Re: Browsing dirs from Dired with graphical explorer

[Tassilo Horn]

Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Richard,

>> There's `xdg-open' which given a directory or file argument should
>> open it with the system's default application.
>
> Where is this defined? It does not exist on my debian system.

Here on Gentoo GNU/Linux it's in the xdg-utils package.

> Also would you know how to make "e" open the directory/file under the
> cursor? Your comments above indicate you thought this to be the case -
> it actually opens the current dir.

Ah, ok.  I wasn't too sure what `dired-current-directory' returns.

Assuming you have xdg-open installed, something like this might do the
trick.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun dired-open-externally ()
  "Open the current directory in your OS's file manager."
  (interactive)
  (start-process "dired-external" nil "xdg-open" (dired-get-file-for-visit)))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Then the logic what application to use for opening the given file or
directory is inside xdg-open.  On GNU/Linux it takes these informations
from /etc/mailcap and ~/.mailcap, AFAICT.

Bye,
Tassilo