Apple’s open(1) Command
September 7, 2006
Why can’t every Unix-like OS have something like this?
I really like OS X. In particular, I like its open(1) command. I seriously wish that Linux and BSD had something like this. Basically, you type open <filename> and that file is handled as if you had double-clicked it. This command is so useful and convenient that I can’t remember what I did without it. For instance, today I wanted to edit all the PHP files in a certain directory that had a certain text string in them. Easy:
grep -l text_string *.php | xargs open
Then, OS X opened up my text editor and loaded it with the matching files, automagically.
As much as I wish this would appear in Free Unix implementations, I don’t see it happening. Sigh…
