Table of Contents

## Name

elinks - lynx-like alternative character mode WWW browser

## Synopsis

elinks [options] URL

## Description

ELinks is a text mode WWW browser, supporting colors, correct table rendering, background downloading, menu driven configuration interface and slim code.

Frames are supported. You can have different file formats associated with external viewers. mailto: and telnet: are supported via external clients.

ELinks can handle local (file://) or remote (http://, ftp:// or https:// if there’s compiled-in SSL support) URLs. It has also basic support for finger:.

## Options

Most options can be set in the user interface or config file, so usually you do not need to care about them. Note that this list is by no means complete and it is not kept up-to-date. To get complete list of commandline options, start ELinks with parameter --help.

-anonymous <0>/<1>
  Restrict ELinks so that it can run on an anonymous account. No local file browsing. No downloads. Executing of viewers is allowed, but user can’t add or modify entries in association table.

-auto-submit <0>/<1>
  Go and submit the first form you’ll stumble upon.

-base-session <number>
  ID of session (ELinks instance) which we want to clone. This is internal ELinks option, you don’t want to use it.

-dump
  Write a plain-text version of the given HTML document to stdout.

-dump-charset <charset>
  Codepage used in dump output.

-dump-width <width>
  Width of the dump output.

-eval <string>
  Specify elinks.conf config options on the command-line: -eval ’set protocol.file.allow_special_files = 1’

-? -h -help
  Print usage help and exit.

-lookup <hostname>
  Make lookup for specified host.

-no-connect <0>/<1>
  Run ELinks as a separate instance - instead of connecting to existing instance. Note that normally no runtime state files (I mean bookmarks, history and so on) are written to the disk with this option on - see also -touch-files.

-no-home <0>/<1>
  Don’t attempt to create and/or use home rc directory (~/.elinks).

-session-ring <number>
  ID of session ring this ELinks should connect to. The ELinks works in so-called session rings, where all instances of ELinks are interconnected and share same state (cache, bookmarks, cookies and so on). By default, all ELinks instances connect to session ring 0. You can change that behaviour by this switch and form as many session rings as you want. Obviously, if the session-ring with this number doesn’t exist yet, it’s created and this ELinks instance will become the master instance (that usually doesn’t matter for you as a user much). Note that you usually don’t want to use this except you’re a developer and you want to do some testing - if you want the ELinks instances running each one standalone, rather use -no-connect commandline option. Also note that normally no runtime state files are written to the disk with this option on - see also -touch-files.

-source <0>/<1>
  Write the given HTML document in source form to stdout.

-stdin <0>/<1>
  Open stdin as HTML document - it is fully equivalent to: -eval ’set protocol.file.allow_special_files = 1’ file:///dev/stdin Use whichever suits you more ;-). Note that reading document from stdin WORKS ONLY WHEN YOU USE -dump OR -source!! (I would like to know why you would use -source -stdin, though ;-)

-touch-files <0>/<1>
  Set to 1 to have runtime state files (bookmarks, history, ...) changed even when -no-connect is used; has no effect if not used in connection with the -no-connect commandline option.

-version
  Print ELinks version information and exit.

## Navigation Keys

You may prefix each of these keys with a number, telling its repeat count (how many times to do it). You can also re-bind keys, see elinkskeys(5) for documentation and a more complete list of keys bound by default.

PGDN
  page down
Space
  page down
PGUP
  page up
b
  page up
B
  page up
CursorDOWN
  next link/down
CursorUP
  prev link/up
^INS
  copy to clipboard
^C
  copy to clipboard
INS
  scroll up
^P
  scroll up
DEL
  scroll down
^N
  scroll down
[
  scroll left
]
  scroll right
HOME
  home
END
  end of page
CursorRIGHT
  enter link/press button
ENTER
  enter link/press button
CursorLEFT
  go back
d
  download link
D
  download link
F4
  edit textarea in external editor (broken)
^T
  edit textarea in external editor (broken)
/
  search in the page
?
  search back in the page
n
  find next match
N
  find next match backwards
f
  zoom actual frame
F
  zoom actual frame
^R
  reload page
g
  go to URL
G
  go to the current URL
a
  add a new bookmark
A
  add a new bookmark
s
  bookmark manager
S
  bookmark manager
^K
  reload cookies from ~/.elinks/cookies
q
  quit
Q
  quit
=
  document information
|
  header information
\
  toggle HTML source/rendered view
*
  toggle display of images
TAB
  next frame
ESC
  menu/escape
F9
  menu
F10
  file menu

## Editing Keys

The following keys can be used while editing a line/jumping to a URL:

CursorRIGHT
  move right
CursorLEFT
  move left
HOME
  jump to the beginning
^A
  jump to the beginning
END
  jump to the end
^E
  jump to the end
^INS
  copy to clipboard
^B
  copy to clipboard
^X
  cut to clipboard
^V
  paste from clipboard
ENTER
  enter line
BACKSPACE
  delete back character
^H
  delete back character
DEL
  delete character
^D
  delete character
^U
  delete from beginning of the line
^K
  delete to the end of the line
^W
  auto complete line

## Environment

ELINKS_CONFDIR
  The location of ".elinks/" user’s directory

WWW_HOME
  Homepage location (as in lynx )

ELINKS_XTERM, LINKS_XTERM
  The command to run when selecting "File/New window" and if DISPLAY is defined (default "xterm -e")

ELINKS_TWTERM, LINKS_TWTERM
  The command to run when selecting "File/New window" and if TWDISPLAY is defined (default "twterm -e")

SHELL
  Used for "File/OS Shell" menu

COMSPEC
  Used for "File/OS Shell" menu in DOS/Windows

## Files

~/.elinks/elinks.conf
  Per-user config file

~/.elinks/bookmarks
  Bookmarks

  file

~/.elinks/cookies
  Cookies file

~/.elinks/gotohist
  GoTo URL dialog history

  file

~/.elinks/globhist
  History file containing last 4096 URLs visited

~/.elinks/socket
  Internal ELinks socket for communication between its instances.

## Platforms

ELinks is known to work on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, IRIX, HPUX, Digital Unix, AIX, OS/2, BeOS and RISC OS. Port for Win32 is in state of beta testing.

## Bugs

See BUGS file coming with ELinks distribution tarball for list of known bugs.

Please report any other bugs you find to (E)Links mailing list <links-list@linuxfromscratch.org>.

## License

ELinks is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

## Author

Links was written by Mikulas Patocka <mikulas@artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>. ELinks - which is based on Links - was written by
Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz>. See file AUTHORS in the source tree for a list of people contributing to this project.

The homepage of ELinks can be found at http://elinks.or.cz/

This manual page was written by Peter Gervai <grin@tolna.net>, using excerpts from a (yet?) unknown Links fan for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). Contributions from Francis A. Holop. Extended, clarified and made more up-to-date by Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz>. Updated by Zas <zas at norz.org>.

## See Also

elinkskeys(5) , elinks.conf(5) , links(1) , lynx(1) , w3m(1) , wget(1)

Table of Contents

- Name
- Synopsis
- Description
- Options
- Navigation Keys
- Editing Keys
- Environment
- Files
- Platforms
- Bugs
- License
- Author
- See Also