shelljs-plugin-open
A ShellJS plugin for the open() command
to open a file (or URL) with its default application. This is largely based on
opener.
This is designed to imitate the open command on Mac OS X. Here's the
equivalent commands for other systems:
-
Mac OS X
$ open file.txt # opens in a text editor -
Linux
$ xdg-open file.txt # opens in a text editor -
Windows
> start file.txt
Installation
$ npm install --save shelljs
$ npm install --save shelljs-plugin-openUsage
ShellJS unofficially has the capacity for plugins (the API is likely to change a bit) since v0.7.1. Although we don't recommend developing for this yet, this plugin is designed to test that API, and we will adapt it along with changes to ShellJS up until official plugin support. To use this plugin, you must use exactly version v0.7.1 (although, eventually this will support v1.0.0+).
To use this plugin in your project, include it like so:
var shell = require('shelljs');
require('shelljs-plugin-open');
// Ex. usage:
shell.open('file.txt'); // the plugin is now available!Supported systems
- Linux (all variants)
- OS X
- Windows
This is supported for Node v0.11+
Writing plugins
If you're interested in taking a look at the current state of the plugin API, take a look at index.js. This has helpful comments explaining the necessary boilerplate for writing a plugin. For an example usage of the plugin, take a look at test/test.js.

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