Far Manager (short for ''File and ARchive Manager'') is an orthodox file manager for Microsoft Windows and is a clone of Norton Commander. Far Manager uses the

Win32 console Windows Console is the infrastructure for console applications in Microsoft Windows. An instance of a Windows Console has a screen buffer and an input buffer. It allows console apps to run inside a window or in hardware text mode (so as to oc ...

and has a keyboard-oriented user interface (although limited mouse operation, including

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

, is possible). Far Manager was created by Eugene Roshal, and has been under development by the ''Far Group'' since 2000. The project's

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

branches (2.0 and 3.0) are open-source (under the BSD-3-Clause license). All branches are available as 32- and 64-bit builds. Far Manager is often viewed as a very customizable file manager and text editor, and a free alternative to Total Commander.

Features

Far Manager features an internal viewer and editor, customizable user menus, tree views, file search, compare, integrated help, and a task switcher for its tools. Its standard functionality can be expanded with macros (which allow scripting) and plugins. Far Manager's default interface combines two file panels with a command prompt. Panels may be fully customized as to which columns are shown and in which order, and operations may be done to and from either panel. The file panels support wildcard selection, advanced filtering, sorting and highlighting. The file panels and the command prompt are both active at the same time (they are interacted with using different keys), and most features can be accessed using keyboard shortcuts (the key bar at the bottom displays the

function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, function ...

actions for the currently held down

modifier key In computing, a modifier key is a special key (or combination) on a computer keyboard that temporarily modifies the normal action of another key when pressed together. By themselves, modifier keys usually do nothing; that is, pressing any of the , ...

s).

Extensibility

Far's standard functionality can be greatly extended with macros (written in

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

scripting language, primarily used to record keypress sequences) and plugins. Standard plugins installed by default include FTP, Windows network, extensible

archive file In computing, an archive file is a computer file that is composed of one or more files along with metadata. Archive files are used to collect multiple data files together into a single file for easier portability and storage, or simply to compre ...

support and temporary panel (sandbox) virtual file systems, a process list, print manager, filename case converter, and several editor plugins to format, wrap, and otherwise alter text. Third-party plugins are available from the PlugRing repository and plugin announcement forum. Some popular plugins include

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

search and replace (both in the text editor and across multiple files),

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...

and

auto-completion Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the tab ...

for the text editor, SFTP/

SCP SCP may refer to: Organizations Political parties * Soviet Communist Party, the leading political party in the former Soviet Union * Syrian Communist Party * Sudanese Communist Party * Scottish Christian Party Companies * Seattle Computer Produ ...

and

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and ...

virtual file systems,

7-zip 7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver, a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999. 7-Zip has its own archive format called 7z, ...

integration, a

hex editor A hex editor (or ''binary file editor'' or ''byte editor'') is a computer program that allows for manipulation of the fundamental binary data that constitutes a computer file. The name 'hex' comes from 'hexadecimal', a standard numerical format f ...

and a picture viewer (which overlays a DirectX surface over Far's console window). Wrappers are available which allow using some Total Commander plugins with Far Manager, and vice versa. Plugins can be developed using the native C/Pascal API, or using wrappers which permit plugin development in other platforms and languages, such as .NET (including PowerShell), and Lua.

Linux and MacOS version

far2l project develops Linux and MacOS ports of Far Manager. As of February 2021, the port successfully builds and the most common functions work. Among ported and working plugins are Colorer, MultiArc and TmpPanel. There is also new NetRocks plugin implementing network connections via FTP, SFTP, SCP, SMB, NFS and WebDAV. far2l also supports "terminal extensions". Although FAR2L itself is a TUI application, it can run in GUI or TTY backends modes. While TTY backend can run in any terminal (like, for example,

xterm In computing, xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System. It allows users to run programs which require a command-line interface. If no particular program is specified, xterm runs the user's shell. An X display can sho ...

), it can also run inside a built-in terminal of GUI mode far2l, gaining capabilities not available on "regular" terminals (such as recognizing all possible keyboard key combinations, even with keyup events). Also, the "host" far2l can provide shared clipboard access and desktop notifications. Those extensions can be used by running TTY far2l inside an SSH client session opened in "host" GUI far2l (or by using SFTP/SCP protocols in NetRocks to run remote far2l via "execute remote command" feature).

Licensing

Far Manager is available under the BSD-3-Clause license. Originally, Far Manager was available as 40 days shareware for everyone except for citizens of the former

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

countries, who could use it as freeware for non-commercial use only. On 26 October 2007, the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

for the Unicode development version (1.80, later renamed to 2.0) was released under the BSD-3-Clause license. On 17 May 2010 the 1.x branch has also been released under the BSD-3-Clause license, though without source code.

References

External links