How can I use terminal commands to access Ubuntu menu items?












1















I need to run a bash script that will retrieve all of the desktop files located in a specific menu item (like accessories/utilities or education, etc) and then run a specific one of them. What terminal commands can I use to do this?






command-line scripts menu .desktop execute-command







share|improve this question





























    1















    I need to run a bash script that will retrieve all of the desktop files located in a specific menu item (like accessories/utilities or education, etc) and then run a specific one of them. What terminal commands can I use to do this?






    command-line scripts menu .desktop execute-command







    share|improve this question



























      1












      1








      1








      I need to run a bash script that will retrieve all of the desktop files located in a specific menu item (like accessories/utilities or education, etc) and then run a specific one of them. What terminal commands can I use to do this?






      command-line scripts menu .desktop execute-command







      share|improve this question
















      I need to run a bash script that will retrieve all of the desktop files located in a specific menu item (like accessories/utilities or education, etc) and then run a specific one of them. What terminal commands can I use to do this?






      command-line scripts menu .desktop execute-command




      command-line scripts menu .desktop execute-command






      share|improve this question















      share|improve this question













      share|improve this question




      share|improve this question








      edited Feb 8 at 13:01









      dessert

      25.3k673107




      25.3k673107










      asked Feb 8 at 4:46









      tristotristo

      1083




      1083






















          1 Answer
          1






          active

          oldest

          votes


















          0














          The .desktop files are located under either /usr/share/applications/ (system wide) or ~/.local/share/applications (per user). The categorisation is done by setting the “Categories” property in the file and this may not be the exact same as shown in the menu, so you first need to find out the correct category name. In my menu there’s a category called “Büro”, which is the German term for “Office”, and it contains a launcher for qpdfview. To review the .desktop file’s “Categories” line I run:



          $ grep Categories /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop 
          
Categories=Viewer;Office;


          That shows the two categories for the program, so it’s called “Office” in the .desktop files. To get a list of every .desktop file categorised with “Office” I use grep again, with the -l flag to only show filenames without matches:



          $ grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*
          
/usr/share/applications/evince.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/evince-previewer.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/gnucash.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-base.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-draw.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-impress.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-math.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-startcenter.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop
          
/usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


          So that’s our list of office programs, now to run them I’d simply use xdg-open, e.g.:



          xdg-open /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


          If xdg-open doesn’t work on your system you may also just extract the start command from the file and run it directly, e.g.:



          exec $(grep -Po 'Exec=K[^ ]*' /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop)


          You didn’t provide information on how you or the script’s user should choose the program to run, so here are some links that may help you with that:




          • How can I create a select menu in a shell script?

          • Create bash menu based on file list (map files to numbers)


          Saving the filenames in an array for easy processing in a script is as easy as that:



          options=("$(grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*)")





          share|improve this answer


























            Your Answer








            StackExchange.ready(function() {
            var channelOptions = {
            tags: "".split(" "),
            id: "89"
            };
            initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

            StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function() {
            // Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
            if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled) {
            StackExchange.using("snippets", function() {
            createEditor();
            });
            }
            else {
            createEditor();
            }
            });

            function createEditor() {
            StackExchange.prepareEditor({
            heartbeatType: 'answer',
            autoActivateHeartbeat: false,
            convertImagesToLinks: true,
            noModals: true,
            showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
            reputationToPostImages: 10,
            bindNavPrevention: true,
            postfix: "",
            imageUploader: {
            brandingHtml: "Powered by u003ca class="icon-imgur-white" href="https://imgur.com/"u003eu003c/au003e",
            contentPolicyHtml: "User contributions licensed under u003ca href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"u003ecc by-sa 3.0 with attribution requiredu003c/au003e u003ca href="https://stackoverflow.com/legal/content-policy"u003e(content policy)u003c/au003e",
            allowUrls: true
            },
            onDemand: true,
            discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
            ,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
            });


            }
            });














            draft saved

            draft discarded


















            StackExchange.ready(
            function () {
            StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2faskubuntu.com%2fquestions%2f1116567%2fhow-can-i-use-terminal-commands-to-access-ubuntu-menu-items%23new-answer', 'question_page');
            }
            );

