CLI "open" (ala OSX)

[iaw4]

(I am switching from OSX to ubuntu.)

under OSX, I can type in a Terminal "open file.xls" and file is opened by the desktop with the system app. is there an equivalent ubuntu 12.04 CLI command?

[sisco311]

xdg-open or gnome-open

[iaw4]

is there an easy way to also specify the application?

open -a "Emacs" hello.html

(the advantage is that the errors and warnings don't go to the terminal, and an accidental C-C on the launch terminal won't abort the program.)

/iaw

[vexorian]

well, if what you want is not to let closing the terminal kill the app then you can use disown



emacs hello.html & disown


If you want to disable messages, then you can redirect output to /dev/null


emacs hello.html 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null

Combining them you got:


emacs hello.html 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null & disown

Which is awful, but you can turn it into a .sh script:



#!/bin/sh
$@ 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null & disown
[/code]

Then just run it:
scriptname.sh emacs file.html

[iaw4]

thanks for the help. I went with defining this special for emacs, and using a bash function in .bashrc:

function emacs() { /usr/bin/emacs "$@" 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null & disown ;}