In my quest to make nautilus easier to use, I was playing around with
some bash and ended up accidentally writing a working nautilus script :)
This initial script is as follows:
#! /bin/bash
location=`zenity --entry`
for arg
do
cp $arg $location
done
You can put this text into a file, make it executable and place the file
in ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts and nautilus will use it as a script.
What this does is, upon right-clicking a file in nautilus, gnome opens a
dialog and asks for a target path, you enter a target path and then
nautilus copies the file you right-clicked on to the path you entered.
Shocked the heck out of me when it actually worked. Now, I'd like to
extend it a bit by checking to see if the file already exists in the
target dir, and if so give the user the chance to cancel the whole
operation or overwrite the existing file in the target dir.
Here's what I have come up with so far:
#! /bin/bash
location=`zenity --entry`
question=`zenity --question --text="file "$location/$arg" already
exists. Do you want to overwrite this file?"`
for arg
do
if [ -e $location/$arg ];then
read $question # read the return of zenity --question
case "$question" in
0 ) exit 1 ;; # if user chose "Cancel", then exit
1 ) cp $arg $location ;; # if user chose "OK", then copy
esac
fi
done
What I need to know now is:
1) how to get zenity to give me a directory selection dialog (instead of
location=`zenity --entry`) so I don't have to type a path into the text
entry dialog
2) how to capture the o or 1 that zenity --question returns (deternins
whether the user chose "OK" or "Cancel" in the zenity --question
messagebox) and then have a seperate action occur depending on whether
the user chose "OK" or "Cancel". So, I need to learn the proper way to
use the "case" in the if/then statement above. Any ideas on either of these?
By the way, when this is done, I plan to write a few more scripts and
make them available to everyone.. possibly get them added to the
nautilus file manager - I hope.
Ian MacGregor