            Post as a guest















            Required, but never shown

























            1 Answer
            1






            active

            oldest

            votes








            1 Answer
            1






            active

            oldest

            votes









            active

            oldest

            votes






            active

            oldest

            votes









            0














            The .desktop files are located under either /usr/share/applications/ (system wide) or ~/.local/share/applications (per user). The categorisation is done by setting the “Categories” property in the file and this may not be the exact same as shown in the menu, so you first need to find out the correct category name. In my menu there’s a category called “Büro”, which is the German term for “Office”, and it contains a launcher for qpdfview. To review the .desktop file’s “Categories” line I run:



            $ grep Categories /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop 
            
Categories=Viewer;Office;


            That shows the two categories for the program, so it’s called “Office” in the .desktop files. To get a list of every .desktop file categorised with “Office” I use grep again, with the -l flag to only show filenames without matches:



            $ grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*
            
/usr/share/applications/evince.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/evince-previewer.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/gnucash.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-base.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-draw.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-impress.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-math.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-startcenter.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop
            
/usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


            So that’s our list of office programs, now to run them I’d simply use xdg-open, e.g.:



            xdg-open /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


            If xdg-open doesn’t work on your system you may also just extract the start command from the file and run it directly, e.g.:



            exec $(grep -Po 'Exec=K[^ ]*' /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop)


            You didn’t provide information on how you or the script’s user should choose the program to run, so here are some links that may help you with that:




            • How can I create a select menu in a shell script?

            • Create bash menu based on file list (map files to numbers)


            Saving the filenames in an array for easy processing in a script is as easy as that:



            options=("$(grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*)")





            share|improve this answer






























              0














              The .desktop files are located under either /usr/share/applications/ (system wide) or ~/.local/share/applications (per user). The categorisation is done by setting the “Categories” property in the file and this may not be the exact same as shown in the menu, so you first need to find out the correct category name. In my menu there’s a category called “Büro”, which is the German term for “Office”, and it contains a launcher for qpdfview. To review the .desktop file’s “Categories” line I run:



              $ grep Categories /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop 
              
Categories=Viewer;Office;


              That shows the two categories for the program, so it’s called “Office” in the .desktop files. To get a list of every .desktop file categorised with “Office” I use grep again, with the -l flag to only show filenames without matches:



              $ grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*
              
/usr/share/applications/evince.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/evince-previewer.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/gnucash.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-base.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-draw.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-impress.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-math.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-startcenter.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop
              
/usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


              So that’s our list of office programs, now to run them I’d simply use xdg-open, e.g.:



              xdg-open /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


              If xdg-open doesn’t work on your system you may also just extract the start command from the file and run it directly, e.g.:



              exec $(grep -Po 'Exec=K[^ ]*' /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop)


              You didn’t provide information on how you or the script’s user should choose the program to run, so here are some links that may help you with that:




              • How can I create a select menu in a shell script?

              • Create bash menu based on file list (map files to numbers)


              Saving the filenames in an array for easy processing in a script is as easy as that:



              options=("$(grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*)")





              share|improve this answer




























                0












                0








                0







                The .desktop files are located under either /usr/share/applications/ (system wide) or ~/.local/share/applications (per user). The categorisation is done by setting the “Categories” property in the file and this may not be the exact same as shown in the menu, so you first need to find out the correct category name. In my menu there’s a category called “Büro”, which is the German term for “Office”, and it contains a launcher for qpdfview. To review the .desktop file’s “Categories” line I run:



                $ grep Categories /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop 
                
Categories=Viewer;Office;


                That shows the two categories for the program, so it’s called “Office” in the .desktop files. To get a list of every .desktop file categorised with “Office” I use grep again, with the -l flag to only show filenames without matches:



                $ grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*
                
/usr/share/applications/evince.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/evince-previewer.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/gnucash.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-base.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-draw.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-impress.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-math.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-startcenter.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


                So that’s our list of office programs, now to run them I’d simply use xdg-open, e.g.:



                xdg-open /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


                If xdg-open doesn’t work on your system you may also just extract the start command from the file and run it directly, e.g.:



                exec $(grep -Po 'Exec=K[^ ]*' /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop)


                You didn’t provide information on how you or the script’s user should choose the program to run, so here are some links that may help you with that:




                • How can I create a select menu in a shell script?

