Dired shell command on file asymchronously

Dired shell command on file asymchronously

[Luis O. Silva]

Dear Emacs community,

Goal:
Being in Dired mode I want to apply a shell command to a file
asynchronously.

Details:
I'm using the extension dired-x.el, Emacs 21.2.1. When in
Dired mode I use dired-do-shell-command for launching xdvi on
a .dvi file. I want to use Emacs further while browsing the
xdvi window, but that is impossible since Emacs waits until
the xdvi process is terminated.

Thank you very much in advance for any help.
luis

-- 
Luis Octavio Silva Pereyra.
IIMAS-UNAM
Depto. de Métodos Matemáticos y Numéricos
Apdo. postal 20-726
01000 México, D.F.

Re: Dired shell command on file asymchronously

[Emilio Lopes]

Luis O. Silva <l.o.silva <at> mail.ru> writes:

> I'm using the extension dired-x.el, Emacs 21.2.1. When in
> Dired mode I use dired-do-shell-command for launching xdvi on
> a .dvi file. I want to use Emacs further while browsing the
> xdvi window, but that is impossible since Emacs waits until
> the xdvi process is terminated.

Append an ampersand ("&") to the command, e.g. "xdvi * &"

Re: Dired shell command on file asymchronously

[Josef.Bauer.NOSPAM]

>>>>> "Luis" == Luis O Silva <l.o.silva@mail.ru> writes:

    Luis> Dear Emacs community, Goal: Being in Dired mode I want to
    Luis> apply a shell command to a file asynchronously.

Hi,

maybe check out my post

 http://groups.google.de/group/gnu.emacs.sources/browse_thread/thread/74f5eef321a64b60/a0bf8a70d3b85ab5?q=dired-do-shell-command-in-background&rnum=1&hl=de#a0bf8a70d3b85ab5

or search for 

 dired-do-shell-command-in-background

in google groups.

Best regards

Josef

Re: Dired shell command on file asymchronously

[Josef.Bauer.NOSPAM]

Hi,

I just found that I added a minor improvement in the meantime. Using
'shell-quote-argument' file names with spaces and such are working.

Here is the new version:

;-----------------------------------------------------------------
(defun dired-do-shell-command-in-background (command)
  "In dired, do shell command in background on the file or directory named on this line."
  (interactive
   (list (dired-read-shell-command (concat "& on " "%s: ") nil (list (dired-get-filename)))))
  (call-process command nil 0 nil (shell-quote-argument (dired-get-filename))))

(add-hook 'dired-load-hook
	  (function (lambda ()
		      (load "dired-x")
		      (define-key dired-mode-map "&" 'dired-do-shell-command-in-background))))

(setq dired-guess-shell-alist-user
      (list (list "\\.wav$" "snack") (list "\\.au$" "snack")
	    (list "\\.doc$" "OOo" ) (list "\\.xls$" "OOo")))
;-----------------------------------------------------------------

Greetings

Josef

Re: Dired shell command on file asymchronously

[Kevin Rodgers]

Josef.Bauer.NOSPAM@web.de wrote:
 > I just found that I added a minor improvement in the meantime. Using
 > 'shell-quote-argument' file names with spaces and such are working.
 >
 > Here is the new version:
 >
 > ;-----------------------------------------------------------------
 > (defun dired-do-shell-command-in-background (command)
 >   "In dired, do shell command in background on the file or directory 
named on this line."
 >   (interactive
 >    (list (dired-read-shell-command (concat "& on " "%s: ") nil (list 
(dired-get-filename)))))
 >   (call-process command nil 0 nil (shell-quote-argument 
(dired-get-filename))))

That doesn't make sense to me.  call-process passes its &rest ARGS
directly to PROGRAM, without any word-splitting etc. by the shell.  So
shell-quote-argument is unecessary, and in fact could introduce quoting
characters that would be interpreted as part of the file name.

If COMMAND is actually a shell command (i.e. with redirection operators
etc.) then you must use shell-command instead of call-process.  If it is
just a program, then using call-process is fine -- but again, using
shell-quote-argument with it is not.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers

Re: Dired shell command on file asymchronously

[Josef.Bauer.NOSPAM]

    Josef> (call-process command nil 0 nil (shell-quote-argument
    Josef> (dired-get-filename))))

    Kevin> That doesn't make sense to me.  call-process passes its
    Kevin> &rest ARGS directly to PROGRAM, without any word-splitting
    Kevin> etc. by the shell.  So shell-quote-argument is unecessary,
    Kevin> and in fact could introduce quoting characters that would
    Kevin> be interpreted as part of the file name.

I think you are right: It works better without the
shell-quote-argument. Please excuse that mistake --- I told you I'm
far from a lisp guru!

Always trying to avoid such things like spaces in filenames I don't
need this very often. I think I had a case where it worked with the
shell-quote-argument but I can't remember what it was.

Best regards

Josef

Re: Dired shell command on file asymchronously

[Luis O. Silva]

Hi Josef,

Thank you for your message (24 Jun 2005 14:59:55 +0200), in
which, among other things, you wrote[1]:

   JB> maybe check out my post

   JB> http://groups.google.de/group/gnu.emacs.sources/browse_thread/thread/74f5eef321a64b60/a0bf8a70d3b85ab5?q=dired-do-shell-command-in-background&rnum=1&hl=de#a0bf8a70d3b85ab5

   JB> or search for

   JB>  dired-do-shell-command-in-background

   JB> in google groups.

this seems to be what I needed. Thank you very much. I'll test
your code today.

Thank you,
luis


Footnotes:
[1] The excerpts of your message are prefixed by "JB>".

-- 
Luis Octavio Silva Pereyra.
IIMAS-UNAM
Depto. de Métodos Matemáticos y Numéricos
Apdo. postal 20-726
01000 México, D.F.