package open

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Open files in their default applications

Install

Dune Dependency

Authors

Maintainers

Sources

v0.2.2.tar.gz
sha256=2458a64a87437b87b2c195636bec1f811ceab176551db630fbad83af72fde13c
md5=b575f0e265a2877b2b6870b271961c55

README.md.html

ocaml-open: open files in their default applications

Conveniently open files such as PDFs in their default applications straigt from OCaml.

Quick start

You can install the library using opam:

$ opam install open

Then in utop or ocaml,

$ ocaml
> #require "open";;
> Open.in_default_app "/home/steffen/ocaml.svg";;
- : bool = true
// SVG viewer opens and displays ocaml.svg

The boolean returned by Open.in_default_app indicates whether the open command exited normally:

> Open.in_default_app "/path/to/non-existent.file";;
- : bool = false
// nothing happens

Both absolute and relative paths are supported:

> Open.in_default_app ".";;
- : bool = true
// file manager displays current working directory

API

The tiny API is documented here.

Building from source

Dependencies

The library requires dune (formerly known as jbuilder) to build, but has no other dependencies.

Building Library and Examples

Run make to build and make test to see the library in action. This should open several files from the examples/basic folder.

There is also a more sophisticated example in examples/graphviz that requires graphivz and Jane Street's core (version v0.9.0 or higher). You can build & run it as follows:

jbuilder build @graphviz

Limitations and Implementation

The library has been tested under Linux, MacOS, and Cygwin. There is experimental support for native Windows, but this is untested. The implementation uses

  • xdg-open on Linux

  • open on MacOS

  • cygstart on Cygiwn, and

  • cmd start on Windows.

Suggestion and Contributions

Suggestions and contributions are always welcome. Feel free to submit pull requests.

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