How can I tell GNOME to execute a custom command, CLI-style?

Question

Whenever you want to open a file with a program that's not in the right-click shortlist, you click 'use a custom command.' However, the way that's worded led me to believe that it may be possible to treat the file as if it were $@, command line input.

What I want to be able to do is add the custom command 'cp (clickedfile) /my/directory'...

However, the custom command 'cp $@ /my/directory' did not work.

Answer 1

Ideally you should create a Nautilus script to perform this task. A Nautilus script is a well-defined way to perform complex tasks in GNOME.

For more on Nautilus scripts with examples, see http://g-scripts.sourceforge.net/

You would like to see the File Management scripts at http://g-scripts.sourceforge.net/cat-filesysmgt.php

Here is what you need,

#!/bin/sh
# Author : Your Name <me@gmail.com>
# Date : 01/01/2011
# depends: none
# version 0.1
# This script copies a file to a specific directory
# Copy this script in your ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts directory

cp $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS /home/myuser/mydirectory/
exit 0

The beauty with this is that you can select multiple files and it still works.

If you want something a bit more complex than that, see http://blog.sriunplugged.com/shell-scripting/send-to-in-linux/