CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshellemacsfreedesktop.org
Xah Lee
Xah Lee

Reputation: 17545

What's a common Linux command to show current dir in desktop?

what's a “open” command that is available on most or all linuxes?

e.g. in OS X, i can do in shell

open .

and the folder is shown in Finder (i.e. desktop) Similarly, on Windows the command is “explore”.

am asking because i want a cross-platform command in emacs.

(defun open-in-desktop () 
  "Open the current file in desktop. 
Works in Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X." 
  (interactive) 
  (cond 
   ((string-equal system-type "windows-nt") 
    (w32-shell-execute "explore" 
      (replace-regexp-in-string "/" "\\" default-directory t t))) 
   ((string-equal system-type "darwin") (shell-command "open .")) 
   ) )

someone suggested xdg-open but am not sure if that's specific to a distro or gnome/kde only. (am not a linux user)

Upvotes: 2

Views: 418

Answers (2)

Flexo - Save the data dump
Flexo - Save the data dump

Reputation: 88711

xdg-utils comes from freedesktop.org. The freedesktop.org project is intended to improve interoperability between the various different desktop environments available on Linux. It's as close as you'll get to reliable method for doing this on Linux therefore.

Upvotes: 8

TartanLlama
TartanLlama

Reputation: 65620

xdg-open points towards the user's preferred browsing application, so would work in general.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions