Norton Commander

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For other uses, see Norton Commander (motorcycle).
Norton Commander

Screenshot of Norton Commander
Design by John Socha
Latest release 5.51 / July 1, 1998
OS DOS
Genre File manager
License Proprietary

Norton Commander (commonly shortened to "NC") is a prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing (later acquired by the Symantec corporation). NC is a file manager which essentially acts as the text user interface for DOS. It was officially produced by Symantec between 1986 and 1998. The last DOS version of Norton Commander, 5.51, was released on July 1, 1998.

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[edit] Background

Captain Norton, the Norton Commander mascot (note his trademark cap and white gloves, used in NC 5.51 *.ICO files)
Captain Norton, the Norton Commander mascot (note his trademark cap and white gloves, used in NC 5.51 *.ICO files)

Norton Commander was considered easy to use based on its constant view of two file manipulation objects at once. After starting the program the user saw two panels with file lists. Each panel can be easily configured to show information about the other panel, a directory tree, or a number of other options. At the bottom of the screen, Norton Commander displayed a list of commands that were extended on demand by the CTRL and ALT keys. Thus, without heavy use of the mouse (though mouse functionality was integrated around version 3.0), the user is able to perform many file manipulation actions quickly and efficiently. In addition it also included a built-in text file viewer (called with F3) and editor (F4).

Windows 95 included a new graphical shell, Windows Explorer and introduced Long filenames (LFN). As an update Symantec released Norton Commander 5.51 to support long filenames using the standard Windows APIs. In order to preserve LFNs while working in real mode, Norton Commander 5.51 required the use of a Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) utility. Norton Commander did not have native support for LFNs in real mode and would truncate them.

Despite the decline in its use Norton Commander was very popular during the DOS era and it has been extensively cloned.

A further update to a new purely graphical version of Norton Commander was introduced by Symantec in 1999 as Norton Commander for Windows. This version fully integrated with Windows features such as the Recycle Bin and Quick View. A Quick View panel provided a preview of most popular document types. The last Windows version of Norton Commander, 2.01, was released on February 1, 1999.

[edit] Norton Commander inspired software

There are several programs that follow the style of Norton Commander. Examples are:

There are also other non-OFM software inspired by NC's look and feel, such as archivers, viewers, hexadecimal editors and more. Mostly these are DOS tools. Examples are:

  • Commandline ACE archiver for DOS and Windows, and is the only existing OFM compressor that supports LFN
  • Hiew hexadecimal editor
  • Pksmart EXE packer for DOS
  • RAR archiver for DOS and Windows
  • RAX archiver for DOS

[edit] Screenshots

Pre-Symantec version of Norton Commander for DOS.

Norton Commander v.5.0 for DOS.
This is the last version of NC which lacks LFN support.

Norton Commander v.5.51 for DOS.
Note the LFN present when running under Windows.

Norton Commander v.2.01 for Windows.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links