Open Files from Command Line on OS X
I'm as much of a fan of application UIs as anyone else but I'm finding myself working more and more from the command line lately. Much of that is becoming obsessed with media manipulation but I'm forcing myself to use less UIs so that I can understand what's under the hood of my favorite utilities.
One common case for running any app is opening an existing file, like an HTML file in a browser or a document in Pages. To open a file on Mac OS X from the command line, type the following:
open portrait.png
The above does not specify an app to open the given file in -- the default app for that file type will be used. To open a file in a specific app, use the -a argument:
open -a /Applications/Firefox.app portrait.png
You can also open a URL directly from the command line:
open https://davidwalsh.name/
You'd expect opening a file from command line to be easy and I'm happy to confirm to you that it is.
![Regular Expressions for the Rest of Us]()
Sooner or later you'll run across a regular expression. With their cryptic syntax, confusing documentation and massive learning curve, most developers settle for copying and pasting them from StackOverflow and hoping they work. But what if you could decode regular expressions and harness their power? In...
![9 Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos]()
As much as developers now loathe Flash, we're still playing a bit of catch up to natively duplicate the animation capabilities that Adobe's old technology provided us. Of course we have canvas, an awesome technology, one which I highlighted 9 mind-blowing demos. Another technology available...
![JavaScript Battery API]()
Mozilla Aurora 11 was recently released with a bevy of new features. One of those great new features is their initial implementation of the Battery Status API. This simple API provides you information about the battery's current charge level, its...
![Drag and Drop MooTools File Uploads]()
Honesty hour confession: file uploading within the web browser sucks. It just does. Like the ugly SELECT element, the file input is almost unstylable and looks different on different platforms. Add to those criticism the fact that we're all used to drag and drop operations...
I was just wondering how to do this, thanks!
When you use
-a, you don’t need to write the path.…would do the same. :)
The
-ahandler is great when you want to open some program one doesn’t really know (eg remember) exactly where it is.Like:
// that one is in /System/Library/CoreServices