Re: Executing External Programs from Emacs

[tyler <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

dstein64 <DStein64@gmail.com> writes:

> Are there any functions that can launch external programs (not just
> command line programs, but also GUI programs) from Emacs?

From a shell within Emacs, call the command followed by '&'. You can
also do this from with the 'shell-command' function, which is invoked
with M-!. So, to call a pdf viewer, for example, you could do:

M-! xpdf & <return>

Cheers,

Tyler



> I know that
> I can access a shell, and call a program from there, but then emacs is
> not operable until I close the program. Prepending the command with
> `nohup' is useful, but for some reason it does not work as expected
> with all programs, including emacs. I would prefer another way of
> doing this - using a specific built-in of emacs lisp if one exists.
> Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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