Executing Shell Script Files
Let's start with the process for shell script files, which is simpler.
Let's say you have a file called script.sh in a given folder (directory). In order to execute it, first we must make the file itself executable by changing its file permissions.
Execute the following command on the terminal [how?]:
chmod +x script.shThe command above will give script.sh the executable permission if it exists in the current working directory.
- How to Change the Current Working Directory using the Terminal on Linux Mint
- How to Pass Arguments to Terminal Commands in Bash / Linux
- What Read, Write, and Execute Permissions Mean on Linux
After doing this, we can execute the script file with this command:
./script.shSee [How to Refer to Files and Folders using the Terminal on Linux Mint] for details.
The same method works for .appimage files.
Other Interpreters
If the script file requires an interpreter other than the shell, e.g. it's a Python script, you'll need to write the appropriate shebang in the script file so the shell can figure out what interpreter to execute. For example, if you have a Python script file called script.py containing the following code:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
print("Hello world!")You can execute it in 3 ways:
- By calling
python3 script.py. - By calling
/usr/bin/env python3 script.py. - By making it executable, and then simply calling
./script.py.
Executing Installed Applications
If an application is installed in the system, we can run it by providing its filepath as the zeroth argument in the command-line. For example:
/usr/bin/kritaThe command above will open Krita if it's installed, because if it's installed an executable file will be created in the /usr/bin directory. That's what we're executing here.
Note: on Linux, filepaths are case-sensitive, which means /Usr/Bin/Krita or /USR/BIN/KRITA won't work as that's considered to be a different filepath.
Executing Applications by Name
Bash can execute a program by name if it's inside one of the directories listed in the $PATH environment variable, which includes /usr/bin by default. This means we can also run Krita through the command:
kritaOnce again, keep in mind that this is case-sensitive and it only works because a file called krita exists in the /usr/bin directory.
Opening Files in Applications from The Command-Line
By convention, an application that opens files takes the filepath of a file to open as its first argument in the command-line. For example:
krita ~/my-file.kraThe command above will pass the filepath of a file called my-file.kra that exists in your home directory, represented in Bash by the tilde (~), to krita. Krita will then automatically open that file when it starts up. This is the same process that occurs whenever you double click on a file in a file manager to open it.
If an application can open files in multiple ways, there may be an option or flag you can use to modify how it opens a file. This depends on the application, though.