) You want to open all your video files with VLC. You also want to add support for .wmv files.

# add these lines
regex/\.([wW][mM][vV])$
    Include=video

# modify the include/video section
include/video
    #Open=(mplayer %f >/dev/null 2>&1 &)   # for mplayer
    Open=(vlc %f >/dev/null 2>&1 &)   # for VLC

(2) Open .docx files with OpenOffice.org.

# add these lines
regex/\.([Dd][oO][cC][xX])$
    Open=(ooffice %f &)

(Thanks for the mc mailing list for their help).