opening files using terminal (Unity)

**Gareth Edwards** · March 11th, 2013

@ CC64 - Thanks, was unaware of the home / ~ replacement. Was aware of case sensitivity, but always good to reinforce the point!

**Gareth Edwards** · March 11th, 2013

@ vasa - yes, odt, my mistake!

**RoosterHam** · March 12th, 2013

Originally Posted by Gareth Edwards

OK after first efforts:

2.The tab completion thing seems useful (I was unaware of this, so thank you) - it shows relevant programs (like an auto complete?) but I don't understand why the second part - "exam <tab> "

Tab-completion will complete an application name, but it will also complete file names. So if you are working in the directory of the file "example.odf" then "exam<tab>" will complete the file name also. If you are in any other directory you can specify the absolute path, and tab-complete it.

ie.
$ls -al /home/USERNAME/Docu<tab>
$xdg-open /home/USERNAME/Doc<tab>/exa<tab>

If there are multiple options for the clue you have given ( do "ls -al /home/USERNAME/Do<tab>") nothing will be displayed. double tapping the tab key will list your options (will list Downloads/ and Documents/ in our example)

Regarding the errors, many gui applications that are started from the terminal will through errors. start firefox from a terminal and watch what happens. If the applications are behaving normally then the errors may be disregarded.

**Gareth Edwards** · March 12th, 2013

So the errors that come up when opening from terminal are normal and to be expected? I don't need to worry about something randomly closing halfway through working just because I opened it using the terminal? I will indeed try opening firefox later.
Thanks for all your help and tips people.

**coldcritter64** · March 12th, 2013

Errors won't always show when starting an application from terminal, but RoosterHam's example firefox usually will, and it still operates fine. A program will occasionally segfault or encounter other problems and shut halfway through operations when opened normally and a segfault or other fault can still occur even if opened from terminal. What I mean by that is you can open a program from terminal, have it crash halfway through operations, the error that caused the crash will be displayed, but that does not mean the error will have been caused by the application being launched from terminal.

Launching from a terminal is actually very handy if you do have a crashing application, open it in a terminal and when it crashes you will be able to see why and take action to rectify the problem; In such a case if you need assistance, you can always paste the error message here between [code][/code] tags in your editor. A simple way to do code tags is to paste the error into the editor, highlight the entire error message, and click on the # button on the editor toolbar.

<aside> @ RoosterHam, like your location

</aside>

**Gareth Edwards** · March 13th, 2013

Thanks CC,

At the risk of going off topic - what would

Code:

 error message

highlight # do in editor? - I've only just started to use editor for simple <html> stuff, so excuse my ignorance....

**vasa1** · March 13th, 2013

Originally Posted by Gareth Edwards

So the errors that come up when opening from terminal are normal and to be expected? I don't need to worry about something randomly closing halfway through working just because I opened it using the terminal? I will indeed try opening firefox later.
Thanks for all your help and tips people.

What is being said is that even when a program works just fine, invoking it from the terminal will throw up errors or warnings that aren't really important. The key point is that invoking a program from the terminal is a useful diagnostic tool when things don't work as expected.

What do you mean by "something randomly closing halfway through working"? That's a bit fuzzy

Could you be clearer? Basically, if something works well, it will work well whether you open it from a terminal or by double-clicking on an icon or by using the Dash. If something doesn't work well, it won't work well no matter how you start it.

**RoosterHam** · March 13th, 2013

@coldcritter64, I'm quite proud to call it home.

**Gareth Edwards** · March 13th, 2013

Thanks Vasa, I've not actually had any problems with anything crashing, but was a bit alarmed at the error messages as mentioned earlier.

**coldcritter64** · March 13th, 2013

...highlight # do in editor?...

My previous instructions said highlight the error (ie. insert the cursor at the start of the message and click and drag a selection over the whole error message), then click on the # button on the toolbar, not highlight it. As soon as you click on th # button with the error selected the editor will automatically wrap the selection with the code tags, easy

.

<aside>@RoosterHam, yeah it's not too shabby

, real steamy and tropical up here atm, looking forward to the colder months approaching. cheers. </aside> (also note with the aside I use the html style <>, but bbcode tags use the [ ] style brackets. Using this layout with the aside comments is only to easily show readers the comment is not related to the post topic, unlike the paragraph above, not for any html purposes). Posts should be on topic, but individual comments within that are off the topic should be cleary marked, as far as I'm aware.