How to open user system preferred editor for given file?

Question

I\'m trying to figure out how to open the system preferred editor for a given file.

Say, we have a file manager, written in Java. User goes to folder and sees the li

Answer 1

Check out the java.awt.Desktop object. In your case, you want to invoke edit()

If you want to ensure that a given platform supports this call, then you can do something like the following (I have not tested this code):

public boolean editFile(final File file) {
  if (!Desktop.isDesktopSupported()) {
    return false;
  }

  Desktop desktop = Desktop.getDesktop();
  if (!desktop.isSupported(Desktop.Action.EDIT)) {
    return false;
  }

  try {
    desktop.edit(file);
  } catch (IOException e) {
    // Log an error
    return false;
  }

  return true;
}

Answer 2

Seems that if you can't use java.awt.Desktop you have to distinguish between the OSes: Windows:

RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,OpenAs_RunDLL <file.ext>

Linux:

edit <file.ext>

Mac:

open <file.ext>

HTH. Obviously, that is not very portable...

Answer 3

This will work in windows

Runtime.getRuntime().exec( "CMD /C START filename.ext " );

Answer 4

This isn't cross-platform, but on Mac OS X you can do

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("open filename");

The open(1) executable uses LaunchServices to pick the right program to execute, and then uses that to open the file named filename.