File Launcher

This is an EXAMPLE script written in Python showing how to create a simple menu on the command line that lets you open a file with its default application

What this script do is the following:

1. Get all the files (not folders) in a directory.
2. Generate a list of their file names.
3. Return a numbered version of this list to the terminal.
4. Ask the number of the file to open.
5. Open the selected file with its default app.

Requirements

This script was tested on python 3.10.6 and use mainly native modules. The only external module required is pandas. You can install it with pip:

pip install pandas

If you don't have pip, install it with your package manager. For ubuntu-based distibutions that could be:

apt install python-pip

How to use this example Python script in Linux

The easiest way to run this script for a non-technical user is to copy-paste or download the file launcher.py to your computer.

Another way to get the file from the terminal is using wget:

wget http://github.com/USER_NAME/REPO_NAME/blob/COMMIT_ID/launcher.py

Then, you have to make it executable:

chmod -v +x file-launcher.py

Finnally, you can run it:

python3 file-launcher.py

On some systems, python may still refer to Python 2 instead of Python 3. I suggest the python3 binary to avoid ambiguity. If you still preffer call python for brevity, you can create a link to it with the following command:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python

By default it list files on the current user's HOME folder. To open another folder, use the -d option (or the long option --directory):

python3 file-launcher.py -d /home/user/Documents

You can use environment variables too:

python3 file-launcher.py --directory $HOME/Images

How to use this example Python script using Git

Comming soon