                • Create bash menu based on file list (map files to numbers)


                Saving the filenames in an array for easy processing in a script is as easy as that:



                options=("$(grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*)")





                share|improve this answer















                The .desktop files are located under either /usr/share/applications/ (system wide) or ~/.local/share/applications (per user). The categorisation is done by setting the “Categories” property in the file and this may not be the exact same as shown in the menu, so you first need to find out the correct category name. In my menu there’s a category called “Büro”, which is the German term for “Office”, and it contains a launcher for qpdfview. To review the .desktop file’s “Categories” line I run:



                $ grep Categories /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop 
                
Categories=Viewer;Office;


                That shows the two categories for the program, so it’s called “Office” in the .desktop files. To get a list of every .desktop file categorised with “Office” I use grep again, with the -l flag to only show filenames without matches:



                $ grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*
                
/usr/share/applications/evince.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/evince-previewer.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/gnucash.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-base.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-calc.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-draw.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-impress.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-math.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-startcenter.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/libreoffice-writer.desktop
                
/usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


                So that’s our list of office programs, now to run them I’d simply use xdg-open, e.g.:



                xdg-open /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop


                If xdg-open doesn’t work on your system you may also just extract the start command from the file and run it directly, e.g.:



                exec $(grep -Po 'Exec=K[^ ]*' /usr/share/applications/qpdfview.desktop)


                You didn’t provide information on how you or the script’s user should choose the program to run, so here are some links that may help you with that:




                • How can I create a select menu in a shell script?

                • Create bash menu based on file list (map files to numbers)


                Saving the filenames in an array for easy processing in a script is as easy as that:



                options=("$(grep -l Categories.*Office /usr/share/applications/*)")






                share|improve this answer














                share|improve this answer



                share|improve this answer








                edited Feb 8 at 13:59

























                answered Feb 8 at 7:59









                dessertdessert

                25.3k673107




                25.3k673107






























                    draft saved

                    draft discarded




















































                    Thanks for contributing an answer to Ask Ubuntu!


                    • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

                    But avoid …



                    • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.

                    • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.


                    To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.




                    draft saved


                    draft discarded














                    StackExchange.ready(
                    function () {
                    StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2faskubuntu.com%2fquestions%2f1116567%2fhow-can-i-use-terminal-commands-to-access-ubuntu-menu-items%23new-answer', 'question_page');
                    }
                    );

                    Post as a guest















                    Required, but never shown





















































                    Required, but never shown














                    Required, but never shown












                    Required, but never shown







                    Required, but never shown

































                    Required, but never shown














                    Required, but never shown












                    Required, but never shown







                    Required, but never shown







                    -

                    Popular posts from this blog

                    Questions related to Moebius Transform of Characteristic Function of the Primes

                    Image
                    2 $begingroup$ Consider the function defined in (1) below related to the fundamental prime counting function $pi(x)$ . Note that A143519(n) is not multiplicative. (1) $quad f(x)=sumlimits_{n=1}^{x}A143519(n)$ https://oeis.org/A143519 The following plot illustrates $f(x)$ defined in formula (1) above. Figure (1) : Illustration of $f(x)$ defined in formula (1) The integer zeros of $f(x)$ for $xle 10,000$ are listed in (2) below. (2) $quad$ {1,6,9,12,19,30,79,80,81,116,193,201,287,288,291,668,673,679,680,685,686,1109} The zero crossings of $f(x)$ for $xle 10,000$ where $f(x)$ doesn't settle at zero are listed in (3) below. (3) $quad$ {14,21,33,114,115,118,195,286,290,295,442,445,665,667,670,671,678,682} Question (1) : Does $f(x)$ have a finite number of integer zeros, and if so ...
                    Read more

                    List of scandals in India

                    Image
                    List of scandals in India From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries. This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article has an unclear citation style . The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation and footnoting. ( January 2014 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This list is in reverse order. As a consequence it appears to be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective and add more content related to non-recent events. ( May 2013 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) ...
                    Read more

                    Can not write log (Is /dev/pts mounted?) - openpty in Ubuntu-on-Windows?

                    Image
                    0 1 What exactly does the error message beginning with E: mean? I assume it has to do with the file structure on Ubuntu-on-Windows, but what exactly? The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required: os-prober Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove it. The following extra packages will be installed: libxslt1.1 The following NEW packages will be installed: libxslt1.1 xmlstarlet 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 435 kB of archives. After this operation, 1023 kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main libxslt1.1 amd64 1.1.28-2build1 [145 kB] Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/universe xmlstarlet amd64 1.5.0-1 [290 kB] ...
                    Read more