Shell script to open a URL

Question

How do I write a simple shell script (say script.sh), so that I can pass a URL as an argument while executing?

I want a browser to start with the page opened on that URL

Answer 1

You don't need to write a script for that. There're some tools that you can use depending on your OS:

Linux

xdg-open is available in most Linux distributions. It opens a file or URL in the user's preferred browser (configurable with xdg-settings).

xdg-open https://stackoverflow.com

macOS

open opens files and URLs in the default or specified application.

open https://stackoverflow.com
open -a Firefox https://stackoverflow.com

Windows

You can use the start command at the command prompt to open an URL in the default (or specified) browser:

start https://stackoverflow.com
start firefox https://stackoverflow.com

Cross-platform

The builtin webbrowser Python module works on many platforms.

python -m webbrowser https://stackoverflow.com