Midnight Commander's features include the ability to view the contents of RPM package files, to work with common archive formats as if they were simply another directory, and to function as an FTP or FISH client.

mcedit's features include syntax highlighting for many languages, macros, code snippets, simple integration with external tools, automatic indentation, mouse support, a clipboard and the ability to work in both ASCII and hex modes.

This is convenient for manipulating large collections of files, e.g. to make them conform to a new naming convention.

This makes the power of regular expressions available for renaming files, with a convenient user interface.

Native support for UTF-8 locales for Unicode was added in 2009 to development versions of Midnight Commander.