CLEX

CLEX (pronounced KLEKS) is an open source, curses-based command-line file manager that features a full-screen user interface, which is capable of displaying directory contents, such as file status details. It boasts a full screen, ncurses-based command-line interface (CLI).

Features at a glance

Key features include detailed directory listing, support for comparing folders, file grouping, file sorting, simple editing of files, redo and undo function, support for selecting multiple files, name completion, command templates, command history, and automatic quoting for special characters in the name of the files.

In addition, CLEX provides on-line context-sensitive help, support for bookmarking directories, easy configuration, panel contents filtering, powerful main function menu, configurable layouts for the file panel, ‘cd’ (change directory) command, ‘rm’ (delete file) command, several date and time formats, as well as support for UTF-8 encodings.

Getting started with CLEX

To install and use the CLEX program under a GNU/Linux operating system, you must either download the latest source tarball from Softoware or open your package manager and install the pre-built binary from there.

Compiling CLEX is easy as pie, as you’ll only have to save the TAR archive on your Home folder, extract its contents using an archive manager utility, open a terminal emulator application and run the ‘./configure && make’ command.

After a successful compilation, run the ‘make install’ command as root or the ‘sudo make install’ command as a privileged user to install CLEX system wide and make it available to all users on your system.

Run the software by executing the ‘clex’ command in the terminal emulator window. You will be warned if no configuration file is present, so you might want to run the ‘cfg-clex’ command first.

Supported operating systems

Supported operating systems include all GNU/Linux distributions, as well as any other UNIX-like systems, such as FreeBSD. At the moment, the program is supported on both 64-bit and 32-bit computers.

Features:

• file manager

What is new in this release:

• Problems fixed:
• Several wide character buffer sizes were computed in incorrect units. No buffer overflows were actually occurring, but such code is not usable if compiled with protection against overflows, e.g. with gcc and FORTIFY_SOURCE=2. Problem noted and a fix proposed by Rudolf Polzer.
• A bug in the file I/O error reporting code of the directory compare function was found by Rudolf Polzer.
• New or improved functionality:
• New setting in the sort panel: hidden files can be excluded from the file list.

What is new in version 4.6 Test 1:

• The English documentation was proofread and corrected.
• Name completion now correctly expands a single tilde as a home directory.
• The new configuration parameter TIME_DATE controls the display of date and time.

What is new in version 4.5:

• A mouse is supported on xterm compatible terminals.

What is new in version 4.5 Test 5:

• Problems fixed:
• name completion could not complete user and group names containing a dot, comma or a dash character
• New or improved functionality:
• a mouse is supported on xterm compatible terminals
• the location of configuration files has been moved again in order to comply with the XDG Specification. The standard place for these files is from now on the ~/.config/clex directory. Use the 'cfg-clex' utility to move the files to the new location
• there is a new option in the completion panel which allows to complete a name which is a part of a longer word. The option has a self-explaining description: 'name to be completed starts at the cursor position'
• configuration parameter C_PANEL_SIZE (configuration panel size) cannot be set to AUTO (screen size) because this size is often uncomfortably small
• The Unicode soft hyphen character is displayed as a control character in the history panel a command separator is automatically inserted into the input line when a command is appended to the end of another command
• configuration parameters CMD_Fn accept a new control sequence $~ which disables the 'Press enter to continue' prompt. The control is returned to CLEX immediately after the command execution terminates provided that: 1) the command has not been modified 2) the command terminates successfully (exit code zero)
• The $! control sequence can appear anywhere in a configuration parameter CMD_Fn, not only at the end new function: alt-Z places the current line to the center of the panel. People using cluster-ssh might find it useful

What is new in version 4.5 Test 1:

• New or improved functionality:
• MOUSE SUPPORT: mouse is supported on xterm compatible terminals. The support is quite limited in this release, it is a work in progress:
• mouse wheel moves the cursor bar
• mouse click sets the cursor bar
• mouse wheel moves the input line cursor
• mouse click sets the input line cursor
• In the filepanel:
• double click on a directory changes the directory
• double click on the secondary directory (top-right corner) switches panels
• NOTE: in order to enable text highlighting and cut & paste operations, hold the shift key to bypass the mouse tracking
• new function: alt-Z scrolls the whole panel and places the cursor bar to the center. People using cluster-ssh might find it useful

What is new in version 4.4:

• Problems fixed:
• in the help text there were few UTF-8 characters which are now eliminated, because they could not be displayed properly in non-UTF-8 encodings
• New or improved functionality:
• new function was added: change into a subdirectory showing the contents in the other file panel (alt-X). This function allows to return into the original directory simply by switching panels (ctrl-X).

What is new in version 4.3:

• Problems fixed:
• a newly added bookmark did not appear on the screen immediately
• a misleading message 'Ignoring the DIR2 configuration parameter' was logged when the 'DIR2' was set to 'HOME'
• New or improved functionality:
• the bookmark organizer has been merged with the regular bookmark panel
• bookmarks can have descriptive names
• the current working directory can be bookmarked from the file panel (ctrl-D)
• the 'B_PANEL_SIZE' config parameter was removed

What is new in version 4.2:

• This release corrects two problems which occurred in some cases.
• The cfg-clex utility was generating an unusable template for the copy command.
• A crash was occurring on exit when CLEX was used over an ssh connection.

What is new in version 4.1:

• An uninitialized memory read was corrected.
• A small utility for troubleshooting keyboard-related problems was added.