Perform commands on selected items in Midnight Commander

Question

How can I perform a command on the selected items ?

for example calling vim, or gimp for the 5 text or image files selected.

I tried to make use of the inlined command line at the bottom, but it doesn't take my selection into account

Answer 1

For one-liners, use %t at the command line, which gets substituted for a list of your selected items.

for F in %t; do echo "${F} is selected"; done

cp %t /var/somewhereelse/

Answer 2

Press F2 for user menu and then choose Do something on tagged files or press @. In popup window you can provide your command.

It is important to notice that for each file command will be executed separately. It will be something like:

for file in files:
   COMMAND file

not

COMMAND file1 file2