Is there a cross-platform way to open a file browser in Python?

Question

I'm thinking something along the lines of the webbrowser module, but for file browsers. In Windows I'd like to open explorer, in GNOME on Linux I want to open nautilus, Konqueror on KDE, etc. I'd prefer not to kludge it up if I can avoid it. ;-)

Answer 1

I'd prefer not to kludge it up if I can avoid it.

Weeell I think you are going to need a little bit of platform-sniffing kludge, but hopefully not as much as the ghastly command-sniffing webbrowser module. Here's a first stab at it:

if sys.platform=='win32':
    subprocess.Popen(['start', d], shell= True)

elif sys.platform=='darwin':
    subprocess.Popen(['open', d])

else:
    try:
        subprocess.Popen(['xdg-open', d])
    except OSError:
        # er, think of something else to try
        # xdg-open *should* be supported by recent Gnome, KDE, Xfce

Note the win32 version will currently fail for spaces in filenames. Bug 2304 might be something to do with that, but there does seem to be a basic problem with parameter escaping and the Windows shell (cmd /c ...), in that you can't nest double-quotes and you can't ^-escape quotes or spaces. I haven't managed to find any way to quote and run cmd /c start C:\Documents and Settings from the command line at all.

ETA re nosklo's comment: on Windows only, there is a built-in way to do it:

if sys.platform=='win32':
    os.startfile(d)

Here's the not-very-nice alternative solution to find the shell and open a folder with it, which you shouldn't now need, but I'll leave in. (Partly because it might be of use for something else, but mostly because I spent the time to type the damned thing!)

if sys.platform=='win32':
    import _winreg
    path= r'SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon')
    for root in (_winreg.HKEY_CURRENT_USER, _winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE):
        try:
            with _winreg.OpenKey(root, path) as k:
                value, regtype= _winreg.QueryValueEx(k, 'Shell')
        except WindowsError:
            pass
        else:
            if regtype in (_winreg.REG_SZ, _winreg.REG_EXPAND_SZ):
                shell= value
            break
    else:
        shell= 'Explorer.exe'
    subprocess.Popen([shell, d])