March 2003
Beginner
432 pages
11h 30m
English
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Opening Things from the Command Line
Why should you have to pop on up to the GUI to open applications, files, directories, and URLs when it’s just as easy from the command line?
The open command
launches applications and opens files, directories, and URLs from the
command line just as if you’d double-clicked its
associated icon in the Finder.
Launch applications by supplying open with their
path. Here we launch
Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word:
%open /Applications/Internet\ Explorer.app... %open /Applications/Microsoft\ Office\ X/Microsoft\ Word
Tip
You’ll notice that Internet Explorer ends in
.app while Microsoft Word does not.
Cocoa applications are postfixed
with a .app extension. Carbon or Classic apps
have no special extension.
Opening a directory is no different; to bring your Music folder up in the Finder, type:
% open ~/MusicJust as the Finder mysteriously figures out which application is
associated with any particular files, shortcuts, or URLs, so too does
open determine which application, if any, to use.
The underlying magic involved comes
in two flavors: type/creator codes and file extensions [Hack #6]
, from the Mac OS 9 and Unix worlds,
respectively. The Macintosh operating system maintains a database of
type/creator codes and their associated applications, quietly looking
up the application best suited to deal with a file you double-click
and launching it for you. The Unix world doesn’t
know such codes and relies instead on file extensions, like
.txt ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.