Launch Command

[Richard Gaskin]

Jyrki Kanerva wrote:

> Just a guess, but try "/Macintosh HD/Applications/TextEdit.app"
> (first char is a slash before the drive name).

Since we're talking about OS X, remember that Apple added one more way in
which the OS differs from how all other OSes work, in this case by deceiving
the user:

In most cases, a *.app appears to be - and by default acts like - a file,
but it is not.  It is a folder, inside of which may be any number of other
files and folders.

With TexEdit, if your .app is at the location given above the path to the
actual executable is:

/Macintosh HD/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/Tex-Edit Plus.Carbon

The name of the actual executable can be obtained from parsing the .plist
file within the bundle.

When writing code to launch apps, this latest Apple anomaly requires you to
special-case an exception for OS X; in all other OSes, a file is a file and
a folder is a folder, including Mac Classic (pre-CarbonLib).

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site
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