Executing the default application assigned to a file type, from terminal, given only file name

Question

Using gnome terminal (Ubuntu 10.10), is there a way to execute the default application associated to a file type, only by typing its name, as it is possible with Windows ?

For example, say I create a mime type associated to every file with the pattern *.abc. Lets say I associate this file type to application 'my_app'.

If I have file 'my_file.abc' in current folder, what I want is that when I enter only 'my_file.abc' at the prompt, it executes 'my_app' feeding it with 'my_file.abc' as first argument. (assuming of course 'my_app' is in the path)

I appreciate this behaviour in Windows, wondering if Linux/Gnome could do that too. Thanks

Answer 1

You could use the binfmt_misc facility for something similar, but you're probably better off just passing it to xdg-open.

Answer 2

On Linux with zsh (http://www.zsh.org/) you could achieve it in this way:

$ alias -s abc=my_app

And after it zsh will always execute my_app youfile.abc when you just enter youfile.abc.

Answer 3

I don't know of any unix shell that allows you to execute any file in this way.

On Debian or Ubuntu, see myfile or edit myfile opens a file in the application that's associated to the file type through the mailcap mechanism. The command is from the mime-support package, which I think is installed by default on both Debian and Ubuntu (and anyway it's in many packages' dependencies, so it's probably installed already).

On many systems, you can use xdg-open myfile from the xdg-utils suite. This opens the file in the application that's associated to the file type through the Freedesktop mechanism. The Ubuntu package is xdg-utils, also probably installed already.

Answer 4

You could use gnome-open for that. Works pretty well for me.