[SOLVED] XFCE - Can't run .sh file via double-clicking it if the file name has a space or apostrophe (works in Cinnamon)

[NM64]

On Mint 20.3 XFCE, regardless of whether it's a live USB session or and installed session, I can't seem to run .sh files if they have a space or an apostrophe in the file name.

I'm also running into this issue when the .sh file is located in a folder that has an apostrophe or space, even if the .sh file itself does not; e.g.

Code: Select all

/folder's_name/script.sh

as well as

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/folder name/script.sh

will both fail.

And yes, the "run as a program" checkbox in right-click -> properties is checked.

For reference, this issue does not occur with Mint 20.3 Cinnamon (I have not tried it on Mate). I've also not tried it on any other XFCE version of Mint other than 20.3.

EDIT: To clarify, all I'm trying to do is double-click on the .sh file through Thunar on XFCE. In Nemo on Cinnamon, it all "just works" regardless of whether there's a space or an apostrophe but, in Thunar on XFCE, it does not (it may be worth mentioning that Thunar on XFCE was by default set to open .sh files with the text editor even when "run as a program" was checked, so I had to set .sh files to instead open with the terminal by default so that double-clicking on them would actually run them).


Simply renaming the file name to not have a space or apostrophe makes it work fine, but a least one program I was trying to run has an apostrophe in its .sh file by default (and renaming it causes issues with the .py file that it normally hooks into using the same file name).

All tests were conducted with the .sh file being located in "Home" and/or on the desktop, and additionally were tested inside of a newly-created folder in those locations.

If you want an example .sh script that I tested with, here's one I "borrowed" from this thread; a file name of:

Code: Select all

hello world.sh

as well as

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world's hello.sh

does not work while

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hello_world.sh

does in fact work:

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#!/bin/bash
# hello world script!
echo 'hello world'
read -n 1 -r -s -p $'Press any key to continue...\n'

[bin]

The way I would expect this to work is that if the path to the sh file contains a space then I would put " " at both ends of the path.

So

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/home/user/scripts/my script.sh 

would fail because it could not find a path after

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/home/user/scripts/my

due to the space

But

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"/home/user/scripts/my script.sh"

would work

If you are in the folder where the script lives then it would be

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./"my script.sh"

I cannot tell from your posts whether the use of " " is to provide this functions or simple to show what you have run.
It would help if you uses the code button in the post toolbar to isolate what you are actually entering.

Apostrophe is just asking for trouble for so many reasons.

[NM64]

Oh yeah using the code bbcode would have been better... I'll fix that.

As for using quotes, that won't work because all I'm trying to do is straight-up double-click on the .sh file in question through Thunar on XFCE. In Nemo on Cinnamon, it all "just works" regardless of whether there's a space or an apostrophe but, in Thunar on XFCE, it does not. I'll edit that into my first post as well.

(it may be worth mentioning that Thunar on XFCE was by default set to open .sh files with the text editor even when "run as a program" was checked, so I had to set .sh files to instead open with the terminal by default so that double-clicking on them would actually run them)


And with regards to the apostrophe, that's part of the program that I simply can't change as .sh files is how one launches a Ren'Py VN (visual novel) natively on Linux. The following is a small example (~50MB) of a freely-available Ren'Py VN that you can use to see what I mean:

• https://madocallie.itch.io/camera

Now admittedly the file name of that example is simply "camera.sh" so it doesn't have the issue in question, but you can at least use it to see that renaming the .sh file to anything else will cause the VN to no longer launch. This means that, if the VN has an apostrophe in the file names of the .sh and .py files, then it will not work in Thunar on XFCE despite working without any issue in Nemo on Cinnamon.

(to clarify, I cannot link you to the actual Ren'Py VN that uses the apostrophe in its name)

[bin]

The way I normally get round this is to use a .desktop file to launch in XFCE

So, this is from script.desktop

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[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=script
Comment=
Exec="/home/robin/Videos/hello_world.sh"
Icon=
Path=
Terminal=true
StartupNotify=false

which works fine. However it does still baulk at spaces and apostrophes. On the other hand

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"hello' world"

will run from the command line.

Not sure if that helps...

[NM64]

Next-day UPDATE: From what I can tell, associating .sh scripts to open in the terminal when double-clicked isn't actually the same as what Cinnamon does by default, and the function that Cinnamon uses actually does exist in XFCE but is disabled by default:

• viewtopic.php?f=57&t=202303

This is an important distinction because that aforementioned "disabled by default" double-click-to-run function does work with .sh files and/or folders that have spaces and apostrophes in their file name, so simply enabling that function in XFCE solves the issue.



________Original post________

The way I normally get round this is to use a .desktop file to launch in XFCE

which works fine. However it does still baulk at spaces and apostrophes.

If it complains about spaces and apostrophes, then what is the benefit vs just double-clicking the .sh file directly? Double-clicking works fine if there's no spaces or apostrophes if you configure via right-click -> "open with" that .sh files open with the terminal by default rather than the text editor
.

On the other hand

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"hello' world"

will run from the command line.

That makes me wonder if it could work with the ./script.sh trick where you can have a .sh file run another .sh so that I could do something like the following:

run_first_script.sh

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./"second script's filename.sh"

EDIT: Sure enough that works! It doesn't really "solve" the issue though, especially since one still has to rename the folder if it too contains a space or apostrophe... unless maybe one could make an additional sub-folder and have the custom script located outside of it? e.g.

/folder/run_first_script.sh

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./"folder's contents/second script's filename.sh"

so in total the folder tree would be:

• /folder/run_first_script.sh
• /folder/folder's contents/second script's filename.sh

EDIT 2: Yup, that works too. And one can even cheat and replace any apostrophes with a ` (the key above tab and left of 1) as well as replace spaces with one of their unicode equivalents such as this one that's just a little bit wider (or alternatively this one that seems to be the same exact size)